Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 12th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

I thank the Leader of the House for his statement. May I echo his thanks to all the staff of the House for the way they have supported us this Session? May I also say to him that, following his written ministerial statement on the experiment with public reading stages, the Opposition will certainly be looking forward to the pilot?

As these are the last business questions before the Olympics, may I take this opportunity, as the Leader of the House has just done, to wish Team GB all the best? The whole country is behind them. However, given today’s urgent question on security, the problems with the M4 flyover and the continuing issues at Heathrow, could he assure us that the Government are confident that these troubles will be overcome before the opening ceremony?

The Government’s handling of the House of Lords Reform Bill has descended into farce. On Tuesday, the Prime Minister lost control of his party and the Government abandoned the programme motion. Despite an explicit promise to me on Tuesday, the Leader of the House has failed to make a further announcement about how the Government intend to proceed. I hope that he will do so in his reply to me.

In his usual helpful way, the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Oakeshott said on Wednesday that the Prime Minister must

“not cringe to the Tory dinosaurs now they have tasted blood.”

Last night at the 1922 committee the Prime Minister apparently gave a hint about how he wishes to proceed when, after hugging his beleaguered Chief Whip—we all agree with that and can add our sympathy to him—he said:

“We are not going to negotiate with Labour, they are the enemy and they can’t be trusted—we are going to negotiate with the Liberal Democrats”.

By all accounts, the Prime Minister’s unique perspective on the trustworthiness of Liberal Democrats did not go down terribly well in that room. It was then pointed out to him by a much more experienced member of the Conservative parliamentary party that:

“Labour is not the enemy; they are Her Majesty’s Opposition”.

May I gently suggest to the Leader of the House that, as the PM clearly does not have the votes on his own side to deliver House of Lords reform, we should proceed on the basis of genuine cross-party discussion and agreement?

At business questions last week, I asked the Leader of the House about Conservative and Liberal Democrat Ministers splitting Government time to enable them to differentiate themselves from one another. In reply, he said that, when it came to the House of Lords Reform Bill, there would be a

“seamless approach to the legislation from those who are opening and closing the debates”.—[Official Report, 5 July 2012; Vol. 547, c. 1071.]

It did not quite work out that way, did it? I see that the Government announced at the end of last month that they were launching a £14 million fund to help people through the process of divorce. It gives people who are splitting up advice on how to divorce amicably and avoid arguments. Could the Leader of the House say whether the Prime Minister and his deputy were the first in line to receive the advice?

Yesterday, the Deputy Prime Minister sent an e-mail to his dwindling band of party activists, and I have managed to obtain a copy. In it, he says of Tuesday’s Lords vote:

“This is a huge triumph for our party”.

I wonder what on earth a disaster would look like in the eyes of the Deputy Prime Minister.

Last night’s suggestion that replacing the remaining hereditary peers with directly elected Members is a substantive reform is absurd. We have been debating whether there should be a 100% elected or an 80% elected second Chamber; electing just 10% would not be a democratic reform. A 10% elected second Chamber would not be a compromise; it would be the Liberal Democrats running up the white flag.

What a shambles this has been: the Prime Minister has lost control of his party; the Liberal Democrats are in revolt; and Government Whips have taken to ordering rebel Tory Back Benchers off the premises. And it is not just Government Whips who have been bullying their own Back Benchers. We have got used to the Prime Minister losing his rag at the Dispatch Box, but on Tuesday night, in one of his Flashman moments, he had an angry altercation with one of his leading Back-Bench rebels. Would the Leader of the House make a suggestion to the Prime Minister: “Just calm down”?

[Sir George Young]

On the first question, we are determined that the Olympics will be a great success and that the issues that the hon. Lady referred to will be resolved in good time.

The hon. Lady conveniently glossed over the rebellion among the Labour Members, 26 of whom defied their Whip, so it is clear that the Conservative party is not the only party that has differences on this issue. In my business statement, I announced the business for the first week back, which did not include further progress on the Bill, but on the substantive issue that she raised, it was clear from the vote on Second Reading that a huge majority of the House want to get on with it, with majorities within each of the three major parties voting for reform. She said that we could trust the Labour party, but I have to say that the Labour party was willing the end but not willing the means. Saying before the programme motion was even tabled that Labour Members would vote against it shows a lack of commitment to getting the Bill on to the statute book.

It was equally clear on Tuesday that there was no consensus on the timetable for the Bill, which is why we did not make progress with the programme motion. What we want to do—I say this in response to what the hon. Lady has just said—is to reflect and to allow time for meaningful discussion, including with the Opposition and with other hon. Members, to build a consensus on the best way forward. As I said on Tuesday, we do intend to table a timetable motion for the Bill in the autumn, but, as the House would expect, we want those discussions to take place first before I can give the House any further information.

As for marital relations, I think that relationships within the coalition are much better than relationships within the previous Labour Government. I get on much better with my deputy than the previous Prime Minister got on with Tony Blair. I just say to the hon. Lady, in conclusion, that two parties are working together to put right the mess left behind by the Labour party, which still refused to admit that it got anything wrong.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

We have listened carefully to the debate so far, confident that we will get a significant majority on Second Reading tonight. But for Lords reform to progress, it needs those who support reform to vote for reform and to vote for that reform to make progress through this House. It is clear that the Opposition are not prepared to do that, so we will not move the programme motion tonight. We remain committed to making progress on Lords reform, and with Second Reading behind us we will then consider how best to take this agenda forward and how best to secure progress through the House for reforms that have the backing of this House. The Government will move a timetable motion before we make progress in the autumn, in accordance with the rules of the House.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

The Government’s decision to withdraw the programme motion today is a victory for Parliament. The Leader of the House has talked about a timetable motion, but will he now confirm, so that there is no doubt, that if this Bill passes its Second Reading tonight, it is the Government’s intention to bring forward immediately a motion to commit the Bill to debate on the Floor of this House? Will he also confirm that it is not now the Government’s intention to bring forward a guillotine on this Bill, having effectively lost the argument for a timetable today? We must have the time to debate this Bill and scrutinise it adequately.

[Sir George Young]

I have nothing to add to what I have just said, apart from this: there will be business questions on Thursday, and at that point I hope to be able to tell the House more about the Government’s proposals.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 5th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for next week is as follows:

Monday 9 July—Second Reading of the House of Lords Reform Bill (day 1).

Tuesday 10 July—Conclusion of Second Reading of the House of Lords Reform Bill (day 2).

Wednesday 11 July—Debate on motions relating to the sitting hours of the House of Commons, followed by a debate on a motion relating to VAT on air ambulance fuel payments. The subjects for these debates have been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee. Followed by opposed private business for consideration, as named by the Chairman of Ways and Means.

Thursday 12 July—Motion relating to the reform of the Court of Justice of the European Union, followed by a motion on a European document relating to the EU draft budget, followed by a motion on a European document relating to EU human rights strategy.

Friday 13 July—Private Member’s Bills.

The provisional business for the week commencing 16 July will include:



Monday 16 July—Opposition day (4th allotted day). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.

Tuesday 17 July—Debate on a motion relating to the Public Administration Committee’s recommendation for the Prime Minister’s adviser on Ministers’ interests to be empowered to instigate his own investigations, followed by a motion on the summer recess Adjournment. The subjects for these debates have been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 12 July will be:

Thursday 12 July—Debate on banking competition.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for announcing next week’s business.

Last week I suggested to the right hon. Gentleman that, as Liberal Democrats and Conservative Ministers now spend their time rubbishing each other, it might be better if future parliamentary business were organised so that Government time was divided between the two parties to give both sufficient time to differentiate themselves from each other. I am delighted to see that the Leader of the House has quickly adopted my suggestion, because in announcing two days of debate on House of Lords reform next week, he omitted to draw the House’s attention to the fact that Government time had been so arranged to allow Liberal Democrat Ministers to speak on Monday and Conservative Ministers to speak on Tuesday. It will be interesting to monitor the differences of approach from one day to the next. Will the Leader of the House confirm that in future all Government business will be organised in this way?

We have learnt this week that Network Rail, a publicly funded body, is planning to pay millions in bonuses to senior managers. Government decisions mean that rail passengers are facing fare rises of 11% a year at a time when people are struggling to make ends meet. It is simply unacceptable for Network Rail to pay out millions in bonuses to its top managers. Six months ago the Transport Secretary promised to appoint a public interest director, yet she has failed to do so. The Transport Secretary has the power to stop Network Rail bosses paying themselves massive bonuses at their annual general meeting on 19 July. Will the Leader of the House confirm that the Government will block Network Rail’s plans, and arrange for the Transport Secretary to make an urgent statement to the House?

The Government have set up an independent inquiry into forests. That was done after 500,000 people signed a petition objecting to the Government’s proposal to flog off England’s forests to the highest bidders. The Government’s U-turn on the issue started a trend; they have been U-turning ever since. The inquiry report was published yesterday. Will the Leader of the House confirm that the Government have now dropped their plans to sell off 15% of English forests, and will he say when they will instead set out plans to protect and secure the future of our forests? Will he also arrange for the Environment Secretary to make an oral statement on the Government’s response to the independent inquiry?

The Government ask a bishop to hold an independent inquiry into the future of forests, but refuse to have an independent inquiry into the banking scandal. On Monday, the Government were against holding any inquiry; then they were in favour of a parliamentary inquiry, but against a parliamentary vote; then they were in favour of a parliamentary inquiry and a parliamentary vote, but still against an independent judicial inquiry. The Government have had three different positions in three days. May I urge the right hon. Gentleman to adopt a fourth? The British people want an independent judge-led inquiry, and all the Opposition parties want an independent judge-led inquiry. In fact, the only people opposing an independent judge-led inquiry are Government Members of Parliament and bankers themselves.

Something else the bankers wanted was for the Vickers report to be watered down, which is exactly what the Government have done. On Tuesday, Martin Wolf, the Financial Times economist and a member of the Vickers commission, described the Government’s decision not to implement the recommendation on high-risk derivative trading as “really quite serious”. Will the Leader of the House explain why the Government are watering down the Vickers commission recommendations, and arrange an urgent statement on this matter from the Chancellor?

May I congratulate the Leader of the House on his sterling performance in the recent ConservativeHome league table of Cabinet Ministers? The right hon. Gentleman has surged up the rankings. [Interruption.] Much to his surprise—perhaps he does not follow it—but he has. Conservative Members have put the Leader of the House in the premier league of Cabinet Ministers. However, the part-time partisan Chancellor, who has presided over a double-dip recession, has slumped into the third division. Does the Leader of the House have any tips on how the Chancellor can raise his game?

[Sir George Young]

On the first issue, these two parties are working together harmoniously to repair the damage done by the Labour party. In the debate on the House of Lords on Monday and Tuesday, there will be a seamless approach to the legislation from those who are opening and closing the debates on the first and second day. I remind Labour Members what their policy was when they were in government, and I hope, therefore, that they will support the Government on Monday and Tuesday, both on the motion on Second Reading and indeed on the programme motion. Through the latter, we propose to allocate 10 days in Committee, which contrasts with the four days they allocated on their Lords reform Bill.

The extraordinary corporate governance structure for Network Rail was actually set up by Labour; they are responsible for the decision-making process. We propose to reform it, and I will pass on the hon. Lady’s suggestion about the bonuses to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport.

So far as the forests are concerned, the hon. Lady will have seen the written ministerial statement from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The joke that we just heard from the hon. Lady was the same one we heard in DEFRA questions a few moments ago; I am sure she told it better. The initial response was set out in the written ministerial statement, and there will be a more substantive one next January. We have confirmed that the forests will remain in public ownership.

On the issue of a public inquiry, we are going to debate that. If the hon. Lady is asking for a debate on this issue, I have granted it, and very quickly. Our view, which will be set out later, is that any Committee should have the power to interview witnesses under oath; it should have the power to send for the necessary people; it should sit in public and have full access to the necessary documents and papers. We believe that a Joint Committee of the House will be able to discharge its responsibilities, and we will move on to that debate in a moment.

We have not watered down the Vickers report. We are introducing a banking reform Bill, and in due course the House will have an opportunity to consider our proposals to separate the retail and investment wings of the banks.

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for bringing to my attention something I had not noticed before—the league table. One thing that is almost certain after her endorsement is that, next time, my position will be a lot lower.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

Mr Speaker, I should like to make a short business statement. The business for this Thursday will now be proceedings on the Supply and Appropriation (Main Estimates) Bill, followed by a debate on two motions relating to professional standards in the banking industry. I shall make my usual business statement on Thursday.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

I welcome that statement from the Leader of the House. Can he tell us how long he expects the debates to last?

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her welcome for the statement. The plan is to table a business motion today which will appear on the Order Paper tomorrow. The debate will be the main business on Thursday, and we plan to bring it to a conclusion at 5.15 pm to allow time for debate before 6 pm.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 28th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House please give us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for next week will be:

Monday 2 July—Motion to approve Ways and Means resolutions relating to the Finance Bill, followed by remaining stages of the Finance Bill (day 1).

Tuesday 3 July—Conclusion of remaining stages of the Finance Bill (day 2).

Wednesday 4 July—Estimates day (1st allotted day). There will be a debate on the work of the UK Border Agency, followed by a debate on UK-Turkey relations and Turkey’s regional role.



Further details will be given in the Official Report.



[The details are as follows: There will be a debate on: UK-Turkey relations and Turkey’s regional role: 12th report from the Foreign Affairs Committee of Session 2010-12, HC 1567, and the Government response thereto, CM 8370.]

At 7 pm the House will be asked to agree all outstanding estimates, followed by a motion to approve a statutory instrument relating to terrorism.

Thursday 5 July—Proceedings on the Supply and Appropriation (Main Estimates) Bill, followed by debate on a motion relating to VAT on air ambulance fuel payments, followed by debate on a motion relating to the public administration Select Committee’s recommendation for the Prime Minister’s adviser on Ministers’ interests to be empowered to instigate his own investigations.

Friday 6 July—Private Members’ Bills.

The provisional business for the week commencing 9 July will include:

Monday 9 July—Second Reading of the House of Lords Reform Bill (day 1).

Tuesday 10 July—Conclusion of Second Reading of the House of Lords Reform Bill (day 2).

Wednesday 11 July—Debate on a motion relating to the sitting hours of the House of Commons. The subject for that debate has been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee. Following that, the Chairman of Ways and Means is expected to name opposed private business for consideration.

Thursday 12 July—Motion relating to the reform of the Court of Justice of the European Union, followed by a motion on a European document relating to the EU draft budget, followed by a motion on a European document relating to EU human rights strategy.

Friday 13 July—Private Members’ Bills.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 5 July will be a debate on PIP breast implants and regulation of cosmetic interventions, followed by a debate on adoption.

[Ms Eagle]

The right hon. Gentleman has announced for next week a debate on a Backbench Business Committee motion on giving the adviser on the ministerial code the power to initiate an investigation rather than waiting for the Prime Minister to ask for it, which this Prime Minister has been remarkably reluctant to do. Will the Government accept the decision of the House on this matter?

The revelations that Barclays bank engaged in “widespread” market manipulation to maximise its profits are truly shocking. There are suggestions that other banks were also involved in rigging the LIBOR and EURIBOR rates. I know the Chancellor will make a statement after business questions, but does the Leader of the House agree that such behaviour is “morally repugnant”?

Yesterday, the Deputy Prime Minister published the House of Lords Reform Bill. The Opposition welcome this legislation. I have always voted for an elected second Chamber and look forward to doing so again, this time with Conservative Back Benchers joining us in the Division Lobby. When the Labour Government took through legislation to remove hereditary peers—a simple six-clause Bill—there were nine days of debate. Why are the Government planning to offer little more debate on the House of Lords Reform Bill, which is a much bigger and more complex piece of legislation? The Leader of the House is fond of saying that the House is not a legislative factory. The Queen’s Speech was short of Bills; time is not a problem. Will he undertake to arrange future Government business to ensure that Members have sufficient time to scrutinise that important Bill?

I can understand Conservative MPs finding the Liberal Democrat differentiation strategy increasingly infuriating—perhaps that explains why the Prime Minister and the Education Secretary have jumped on the same bandwagon —but if the Liberal Democrats differentiate themselves from the coalition and the Conservatives do the same, where does that leave the Government? Perhaps the Education Secretary, who wants to micro-manage schools, could pose this as an exam question: if two parties come together and then differentiate themselves, what does that leave? Based on the last few weeks, the answer is a complete shambles. Will the Leader of the House arrange in future business for Liberal Democrat and Conservative Ministers to share the speaking time to give both parties ample opportunity to differentiate themselves?

We have known for months that the Chancellor is out of touch with the country, but we did not realise until recently the extent to which he is out of touch with his own ministerial colleagues. The Transport Secretary has spent weeks telling everyone that the increase in fuel duty announced in the Budget is going ahead, and on Tuesday morning on the airwaves she was absolutely clear that it would not be postponed. Later that day at 12.30 pm, Conservative Whips sent a briefing to all Tory MPs saying that freezing fuel duty would be

“hypocrisy of the worst kind”.

Two hours later, the Chancellor popped up at the Dispatch Box to announce that he will, after all, freeze fuel duty. Having humiliated the Transport Secretary, the Chancellor then forced the Economic Secretary to make her now celebrated “Newsnight” appearance to explain the latest Budget U-turn, on the grounds—to quote her words—that

“there isn’t much in the world that is certain”.

Given the disarray and panic in the Treasury bunker, the Leader of the House might struggle to give an exact figure, but how many Budget U-turns have we had to date? I wonder whether the Chancellor could write the next Budget in pencil so that we can rub it all out again when he changes his mind. The Leader of the House has announced two days of debate on the Finance Bill next week. Will he now put his reputation on the line, here and now, and tell us categorically that there will be no more U-turns on this bungling Budget? Perhaps he should just give up and vote for our amendments next week.

The Government have made the wrong choice on the economy—a double-dip recession made in Downing street, borrowing up, tax receipts down, living standards down, no plan for growth. The Government’s economic policy is running out of road. The U-turn that the Chancellor needs to make is on his failed economic strategy.

[Sir George Young]

On the point about the debate on the adviser to the Prime Minister, the hon. Lady is now asking us to do what her Government consistently refused to do, which was to allow the Prime Minister’s adviser to initiate inquiries. She will have to listen to the response given by my ministerial colleague in the debate that I have just announced, which was selected by the Backbench Business Committee.

On the Barclays debacle, as the hon. Lady knows, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will make a statement, but it strikes me as a failure of the light-touch regime introduced by a previous Minister.

So far as the House of Lords is concerned, the Opposition seem to be in a total muddle. They say that they support the Bill but that they will oppose the programme motion, before they even know what it contains. I ask the hon. Lady, who I know supports reform, to listen to what her leader said in his first conference speech in 2010:

“This generation has a chance—and a huge responsibility—to change our politics. We must seize it and meet the challenge… we need to finally elect the House of Lords after talking about it for…a hundred years.”

That is what he said in 2010, yet yesterday the shadow Leader of the House of Lords said that

“it is not a priority”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 27 June 2012; Vol. 738, c. 237.]

The only thing that is consistent is the sheer opportunism of the Labour party on this subject.

On the usual knockabout about the coalition from the hon. Lady, I would simply say that two parties are now working together in government more harmoniously than one party did in government for 13 years.

Finally, on fuel, I admire the cool performance of the Economic Secretary in the face of some very aggressive interviewing by Jeremy Paxman. The Opposition accuse the Government of a U-turn, but let us consider their position. First, they introduced a fuel duty escalator—[Interruption.] Secondly, they asked us not to go ahead with their tax rise. Thirdly, when we do not, they complain. The alphabet does not contain a letter describing that manoeuvre.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 21st June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House please give us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for next week will be as follows:

Monday 25 June—Consideration in Committee of the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill (day 2).

Tuesday 26 June—Opposition Day [3rd allotted day]. There will be a debate on the national health service followed by a debate on defence. Both debates will arise on an Opposition motion.

Wednesday 27 June—Conclusion of consideration in Committee and remaining stages of the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill (day 3).

Thursday 28 June—Debate on a motion relating to fiscal measures to strengthen the green economy, followed by debate on a motion relating to the appointment of a Minister for older people. The subjects for these debates have been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

The provisional business for the week commencing 2 July will include:

Monday 2 July—Motion to approve ways and means resolutions relating to the Finance Bill, followed by remaining stages of the Finance Bill (day 1).

Tuesday 3 July—Conclusion of remaining stages of the Finance Bill (day 2).

Wednesday 4 July—Estimates Day [1st allotted day]. There will be a debate on UK-Turkey relations and Turkey’s regional role, followed by a debate on the work of the UK Border Agency.

Further details will be given in the Official Report.

[The details are as follows: There will be a debate on: UK-Turkey relations and Turkey’s regional role; 12th report from the Foreign Affair Committee of Session 2010-12, HC 1567, and the Government response thereto, CM 8370. Followed by a debate on the work of the UK Border Agency; 15th report from the Home Affairs Committee of Session 2010-12, The Work of the UK Border Agency (April-July 2011), HC 1497, and the Government response thereto, CM 8253, and the Committee’s 21st report of Session 2010-12, Work of the UK Border Agency (August-December 2011), HC 1722.]

At 7 pm the House will be asked to agree all outstanding estimates.

Thursday 5 July—Proceedings on the Supply and Appropriation (Main Estimates) Bill, followed by debate on a motion relating to VAT on air ambulance fuel payments, followed by a further debate to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 6 July—Private Members’ Bills.

I should also like to inform the House of business in Westminster Hall:

Thursday 5 July—Debate on adoption.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business for next week.

The visit to the UK by Aung San Suu Kyi is an opportunity for us to pay tribute to her enormous courage and determination in leading peaceful opposition to the Burmese dictatorship. The personal sacrifices that she has made in spending most of the last quarter of a century under house arrest have been enormous. Her bravery and fortitude have been an inspiration to many and deserve the deepest admiration. Members in all parts of the House will be looking forward to the speech she will deliver to both Houses later today. Because of the courage of Aung San Suu Kyi and others, Burma is finally taking the first tentative steps on the road to democracy. Does the Leader of the House agree that it is important for the UK to do all we can to help to ensure democratic reform in Burma?

If in Burma the signs are promising, in Egypt there are worrying signs that the military is reluctant to give up power, and in Syria the Government’s actions in massacring their own people are completely unacceptable. Will the Leader of the House give an undertaking that the Foreign Secretary will continue to keep the House aware of the efforts being made to ensure the transition to democracy in all these regions?

This week Members will have received a letter from the Culture Secretary announcing a U-turn on the planned draft Communications Data Bill Green Paper, which was to be published this summer. It was delayed until the autumn, and now we are told that it will not be published at all. Instead, we are promised a White Paper some time next year. In his letter, the Culture Secretary told Members that this would incorporate the Government’s response to the Leveson report. Is not the position of the Culture Secretary and the Government getting beyond parody? Does the Leader of the House really think that it is remotely credible for Lord Justice Leveson’s report to be sent to this Culture Secretary to consider, given that he has, to put it kindly, a strong personal interest in the conclusions?

The Prime Minister rushed to the TV studios to condemn the tax avoidance scheme used by Jimmy Carr. Oddly, he did not take the opportunity to condemn as “morally repugnant” the tax avoidance scheme used by Conservative supporter Gary Barlow, who has given a whole new meaning to the phrase “Take That”. If he is also “morally repugnant”, why has he just been given an OBE in the birthday honours? Why is the Prime Minister’s view of what is dodgy in the tax system so partial? Sir Philip Green has interesting tax arrangements, but far from being labelled “morally repugnant” in a Mexican TV studio, he got a Government review to head up.

While the Prime Minister talks the talk in the TV studios, the reality is that his Government are cutting Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs’ resources, making it much harder to tackle tax avoidance schemes, while in the botched Budget his Government have given every millionaire a legal way to reduce their tax bill by cutting tax for the richest 1%. Will the Leader of the House arrange for the part-time Chancellor to make a statement to explain why the Government are cutting taxes for millionaires when hard-pressed families are struggling to make ends meet?

Another U-turn this week was the admission by the gaffe-laden Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General that the Government had recruited additional special advisers, breaking the spirit, if not the letter, of the Tory election manifesto and the coalition agreement. May I tell the Leader of the House that the difficulties that the Government are experiencing are not because they have too few special advisers but because they stand up for the wrong people? They make the wrong choices: the wrong choices on the economy, the wrong choices on tax cuts for the richest 1%, and the wrong choices on HMRC funding.

The U-turn on special advisers is the latest in a long line. Will the Leader of the House update Members on how many U-turns the Government have performed over the last month? We have had U-turns on the pasty tax, the skip tax, the caravan tax, aircraft carriers, and the special advisers cap. Have I missed any? [Interruption.] Oh yes, the charity tax. Given this record, and for the convenience of Members, will the Leader of the House, alongside announcing the forthcoming business, in future also announce the forthcoming Government U-turns?

[Sir George Young]

I suppose that there was a tangential connection with next week’s business in some of that.

May I, too, start on a consensual note and endorse what the hon. Lady said about the visit of Aung San Suu Kyi? We are all looking forward to her address in Westminster Hall. It is a sign of the progress that has been made in Burma that she feels able to leave Burma confident that she will be able to return. It is quite right that this iconic person should be given the opportunity to address both Houses in Westminster Hall later on. It is indeed our objective to play a key role in supporting genuine democratic change in Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi will be seeing the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for International Development, and that dialogue will take forward the agenda for change. There is a heavy weight of expectation on her shoulders, and I feel some sympathy with her for carrying that burden.

The Foreign Secretary will certainly want to keep the House up to date on the worrying events in Egypt and Syria, so I can give the hon. Lady that undertaking.

On the proceedings on the Leveson report and the way in which that gets reported back to the House, I think that the machinery we have set up is absolutely correct. We debated the position of the Culture Secretary last week, and his position was endorsed in a vote at the end of that debate.

On tax avoidance, we are introducing a number of measures that the Labour party failed to introduce, such as a general anti-avoidance rule and measures to ensure that at least some tax is paid by those on high incomes. Of course, the Chancellor will be at the Dispatch Box on Tuesday to answer questions.

The hon. Lady ended on U-turns and wrong choices. Today I read an article in The Times by the shadow Home Secretary, in which she conceded that Labour did not get it right on immigration:

“In government we didn’t do enough to address people’s concerns on immigration. By the election, we had lost the argument”.

That was one wrong choice, and I welcome that admission. I hope we can expect it to be the first in a series of articles by Opposition Front Benchers outlining their mistakes over the 13 years. When can we expect an article in The Times from the shadow Chancellor, confessing that Labour did not get it right on the economy either?

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 14th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for next week will include:

Monday 18 June—Consideration in Committee of the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill (day 1).

Tuesday 19 June—Debate on a motion relating to the application of article 8 of the European convention on human rights, followed by debate on a motion relating to financial services market abuse.

Wednesday 20 June—Opposition day [2nd allotted day]. There will be a debate on disability benefits and social care, followed by a further debate on a subject to be announced. Both debates will arise on an Opposition motion.

Thursday 21 June—Motion relating to the work of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, followed by a motion relating to the mis-selling of interest rate swap products to small businesses. The subjects of these debates have been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Colleagues will wish to be reminded that the House will meet at 9.30 am on this day.

The provisional business for the week commencing 25 June will include:

Monday 25 June—Consideration in Committee of the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill (day 2).

Tuesday 26 June—Opposition day [3rd allotted day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion, subject to be announced.

Wednesday 27 June—Conclusion of consideration in Committee and remaining stages of the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill (day 3).

Thursday 28 June—Business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 28 June will be a debate on social mobility.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business for next week. We are all particularly looking forward to the visit next Thursday of Aung San Suu Kyi, which is the cause of the change in the start time.

This week the part-time Chancellor has been whingeing to a group of business leaders because they have not been publicly defending his decision to cut taxes for the richest 1%. This, in a week when we learn that FTSE 100 bosses have awarded themselves an extremely generous pay rise of 12% on average, with one in four pocketing staggering pay rises of 40% or more.

How do the Government respond? On Second Reading of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill on Monday, the Business Secretary announced that he is to water down proposals, which were already inadequate, to give shareholders binding votes on executive pay. Instead of encouraging business leaders to lobby for an even bigger deal for the richest 1%, does the Leader of the House not think that the Chancellor should clamp down on unwarranted and exorbitant rewards for those at the very top?

With the Chancellor disgracefully ducking his own statement on banking reform later today, how are we ever going to get him into this Chamber to explain what has happened to his abandoned slogan: “We’re all in this together”? We have also had an independent report this week on child poverty, which states that the previous, Labour Government cut child poverty at a pace and scale unmatched in any other industrial country. It reveals that measures that Labour introduced in government stopped almost 1 million children growing up in poverty, and it states also that measures introduced by this Government were both “unfair” and “short-sighted”.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies expects the number of children growing up in poverty to increase by 600,000 over the next two years, but the Government’s response is to try to redefine poverty, not to deal with the problem. There we have it: a Government who cut taxes for the richest and make the poor poorer while trying to cover it up. Will the Leader of the House finally find time for a debate on fairness? The Chancellor in his Budget made the wrong decision, and he also chose the wrong economic strategy. Britain is in a double-dip recession made in Downing street. Next week the G20 is meeting in Mexico, and this is an opportunity for the Government finally to come up with a plan B, but I fear that Ministers will have trouble even making it to the G20 given that they are constantly U-turning. A holding pattern over Heathrow seems like a more realistic ministerial destination than Mexico.

The Chancellor made good use of the recess to perform mass U-turns on his omnishambles of a Budget, and I now understand why there are so many recesses at the moment: the Government have built time into the parliamentary calendar to allow Ministers to slip out all their U-turns when the House is not sitting. Does the Leader of the House agree that Ministers should have the guts to come to the House to announce their U-turns?

House building is down, homelessness is up, rough sleeping is up and young people find it impossible to get on the housing ladder. What is the response of the Minister for Housing and Local Government? He spends his time spinning figures that are palpable nonsense. In what parallel universe can the Minister for Housing and Local Government describe a year-on-year drop of 68% in the number of affordable housing starts as an “impressive” and “dramatic” increase? He claimed that there was a “net loss” of 45,000 homes between 1997 and 2010, before deciding that that figure was not sufficiently dramatic and press-releasing that we ended up with 200,000 fewer homes.

In fact, the Government’s own statistics show that by May 2010, when compared with May 1997, there were an additional 2 million homes in England. Will the Leader of the House therefore arrange for the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to make a statement explaining the antics of the Housing Minister as well as his flawed understanding of simple mathematics?

The pay of FTSE 100 bosses is spiralling out of control, the number of children growing up in poverty is increasing, house building is down and homelessness is up. What we need from the Prime Minister and this Government are less PR and more delivery. To date, it is a pretty sorry record from an out-of-touch and incompetent Government.

[Sir George Young]

I begin on a consensual note and agree with what the hon. Lady said about next Thursday, when we welcome Aung San Suu Kyi in Westminster Hall.

“Part-time Chancellor”, the hon. Lady says, which is all very well coming from a shadow Leader of the House who a few weeks ago assumed new responsibilities for heading up her party’s policy unit. I hope that she is not going to be a part-time shadow Leader of the House.

On executive pay, the previous Government had 13 years but did absolutely nothing about it. Since January we have been consulting on the most comprehensive reform of governance on directors’ pay, and greater transparency on what executives are paid; strengthening shareholder rights by legislating so that they can hold companies to account; and calling on responsible business and investors to promote good practice. We will announce the final package shortly and do in two-and-a-half years something that Labour wholly failed to do in 13.

On child poverty, the previous Government’s target was to halve it by 2010. They failed. Although relative child poverty numbers fell over the past year, children were no better off in real terms, as it was largely due to a reduction in median incomes. Absolute poverty also did not change, so there are some perverse incentives in the current system, given that, perversely, in a recession it seems that poverty statistics are getting better. That is why we are consulting on a better range for measuring child poverty, something that looks at the causes as well as the monetary measures. In a report it will be announced that the Government intend to consult in the autumn on new, better measurements of child poverty, and when we introduce universal credits that will lift hundreds of thousands of children and families out of poverty.

The hon. Lady asks for a debate about fairness. I have announced a number of Opposition days, so she is perfectly welcome to choose fairness as the subject of one of them. Indeed, she might have chosen fairness for the debate yesterday; it would have been far better than the one that we had.

As for the sittings of the House, we are now sitting in September, which we did not do at all during the previous Parliament, and sitting like-for-like for more days than the previous Parliament.

As for housing, under the previous Government house building starts fell to the lowest level in peacetime since the 1920s. The hon. Lady asked what we were planning to do. We have plans for 170,000 affordable homes during the current spending review. We have reformed the planning system and we are making more public land available to house builders. We are taking a range of steps to assist the housing market.

Apparently, we do not deal with our problems in the same way as the Opposition. This morning we discovered an interesting new technique for establishing party discipline from a prominent Labour blogger in the New Statesman, who wrote: “Challenge Labour and you’ll find a horse’s head on your pillow”. It is no wonder that one insider was quoted as saying:

“We’re all being terribly positive at the moment.”

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 24th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of House please give us next week’s business?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

Next week’s business would not take very long, but the business for the week commencing 11 June will be:

Monday 11 June—Second Reading of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill.

Tuesday 12 June—Second Reading of the Defamation Bill, followed by motion on a European document relating to the proceeds of crime.

Wednesday 13 June—Opposition Day [1st allotted day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.

Thursday 14 June—There will be a debate on mental health. The subject for this debate was previously suggested by the Backbench Business Committee.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for Thursday 14 June will be:

Thursday 14 June—Debate on piracy off the coast of Somalia.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for his statement. Twenty four years ago today, Parliament passed legislation introducing section 28 into law. It was a nasty, discriminatory law that caused a lot of bullying and misery. After a fierce three-year battle, in the teeth of Tory opposition, we repealed it in government. Last week, I asked the right hon. Gentleman about the Government’s position on equal marriage. In reply, he spoke eloquently about the importance of equality, but by an unfortunate oversight—I am sure it was an oversight—he omitted to answer my question. This morning, the Government’s position has become clear. Lacking the courage of the Prime Minister’s convictions and threatened with a growing revolt in the Cabinet, they have decided to grant those opposed to equal marriage a free vote, meaning that the Government’s flagship policy on equal rights will become law only with Labour support. Will he arrange for the Home Secretary to make a statement to say when legislation will be introduced, because there was no sign of it in the Queen’s Speech?

The Prime Minister was no doubt delighted to receive from Steve Hilton his leaving gift, a copy of the Beecroft report, which is the worst attack on workplace protection in a generation. His gratitude was clearly short lived, because only a few days later No. 10 was briefing The Daily Telegraph:

“No one really has any idea what went on with this report, it was very much Steve Hilton’s project. The whole thing is a bit dodgy and we wish it had never happened”.

Liberal Democrat and Conservative Ministers have spent the last few days fighting over it, and the shambles has continued with the report’s author attacking the Business Secretary by calling him a “socialist”. Only a hedge fund boss and Tory donor could call someone who voted for a tax cut for the richest 1% a socialist. Where was the Business Secretary today, by the way? He was in Berlin. Will the Leader of the House prevent Secretaries of State from being out of the country when there are questions to answer in the House? It is perfectly reasonable for them to arrange their trips at other times of the week.

Yesterday, the Government published the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill. The Leader of the House announced a moment ago that the Bill will be the first thing we consider on our return. The Bill contains a small section on employment law. Will he reassure the House that the Government will not bring forward amendments to the Bill to implement more of the Beecroft report?

The senior Liberal Democrat BackBencher, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), introduced a petition this week opposing the Government’s decision to impose a caravan tax. I thought I must have missed him in the Division Lobby when the Opposition tried to prevent the Government from introducing this unfair tax, but according to Hansard he voted for it. The Liberal Democrats voted for the pasty tax and pretended to oppose it in their constituencies, and now they campaign against the caravan tax, which they voted for. Is there any bit of this bungled Budget that they are prepared to support in their constituencies?

These Liberal Democrat tactics are clearly infectious, because four Conservative Back Benchers have started doing the same thing: they have introduced petitions opposing the caravan tax that they voted for. Will the right hon. Gentleman find time for a statement to remind his Back Benchers that if they want to campaign in their constituencies against Government policy, they should at least vote against it when the matter is before this House? People are beginning to notice.

Ministers have recently been complaining that the country has not been working hard enough. We have to wonder what planet they are on. Families up and down the country are struggling to make ends meet, worried about job security, worried about how they will afford rising fuel and food bills, and angry that the Government are doing nothing to help. Can the Leader of the House confirm that when Ministers complain that the country needs to work harder, they are in fact thinking about the Prime Minister? We learn this week that his aides say that he spends

“a crazy, scary amount of time playing Fruit Ninja”.

We have a Chancellor who is trying to do two jobs—both badly—while the Prime Minister fills his time slicing fruit on his iPad.

On a day when the Office for National Statistics has announced that the double-dip recession is worse than we thought, Liberal Democrats and Conservative Ministers are slugging it out in public. The Conservative party is fighting among itself on equal marriage and House of Lords reform. Government Back Benchers are denouncing in their constituencies the measures that they voted for in Parliament. Does the Leader of the House not think that instead of losing his temper and ranting at the Dispatch Box, the Prime Minister should just get a grip?

[Sir George Young]

I wait patiently for questions about next week’s business, but they are pretty hard to find. Let me go through the issues that the hon. Lady touched on.

The Government are consulting on equal marriage, which the Labour party did not consult on, or indeed do anything about, when it was in government for 13 years. The consultation is under way; it has not finished. Along with other issues that involve matters of conscience, it seems to me perfectly proper that this matter should be subject to a free vote on this side of the House, and that is what we plan to do.

We had a statement on Beecroft on Monday. We have also had BIS questions, a large chunk of which were all about Beecroft, and I am not sure that the Leader of the House can usefully add to what has already been said.

The hon. Lady asked about the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, which has been published. The Bill, which will be debated when we come back, sets out the Government’s proposals on the subject. Of course the Government will listen to the House if it proposes amendments to the Bill. For her to ask me to rule out any Government amendments is to say that we should be denied the opportunity of listening to the views of the House, including those of Opposition Members, so of course we will be in listening mode on that issue.

On VAT on static caravans, the Chancellor announced a number of measures in the Budget to address anomalies and loopholes. We extended the consultation period on the measures to 18 May, and we are now considering the consultation responses, including the petitions that hon. Members have presented to the House. The Government will respond on the issue of static caravans later in the summer.

On not supporting in the Division Lobbies that which Members may have supported in early-day motions, I would just remind the hon. Lady of the incident with the post office closures in the last Parliament. We tabled a motion that very closely resembled early-day motions that had been signed by Government Members, and then, miraculously, they were not in the Lobby when the Division was called. I therefore think she needs to be cautious about that.

As for my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s temper, I am amazed that the hon. Lady has the audacity to raise that, in the light of the somewhat irrational behaviour at times of the previous Prime Minister.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 17th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for next week will be:

Monday 21 May—Remaining stages of the Local Government Finance Bill.

Tuesday 22 May—Remaining stages of the Financial Services Bill, followed by Third Reading of the Civil Aviation Bill.

Wednesday 23 May—Second Reading of the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill, followed by a European document relating to the proceeds of crime.

Thursday 24 May—Motion on the Whitsun recess Adjournment.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for his announcement of next week’s business, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) on her re-election unopposed to the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee.

Analysis of last week's Queen’s Speech has demonstrated that this Government have already run out of ideas. Of the 19 announced Bills, three are carry-overs from the previous Session, and now we learn that the passage of as many as five of the new Bills might be delayed until the next Session, making this by far the slimmest Queen’s Speech in living memory. Will the Leader of the House tell us why?

Today is the international day against homophobia and transphobia, and it is right that we mark it in this House. There are five countries where people can be sentenced to death for being lesbian or gay, and 76 where it is still illegal. We should pay tribute to all those who are bravely campaigning for equality around the world.

Will the Leader of the House arrange for the Equalities Minister to make a statement on the Government's proposals for equal marriage? This weekend, the Defence Secretary said that it was “not a priority”, and the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), said that he is “totally opposed”, but across the country there are couples who want to know whether to have a civil partnership, or to wait until the law is changed. What they do not want is to be in limbo while Conservative MPs fight among themselves and the Government prevaricate. The Prime Minister has said it is an important matter of equality. I agree. Will the Government now commit quickly to introducing legislation on equal marriage?

The whole House will be concerned about the eurozone crisis. On Monday, the Chancellor said

“the open speculation from some members in the eurozone about the future of some countries in the eurozone…is doing real damage across the whole European economy”—

only for the Prime Minister to indulge in precisely that speculation two days later. The Government’s plan A has pushed us back into recession. It has failed in Britain and it is now failing across Europe. Instead of manoeuvring to blame Europe for his failed economic policy, the Prime Minister should be pushing for a solution to the eurozone crisis.

At the election, Government Members promised not to cut front-line services, but that is exactly what the Home Secretary has done. More than 5,000 police officer jobs have been cut. When she spoke to the Police Federation conference yesterday, the right hon. Lady insisted the podium be shifted, because she did not want to be filmed in front of a conference slogan opposing police cuts. She can shift the podium and the camera angle, but she cannot shift the responsibility. Will the Leader of the House arrange for the Home Secretary to make a statement on police numbers so that she can explain what happened to their manifesto promise not to cut front-line staff?

While the Home Secretary is at it, she could also explain the ongoing immigration shambles at Heathrow. Every week we hear reports of thousands of people stuck at immigration and passengers queuing for hours while immigration desks are closed. It takes something when even Joan Collins feels the need to tweet from the queue that the Home Secretary should get a grip. And it is not just the Home Secretary; the Immigration Minister’s justification for the shambles at Heathrow’s border control was that it was the result of the wrong type of wind. What is it about this Government and the weather? First they blamed the economy’s performance on the snow, then the excuse was the wrong type of rain, and now we have the wrong type of wind. May we have a statement on the ministerial code? Does the Leader of the House intend to amend the code to say that Ministers are responsible unless they can blame the weather or, perhaps, their special advisers?

At Justice questions this week neither the Secretary of State nor his deputy were present. The ministerial code states that Ministers are accountable to this House, so they should at least turn up for departmental questions rather than leaving it to junior Ministers and Whips to do their work for them. Will the Leader of the House undertake to make sure that senior Ministers are present for oral questions in future?

Justice Ministers dodge their responsibilities to the House, the Home Secretary refuses to take responsibility for her police cuts, the Immigration Minister refuses to take responsibility for the shambles at Heathrow and the Chancellor refuses to take responsibility for a double-dip recession made in Downing street. What a way to start the new parliamentary Session.

[Sir George Young]

May I begin in a conciliatory way by congratulating the hon. Lady on her promotion to the chair of her party’s national policy forum? We hope that she can do that without becoming a part-time shadow Leader of the House. I know that she will bear in mind what her leader said on 10 January:

“in these times, with less money, spending more on one thing means finding the money from somewhere else.”

That is something her colleagues seem to have forgotten. Her previous job was shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, so she will want to bring some financial discipline to her party’s policies if they are to have any credibility with the electorate.

The hon. Lady asserted that there were not enough Bills in the Queen’s Speech. If she looks at earlier Queen’s Speeches, she will find that the number of Bills introduced in this Session is not dissimilar to the number introduced in the 2005, 2006 and 2007 Sessions. She will also find that three Bills are being carried over from the previous Session. We are not going to do what the previous Government did, which was to bring so much legislation to the House that they were unable to process it properly. As I have said before, the House is not simply a legislation factory. We are not going to make their mistake of imposing too many ill-considered and ill-drafted Bills on the House.

The hon. Lady mentioned that today is a day to celebrate equality. Had Mr Speaker been in the Chair, I would have commended the article he wrote for today’s copy of The Independent. Today is international day against homophobia and transphobia. The Government are strongly committed to advancing equality and want to ensure that public services are accessible to all and free from discrimination. She will know that we have lifted the ban on civil partnerships taking place on religious premises and are currently consulting on how to implement equal civil marriage. We are continuing to remove barriers and tackle prejudice.

On the economy, the hon. Lady will know that we are about to debate economic matters on an amendment tabled by the Opposition, but I have to say that her policies would increase this country’s debt and provide no solution to its problems whatsoever.

On policing, I remind the hon. Lady that before the election the then Home Secretary was asked whether he could guarantee police numbers, and he said “No.” I remind her also that the Labour party has now endorsed cuts of £2.1 billion to the police budget, and the official Association of Chief Police Officers response, from Chief Constable Peter Fahy, stated that

“the effectiveness of policing cannot be measured by the number of officers alone but by reductions in crime and increases in public confidence.”

It is an inconvenient truth for the hon. Lady that, although she might suggest that crime is going up, official figures show that police-recorded crime has fallen by 3%.

Turning to immigration, I note that we inherited a shambles at the UK Border Agency, which we are putting right. The hon. Lady will welcome the Immigration Minister’s announcement before the Home Affairs Committee of an additional mobile unit at Heathrow to cope with the delays to which she refers.

I am astonished that the hon. Lady mentions the absence of the Lord Chancellor from oral questions. She was a Minister herself, and she will know that occasionally Ministers have responsibilities other than in the House. The Lord Chancellor, in line with precedent, wrote to Mr Speaker and to the shadow Lord Chancellor to explain that he would not be at oral questions but at an international legal forum in Russia. I am sure that he would have preferred to have been here, because he enjoys his time at the Dispatch Box, but I commend the performance of my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara), who was an understudy for the Lord Chancellor and not only kept the balls away from the wicket but swept many of them to the boundary.

Finally, I say to the hon. Lady that it is a fortnight since the Labour party candidate was defeated in the election for Mayor of London, and less than two months since the hon. Lady’s party lost Bradford West, so any triumphalism on her part is very premature.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 10th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Following the brief—sorry. Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

We got there in the end.

Mr Speaker, you informed the House on Wednesday of the subjects for debate on the Queen’s Speech. The business for next week will be:

Monday 14 May—Continuation of the debate on the Queen’s Speech. The subject will be business and the economy.

Tuesday 15 May—Continuation of the debate on the Queen’s Speech. The subject will be foreign affairs and international development.

Wednesday 16 May—Continuation of the debate on the Queen’s Speech. The subject will be the cost of living.

Thursday 17 May—Conclusion of the debate on the Queen’s Speech. The subject will be jobs and growth.

The provisional business for the week commencing 21 May will include:

Monday 21 May—Remaining stages of the Local Government Finance Bill.

Tuesday 22 May—Conclusion of remaining stages of the Financial Services Bill (Day 2), followed by Third Reading of the Civil Aviation Bill.

Wednesday 23 May—Second Reading of the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill, followed by a European document relating to the proceeds of crime.

Thursday 24 May—Business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 24 May will be:

Thursday 24 May—Debate on the operations of the family courts.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for his statement and apologise for my slightly unfocused beginning; I was lost in admiration for the work that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) has done as Chair of the Backbench Business Committee and rather wondering whether, and hoping that, she would consider standing again.

Following the brief announcement yesterday of the Government’s legislative programme, the Deputy Prime Minister said in a letter to his party activists that it showed that

“Liberal Democrats are punching above their weight”.

At last, we have an acknowledgement from them—that they are in the political lightweight division. After all, this is a party that was beaten at the polls last week by a man dressed as a penguin.

The Deputy Prime Minister added in desperation that the Queen’s Speech

“has a firm Liberal Democrat stamp on it”—

and he was right. It had nothing to say on the economy; nothing to say on getting people back to work; nothing to help hard-pressed families. All that Liberal Democrats want to do is sit around and debate House of Lords reform. The Leader of the House has announced six days of debate on the Government's packed legislative programme. Will he find time for a debate about how the Liberal Democrats are punching above their weight?

Will the Leader of the House find time also for the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr Letwin), to participate in that debate? After all, he said of the Government last year:

“We don’t know what we’re doing”

after 2011, and

“we’ve run out of ideas”.

Will the Leader of the House coax the right hon. Gentleman out of whatever cupboard they have put him in and get him to the Chamber so that we can congratulate him on being correct?

Before the Queen’s Speech the Conservative Chair of the Public Administration Committee said that the Government lacked a compelling vision. Today it is clear: the problem is not that they lack a compelling vision, but that they lack any vision at all. The Leader of the House was unable to find time for a debate on the Committee’s report before the Queen’s Speech. Will he now finally do so?

While his economic plan is failing, the part-time Chancellor is focused on his other job of managing the Conservatives’ election strategy. As Thursday’s local elections showed, that is going very well. Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating the new Chipping Norton set of Labour councillors elected in the Prime Minister’s constituency last Thursday? They join more than 800 other new Labour councillors elected up and down the country.

After last week’s polls, the Prime Minister said that he wanted to listen. Why does he not meet his new Labour councillors, who will be able to tell this out-of-touch Prime Minister what the electorate are really saying? He will not even have to ban photographs of that meeting. On that very point, we learned this week that the Prime Minister arranged to meet Rebekah Brooks at a point-to-point meeting so long as they were not seen together. Meanwhile, the Culture Secretary hides behind a tree so that members of the press do not spot him meeting James Murdoch. That sums up the Government—wrong choices, wrong priorities.

Can the Leader of the House confirm that prior to appearances before the Leveson inquiry, Ministers still have to account for their actions to the House and that the ministerial code still covers them? Following yesterday’s Queen’s Speech, the Institute of Directors said that the Government were beginning to lose the confidence of UK plc, the Institute of Mechanical Engineers complained that there was no industrial strategy, and the British Chambers of Commerce wanted more support for jobs and growth. Even today’s edition of The Daily Telegraph asks, “Why was there no plan for growth?”

Will the Leader of the House find time for a statement on the Government’s elusive plan for growth? Slashing employment rights is no substitute for a growth strategy. The Government’s disastrous economic policy has led to massive unemployment, growing inequality and a double-dip recession. The out-of-touch Chancellor thinks that the solution is a huge tax cut for millionaires. A Cabinet Minister says that the Government have no ideas, while a senior Back Bencher says that they have no vision. It is little wonder that, abandoning the No. 10 rose garden, the Prime Minister and his deputy went this week to a factory to relaunch the Government. It was a factory where big blue tractors pulled small yellow trailers. What an apt metaphor for this Government.

[Sir George Young]

Mr Speaker, before I address the issues raised by the hon. Lady, I should say that you will have seen today’s announcement of the death of Lord Glenamara, who, as Ted Short, was Leader of the House from 1974 to 1976—my first two years in the House. He has left his name as the author of Short money, an important constitutional reform that enables Opposition parties better to hold the Government to account. As Leader of the House, he gave the shortest answers at business questions; whatever was asked for, the answer was “not next week”. The answers today may still be the same, but they are at least couched in more user-friendly terms when people ask for a debate.

The local elections did not produce a famous set of results for the governing parties, but if we add together the votes for the two coalition parties, we find that we comprehensively beat the Labour party. The Labour party was, of course, beaten by a monkey in Hartlepool and it did not even put up a candidate in more than 110 wards—the penguin did not even have a chance to beat the Labour party because the Labour party did not stand.

I move on to the Queen’s Speech. The hon. Lady complains that there is not much in it; if that is right, I hope that we will have no complaints from her on a Thursday that the Government have not allowed adequate time to debate the legislative programme. If she looks at that programme, she will see that we are addressing a whole range of issues that her party simply ducked when it was in government—energy, electricity market reform, public sector pensions, House of Lords reform, adult care and executive pay. Her side ducked all those policies, but we are now dealing with them.

On high rates of tax, the fact is that for 13 years Labour’s top rate was not 50% or 45%; it was 40%. Labour left us with a legacy of a 50% tax rate that raised no money at all and a letter saying that there was no money left. As a result of the Budget, those earning above £150,000 will pay £1,300 a year more, which means that there will be less pressure on those who are not in the top tax bracket, who will obviously pay less. The question to which we have not had the answer is whether, if Labour Members know that that rate raises very little, they are pledged to reinstate it.

Turning to the question of Ministers, of course Ministers remain subject to the ministerial code, and of course they are accountable to Parliament for the actions that they take.

On growth, if the hon. Lady looks at the Queen’s Speech she will see that it contains some good Bills for businesses. There is an enterprise Bill giving employers more confidence to hire new staff and grow, there are repeals to save businesses time and money, there is a £3 billion green investment bank to stimulate the green economy, and there is an energy Bill delivering long-term, affordable electricity. Also, we have just had the Budget, and the Finance Bill is going through the House at the moment. That is the main vehicle for economic policy rather than the Queen’s Speech. The Budget included cuts to corporation tax, more funding for the Business Finance Partnership, the scrapping of health and safety legislation, investment in technology, and more investment in infrastructure—all in addition to the measures that we announced in the autumn statement last year. Of course there is more administrative action that we can take and will take. We have set our course and we must stick to it. The International Monetary Fund is forecasting higher growth in the UK this year than in Germany, France and the eurozone. I very much hope that we will have the hon. Lady’s support for the measures in the Queen’s Speech, which promote growth in this country.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 26th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House please give us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for next week is as follows:

Monday 30 April—Consideration of an allocation of time motion, followed by all stages of the Sunday Trading (London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games) Bill [Lords], followed by if necessary consideration of Lords Amendments.

Tuesday 1 May—The House may be asked to consider any Lords messages which may be received.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for his comprehensive statement. I also thank the staff of the House for all the hard work that they have done for Members during the current Session.

In the week of Shakespeare’s birth, we should pay tribute to our greatest dramatist, who has had such an enormous impact on our culture and our language. Looking at the Government, however, I have to say that even Shakespeare could not write a farce like this. Where does one start?

The Culture Secretary came to the House yesterday to try to explain himself. He failed. He said on Tuesday evening that now was not the time for knee-jerk reactions. On Wednesday morning, he kicked out his special adviser. The Culture Secretary may have thrown his aide to the wall, but the ministerial code is crystal clear: the Secretary of State is responsible for the conduct of his special advisers. Will the Leader of the House now answer the following questions, which the Culture Secretary conspicuously failed to answer yesterday?

Was News Corporation informed about the content of a parliamentary statement before that statement was made to the House? Although the Culture Secretary told the House on 3 March that he had published all the exchanges between his Department and News Corporation, the e-mails that were disclosed at the Leveson inquiry demonstrate that he had not done so. That is not a matter for Lord Leveson; it is a matter for the House, and the House needs answers. Far from acting in a quasi-judicial capacity, the Culture Secretary has been acting like a dodgy football ref who not only favours one team, but is in the dressing room with them planning the tactics. Apparently he is at the Tower of London today, awaiting his fate.

Will the Leader of the House tell us whether the Prime Minister has asked the independent adviser on the ministerial code to investigate the Culture Secretary’s actions, and if not, why not? Will he also tell us whether the Prime Minister has indicated his intention to come to the House to correct the record that he placed in the Library on his meetings with Rupert Murdoch? The Prime Minister recalled just two, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said yesterday, Mr Murdoch revealed to the Leveson inquiry that he had met the Prime Minister more often than that. The Prime Minister apparently “forgets” the majority of his meetings with Rupert Murdoch.

The Prime Minister also said that he had not been involved in “any of the discussions” about News International’s bid for BSkyB, but it now emerges that he did discuss it with James Murdoch—over a cosy Christmas dinner with Rebekah Brooks while the phone-hacking scandal was in full swing. And then there is Raisa the police horse. The Prime Minister could not remember whether he had taken her riding, before finally remembering that he had. We know that this Prime Minister doesn’t do detail, but his lapses of memory are beginning to look a little bit too convenient.

The Public Administration Committee has been examining the leadership that the Prime Minister has given the Government. Has the Leader of the House had an opportunity to read its report? According to the Committee, which is chaired by a distinguished Conservative Back Bencher, there is a “strategic vacuum” at the centre of this Government. The report concludes that the Government’s aims were

“too meaningless to serve any useful purpose”.

Another Conservative Back Bencher, the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries), has put it even more bluntly. Now that Government Members recognise what Opposition Members have been saying for some time—that this is an incompetent, out-of-touch Government —will the Leader of the House be making time for a debate on the Committee’s report before Prorogation?

The current long parliamentary Session is finally crawling to a close. It began with extravagant boasts by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In June 2010, presenting his first Budget, the Chancellor told the House that by today the economy would have grown by 4.3%. He also told the House that unemployment would peak in 2010 and fall in each subsequent year, and that public sector borrowing would fall each year. Will the Chancellor now be correcting the record?

The economy is back in recession. The Chancellor has presided over the worst performance in our economy for a century. Unemployment is higher than it was when the Government came to power, and they are borrowing £150 billion more than they had planned to borrow. This is a double-dip recession made in Downing street. The Chancellor has bungled his latest Budget just as he has bungled his economic strategy, and hard-working families up and down the country are paying the price.

“The economy is stagnant. The Government is misfiring. The Budget was a shambles. Tory MPs are unhappy. Downing Street is incompetent.”

That is not my assessment; it is the assessment of The Daily Telegraph.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 19th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for the week commencing 23 April will include:

Monday 23 April—Remaining stages of the Financial Services Bill (day 1).



Tuesday 24 April— If necessary, consideration of Lords amendments, followed by a motion relating to section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993, followed by a motion on an EU directive on data protection in the areas of police and criminal justice, followed by a general debate on the national planning policy framework.

Wednesday 25 April—Consideration of Lords amendments, followed by Report stage of the Civil Aviation Bill, followed by, if necessary, consideration of Lords amendments.



Thursday 26 April—Consideration of Lords amendments.

The provisional business for the week commencing 30 April will include:



Monday 30 April—Consideration of an allocation of time motion, followed by all stages of the Sunday Trading (London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games) Bill [Lords], followed by, if necessary, consideration of Lords amendments.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 26 April will be:

Thursday 26 April—Presentation of a report on the work of the Backbench Business Committee in session 2010-12, followed by a debate on EU working time regulation and the NHS.

[Ms Eagle]

I not only thank the Leader of the House for his statement and congratulate the new Serjeant at Arms on his appointment, but pay tribute to the former Leader of the House, Tony Newton, who has sadly died.

Four weeks ago, the Chancellor made one of his rare appearances at the Dispatch Box to present his Budget, and it has gone down so brilliantly that the Leader of the House is going to find it even more difficult to coax the Chancellor out of hiding and back to the Dispatch Box any time soon. It takes a unique combination of political skills, which only this Chancellor possesses, to unite pie and pasty makers, Church and charity leaders, philanthropists, university vice-chancellors and caravan owners. The Chancellor’s magic touch has now extended to his own Back Benches, because last night nearly 10% of the Conservative parliamentary party voted against their own Government on the Budget.

It is not just the Budget that this Chancellor has bungled. He has made the wrong choices on the economy and the Government have no strategy for growth. While ordinary families are being hammered by soaring fuel, food and housing costs, this part-time Chancellor has chosen to give a huge tax cut to the richest 1%.

One of the first acts of the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport on coming to office was to give a speech on philanthropy. In it, he announced that the Government would be

“reviewing what it can do to encourage philanthropy across the board”.

You have to say, Mr Speaker, that they have come up with a very novel way of doing it. The Culture Secretary briefed that the Budget process was such a shambles that the Chancellor did not bother speaking to him about the charities tax, and presumably he did not know about the churches tax either. Will the Culture Secretary come to this House and make a statement on that debacle?

Following on from the shambolic Budget, yesterday the Government forced through a tax cut for the richest 1%. Last November, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg), the Liberal Democrat leader, said:

“It would be utterly incomprehensible for millions of people who work hard...if suddenly the priority is to give 300,000 people at the very, very top a tax break”.

If it was utterly incomprehensible then, why have Liberal Democrats voted for it now? Will the Leader of the House coax the Deputy Prime Minister to the Dispatch Box to explain his damascene conversion to the interests of the top 1%?

Do the Liberal Democrats seriously think they can get away with agreeing a policy round the Cabinet table, denouncing it in the media, and then voting for it in the House? It is not just on the Budget that they have tried that trick. As the Prime Minister pointed out while on his most recent world tour, the Liberal Democrat leader secretly signed off the policy on internet surveillance in Government and then, when details appeared in the papers, he publically denounced it. A pattern is emerging. Judging by his track record, the Deputy Prime Minster will now ensure that Liberal Democrats vote for the measure while he blames the Tories for it.

Perhaps the Liberal Democrat leader could explain this leaflet, which the party has just put out in Cornwall. It states “Stop the Tories Taxing Our Pasties!” Just five Liberal Democrat MPs voted for Labour’s amendment, and analysis of last night’s result reveals that it was Liberal Democrat votes what won the pasty tax for the Government. May we have a statement on this desperate effort to hoodwink the public? People are not fooled by the Liberal Democrats’ dubious political posturing. The pasty tax, the caravan tax and the churches tax were all voted through the House last night because of Liberal Democrat support.

The part-time Chancellor’s shambolic handling of the Budget is matched by the Home Secretary’s increasingly chaotic attempts to deport Abu Qatada. On the interpretation of time limits, I have to ask, why did no one in the Home Office think to phone up the European Court to check when it thought that the deadline was at an end?

This parliamentary Session is finally staggering to a close, ending a spectacularly mismanaged legislative programme with a spectacularly mismanaged Budget, and we have already started to have leaks about the content of the next Queen’s Speech. The entire Budget was leaked, but the content of the Queen’s Speech should not be briefed to the media before Her Majesty has delivered it.

In his statement, the Leader of the House referred to all the time he has allowed for consideration of Lords amendments next week, but will he take this opportunity to deny rumours that the House will rise much earlier than he is planning?

In an interview this week, the chair of the Conservative party tried to explain away what she herself described as the Government’s “incoherence” with two words “Liberal Democrats”. Can the Leader of the House tell us what on earth she could have meant?

[Sir George Young]

I begin by thanking the hon. Lady for her kind words about Tony Newton, whose funeral I attended last week, where I listened to some generous tributes from John Major and John MacGregor. It was a very well attended and moving funeral.

Let me move on to the hon. Lady’s questions. Most of them related to the Budget; I gently point out to her that we are debating the Budget for the whole of this week and that this time is for questions about next week’s business. All the issues she raised have been the subject of a debate this week or will be the subject of a debate later today. Let me also gently remind the hon. Lady about Budget rebellions. Three weeks ago, an amendment was tabled to the Budget opposing the cut to the 50p tax rate. In other words, it was an amendment that would have implemented the Labour party’s policy. When there was a vote, only two Labour Members voted for it: the hon. Members for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) and for Newport West (Paul Flynn). They were the only two Members who supported the official Labour party policy. Everyone else, including the hon. Lady, rebelled, so I will take no lectures from her on rebellions on Budget measures.

The hon. Lady raised some points about taxation. She did not mention the 2 million people we are taking out of tax or the 24 million taxpayers who will benefit from the changes we have made. As she knows, the better-off will pay five times more in extra tax than they will get from the reduction in the rate from 50p to 45p.

On the subject of Qatada, we have just had a whole hour of exchanges on Qatada and I hope that the hon. Lady’s colleagues have raised all the questions on that subject that could possibly be raised.

On the legislative Session, I gently remind the hon. Lady that, unlike during the previous Session under the previous Government, we have not rushed through Bills with guillotine after guillotine. We have consistently allowed two days on Report for several Bills, many programme motions have been supported by the Labour party—all credit to Labour for coming to a sensible accommodation—and we have had adequate discussion. I remember the hon. Lady saying that we would not get all the Bills through, but we are getting them all through, with adequate time.

On the hon. Lady’s final question, I have announced that the House will be sitting the week after next and I have announced the business for the Monday. She will understand that at this stage in the parliamentary Session, with four Bills still in play between the two Houses, it is impossible to forecast exactly when the House will prorogue. I anticipate that it will be some time the week after next.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 22nd March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House please give us next week’s business?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for next week will be:

Monday 26 March—Conclusion of the Budget debate.

Tuesday 27 March—Motion relating to assisted suicide. The subject for this debate has been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee. Colleagues should be reminded that the House will meet at 11.30 am on Tuesday.



The business for the week commencing 16 April will be:

Monday 16 April—Second Reading of the Finance (No. 4) Bill.

Tuesday 17 April—Consideration of Lords amendments to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill.

Wednesday 18 April—Consideration in Committee of the Finance (No. 4) Bill (day 1).



Thursday 19 April— Consideration in Committee of the Finance (No. 4) Bill (day 2).

The provisional business for the week commencing 23 April will include:



Monday 23 April—Remaining stages of the Financial Services Bill (day 1).

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for his statement.

Last week, I recommended to the Cabinet horses that they could back at the Cheltenham festival. Well, the verdict is in, and I have to announce that I will not be giving up the day job. Palace Jester, the horse that I recommended for the Deputy Prime Minister, was much talked about before the race and entered the field with high expectations, but it failed to live up to its overblown hype—it wilted at the first sign of pressure and ended up nowhere. That just proves that Palace Jester was exactly the right horse for the Deputy Prime Minister.

I have been forced to conclude that I am about as successful at tipping horses as the Chancellor is at managing the economy. Yesterday, the Chancellor made a rare appearance in the House to present his millionaires’ Budget. Although an appearance from him at the Dispatch Box is always a pleasant surprise, the content of the Budget certainly was not.

In future, the Government could dispense with the Budget Red Book altogether and just publish a collection of newspaper clippings; instead of delivering a Budget speech from the Dispatch Box, the Chancellor could just review last week’s papers. Will the Leader of the House undertake to update the House at next business questions on how the leak inquiry is going?

This time last year, the Chancellor said his budget would

“put fuel into the tank of the British economy.”—[Official Report, 23 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 966.]

Since then, the economy has stalled, unemployment has risen and he is borrowing £150 billion more than he planned. What fuel has the Chancellor been using? After the lamentable record on growth, what was needed yesterday from the Chancellor was a Budget for jobs. Instead, we got a Budget that will be remembered for giving a huge tax cut to the richest 1%.

We were all astonished to learn from the Chancellor this morning that he was not a top rate taxpayer. The hunt is now on for the name of his accountant, who will surely find himself in spectacular demand. Given that the Chancellor has answered the question, surely the rest of the Cabinet should now do so too. Will the Leader of the House arrange for a note to be placed in the House of Commons Library listing which members of the Cabinet have benefited from the cut in the 50p rate?

Yesterday’s ideological Budget gave a £40,000 tax cut to the richest 14,000 people—wrong choice. Yesterday’s Budget introduced a stealth tax on pensioners to pay for that—wrong choice. Cuts to tax credits in April mean that 200,000 households will now be better off on the dole than in work—wrong choice. With VAT increased, fuel duty going up and child benefit cut, this is a Budget that leaves families £253 a year worse off—wrong choice.

It is not just the Government’s choices that are wrong; their entire philosophy is wrong. We now have a Government who believe that the top 1% will work harder if they are given a tax cut while everyone else can be made to work harder only by having their income cut. Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on that notorious phrase, “We’re all in this together”? I have been trying to understand what the Chancellor could possibly have meant by it, so I looked up the word “all” in the Oxford English Dictionary, which said:

“All (noun): the entire number of; the individual components of, without exception.”

Having scoured the dictionary, I have to report to the House that I could not find a definition that excluded the top 1%, so will the Government be writing to the Oxford English Dictionary to ask it to correct its definition?

Were the Leader of the House to find time for a debate on the phrase, “We’re all in this together”, the Deputy Prime Minister could lead it, because he has claimed that this was a “Robin Hood” Budget. The Deputy Prime Minister had a very expensive education at Westminster school; what did they actually teach him? In my more modest school, we were told that Robin Hood took money from the rich and gave it to the poor, not the other way round. Every time I have asked the Leader of the House to find time for a debate on fairness, he has ignored my request, and now we know why. This was a Budget that was neither fair nor progressive and built unfairness on top of economic policies that have failed. Will the Leader of the House finally find time for a debate on fairness?

This week, Government Members waved their Order Papers for tax cuts for the richest 1% and the Cabinet banged the table when the Health and Social Care Bill was passed. Wrong choices; wrong philosophy; wrong ideology: same old Tories.

[Sir George Young]

It is perhaps unfortunate that the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) began by apologising for her tips on horses and then accused us of making all the wrong choices—not a good start. She apologised for her tips; I think she is going to have to start apologising for some of her jokes.

The hon. Lady asked a whole series of questions about the Budget. We have four days’ debate on the Budget. When we come back after the Easter recess, we will have a debate on the Floor of the House on the Finance Bill, and then two more days’ debate on the Finance Bill, as well as a debate on the Financial Services Bill. She asks me for time to debate these issues, but it seems that we are debating very little else over the next week or so. She and her hon. Friends have criticised us for taking a gamble with the Budget, but they took the gamble when they were in government by spending money they did not have and racking up debts that could not be paid.

On the hon. Lady’s comments about fairness, what was fair about selling off the nation’s gold at a record low price? What was fair about giving pensioners an insulting 75p a week increase in the state pension? What was fair about abolishing the 10p tax rate? What was fair about leaving this country with the biggest budget deficit in our history? Labour set back fairness in this country, not the coalition.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 15th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House give us next week’s business?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for the week commencing 19 March will be:

Monday 19 March—Consideration of Lords amendments to the Protection of Freedoms Bill, followed by a debate on a motion relating to the waste water national policy statement.

Tuesday 20 March—Consideration of Lords amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill.

It may be helpful if I remind colleagues of your statement, Mr Speaker, in which you set out the arrangements for Tuesday 20 March. The House will meet for prayers at 9.45 am and the sitting will then be suspended until 2.30 pm in order to facilitate the attendance of the two Houses on Her Majesty in Westminster Hall for the presentation of Humble Addresses.

Wednesday 21 March—My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will open his Budget statement.

Thursday 22 March—Continuation of the Budget debate.

Friday 23 March—Continuation of the Budget debate.



The provisional business for the week commencing 26 March will include:

Monday 26 March—Conclusion of the Budget debate.

Tuesday 27 March—Motion relating to assisted suicide. The subject for this debate has been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Colleagues will be aware that the House will meet at 11.30 am on Tuesday 27 March.

The provisional business for the week commencing 16 April will include:

Monday 16 April—Second Reading of the Finance (No. 4) Bill.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall will be:

Thursday 19 April—Debate on regeneration.

[Ms Angela Eagle]

Last weekend, the Liberal Democrat spring conference voted against the health Bill. This week, Liberal Democrats in Parliament voted for the health Bill. It could not be clearer: the Liberal Democrat leader now takes his instructions only from the Prime Minister. Would the Leader of the House join me in congratulating the five Liberal Democrats who defied their leadership and voted against the health Bill? Does he not agree that when the legislation returns to this House next week, the Government must publish the transition risk register, as they have been ordered to by the Information Commissioner? Much better still, the Government should just drop the Bill.

This week at the Leveson inquiry we learned further details about how the deputy Mayor for Policing in London put pressure on the Metropolitan police to drop their investigation into phone hacking. The Met say that they had to remind him that the police are operationally independent of politicians and that operational decisions are taken by police officers, not the Mayor’s political appointees. It is especially worrying when it is a Conservative deputy Mayor pressurising the police on an investigation that involved one of the Prime Minister’s senior aides, Andy Coulson. Will the Leader of the House therefore arrange for the Home Secretary to make an urgent statement about how such inappropriate interference by the Mayor’s political staff can be stopped?

We now know that the Prime Minister is fond of going horse riding with his old school friends—when they are free. As it is the Cheltenham festival at the moment, may I suggest some horses that Government Members might want to back? As the Prime Minister is conveniently out of the country when unemployment reaches another high, he could back American Spin in the 2.40 today. With the Health Secretary’s career in terminal decline after his disastrous mismanagement of the NHS, his horse is clearly Final Approach. The Education Secretary, who is doing everything he can to undermine the Leveson inquiry, will no doubt want to put his money on Time for Rupert. And the only possible horse for the Deputy Prime Minister is running today in the 2.05: Palace Jester.

The Deputy Prime Minister has been keeping himself busy floating various suggestions for the Budget in the media. Clearly bored with hearing from him, the Chancellor decided to follow Steve Hilton to America. As his economic strategy has unravelled, the Chancellor, rather like the Prime Minister, has been increasingly reluctant to come to the House. Could the Leader of the House confirm that he is actually planning to turn up for the Budget?

I raised last week the Chancellor’s proposals to cut child benefit. The Leader of the House said that the Government’s view was clear. He said the Government’s view was clear three times, but by some strange oversight, he forgot to tell us what the Government’s view actually was. Perhaps the Leader of the House could clear up this issue. Is it fair that a household in which one parent works and earns £43,000 a year will lose child benefit, while a household in which both parents work and take home £84,000 will not? Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on fairness before the Budget? The debate on the Budget within the Government has been a shambles.

Are the Government in favour of a mansion tax or not? The Business Secretary thinks it is a good idea; the Local Government Secretary thinks it is a terrible idea. Conservative Back Benchers want a tax cut for the top 1%; meanwhile, Liberal Democrat Cabinet Ministers and Back Benchers wander around claiming that while the Tories favour tax cuts only for the rich, they themselves do not. The truth is, however, that every member of the Government has voted for Budgets that take the most money from those who have the least.

Can the Leader of the House find time for a debate on families? It is families who have been hardest hit by the Government’s Budgets, and what families want from this Budget is not Government in-fighting, but real help now to reduce the squeeze on their living standards and get the economy moving again.

Perhaps, while he is in the United States, the Chancellor might ask why the economy there is growing and unemployment is falling, while in Britain the economy is flatlining and unemployment is rising. The Government's economic strategy is failing, and the Cabinet cannot agree on what to do next. No wonder the Business Secretary thinks that the coalition lacks a “compelling” case, and no wonder the Prime Minister decided that he was better off out of the country on the ides of March, as far away as possible from the Mayor of London.

The right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws) has taken to warning about Government paralysis. His heart may still be in the coalition, but there is only one horse for Liberal Democrat Back Benchers now. It is running in the 2.05 this afternoon, and it is called Get Me Out Of Here.

[Sir George Young]

We welcome the new career that the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) is developing as a tipster. It will be interesting to see how well the horses that she has commended to the House actually perform.

The hon. Lady raised—yet again—the subject of the Health and Social Care Bill. It is interesting: we have had three Opposition day debates on the Bill, and I still have not the faintest idea what the Opposition’s policy is on health. Nor, apparently, does the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown). He turned up the other day to support the amendment tabled by a Back-Bench Liberal Democrat, but disappeared when the time came to vote on the Labour party’s own motion. Perhaps he had not realised that the negotiations with the Liberal Democrats had ended, some two years ago, in failure. Perhaps he, and indeed the hon. Lady, should heed the wise words of his former Transport Secretary Lord Adonis, who wrote today:

“Labour will get back into government by having a better plan for the future, not by opposing changes which are working well.”

[Interruption.] Lord Adonis clearly thinks that they are working well.

The hon. Lady asked about the risk register. As she knows, we are awaiting the detailed judgment of the tribunal before deciding what further action the Government might take.

The police are operationally independent of politicians, and rightly so. The Home Secretary will be at the Dispatch Box on Monday, when she will be happy to answer questions.

As the hon. Lady may have noticed, the Chancellor will be making a Budget statement on Wednesday. I think that the best thing to do is to put to one side the speculation in the papers about what he may or may not do, and then come along on Wednesday and listen to the real thing.

The hon. Lady mentioned child benefit. Is it fair for someone earning £20,000 a year to pay, through his or her taxes, for the child benefit of someone earning five times as much? That is the question that she needs to address. As for growth, she will be aware that the International Monetary Fund has pointed out that growth in this country this year is three times that in France and twice that in Germany.

Finally, the hon. Lady always obsesses about the relationship between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, but when even The Guardian reports, as it does today, that Labour is in “turmoil”, we know something must be going very badly wrong with the Opposition, and when another report uncovers that morale at Labour HQ is

“even worse than the dark days under Brown”,

we have to wonder how bad it has to get before the hon. Lady stops worrying about the coalition and starts to focus more on the chaos in her own party.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 8th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House please give us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for the week commencing 12 March will be:

Monday 12 March—Motions relating to the Backbench Business Committee, a Committee on Standards and a Committee of Privileges, the code of conduct, all-party groups and scrutiny of certain draft orders.

Tuesday 13 March—Opposition day (un-allotted day) (half day). There will be a debate on a motion relating to the Health and Social Care Bill. This debate will arise on an Opposition motion. Followed by consideration of opposed private business nominated by the Chairman of Ways and Means.

Wednesday 14 March—Consideration in Committee and remaining stages of the Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill.

Thursday 15 March—Motion relating to the introduction of charging for Big Ben Clock Tower tours followed by a motion relating to reform of the common fisheries policy. The subject for these debates has been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

The provisional business for the week commencing 19 March will include:

Monday 19 March—Consideration of Lords amendments followed by a debate on a motion relating to the waste water national policy statement.

Tuesday 20 March—Consideration of Lords amendments.

Wednesday 21 March—My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will open his Budget statement.

Thursday 22 March—Continuation of the Budget debate.

Friday 23 March—Continuation of the Budget debate.

The provisional business for the week commencing 26 March will include:

Monday 26 March—Conclusion of the Budget debate.

Tuesday 27 March—Motion relating to assisting dying. The subject for this debate has been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 22 March 2012 will be:

Thursday 22 March—Debate on services for young people.

[Ms Eagle]

This week, the chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life criticised the Prime Minister’s failure to ask the independent adviser on ministers’ interests to investigate allegations made against the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), the then Defence Secretary—a course of action that the Opposition urged him to take at the time. Does the Leader of the House agree that since the office was established it has become clear that it would be far simpler and more transparent if the independent adviser could initiate an investigation? Will the Leader of the House find time for an urgent debate on the ministerial code so that we can determine what Parliament should do when the Prime Minister himself breaks the ministerial code?

The Institute for Fiscal Studies states that the Government’s proposals to cut child benefit are “fundamentally unfair”. For some families a pay rise will actually result in a significant cut in household income. Is this the Prime Minister’s definition of fairness? This is a mess entirely of the Government’s own making. They rushed out a press release for cheap headlines ahead of the Tory party conference without bothering to look at the detail, and it is hard-working families who will pay the price. This week, the Opposition forced a parliamentary debate, but we did not get an answer from Treasury Ministers, so will the Government now find time for a debate on what on earth they mean by “fairness”?

That would give them the opportunity to explain why, from April, they are penalising almost 500,000 children with draconian cuts to child tax credits. At the moment, because of tax credits, a couple where one parent works and the other looks after the children are £59 a week better off. It pays to work. From April, they will be £14 a week better off on the dole—this despite the Government’s claims that they want to make work pay. Will the Leader of the House explain how that is fair?

May I wish everyone a happy international women’s day and welcome the debate later today, for which I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel)? Does the Leader of the House agree that the Justice Secretary should clear his diary to attend it? The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill will halve the number of women entitled to legal aid in domestic violence cases. The Opposition have set out proposals to reduce the legal aid bill without penalising the most vulnerable. Will the Leader of the House explain how the Government’s proposals are fair?

One person who does not think it fair is the junior Education Minister, the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), who spends her day voting for Government cuts and then goes delivering leaflets in the evening asking, “Who can you trust to stop the cuts?” The answer is clearly not the Liberal Democrats. Will the Leader of the House arrange for an urgent debate on Government communications to the electorate to enable her to explain herself?

A letter from the Business Secretary to the Prime Minister this week mysteriously found its way into the public domain. The Business Secretary thinks that the Government lack a “compelling vision”. Middle-income families are being hit by cuts to child benefit. Hard-working families are being penalised by child tax cuts. Women are being shut out of the legal system. The Business Secretary is right. That is not a compelling vision for Britain. Is it any wonder that the Prime Minister’s guru, Steve Hilton, the man who authored the statement,

“Let sunshine win the day”,

has fled to California in search of it?

This week the Prime Minister’s top aide leaves the country; last week the Deputy Prime Minister’s chief economic adviser resigned to go travelling the world. Can the Leader of the House therefore find time for a debate on why so many senior Government advisers are fleeing the country?

The Business Secretary said he thought his letter was “helpful”, and I suppose it was—in the sense that it was helpful for the Business Secretary’s party profile ahead of the Liberal Democrat spring conference. May I also be helpful to the Leader of the House? He knows I always try to be. Every time I have raised the Health and Social Care Bill, he has cited parts of it that he thinks have merit. Is he not concerned that doctors, nurses, royal colleges, public health organisations, patients, GP groups and now even the Cabinet Secretary think the Bill should be dropped? Instead of proceeding with this disastrous Bill, here is a helpful suggestion: just drop it and start again.

[Sir George Young]

Let me start with the ministerial code, which sets out that if there is an alleged breach, the Cabinet Secretary can make some initial investigations. That is exactly what happened in this case. As a result of those initial investigations, the facts were put into the public domain, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) resigned and there was therefore no need to refer the matter to the independent adviser—something that, I note in passing, the previous Prime Minister did only once. The shadow Leader of the House will also know that the Public Administration Committee is currently holding an inquiry into the ministerial code. We await the outcome of that inquiry with interest.

On the issue of child benefit, we debated it on Monday —we had a half-day Opposition day—and it featured regularly in the exchanges at Treasury questions on Tuesday. Our view is quite clear: it is not fair that somebody on £20,000 a year should pay, through their tax, for the child benefit of someone who might be earning five times as much. That is the view that we put forward in that debate, and we are very clear that those who are better off should make a contribution to paying down the financial deficit. The same issue was also raised in relation to child tax credit in the debate on Monday, and again at Treasury questions, and we made our position quite clear. To put it in the broader context of universal credit, even couples working 16 hours a week will be some £36 a week better off when universal credit is introduced next year.

On international women’s day, the hon. Lady may have seen that we have announced a new offence of stalking—an amendment has been tabled to the Protection of Freedoms Bill. On Monday we had a written ministerial statement about domestic violence disclosure—the so-called Clare’s law. We will take no lectures from Labour Members about women. They did nothing about the glass ceiling or the differential. I welcome the debate that is about to take place on international women’s day.

On legal aid, the hon. Lady will know that the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill is in another place. Legal aid in this country, at some £39 a head, is way above what is spent in France or Spain, at some £5 a head. The Labour party consulted on reducing legal aid, but never got round to doing it. However, we are protecting the most vulnerable members of society in the legal aid scheme.

On the letter from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, I am not sure whether the BBC has changed its definition of “breaking news”, but this was, in fact, originally reported several weeks ago in a newspaper. However, I think the whole country was much more interested in the news on Tuesday that Nissan was bringing an additional 2,000 jobs to the north-east—a clear vindication of the Government’s decision to put support for manufacturing at the heart of our economic strategy.

I am responsible for many things; I am not responsible for leaflets that get distributed in the London borough of Brent. However, it is certainly the case that had the Labour party been re-elected at the last election, it would have had to make some cuts. Labour would not have been able to maintain the investment in, for example, the numbers of police on the front line.

So far as Steve Hilton is concerned, yes, he is going; but the good news is that he is coming back. Also, he is not leaving next week, and I pay tribute to the number of creative new ideas that he has injected into the first two years of the coalition Government.

Finally, on a serious note, the whole House will want to honour the memory of two previous Leaders of the House, Robert Carr and Norman St John-Stevas, who died recently. They were not only effective politicians of their day, but fine parliamentarians who left an enduring mark on this place, and the resurgence that the House is currently enjoying, both in the Chamber and on the Committee corridor, would not have been possible without the changes that they put in place all those years before.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 1st March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House please tell us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for the week commencing 5 March will be:

Monday 5 March—Opposition day [un-allotted day]. There will be a debate on jobs and growth in a low-carbon economy, followed by a debate on living standards. These debates will arise on Opposition motions. In addition, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister plans to make a statement following the EU Council.

Tuesday 6 March—Conclusion of Second Reading of the Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill, followed by a motion relating to a reasoned opinion on procurements by public entities. That will be followed by the remaining stages of the Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Bill [Lords]. In addition, the Chairman of Ways and Means has named opposed private business for consideration.

Wednesday 7 March—My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will propose an Humble Address to celebrate the diamond jubilee of Her Majesty the Queen. That will be followed by Opposition day [un-allotted day] [half-day]. There will be a debate on a Democratic Unionist party motion, subject to be announced, followed by a motion relating to human rights abuses and the death of Sergei Magnitsky. The subject for this debate has been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Thursday 8 March—Topical debate on international women’s day, followed by a debate on the future of social care. The subjects for these debates have been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

The provisional business for the week commencing 12 March will include:

Monday 12 March—Motions relating to Standing Orders and to outstanding reports of the Committee on Standards and Privileges.

Right hon. and hon. Members will know that this morning I made a written statement to the House announcing that Her Majesty the Queen will open a new Session of this Parliament on Wednesday 9 May.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his statement and, ahead of this afternoon’s general debate, wish everyone a happy St David’s day. We spend our time surrounded by his amazing designs in this place, so it is also right to mark today the 200th anniversary of Pugin’s birth.

The Foreign Secretary updated the House this week on the situation in Syria. Today, the whole House will be appalled that the Syrian Government appear to be escalating repression. They are responsible for widespread human rights crimes, including the deliberate targeting of civilians and journalists. We fully support the call by the United Nations Secretary-General for an immediate end to the violence. Across the region, tens of thousands have been killed demanding the freedom that we in this country take for granted. Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on the middle east so that the House can consider the support we give to those battling against brutal dictatorship? Such a debate would give us the opportunity to praise the outstanding journalism that has meant the crimes of the Syrian Government have not gone unrecorded.

If in Syria we have seen journalism at its very best, we have heard this week at the Leveson inquiry about the worst excesses of some sections of the press. The Conservative Mayor of London, who is in charge of the Metropolitan police, said last year that stories of illegal phone hacking were “codswallop”, but this week he argued that “the caravan should move on”. Joining in, the Conservative Education Secretary said that the Leveson inquiry was having a chilling effect on press freedom. This is beginning to look like a systematic attempt to undermine the inquiry and pre-empt the outcome. Some sections of the press might be trying to browbeat Lord Justice Leveson, but does the Leader of the House agree with me that Conservative Cabinet Ministers and the Conservative Mayor of London should not join in?

I was disappointed this time last week when, in response to my questions about the Health and Social Care Bill, the Leader of the House said that he was not one of the heroic three Cabinet Ministers who briefed ConservativeHome off the record that the Bill was a disaster, but it is not too late to change his mind. After all, the Deputy Prime Minister briefed Liberal Democrat peers this week on the record that the Bill needed amending to stop Conservative Ministers privatising the NHS. I wonder whether the Leader of the House could explain what the Deputy Prime Minister has been doing all this time, because he wrote the foreword to the health White Paper and championed the original Bill. He then voted for the Bill but championed the pause and the rethink. He then championed the revised Bill, and now he is championing a revision of the revision of the Bill. This cynical choreography will not be taken seriously by the public. If he really wanted to, he could stop the Bill now. Why on earth has he not done so? Meanwhile, a Conservative Health Secretary is proving that we can never trust the Tories on the NHS.

The most signed e-petition on the No. 10 website is a campaign to drop the Health and Social Care Bill. The Prime Minister said on launching the site:

“One of the points of the new e-petitions website is to make sure that if a certain level of signatures is reached, the matter will be debated in the House, whether we like it or not. That is an important way of empowering people.”—[Official Report, 11 August 2011; Vol. 531, c. 1092.]

Will the Leader of the House explain why Government Members of the Backbench Business Committee voted en bloc to stop a debate on the NHS petition? Last week the Prime Minister locked his health critics out of No. 10, and this week’s shenanigans in the Backbench Business Committee revealed that the Government are running scared of debate. Does the Leader of the House think that that will win over the public?

As a result of another e-petition, the House decided to ban the keeping of wild animals in circuses, but today the Government sneaked out a consultation that completely ignores the will of the House. It looks as though e-petitions are another public relations gimmick from a Prime Minister who thinks that that is what his job is about, so may we have an early debate on the Government’s response to the Procedure Committee’s report on e-petitions, which after all said that the Prime Minister’s claims on the No. 10 website needed to be rewritten to ensure that they “more accurately reflect reality”?

I thank the Leader of the House for finally confirming what Paul Waugh of PoliticsHome announced at the beginning of January: that the Queen’s Speech would be on 9 May. I have a suggestion for how he could successfully bring this legislative Session to a proper close: drop the Health and Social Care Bill.

[Sir George Young]

I endorse what the hon. Lady said at the beginning of her questions about St David’s day and the 200th anniversary of Pugin’s birth.

On the serious issue of Syria, we had Foreign Office questions on Tuesday. She will know that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has issued a written ministerial statement today. She may also know that the matter is likely to be raised at the European Council meeting later today, and I have announced that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will make a statement on that on Monday, so there might be an opportunity to report progress then. I join her in paying tribute to those journalists who have risked their lives, and in one case lost her life, to bring the truth to the rest of the world, going to the most dangerous places in the world, showing the hardships that people endure there and broadcasting the realities to a wider audience.

On Leveson, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister dealt with this yesterday, and I gently remind the hon. Lady that it was the coalition Government who set up the inquiry to get to the bottom of exactly what has been going on.

We had an urgent question on the Health and Social Care Bill on Tuesday, which my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary answered. The Bill continues to be improved by amendments tabled from both sides of the House, and from both Houses, as it goes through Parliament. It was a Labour Secretary of State for Health who had a motion of no confidence passed in her by one of the royal colleges.

We have no intention of dropping the Bill. I asked the hon. Lady last week which particular clauses she wanted to see dropped. Does she want to drop clauses 22 and 25, which make it explicit that patients should have more choice and be much more involved in decisions about their care? Does she want to drop the clauses placing a duty on key organisations to integrate health and social care services? Does she want to drop the clauses that remove the arbitrary private patient cap, which stifles groundbreaking new treatment by organisations such as The Royal Marsden?

The Government have passed to the Backbench Business Committee responsibility for the subjects that it chooses. It has chosen Magnitsky, social care and a wide range of important issues which have been brought before it by Members from both sides of the House. The Committee may have taken the view that the health Bill has been adequately debated in this House since it was introduced more than a year ago. It has probably had more debate than any other Bill in recent history, and that may be why the Committee took that decision.

We have just had DEFRA questions, and I watched the Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Mr Paice), answer questions about circus animals. As the hon. Lady knows, we have put out a written ministerial statement—

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 23rd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House please give us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for the week commencing 27 February will be as follows:

Monday 27 February—Estimates day [4th allotted day]. There will be debates on funding for the Olympics and Paralympics, and on the Forensic Science Service.

Further details will be given in the Official Report.

[The details are as follows: Funding for the Olympics and Paralympics: Oral evidence taken before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on 14 and 21 December 2010, HC 689 I and II, 17 May 2011, HC 689-III, 15 November 2011, HC 689-IV, and 24 January 2012, HC 689-V; Forensic Science Service: 7th report from the Science and Technology Committee of Session 2010-12, HC 855; Government response—The Forensic Science Service, Cm 8215.]

Tuesday 28 February— Estimates day [5th allotted day]. There will be debates on transport and the economy and on preparations for the Rio plus 20 summit.

Further details will be given in the Official Report.

[The details are as follows: Transport and the Economy: 3rd report from the Transport Committee of Session 2010-12, HC 473; Government Response—4th special report from the Transport Committee of Session 2010-12, HC 962; Preparations for the Rio+20 summit: 8th report from the Environmental Audit committee of Session 2010-12, HC 1026; Government response—5th special report from the Environmental Audit Committee of Session 2010-12, HC 1737.]



At 10 pm the House will be asked to agree all outstanding estimates.

Wednesday 29 February—Second Reading of the Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill, followed by proceedings on the Supply and Appropriation (Anticipation and Adjustments) Bill.



Thursday 1 March—Motion relating to CPI/RPI pensions uprating, followed by a general debate on Welsh affairs. The subject for these debates has been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.



The provisional business for the week commencing 5 March will include:

Monday 5 March— Opposition day [un-allotted day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 1, 8 and 15 March 2012 will be:

Thursday 1 March—Debate on rebalancing the Northern Ireland economy.



Thursday 8 March—Debate on the common agricultural policy after 2013.

Thursday 15 March—Debate on the effectiveness of UK Trade & Investment.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for his statement.

Every time that I have raised the question of the Health and Social Care Bill, the right hon. Gentleman has claimed that he supports it, and I was beginning to worry that he might actually be a true believer in it. So I was delighted to read that Downing street sources had fingered him as one of the Cabinet’s heroic three who had briefed Conservative Home about their opposition to the Bill. May I welcome him to a just cause? He joins the company of patients, doctors, nurses, midwives, royal colleges and health managers—in fact, he joins just about anyone who has anything to do with the NHS. These are all the people who were locked out of No. 10 when the Prime Minister held his self-styled “summit” on Monday, which was just another public relations stunt from a Prime Minister who thinks that that is what his job is about. A year ago, the Prime Minister said he had to listen to those in the NHS, but now he shuts the door on them if they dare to disagree with him.

Yesterday, the hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson), explaining all this away, said that we should ignore the views of the royal college because general practitioners had been opposed to Labour’s 1948 Bill founding the NHS. That was not the best argument for a Conservative MP to advance, because if Labour had listened to the Conservatives then, there would be no NHS today. The Conservative party was wrong then and it is wrong now, so will the Government see sense, listen to even the Leader of the House and drop the Health and Social Care Bill.

Fifteen Liberal Democrats signed early-day motion 2659, which states:

[That this House expects the Government to respect the ruling by the Information Commissioner and to publish the risk register associated with the Health and Social Care Bill reforms in advance of Report Stage in the House of Lords in order to ensure that it informs that debate.]

Yesterday, there was an almost identically worded motion on the Order Paper, but astonishingly only four Liberal Democrats joined us to vote for it—the rest abandoned their principles and shamefully scurried through the Government Lobby or sat on their hands. This week, Russian scientists announced they had grown an extinct plant from seeds frozen in the permafrost for the past 30,000 years. Liberal Democrats have clearly decided to put their principles into a similar deep freeze. Let me tell them that they are kidding themselves if they think they can store them away until the next election.

There are rumours going around that the Deputy Prime Minister, who astonishingly did not turn up to vote last night, is encouraging Liberal Democrats in the Lords to wreck the Health and Social Care Bill. So will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on coalition unity, to give Liberal Democrats a chance to make up their minds on whether they are in the Government or not? They cannot be a bit of both.

The House was grateful to the Leader of the House for announcing the forthcoming parliamentary calendar. The Government are planning for the House to rise on Tuesday 27 March, Tuesday 17 July, Tuesday 18 September and Tuesday 13 November. In total, two thirds of the days on which the House has risen since the election have been Tuesdays. Will the Leader of the House now find time for a debate on why the Government are so keen for the House to rise on Tuesdays? The Prime Minister operates a lock-out policy at No. 10 for his health critics, he cannot stand criticism, he gets rattled at the Dispatch Box and now it looks very much like he is running away from Prime Minister’s questions at every opportunity.

Today, Royal Bank of Scotland has announced that its losses doubled last year. There have been 3,500 job cuts and front-line bank staff have been offered a 1% pay rise. With ordinary families struggling, can it be acceptable that RBS is planning to pay £400 million in bonuses to top bankers—from a state-owned bank? Is that the Government’s definition of “We’re all in this together”?

[Ms Eagle]

I am pro-fairness, not anti-business.

The House was conveniently in recess when last week’s appalling unemployment figures came out, and when the next figures are due the Prime Minister is out of the country. The Prime Minister runs away from engaging with health critics, he cannot face talking about the economy and he has no solution to the unemployment crisis. So will the Leader of the House now find time for a debate on the economy so the Government can explain their failing economic policies?

This is a Government led by a Prime Minister who dodges Prime Minister’s questions and a Deputy Prime Minister who spends most of his time attacking the Government of which he is a member. Their disastrous economic policy has resulted in unemployment at its highest level for a generation and their health policy is opposed by just about everyone who works in or cares about the NHS. No wonder recesses cannot come fast enough for the Government.

[Sir George Young]

I was waiting for the question about the business, but it did not come.

May I begin by disappointing the hon. Lady? There was no truth in the rumours to which she referred at the beginning of her remarks. I have supported the Health and Social Care Bill publicly and privately and continue to do so. Once again, she asked us to drop the Bill. Does she really want us to drop clauses 22 and 25, which put in law for the first time a duty on the NHS to tackle health inequality? Does she want that dropped? Does she want clause 116 dropped, which will prevent discrimination in favour of private health companies over the NHS the first Bill to do so? Does she want to abolish part 1, which is all about integrating health and social care? Does she want to stop local authorities dealing with public health? The Opposition want to stop all sensible reforms and to drop our extra £12.5 billion investment.

On yesterday’s debate, I am delighted that Liberal Democrat Members of Parliament listened to the argument made by Members on the Government Benches and decided, on reflection, to oppose the Labour party’s motion. I gently remind the hon. Lady that I seem to remember an early-day motion in the last Parliament that was signed by a large number of Back-Bench Labour MPs. When it was debated in the House, they miraculously had the same sort of Pauline conversion and decided to support the Government, so she should be slightly more careful about the examples that she chooses. On the cohesion of the Government, I would say that this is a more cohesive Government than the Blair-Brown Government of which she was a member.

So far as Prime Minister’s questions are concerned, I have checked the figures and can tell the hon. Lady and the House that the number of Prime Minister’s questions per sitting day has risen in this Session compared with the last Session under the previous Administration. I say to the hon. Lady that the current Prime Minister is turning up for Prime Minister’s questions more often than his predecessor. His predecessor—[Interruption.]

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 9th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House please give us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for the week commencing 20 February will be:

Monday 20 February—Motion relating to Iran. The subject for this debate has been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Tuesday 21 February—If necessary consideration of Lords amendments, followed by a European document relating to the remuneration of European Union staff.

The Chairman of Ways and Means has named opposed private business for consideration.

Wednesday 22 February—Opposition day (un-allotted day). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion including on the publication of the NHS risk register.

Thursday 23 February—Motions relating to the draft Social Security Benefits Up-rating Order 2012, the draft Guaranteed Minimum Pensions Increase Order 2012, and the draft Pensions Act 2008 (Abolition of Protected Rights) (Consequential Amendments) (No. 2) (Amendment) Order 2012.

The provisional business for the week commencing 27 February will include:

Monday 27 February—Estimates day (4th allotted day). Details will be given in the Official Report.

[The details are as follows: Funding for the Olympics and Paralympics: Oral evidence taken before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on 14 and 21 December 2010, HC689 i and ii, 17 May 2011, HC689-iii, 15 November 2011, HC689-iv, and 24 January 2012, HC689-v; Forensic Science Service: 7th Report from the Science and Technology Committee of session 2010-12, HC 855; Government Response – The Forensic Science Service, Cm 8215]

Colleagues will wish to be reminded that they will have the opportunity to pay individual tributes to Her Majesty the Queen on 7 March during the debate on the Humble Address, marking the 60th anniversary of her accession to the throne.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 23 February will be:

Thursday 23 February—Debate on cycling.

For the convenience of the House, I would like to provide additional information on the parliamentary calendar. The House will return from the conference recess on Monday 15 October. In addition to the dates already announced, the House will rise at the close of play on Tuesday 13 November and return on Monday 19 November. The House will rise at the close of play on Thursday 20 December and return on Monday 7 January 2013.

As previously announced, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will deliver his Budget statement on Wednesday 21 March. As is usual, the Budget debate will continue for a further three days. I will bring forward a motion to allow the continuation of the Budget debate on Friday 23 March. This will also facilitate the Backbench Business Committee’s usual pre-recess Adjournment debate prior to the Easter recess on Tuesday 27 March.

The House will also want to be aware that the private Members’ Bills Fridays for the next Session will be: 6 July, 13 July, 7 September, 14 September, 19 October, 26 October, 2 November, 9 November, 30 November, 18 January 2013, 25 January, 1 February and 1 March. All these dates are contained in a revised version of the calendar, now available for Members and staff from the Vote Office.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for his statement and for announcing yet another packed week.

The Government’s legislative incompetence has reached new heights with the announcement the Leader of the House has just made of a Friday sitting for the Budget. Did Government business managers forget to schedule the time they needed to debate the Budget, or did the Chancellor not bother to inform them when he announced the date? They certainly know how to manage the legislative factory, although I note that once again, the House is rising on a Tuesday so the Prime Minister can dodge his Question Time.

Yesterday, the Government were defeated in the Lords on day one of the Report stage of the Health and Social Care Bill. In yesterday’s Financial Times a Conservative Back Bencher was quoted as saying:

“No Tory MP knows what the point of these reforms is”.

Let me reassure Conservative Members: they are not alone. No one—with the possible exception of the Health Secretary—understands the point of these reforms. However, what doctors, nurses, the royal colleges, patients’ groups—in fact, just about anyone working in or using the health service—do understand is that this disastrous Bill is damaging our NHS. As the massive increase in the number of people waiting more than 18 weeks for treatment shows, it is patients who are suffering.

The Health Secretary may have presided over the biggest legislative shambles and policy disaster in recent history, but apparently the Prime Minister still has confidence in him. I do not imagine he feels particularly reassured, given that one No. 10 insider is quoted in The Times as saying that the Health Secretary

“should be taken out and shot”.

That was followed by a story in The Daily Telegraph with a headline saying that No. 10 does not want to shoot the Health Secretary. Given that the Prime Minister cannot even get his story straight on whether or not he wants to shoot his Ministers, is it any wonder that they have made such a mess of running the NHS? Will the Government recognise reality and finally drop the Health and Social Care Bill?

Ever willing to help the Government out, the Deputy Prime Minister briefed this week that he thought about vetoing the Health and Social Care Bill, but decided against it “for the sake of coalition unity”. So there we have it: the Liberal Democrats in government—power before principle.

The Health and Social Care Bill has become the latest Government Bill to run into trouble in the Lords. Over the period of the Labour Government, when we lost about a third of whipped Divisions in the Lords, the proportion of Labour peers reached a maximum of 30%. Representation on the Government Front Bench in the Lords is already at 39%. Will the Leader of the House therefore rule out stuffing the House of Lords any further with Government peers?

The Deputy Prime Minister also said this week that he was asking Liberal Democrats “day in, day out” to vote for things they

“wouldn’t do in a month of Sundays”

if there were a majority Liberal Democrat Government. It might have escaped his notice, but we have not been voting for legislation “day in, day out” due to the Government’s shambolic mishandling of parliamentary business in this House. The few votes we have had were clearly too much for the children’s Minister, who fled London rather than going into the Division Lobby with the Conservatives to vote for the Welfare Reform Bill. Does the Leader of the House agree with his own Back Benchers who said that the children's Minister should have the courage to vote for the Government’s business, or the guts to resign?

Labour called for the RBS chief executive not to take his bonus; it happened. Labour called for the board of Network Rail not to take their bonuses; it happened. On Tuesday, Labour initiated a debate on bankers’ bonuses and not a single Cabinet Minister could be bothered to speak for the Government. The Chancellor, speaking to the Federation of Small Businesses, even seemed to think it was anti-business to be talking about executive pay at all. Had he deigned to come to this House on Tuesday, he would have realised it is actually about fairness.

Will the Leader of the House confirm that as a result of quantitative easing, every bank in the country has benefited from taxpayer funding, and does he agree that it is not fair for the bosses of all the banks that have benefited from taxpayer support to earn in one day many times more than most people in this country earn in a lifetime? Every time I have raised this matter, the right hon. Gentleman has ducked the question. Given that Barclays is due to announce its bonus round, will the Leader of the House now send an unequivocal message to banking bosses about what the Government consider fair?

I want to pay tribute to two remarkable women. Her Majesty the Queen has reigned for 60 years, and her commitment to the nation and the Commonwealth has rightly earned respect across the country and around the world. Florence Green, who died this week at the age of 110, was the last known surviving service member from world war one. Mrs Green was one of 100,000 women to serve this country in the great war. Will the Leader of the House now agree to schedule the traditional debate to mark international women’s day, so that we can pay tribute to the service of those remarkable women and many others who enhance our public life in this country?

[Sir George Young]

The Government are anxious that we should have the normal pre-Easter recess Adjournment debate, which is normally scheduled by the Backbench Business Committee, and that is why we are scheduling an additional day’s debate on the Friday after the Budget; if we did not do so, there would be a risk that that popular occasion would be squeezed out of the calendar.

The Prime Minister relishes Prime Minister’s questions—probably more than the Leader of the Opposition does. If the hon. Lady had been listening to what I said, she would have heard me announce that the House would be rising on a Thursday in December, not on a Tuesday. As for the upper House, the Labour party has more peers than any other party and if there was representation on the basis of votes at the previous general election, Labour would clearly not be entitled to that number of peers.

There are three principles in the Health and Social Care Bill: more control for patients; more power for professionals; and less bureaucracy. Those are three principles that the previous Labour Government were embarked on following when they were in power; they were establishing foundation trusts, they were promoting choice and they were promoting practice-based commissioning in the mid-2000s. We take forward that agenda. In addition, I say to the hon. Lady that it is called the “Health and Social Care Bill”—everyone agrees that social care must be linked more closely to the NHS, and the Bill promotes better financial and professional integration. As for the independent sector, I just remind her of what her manifesto said:

“We will support an active role for the independent sector working alongside the NHS in the provision of care”.

We are actually precluding the sort of arrangements that Labour promoted, whereby independent treatment centres were parachuted into the NHS with no powers for the NHS to compete.

On the point about the education Minister, the shadow Leader of the House was a Minister and she knows perfectly well that Ministers are occasionally away on ministerial business. That was the issue for my hon. Friend. If the shadow Leader of the House looks at the voting register, she will find that a large number of her colleagues did not take part in that particular vote.

On taxing the banks, the shadow Leader of the House will know that our annual levy on the banks brings in more each year than Labour’s one-off tax—that deals with that issue.

On international women’s day, that debate is one of the fixed events now allocated to the Backbench Business Committee, but I can say in response to the hon. Lady’s question that we will seek to allocate to that Committee a day so that it can hold the traditional debate on international women’s day roughly on the date when it occurs in March.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 2nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House please give us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business commencing 6 February will be:

Monday 6 February—Second Reading of the Financial Services Bill.

Tuesday 7 February—Opposition day (un-allotted day) (half day). There will be a debate on responsibility and reform for British banks. This debate will arise on an Opposition motion. It will be followed by a motion relating to metal theft. The subject for this debate has been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.



Wednesday 8 February—Motions relating to the police grant and local government finance reports.

Thursday 9 February—General debate on Somalia.

The provisional business for the week commencing 20 February will include:

Monday 20 February—A debate on Iran. The subject of this debate has been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his statement. I commended him last week for announcing three days of actual Government business. Clearly exhausted after their exertions, next week the Government are to manage only a paltry one day of legislative business.

A few weeks ago, when I asked the Leader of the House for the date of the Queen’s Speech, he promised it “in due course”. On Sunday, The Independent on Sunday announced that the Queen’s Speech was delayed because the Government needed “more time” to secure their legislation. Given the Government’s incompetent handling of the legislative programme, if we have to wait for them to get their act together, we will not have a Queen’s Speech this year at all. Government business managers might find a deadline helpful, so will the Leader of the House finally tell us the date of the Queen’s Speech?

May I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that one way to end the legislative logjam and enable the Government to get around to having a Queen’s Speech this year would be to drop the Health and Social Care Bill? This week, the British Medical Journal, the Health Service Journal and Nursing Times called for the Bill to be dropped because the NHS was

“far too important to be left at the mercy of ideological and incompetent intervention”.

The Prime Minister has told Ministers that he wants “less and better legislation”, yet last night the Government put down another 136 amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill—adding to the 1,800 already tabled. Does the Prime Minister actually know what is going on with his own Health and Social Care Bill? Can the Leader of the House find time for a debate on the NHS to give the Prime Minister the opportunity to inform himself on what the Government are doing and to give the Health Secretary the opportunity to come to this House to announce that he has finally seen reason and will drop this disastrous Bill?

I note that the Prime Minister did not tell his Ministers that he wanted fairer legislation. Yesterday, the Government voted to cut support for disabled children; they voted to cut support for people recovering from cancer; and they voted for a crude cap that even the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government says will increase homelessness. Can the Leader of the House find time—again, he has plenty of it—for a debate on fairness? That would give Ministers the opportunity to explain why, when they are cutting support for those who have the least, all we have had from the Prime Minister about the excessive rewards for those who have the most is pointless press releases.

The Chancellor, who has not been seen at the Dispatch Box since mid-December, is fond of saying, “We’re all in this together.” Will the Leader of the House explain, then, how this Government can triple student fees, leading to an almost 10% drop in university applicants, at the same time as they sign off a tax dodge for the chief executive of the Student Loans Company, which saves him tens of thousands of pounds a year? Will the Leader of the House explain, since the Chief Secretary to the Treasury did not, how that can be fair? While he is at it, will he explain which Minister was aware of this issue and went ahead and approved it?

Will the Leader of the House explain how it is fair that the Government did nothing to stop the chief executive of RBS taking a £1 million bonus and why it took the threat of an Opposition motion to put a stop to it? What have the Government been doing? If the Leader of the House could find time for a debate on fairness, perhaps the Deputy Prime Minister could lead it. There has been no sign of him explaining in public why the Liberal Democrats did nothing to stop bankers awarding themselves multi-million pound bonuses, yet voted to cut support for those who have the least.

The Deputy Prime Minister did pop into the Chamber for the European statement earlier this week—at least he turned up for some of that one, although he was too busy sulking to turn up in December. On that occasion, the Prime Minister told this House there would be absolutely “no way” other European Governments would be allowed to use EU institutions to enforce a fiscal compact. He said “no way”, as he had vetoed it. This week, the Prime Minister slunk back to announce that EU institutions would be allowed to enforce it after all, but it was all right because he was going to be watching them “like a hawk”. Who is he kidding? The only thing the Prime Minister watches “like a hawk” is the news cycle. We have a veto that has been un-vetoed to a treaty that is not a treaty—it is like the mad hatter’s tea party.

[Sir George Young]

Three of this week’s four days have been on Government business, on Monday we have the Second Reading of the Financial Services Bill, and on Wednesday we will deal with the local government and police grant orders, without which no local authority will get its funding next year. I hope the hon. Lady agrees that that is important legislation. There is an Opposition debate on Tuesday—I hope she is not going to describe that as “thumb-twiddling”, as she said last week. Next Thursday we have an important debate on Somalia, which some Opposition Back Benchers have asked for. I hope she will not be so dismissive about the House of Commons programme.

As for the Queen’s Speech, the date will be announced in due course in the usual way—a response with which the hon. Lady may be becoming familiar. There is legislation still to get on to the statute book. On the one hand, she wonders why things are taking so long, but on the other hand I am constantly being asked for more time for debates. At some point, the shadow Leader of the House will have to work out whether the Government are pushing their programme through the House of Commons too fast or whether they are taking a leisurely time about it.

We have no plans to drop the Health and Social Care Bill. The principles of clinical-based commissioning, of patient choice and of any qualified provider as well as the linking of health and social care are important reforms. There will be an opportunity for further debate when the House returns.

We discussed the issue of fairness at some length yesterday. We are convinced that work must always pay more than benefits, which is at the heart of our welfare reform. We owe it to people who work hard, do the right thing and pay their taxes to make sure that there are some limits on welfare. Some families in Westminster receive £2,000 a week in housing benefit; I think that position is wholly unsustainable.

So far as the Chancellor of the Exchequer is concerned, I have announced a Second Reading on Monday of the Financial Services Bill; the hon. Lady may find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is in the House for that. On student loans, we have just sat through 40 minutes of an urgent question, and I have nothing to add to what the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said.

As to bankers’ bonuses, the hon. Lady keeps on asking who signed off the contract with Mr Lester, but we know who signed off the contract for the bonus for Mr Hester at the Royal Bank of Scotland. There is no doubt that the Labour Government signed off that contract, which entitled him to the bonus. Since then, we have taken steps, which Labour never took, to cap bankers’ bonuses in cash. Last week, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills announced new reforms to empower shareholders to control future pay.

Finally, the hon. Lady asked about the EU treaty. Perhaps at some point we could have an answer to the question of whether or not the Leader of the Opposition would have signed the proposed treaty.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 26th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House please give us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for the week commencing 30 January will be:

Monday 30 January—Second Reading of the Civil Aviation Bill.

Tuesday 31 January—Conclusion of consideration in Committee of the Local Government Finance Bill (day 3).

Wednesday 1 February—Consideration of Lords amendments to the Welfare Reform Bill.

Thursday 2 February—General debate on the transparency and consistency of sentencing.

The provisional business for the week commencing 6 February will include:

Monday 6 February—Second Reading of the Financial Services Bill.

Tuesday 7 February—Opposition day (un-allotted day) (half-day). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion, subject to be announced, followed by business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Wednesday 8 February—Motions relating to the police grant and local government finance reports.

Thursday 9 February—General debate on the Somalia conference.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 9 February will be:

Thursday 9 February—Debate on the seventh report of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on “Football Governance”.

Earlier this week, all colleagues should have received an e-mail on behalf of the House service, inviting them to participate in the 2012 survey of services. As well as providing an opportunity for Members and their staff to provide feedback on the services we currently use, it will also help the House service and the House of Commons Commission to identity priorities for the next few years, when budgets will be tighter. I encourage colleagues to find a few minutes to take part.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his response and for finally announcing three whole days of actual Government business—for, I think, the first time since October. The Leader of the House wanders about saying that Parliament is not a legislative factory, but if he were running a factory he would have had us all sent home on half pay ages ago.

I raised last week the extraordinary situation of the Business Secretary lining up a speech to a think-tank in order to announce his proposals on executive pay. The Leader of the House promised to remind the Business Secretary of his obligations under the ministerial code. I fear he would not make a very good factory foreman, because it took an urgent question to force the Business Secretary to come to the House first. Did the right hon. Gentleman forget to remind the Business Secretary, or are Government relations so poor that his Liberal Democrat colleague just ignored him?

Another Minister who is reluctant to come to the House is the Chancellor. Despite two weeks of terrible economic news, he has made no appearance at the Dispatch Box. This week’s GDP figures showed that the economy is shrinking, not growing; 2.7 million people are out of work; and family budgets are under extraordinary pressure. This time last year, the Government’s excuse for the shrinking economy was the snow. We have now had the mildest winter for 350 years, and the economy is still contracting; it was too cold last year, and it is too warm this year—the country is tired of excuses from a Government who refuse to take responsibility for their own disastrous economic mismanagement.

Given that the Chancellor was not present for Treasury questions, will the Leader of the House be a bit more of an assertive factory foreman and insist that he come to the Chamber? If the Chancellor does ever condescend to reappear at the Dispatch Box, we could ask him about the bonus scheme for the chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland. I fear that the Leader of the House will be unsuccessful in coaxing the Chancellor out of hiding, so perhaps he will now explain why RBS, a state-owned bank bailed out by the taxpayer, wants to give its chief executive a £1 million bonus this year. The board of RBS is thinking of paying its chief executive in one day more than someone on average earnings would make in a lifetime. We have heard the synthetic outrage from those on the Government Benches, but the question is, what are they going to do about it?

Government incompetence plumbed new depths this week when the local government Minister ended up in the Aye Lobby supporting an amendment that he had rejected moments earlier at the Dispatch Box. Will the Leader of the House confirm that the Minister, on realising that he was locked in the wrong Lobby, bravely took refuge in the toilet while a Conservative Minister barked orders at him through the doorway? The Government’s legislative agenda has been bogged down for months—[Laughter.] It says something about the incompetence of the Government that it took the Serjeant at Arms to flush the Minister out—[Laughter.] The local government Minister has inadvertently revealed the Liberal Democrats’ new political strategy—if in trouble, run for the toilet.

Last night, the Government suffered a crushing defeat in the House of Lords. Their proposal to charge lone parents for using the Child Support Agency is simply “unjust”; I am quoting a Conservative peer. I agree with a former Conservative Lord Chancellor, a former Conservative party chairman and a former Liberal Democrat Chief Whip—why on earth will not the Government? The party of Lloyd George is reduced to this: voting to take away support from young people with cancer, the disabled and lone parents. I quite understand why Liberal Democrat Ministers have taken to hiding in the toilet.

It is more than a year since the Health and Social Care Bill was first introduced. It started at 353 pages; by Second Reading, it had grown to 405 pages; and now, almost 2,000 Government amendments later, it weighs in at a colossal 445 pages. In the Leader of the House’s legislative factory, MPs are sat around twiddling their thumbs, but the Clerks are run off their feet redrafting the Government’s disastrous Bills.

The growing length of the Health and Social Care Bill has not won over critics—the royal colleges, doctors, nurses, patient groups and the voluntary sector all now oppose the Bill. Even the Select Committee on Health, chaired by a former Conservative Health Secretary, has questioned what the Government are doing. The Health Secretary is about the only person in the country who still believes in the Bill. Is it not time that the Government listened and dropped this disastrous measure?

[Sir George Young]

On the programme before the House, we believe in a balanced diet, including proposed legislation. For the hon. Lady to describe as “twiddling our thumbs” Opposition days, Back-Bench business days and serious debates, such as the one I have announced on Somalia, does a genuine discourtesy to the House.

My right hon. and hon. Friends are fully aware of the ministerial code and I remind them about it from time to time.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer was at ECOFIN on Tuesday, which is why he was not at Treasury questions. I am sure that if the hon. Lady reflects on her days at the Treasury, she will understand that from time to time the Chancellor has to represent this country overseas and therefore cannot appear in the House.

I am surprised that the hon. Lady raised the subject of bonuses, as the contract that entitles Mr Hester to a bonus was put in place by the Labour Government. We have done something that they failed to do: we have limited cash bonuses to £2,000 at RBS and Lloyds, and we will do the same this year. We have also said that the bonus pool at RBS and Lloyds will be lower and more transparent this year than last year—something else that the Labour Government failed to do. So far as this year is concerned, no decision on bonuses has been taken.

I have looked at Hansard, and the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell), voted the right way. I understand that after so doing, as an act of generosity, he went to refill one of the carafes on the Table so that his fellow Minister would be refreshed during the remaining stages of the debate, when he was entrapped in the opposite Division Lobby. I understand that there were fraternal greetings. We are all grateful that my hon. Friend emerged from the Lobby unharmed.

On the Child Support Agency, I understand that the provision to make charges was introduced by the Labour Government. We all know from our constituency work that the CSA is in need of reform. All too often, it lets down those it seeks to help. Part of the purpose of that reform is to encourage more settlements outside the CSA. The proposal to which the hon. Lady referred is part of that process.

On the Health and Social Care Bill, many of the amendments to which the hon. Lady referred were called for by the Opposition, so I hope she will welcome them. In due course, this House will deal with Commons consideration of Lords amendments.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 19th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for next week is as follows:

Monday 23 January—Opposition day (un-allotted day). There will be a debate on rising food prices and food poverty followed by a debate on youth unemployment and taxation of bank bonuses. These debates will arise on an Opposition motion.

Tuesday 24 January—Continuation of consideration in Committee of the Local Government Finance Bill (day 2).

Wednesday 25 January—European document relating to EU criminal policy. To follow, the Chairman of Ways and Means has named opposed private business for consideration.

Thursday 26 January—General debate on progress on defence reform and the strategic defence and security review. The subject for this debate has been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

The provisional business for the week commencing 30 January will include:

Monday 30 January—Second Reading of the Civil Aviation Bill.



Tuesday 31 January—Conclusion of consideration in Committee of the Local Government Finance Bill (day 3).

Wednesday 1 February—Consideration of Lords Amendments.

Thursday 2 February—General debate. Subject to be announced.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 2 February will be:

Thursday 2 February—Debate on Network Rail.

This year marks the happy occasion of the Queen’s diamond jubilee and I am today able to announce that an early celebration of that magnificent anniversary will be the attendance of the two Houses on Her Majesty in Westminster Hall for the presentation of Humble Addresses on the morning of Tuesday 20 March. On a day before then, which will be announced in a forthcoming business statement, there will be a debate on the motion

“That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of her accession to the throne.”

I hope the House joins me in looking forward to an important and happy event. On that theme, Mr Speaker, although the score is somewhat lower, may I wish you many happy returns of the day?

[Ms Eagle]

We all look forward to being able to celebrate the Queen’s jubilee, a remarkable achievement and a very happy reign.

Yesterday’s unemployment figures were desperate. There are now almost 2.7 million people without a job in this country, a 17-year high. This week, two independent reports predicted that the worst is still to come. One said unemployment would increase to a staggering 3 million, the other that it would not fall for four more years, yet all we get from the Government is talk and no action.

On Tuesday, the Economic Secretary actually boasted that the cost of living was coming down. Over the past year, unemployment has gone up by 17% in her constituency, so does the Leader of the House agree she is now a leading contestant to be this week’s most out-of-touch Minister? The Economic Secretary’s boss, the Chancellor, had to fly halfway around the world to Hong Kong before he felt he had sufficient distance between himself and his Back Benchers to announce that the Government would be willing to increase International Monetary Fund funding. While I understand why he might have wanted to make such an announcement 6,000 miles away, would it not have been better if he had made a statement to this House?

On 6 December, the House voted overwhelmingly to continue a debate on the economy in Government time. Given that the parliamentary managers are yet again struggling to fill the Commons timetable as a consequence of their gross mishandling of their legislative agenda, will the Leader of the House now bow to the clearly expressed view of this House by letting the Chancellor know that it is safe to come home and by finding time for a debate on the Government’s mishandling of the economy?

Will the Leader of the House assure me that if we finally get an announcement on tackling executive pay, the Business Secretary will make it to this House first? It is unacceptable that he appears to have lined up a speech to a think-tank next week to make this announcement. He should make a statement to this House and then give a speech to a think-tank, not the other way around. With bankers set to award themselves massive bonuses while millions of hard-pressed families are struggling to make ends meet, we need Government action now, not promises of action at some point in the future or lectures to think-tanks.

Up to 100,000 people died during the famine in the horn of Africa last year. The House will have seen the report that found that this tragedy could have been averted if the international community had responded faster. There is now a growing food crisis in the west of Africa. Will the International Development Secretary make a statement to reassure the House that mistakes made in the horn of Africa last year are not being repeated in the west of Africa this year?

This week, the Government announced a commission into the so-called West Lothian question. Rather than following the cross-party approach we took when setting up the Calman commission and the current Welsh Secretary took when establishing the Silk inquiry—both of which were on devolution matters—the Government have, outrageously, chosen to proceed without any input at all from opposition parties. It is difficult to conclude anything other than that this is yet again constitutional tinkering to secure partisan electoral advantage. Will the Leader of the House explain why cross-party agreement was not even sought?

Tomorrow there is legislation before this House—not Government legislation, needless to say—to clamp down on metal theft. Will the Government confirm that they will now support this important piece of legislation, given the growing problem, as highlighted in Question Time?

We learned from yesterday’s Telegraph that the Government are to launch a consultation on building a new airport in the south-east. Had the Transport Secretary announced it last week when she was before this House, Members would have had the opportunity to question her. According to media reports, a Conservative source said there were timetabling problems because “at the last minute” the Deputy Prime Minister “stepped in to block” that. Coalition infighting may explain the discourtesy to this House, but it does not excuse it. Will the Leader of the House tell us how much this consultation will cost?

I am sure the Education Secretary deeply regrets the fact that coalition tensions mean his confidential Cabinet correspondence has been leaked to the media. Will the Leader of the House confirm that a leak inquiry has been set up? Is not the leaking of Cabinet correspondence the latest sign of growing coalition disarray? The Liberal Democrat leader now spends his time doing interviews claiming credit for allegedly blocking Conservative proposals. In turn, an ally of the Prime Minister is quoted in the Telegraph saying of the Deputy Prime Minister:

“No one has noticed, but there isn’t much about him that is British.”

What sort of Government do we have when the announcement of important infrastructure proposals is delayed by coalition infighting, and when the Transport Secretary then announces that policy—in the media—the Deputy Prime Minister briefs the media that he is going to veto it anyway? This is a complete and utter mess.

We learned from Now magazine that the Prime Minister and his wife have a “date night” each week. Given coalition tensions, perhaps Conservative Cabinet Ministers should have date nights with their Liberal Democrat colleagues. May I suggest that the Education Secretary might want to go on a date with the Energy Secretary to discuss the leaking of Government correspondence? I can understand that no Minister would want to ruin their evening by spending it with the Deputy Prime Minister, but perhaps someone could take out the Business Secretary to remind him that since joining the Government he has abandoned everything he said on the economy when in opposition.

Finally, Mr Speaker, I am reluctant to draw attention to your birthday in case the Prime Minister now starts poking fun at you because of your age, but happy birthday—I hope you have a good one.

[Sir George Young]

There will be an opportunity to debate unemployment on Monday, as I note that the Opposition have allocated half a day to it. I just make the point that youth unemployment increased by 40% when world trading conditions were benign and, obviously, it is a challenge for any Government, particularly one tackling a huge deficit, to deal with youth unemployment when world conditions are less benign than they were, but the Government will be happy to set out on Monday the steps that we are taking—the youth contract, the Work programme, and the initiatives on apprenticeships and work experience, among others—to bring down youth unemployment.

This country is a good supporter of the IMF, and there are no firm proposals from the IMF at the moment to increase contributions. Our position has not changed: we have been prepared to provide resources in the past and we would be willing provide them in the future if a strong case is made, but we have made it absolutely clear that the IMF cannot lend money to support a currency and, of course, we would have to come back to Parliament if the request took the Government over the limit that has been voted on.

On legislation, and returning to what the shadow Leader of the House has said in past weeks, I hope she will welcome the fact that a lot of legislation is to be dealt with in the two weeks that I have just announced, with three days of it in the second week. On debating the economy, I just remind her that we had no debate on the pre-Budget report in one year when her Government were in office and had sole control of the timetable. Indeed, we went for months without any debate on the economy under a Labour Government. On the Business Secretary, he is well aware of the ministerial code, which of course he will observe; all important announcements of policy will be made, in the first instance, to the House of Commons.

I am surprised that the shadow Leader of the House raises the matter of bank bonuses, because the Labour party did absolutely nothing about them when it was in government. We have already had the Merlin agreement last year, which capped cash bonuses at £2,000, and she must await further announcements about what we plan to do about executive pay.

On what the shadow Leader of the House said about Somalia, my view is that this country led the way in the support that we extended to Somalia and that if other countries had responded as proactively as we did, the harm might have been reduced. However, I will pass on to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development the point that she made about learning any lessons.

The coalition agreement contained a clear commitment to establish a commission to look at the West Lothian question. That question was one of the many unanswered constitutional issues we inherited from the outgoing Government. On metal theft, the hon. Lady must await the views of the Government, which will be set out in response to the debate tomorrow on a private Member’s Bill.

On airports, the coalition parties are united in rejecting a third runway at Heathrow—the Labour party backed that runway in government but they have now joined us in opposing it in opposition. No decisions have been taken on the estuary airport. As the Chancellor made clear in his autumn statement,

“we will explore all the options for maintaining the UK’s aviation hub status, with the exception of a third runway at Heathrow.”—[Official Report, 29 November 2011; Vol. 536, c. 806.]

We will consult on an overarching sustainable framework for UK aviation this spring and publish a call for evidence on maintaining effective UK hub airport connectivity.

On relationships within the coalition, my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House and I are at one; we are as brothers in our approach to the issues for which we have responsibility, and not a cigarette paper could be found between us on any issue.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 12th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House please give us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for next week is as follows:

Monday 16 January—Opposition day [un-allotted day]. There will be a debate on individual voter registration, followed by a debate on the national health service. These debates will arise on an Opposition motion.

Tuesday 17 January—General debate on the future of town centres and high streets. The subject for this debate has been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Wednesday 18 January—Consideration in Committee of the Local Government Finance Bill (day 1).

Thursday 19 January—Motion to approve European documents relating to integrated EU infrastructures, followed by motion on public bodies—scrutiny of draft orders—followed by continuation of debate on national policy statements relating to ports.

Friday 20 January—Private Members’ Bills.

The provisional business for the week commencing 23 January will include:

Monday 23 January—Opposition day [un-allotted day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.

Tuesday 24 January—Continuation of consideration in Committee of the Local Government Finance Bill (day 2).

Wednesday 25 January—Motion to approve a European document relating to EU criminal policy, followed by: the Chairman of Ways and Means will name opposed private business for consideration.

Thursday 26 January—Business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 19 and 26 January 2012 will be:

Thursday 19 January—Debate to mark Holocaust Memorial Day 2012.

Thursday 26 January—Debate on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee report on football governance.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for that explanation of the packed legislative programme that he has brought to the House of Commons for the start of the new year. I notice that he has not announced the date for the Queen’s Speech, despite the fact that Paul Waugh of PoliticsHome announced it on his blog last week. We wait to hear some time in the future whether he was accurate.

We learned this week that the Committee stage of the Local Government Finance Bill is being taken on the Floor of the House—virtually the only Government business to be taken on the Floor in the next couple of weeks. The House of Commons Library has confirmed that over the past 30 years, only five local government Bills have been treated in this way: the 1984 and 1985 Bills that abolished the Greater London council; the 1987 Bill on block grants and rate limitation; the 1991 Bill on rate capping; and the 1999 Labour Bill that finally restored democratic government to London. Will the Leader of the House explain what in this local government Bill requires it to have its entire Committee stage on the Floor of the House? The Government are obviously struggling to fill the Commons calendar, so in the spirit of new year bonhomie, and wanting to help the right hon. Gentleman, may I ask him whether he could make time for a debate on the Government’s mishandling of their legislative programme?

On fat cat salaries, the Prime Minister, in his new year tour of the TV studios, announced that shareholder votes on executive pay would now be binding. However, in November he announced that his idea to address exorbitant boardroom pay was to appoint more women to boards, and in October he told us that the solution was boards asking themselves, “Is this the right thing to do?” Over the past year we have had plenty of press releases from No. 10, but FTSE 100 bosses have put their own salaries up by a staggering 49%, while average earnings have gone up by just 1.4%. To prevent the Prime Minister from touring the TV studios once a month with the latest wheeze, will the Leader of the House explain to him that if he is serious about dealing with fat cat salaries we need action, not more press releases? When will we get it?

Perhaps the Leader of the House could also have a word with the Chancellor and inquire when we can expect a response from the Treasury to Will Hutton’s report on fair pay in the public sector. In June 2010 the Chancellor announced—in yet another press release—that this was an “important review” and that it would play a “crucial role” in developing Government policy. Will the Leader of the House enlighten us as to what has happened since the report was published 10 months ago?

Given the defeat that the Government suffered last night on their shocking plans to deny benefit to cancer sufferers, will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating the tiny band of Liberal Democrats who joined Labour and the “Cross Benchers” in standing up for decency and fairness? Rather than using parliamentary time in this place to reverse the three votes that the Government lost last night, may we instead have a debate on fairness, to remind the Liberal Democrats why they claim they came into politics in the first place?

The Leader of the House will understand the concern over the safety of PIP implants. The Secretary of State for Health announced yesterday a “rapid review” of the safety of people seeking cosmetic interventions. Can the Leader of the House confirm when the review will conclude, and will he assure us that the Health Secretary will make a statement to the House when it does?

The House is growing weary of rapid reviews being announced by press release. Last November, the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) promised that the Government would publish by the “end of the month” proposals to clamp down on the access that lobbyists have to the Government. Since then we have had Mr Collins of Bell Pottinger boasting of the access to those at the top of Government that he can arrange for his clients, and now Mr O’Shaughnessy, one of the Prime Minister’s top aides, has signed up to another lobbying firm. What we have not had is the promised consultation. The last time the Leader of the House was asked about this, at the beginning of December, he told the House that the Government would publish proposals “in a few weeks”. Given that the consultation is now long overdue, will the Cabinet Office Minister return to the House to explain what has gone wrong? While he is at it, will he also explain the Government’s policy on freedom of information?

Before Christmas the Information Commissioner launched his first ever probe into a Government Department, because the Education Secretary and his advisers were communicating using the Education Secretary’s wife’s e-mail account. Given that the Secretary of State announced this week—not to the House—a new policy on information technology lessons in schools, perhaps the Leader of the House could arrange for his colleague to have some IT lessons himself, so that if he wants to communicate secretly with his advisers he can set up his own e-mail account, and will not need to use his wife’s.

Finally, Mr Speaker, may I wish you and all Members a happy new year? Will the Leader of the House join me in urging all Ministers to adopt a new year’s resolution to make announcements to this House first? After all, the ministerial code requires them to do so.

[Sir George Young]

I begin by echoing the hon. Lady’s good wishes to you, Mr Speaker, and to the House, for a happy new year. She began in a traditional way by asking about the Queen’s Speech. I am delighted that she is looking forward to the next one, which will be packed with legislative reform from the coalition Government, and I hope that she will warmly welcome it when it arrives. She will have to contain herself for a little longer, however. The date of the Queen’s Speech will be announced in due course in the usual way. In the meantime, I have given hon. Members some certainty about the House’s sittings: I have announced them up to October this year. By contrast, my predecessor gave the House two weeks’ notice of the Easter recess in March 2010. The House now has a degree of certainty about when we shall meet, and hon. Members can plan their work-life balance accordingly.

On Parliament’s work programme, I hope that the hon. Lady is not going to denigrate the work that the House is doing. This week we had two statements on Tuesday, on the referendum in Scotland and on High Speed 2. We had a statement yesterday on breast implants, as well as two Opposition day debates; I hope that she is not going to say that those were not worth having. Later today we shall have two important debates arranged by the Backbench Business Committee. As I have said before, this place is not a legislative factory. We are not going to make the mistake that the previous Government made of introducing too much ill-considered legislation.

The hon. Lady asked why we were having the Committee stage of the Local Government Finance Bill on the Floor of the House. I have in front of me a list of 18 non-constitutional Bills that went to a Committee of the whole House between 1997 and 2010, so let us not have any nonsense about this being unprecedented.

Let me give just one example of what the previous Government did. The Digital Economy Act 2010—50 clauses and three schedules—was rushed through the House during wash-up, without consensus, on the Floor of the House. Here we have a 10-clause Bill with three schedules and we are allowing three days for Committee. I hope the House will support what we are doing, as more than 600 experts on local government will be at hand here and able to take part in the Bill’s proceedings.

On executive pay, let me remind the Opposition that they did nothing about it for 13 years. By contrast, we consulted and we will set out in our response the action we will take to tackle irresponsible directors—something Labour did not do—and we are going to require greater transparency for directors’ pay and salary. We shall give shareholders a greater say through binding votes, and allow them to block unjustified pay-offs for failure. An announcement will be made in due course by the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills. I will, of course, pursue the matter of fair pay and the Government’s response with the Chancellor, and find out the date of the response for which the hon. Lady asked.

There will, of course, be an opportunity for the Government to consider in this House yesterday’s votes on the Welfare Reform Bill in the other place. I make the simple point that if we do not reverse those amendments we will need to make savings from other areas. Of course the Government will look carefully at what has happened in the other place. It is worth making the point that the amendments that were carried would not have affected the position of those in the support group—the most vulnerable—whose entitlement to benefit would remain unaffected. Nor would the Government’s proposals have affected those on means-tested benefits. It is a question of getting the balance right on the extent to which applicants draw on their own resources or on the resources of taxpayers. Let me remind the hon. Lady of what the Leader of the Opposition said in his speech of 10 January:

“in these times, with less money, spending more on one thing means finding the money from somewhere else. When someone wins, someone else loses.”

She might like to remember that when we come to debate those amendments.

On yesterday’s statements by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health, he announced three reviews in connection with what went wrong with the breast implants, and I know he will want to keep the House informed as those reviews make progress.

I am surprised that the hon. Lady raised the issue of lobbying. For 13 years the Labour Government did nothing about lobbying, yet she now criticises us for taking time to come up with the paper on our proposals. The consultation document will be published shortly, and there was no breach of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments rules by Mr James O’Shaughnessy.

Finally, I have announced an Opposition day on Monday, and I wonder whether the Opposition are going to compound the confusion they caused with their last one. On Tuesday their leader talked about responsibility regarding the deficit, but just hours later the Opposition voted against our modest measures for sorting out the mess in local government finance. On the very next day they tabled two motions that, far from reducing the deficit, would have increased it. They opposed every cut and promised to spend an extra £87 billion that we do not have, and they were in denial about the mess they created when they were in government. I wonder whether the time has not now come for another relaunch by the Opposition.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 15th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week and a bit of next year?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for the week commencing 19 December will be:

Monday 19 December—General debate on apprenticeships.

Tuesday 20 December—Pre-recess Adjournment debate. The format has been specified by the Backbench Business Committee.

Colleagues will also wish to be reminded that the House will meet at 11.30 am on 20 December.

The business for the week commencing 9 January will include:

Monday 9 January—The House will not be sitting.

Tuesday 10 January—Second Reading of the Local Government Finance Bill.

Wednesday 11 January—Opposition day [un-allotted day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.

Thursday 12 January—Motion relating to a statutory code of practice for pub companies, followed by motion relating to parliamentary representation.

The subjects for these debates were nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 12 January will be:

Thursday 12 January—Debate on the Home Affairs Committee report on “The Landscape of Policing”.

May I take this opportunity to wish you, Mr Speaker, the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) and all right hon. and hon. Members a very happy Christmas and new year, and thank all those who have kept the House running smoothly during the year, including the Clerks, the Officers and staff of the House, the Doorkeepers and the cleaners? A merry Christmas to all with peace and good will.

[Ms Eagle]

Many of us are incredibly relieved that we have finally spotted a Government Bill arriving in the House, even if we have to wait until next year to see it. May I take this opportunity—the last business questions before Christmas—to echo the Leader of the House’s Christmas wishes? I wish you, Mr Speaker, your Deputies, the staff of the House, the Leader and Deputy Leader of the House, and all Members and their staff a very happy Christmas and contented new year.

The House rises on Tuesday. The Government will no doubt be tempted to slip out as much bad news as they can in the last hours when they think that no one is looking. With 27 written ministerial statements on today’s Order Paper alone, can the Leader of the House assure me that any announcement of significance will be made as an oral statement to this House?

Last week, I said that the Prime Minister was isolated in Europe, but I did not know then quite how alone he would end up. Last Friday, the Deputy Prime Minister was apparently firmly behind the Prime Minister’s premature use of the veto at the European Council, saying that he was fully signed up to it. A few hours later, as his own party erupted in outrage, he let it be known that he was “bitterly disappointed” by it. He claimed that he told the Prime Minister that his actions were bad for Britain.

As the Prime Minister came to the House to make a statement, his Deputy got into a gigantic sulk, went to the gym and then straight on to Sky News to moan about his own Government before drowning his sorrows at the Ministry of Sound. The Business Secretary was apparently furious with the situation. The Scottish Secretary has publicly denounced the Prime Minister’s use of the veto and the Energy Secretary has claimed on the Floor of the House that in Europe

“if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”—[Official Report, 12 December 2011; Vol 537, c. 574.]

On Tuesday, all Liberal Democrat Ministers and Whips, including the Deputy Leader of the House, and five members of the Cabinet refused to support a motion congratulating their own Prime Minister. The Ministerial Code says:

“The principle of Collective Responsibility…requires that Ministers should be able to express their views frankly in the expectation that they can argue freely in private while maintaining a united front when decisions have been reached.”

What a joke. Is it not the case that in this Government, the Liberal Democrats have got it completely the wrong way round? They argue in public, but in private they will not stand up to the Tories no matter how much the Prime Minister humiliates them. Will the Leader of the House now confirm that the Prime Minister does not need to get a doormat for Christmas because he already has one?

While the Deputy Prime Minister hosts a European re-engagement event for business, the Prime Minister is busy fomenting opposition to the deal to appease his Eurosceptic Back Benchers. Will the Leader of the House tell us when the Prime Minister is going to amend the Ministerial Code so that it more accurately reflects the cynically choreographed “licensed dissent” which is becoming more obvious by the day?

Unemployment has risen this week to well over 2.5 million, which is the highest level for 17 years and includes more than 1 million young people, who are now in the growing dole queue. The Employment Secretary spent yesterday saying that the figures had stabilised, but the Prime Minister told his party last night that

“2012 will be the worst since the 1980s”

On Tuesday, the Justice Secretary admitted that Britain was facing

“a long period of youth unemployment.”

Will the Leader of the House tell us why the Government have resigned themselves to a long period of high youth unemployment and a wasted generation? Instead of planning for this, would the Government not be better doing everything they can to stop it by adopting Labour’s five-point plan for jobs and growth, which would give 1 million unemployed young people some hope for an otherwise bleak 2012? Should not the voters of Feltham and Heston reject this do-nothing Tory pessimism and vote for Labour’s excellent candidate in today’s by-election?

As Christmas approaches, many of us are racking our brains to think of appropriate gifts for friends and family, but with the Cabinet it is very simple: flip flops for the Deputy Prime Minister; a shredder to be shared between the Business Secretary and the Minister of State at the Cabinet Office; and an espresso machine for the Justice Secretary so that he does not doze off in the Chamber again.

I was having trouble thinking of ideas for the Prime Minister until I discovered the Eton college online gift shop, where I found a very appropriate gift for him: “decision dice”. For those who are not familiar with the finer gifts available from the Eton college catalogue, the dice are described as:

“The ideal gift for the indecisive or those who just can't make up their minds.”

They are presented in a stylish chrome box engraved with the college coat of arms. For just £14.75, the dice are the ideal present for a Prime Minister whose U-turns this year have included: the sale of England’s forests; cuts to school sports; anonymity for those accused of rape; and the scrapping of the office of the chief coroner.

I know that the Leader of the House with his usual gallantry will be trying to think of a gift for me. May I tell him that all I want from him for Christmas is the date of the Queen’s Speech?

[Sir George Young]

I am not sure that there was a lot there about the business of the House, but let us have a go.

The hon. Member for Wallasey welcomed—I think—the announcement that a Bill would be given its Second Reading after the recess. I remind her that the House is not simply a legislation factory. We are not going to make the mistake that the last Government made of imposing too many ill-considered, ill-drafted Bills on the House. The Chamber has other things to do: the Chamber is here to hold the Government to account, to debate matters of national interest, and to represent the views of Members’ constituents, and we are determined that it should have adequate time in which to do those things.

The hon. Lady spoke of written statements being rushed out before the recess. It was precisely in order to avoid making the mistakes made by the last Government and to avoid a last-minute rush that 27 written statements were issued today, days before the House rises.

As for our being isolated in Europe, on my way to the House I just happened to see a headline in The Independent which read “EU 26 fight to stop pact unravelling”.

In response to the hon. Lady’s lengthy thesis on relationships, I simply make the point that the relationship between the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister is stronger than the relationship between Tony Blair and the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, who were members of the same party. [Interruption.] Several autobiographies chronicle the weak relationship between Tony Blair and the then Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The unemployment position has indeed stabilised, as the hon. Lady will see if she reads what was said in the House yesterday by the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling). It can be found in column 844 of Hansard. My right hon. Friend told us that in the last month employment had risen by 38,000 and unemployment by 16,000, that the youth unemployment figure had remained static, that the jobseeker’s allowance claimant count had risen by 3,000, and that the number of people who had stopped claiming incapacity benefit and income support as a result of the Government’s welfare reforms was 10,000. The figures cover only one month, but they do show some signs of stabilisation in the market.

The hon. Lady referred to today’s by-election. I hope that voters in Feltham will use it as an opportunity to reveal whether or not they approve of the stand taken by the Prime Minister last week, and I hope that, if they endorse it, they will go out and vote for the Conservative candidate.

The hon. Lady said that her Christmas wish was to know the date of the Queen’s Speech. I admire her bravery, because it was not until 5.30 pm on Tuesday this week that the House was informed of the business for the following day, Wednesday, when the Opposition held a one-day debate. The Opposition give the House less than a day’s notice, and the hon. Lady wants me to give the House months’ notice of the date of the Queen’s Speech.

Observing who is sitting next to the hon. Lady, let me end on this note. Like the leader of her party, the shadow Leader of the House has a sibling who is also a Member of Parliament, and whom I welcome to the Front Bench. According to an interview with the shadow Leader of the House and her sister, published earlier this year,

“they haven’t had a… row in decades.”

The hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) said

“we do know how to be with each other. It doesn't mean you can’t disagree, but you know—you’re sisters”.

Given that admirable expression of family affection, I wonder whether the hon. Member for Wallasey might be able to give the leader of her party some advice on how to manage relationships.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 8th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for the week commencing 12 December will be:

Monday 12 December—General debate on immigration. In addition, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister plans to make a statement on the EU Council.

Tuesday 13 December—Motion to approve the chairman of the Statistics Board, followed by proceedings on the Charities Bill [Lords], followed by motion to approve a statutory instrument relating to financial restrictions (Iran), followed by Opposition day [un-allotted day] [half-day]. There will be a debate relating to Europe. This debate will arise on a Democratic Unionist party motion.



Wednesday 14 December—Motions on Standing Orders relating to ways and means and supply, followed by motions relating to scrutiny of draft orders under the Public Bodies Bill [Lords], followed by Opposition day [un-allotted day] [half-day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.

Thursday 15 December—Motion relating to the recommendations of the Members’ Expenses Committee report on the operation of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009, followed by, motion relating to financial education. The subjects for these debates were nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

The provisional business for the week commencing 19 December will include:

Monday 19 December—General debate on apprenticeships.

Tuesday 20 December—Pre-recess Adjournment debate. The format will be specified by the Backbench Business Committee.

Colleagues will also wish to be reminded that the House will meet at 11.30 am on 20 December.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 15 December 2011 will be:

Thursday 15 December—Debate on Remploy.

[Ms Eagle]

We have all been captivated this week by the images of the arrival of two giant pandas at Edinburgh zoo. Is the Leader of the House alarmed to realise that there are now more giant pandas in Scotland than there are Conservative MPs? Before the Deputy Leader of the House gets too comfortable, let me say that, given his party’s poll ratings in Scotland, it looks like its MPs are going to be joining the endangered species list north of the border as well.

In 20 years in this place, I have never known business statements to contain so little legislative substance, especially so early in a Parliament. There has been little even resembling Government legislation in this place for weeks now. Will the Leader of the House explain why the Commons is twiddling its thumbs while the Lords teeters under the weight of badly drafted, highly controversial and ill-thought-out legislation? Was this part of the plan? Before he blames the Opposition, the snow or the royal wedding, analysis shows that thousands of Government amendments and endless Liberal Democrat speeches are causing the logjam in the Lords. Why is the Government’s legislative programme so out of balance and why can they not manage it better?

Talking about incompetence, on Tuesday the Government lost their first vote in the House of Commons amid chaotic scenes as panic-stricken Government Whips first dragged their MPs out of the Aye Lobby and then shoved them back in again. By the time the doors were locked, Hansard shows fewer than a quarter of Government MPs were actually in the Lobby with just three Cabinet Ministers for company. I have to say that neither the Leader of the House nor his Deputy were among them. Thankfully for the Leader of the House, neither was the Chief Whip.

I understand that when this defeat was announced, the cheers from the Carlton Club were even louder than those from Opposition Benches. What an ominous sign for the Prime Minister on his way to Brussels. Whether the Leader of the House likes it or not, this place has expressed a clear view by a majority of 134 that we require more time to debate this Government’s failing economic policy. Will the right hon. Gentleman now honour the clearly expressed wishes of this House, by scheduling further Government time for debate on the economy in the very near future?

This week, the Deputy Prime Minister vowed to go into the next election with a plan to means-test free bus passes and TV licences for millions of pensioners. Is that what his newly appointed “brand advisers” meant when they told him to act more like Oxfam? Some 9 million pensioners now want us to have a debate on whether this is Government policy. Will the Leader of the House oblige?

On Tuesday, a former Conservative Member of this House was caught on camera boasting of his access and influence at the heart of Downing street. This follows the still unanswered questions on the Werritty affair. In Opposition, the Prime Minister said that lobbying was the

“next big scandal waiting to happen.”

The Minister responsible gave a firm promise to the House that there would be a consultation document on the regulation of the lobbying industry by the end of November. Given that it is now December and next week is the last full parliamentary week before the recess, will the Leader of the House confirm that the promised consultation paper will be published next week?

Tory divisions on Europe have exploded into the open. The Prime Minister got a Euro-mauling from his own Back Benchers yesterday and the Eurosceptics are out on manoeuvres. Meanwhile, Cabinet Members are openly at war: the Work and Pensions Secretary is reportedly issuing threats over the phone; the Northern Ireland Secretary has taken to the airwaves demanding a referendum and the leader in waiting at City Hall is madly stirring the pot.

We have a Tory grass-roots rebellion, a Cabinet divided and a Prime Minister isolated. Will the Leader of the House inform us what is different from the last Tory Government that he served in?

[Sir George Young]

My party plans to overtake the population of pandas before the next election—[Interruption.] At the next election. In view of the fertility of pandas, that may not be a very high hurdle, but we do plan to do better than them.

As for the House twiddling its thumbs, I think that the hon. Lady demeans the debates that I have announced in the forthcoming week. There is a debate on Europe. What can be more topical than that? There is the Opposition-day debate. Are they going to choose something that is of no consequence? I am amazed that she has repeated the accusation that we heard last week. The fact is we have managed the business in the House of Commons much better than the outgoing Government. We have managed to scrutinise the Government’s legislative programme with adequate time. That programme is now in another place and we will deal with the Lords amendments in due course.

I am amazed that the hon. Lady raised the issue of the debate and vote on Tuesday. We provided a debate in Government time after the autumn statement. That is something that the previous Labour Government did not always do. We had the pre-Budget report, and we did not always get a debate in Government time. Having provided a debate in Government time, the Labour party then brought it to a premature conclusion by moving that it should stop before we reached 10 o’clock. It then complained that we did not have enough time to debate the motion. A number of Labour MPs who took part in the debate then solemnly went through the Division Lobbies to assert that they had done no such thing; that they had not considered the economy. At a time when we are trying to reconnect the House of Commons with the public, I wonder whether the sort of antics that the Labour party got up to on Tuesday really advanced our cause.

On benefits for pensioners, if the hon. Lady looks at the coalition agreement, she will see clear commitments on benefits to pensioners on bus passes and other issues and that remains the policy of the coalition Government.

I am amazed that the hon. Lady chose to raise the subject of lobbying. For 13 years, the Labour Government did nothing about lobbying. They ignored the recommendations of the Public Administration Select Committee, which reported in 2009. By contrast, we are actually doing something about lobbying. We will produce our consultation paper within the next few weeks, proposing a statutory register of lobbyists, which is something that the Labour Government consistently failed to do. On the question of boasting, I have to say that in the previous Parliament, there were ex-Labour Ministers who were boasting, while they were still Members of Parliament, of the influence that they had on Government.

Finally, on Europe, I gently remind the hon. Lady that when we had the vote on the referendum, her party was split as were all three parties. On the Government Benches, we are delighted that the person representing this country in Europe today and tomorrow is the Prime Minister and not the Leader of the Opposition.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 24th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for the week commencing 28 November will be:

Monday 28 November—General debate on political developments and security in the middle east, north Africa, the Sahel, and the horn of Africa.

Tuesday 29 November—My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will make his autumn statement, which will be followed by consideration of Lords Amendments to the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Amendment) Bill, followed by consideration of Lords amendments to the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill, followed by consideration of Lords amendments to the Public Bodies Bill [Lords], followed by a motion relating to national policy statements relating to ports.



Wednesday 30 November—Opposition day (un-allotted day). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.

Thursday 1 December—Motion relating to BBC cuts, followed by a general debate relating to debt advice and debt management services. The subjects for these debates were nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.



The provisional business for the week commencing 5 December will include:

Monday 5 December—Business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Tuesday 6 December—General debate on the economy.

Colleagues will also wish to be reminded that the House will meet at 11.30 am on Tuesday 29 November.

[Ms Eagle]

I should like to begin by paying my own tribute to Alan Keen, whose death was announced to the House this week. He was a dedicated champion of his constituents. Many of us have happy memories of Alan, especially of the Tea Room football banter that we all shared with him. My thoughts go out to his wife Ann and the family at this very difficult time.

Mr Speaker, this week you let it be known in no uncertain terms that the leaking in advance of statements is a gross discourtesy to the House. On Monday, you warned the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government about the disclosure of his housing statement in the weekend papers. Less than 48 hours later, not only was the Government’s energy statement leaked, but the fact that there was to be a statement at all was tweeted to the world half an hour before the Secretary of State could be bothered to inform his opposite number or the House. Can we now take it that it is the Government’s intention to replace the Order Paper with the Twitter feed of The Guardian? Does the Leader of the House deplore this behaviour, and will he give me a personal assurance that it will never happen again?

On housing, the Government’s rushed-out PR blitzkrieg on Monday came the day before official figures, which they will have seen, showed a complete collapse of housing starts across Britain from 32,000 to just 454 across the entire country. In my own region of the north-west, not one single housing start was made. Monday’s cynical choreography was clearly designed to bury bad news. May we have a proper debate on the worsening housing crisis now that the full facts of the Government’s failure have been revealed?

Two weeks ago the right hon. Gentleman was kind enough to tell me that

“the Queen’s Speech will be held in May to coincide with the fixed election dates”.—[Official Report, 10 November 2011; Vol. 535, c. 454.]

But last week his counterpart in the other place, Lord Strathclyde, seemed to contradict him by saying that it could be in April. That is despite Government undertakings given by Lord Wallace during the passage of the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill that there would be a fixed day in May for the Queen’s Speech. Based on these assurances, Labour peers withdrew an amendment to the Bill which would have set the Queen’s Speech in May after local elections. Will the Leader of the House now clear up the chaos between the Government Front Benchers in the two Houses? Will he confirm that it is not his intention to stage the Queen’s Speech just ahead of election purdah? Surely he has no desire to put Her Majesty in an invidious position by using her in a politically partisan pre-election stunt in her diamond jubilee year?

Every week demonstrates that the Government’s economic policy is hurting but not working. The Office for National Statistics revealed a 3.5% real-terms fall in average incomes, while chief executives and directors enjoyed a 15% increase in median earnings this year alone. Meanwhile youth unemployment passed 1 million, showing the brutal price our young people are paying for the Government’s failed choices on the economy. Long-term youth unemployment has risen 77% since the Government scrapped the future jobs fund. As the economy continues to flatline, instead of Government action all we are hearing from the Prime Minister is his latest list of excuses. Last year it was the snow, this year it has been the royal wedding, civil servants, trade unions and employment rights—and now it is the eurozone. The Prime Minister is like an Eton schoolboy, facing rustication by his headmaster, who will say anything and blame anyone rather than take responsibility for the consequences of his actions. Will the Leader of the House now admit that these policies are not working and urge the Chancellor to announce an economic rethink that puts jobs first in next week’s autumn statement?

In opposition, the Prime Minister said that lobbying was the next big scandal waiting to happen, but after 18 months and the loss of a Cabinet Minister there is still no sign of the promised register of lobbying interests. Today there are disturbing reports that Ministers’ spouses and partners will remain free to lobby the Government for private companies under any new rules. This week, it was also revealed that a serving Conservative peer and ex-Chief Whip has been appointed UK representative for the Cayman Islands in order to oppose any further regulation of offshore tax havens. Will the Leader of the House tell us when the Government propose to address the increasingly urgent need for tough regulation in this area, and what is the Government’s position on serving Conservative peers lobbying against regulation of tax havens?

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 10th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House please give us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for the week commencing 14 November will be:

Monday 14 November—Consideration of Lords amendments to the Education Bill.

Tuesday 15 November—Motion relating to fisheries, followed by motion relating to fuel prices. The subjects for these debates were nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.



The business for the week commencing 21 November will include:



Monday 21 November—General debate on the 2010-2011 annual report from the Intelligence and Security Committee.

Tuesday 22 November—Opposition day [12th allotted day] [half day] [second part]. There will be a debate on a Democratic Unionist party motion. Subject to be announced, followed by motion to approve a European document relating to Croatia and European Union enlargement, followed by motion to approve a money resolution relating to the Daylight Savings Bill.

Wednesday 23 November—Opposition day [un-allotted day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.

Thursday 24 November—Business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 25 November— Private Members’ Bills.



I should like to remind the House that we will meet at 11.30 am on Tuesday 15 November.



I should like also to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 1 December 2011 will be:



Thursday 1 December—A debate on “Keeping the UK moving: the impact on transport of the winter weather in December 2010”, the fifth report from the Transport Committee, followed by a debate on “Bus Services after the Spending Review”, the eighth report from the Transport Committee.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for that statement.

Ahead of Remembrance Sunday, it is only right that this House records its deep debt of gratitude to the brave men and women who have served and continue to serve in our armed forces. We will remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice in services up and down the country this weekend, and we will all wear our poppies with pride.

In normal circumstances, the House rises at this time of the year for practical reasons, to make way for the beginning of a new Session and the State Opening of Parliament, but even though that has been put off until next year, we are still to have a short recess now. During the summer recess, Parliament had to be recalled the day after it rose in order to deal with the phone hacking scandal, and then it had to be recalled a second time to deal with the riots. With no Government in Greece and contagion spreading to Italy, does the Leader of the House think that it is right for Parliament to take a break just as we face the biggest economic crisis of our lifetimes—

[Ms Eagle]

It was voted for before those events. Is the Leader of the House making contingency plans for a recall to deal with the worsening economic and political situation in Europe?

Given that the right hon. Gentleman has already helpfully announced all the recess dates for next year, will he now tell us the date of the rearranged Queen’s Speech? With crucial elections taking place countrywide on 3 May 2012, and with the Easter recess taking place between 27 March and 16 April, I am sure that he would not wish to put Her Majesty in a position where the ceremony of a State Opening runs up against election purdah. Our Head of State should not be used in a pre-election stunt by this Government, especially in her diamond jubilee year, so I hope that the right hon. Gentleman can reassure me on that important point.

The fact is that there should be a new Queen’s Speech next week, not next year. If one were happening now, the Government could start by admitting that they will have to revise their economic growth forecast down for the fourth time in 18 months, as unemployment and inflation soar and growth stalls. They ought to abandon their disastrous top-down reorganisation of our NHS and get to grips with the fiasco engulfing Britain’s border controls, and if the Chancellor had any sense he would swallow his pride and unveil a plan B to rescue our stagnating economy.

On the shambles at our borders, will the Leader of the House confirm to the House that the information given to the three inquiries that the Home Secretary has announced so far into those events will be published, so that we can get to the truth of what happened? Does he agree that that is especially important given that the former head of the border force has directly contradicted the account that the Home Secretary gave to the House and to the Home Affairs Committee?

The Rio plus 20 summit, the biggest meeting on the environment in 20 years, has been moved to avoid a clash with the diamond jubilee celebrations and to allow the attendance of all 54 Commonwealth leaders, but, despite the Prime Minister’s pre-election pledge to lead the “greenest Government ever”, we hear this week that he does not plan to attend. Does the Leader of the House agree that, by not attending, the Prime Minister is failing to show any leadership at all on climate change, despite his pre-election posturing and husky-hugging photo calls? Is it not now clear that the Government’s green credentials are being put in the bin quicker than the constituency correspondence of the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr Letwin)?

Speaking of privacy, I note that in the run-up to James Murdoch’s second appearance before the Culture Media and Sport Committee this morning, it has become clear that at least one Committee member has been subject to covert surveillance by News International. We know also from the comments of former members of the Committee that they were initially reluctant to pursue the phone hacking scandal with full rigour because they feared that they would be targeted in exactly the same way. Did the Prime Minister know about that when he decided to give Andy Coulson a job at the heart of Downing street? If not, why not? Given those extremely disturbing developments, which touch directly on the rights of Members of this House to pursue the truth without fear of intimidation, can we have a debate on Select Committee powers?

[Sir George Young]

I endorse what the hon. Lady said at the beginning of her remarks. Many of us will be at Remembrance day services on Sunday, and I am grateful to the House for enabling a portcullis to be prepared that Members of Parliament can insert in the wreath. I commend the Royal British Legion for its work in making that facility available.

On next week’s business, discussions took place through the usual channels on the Adjournment of the House on Tuesday and the House has voted on the matter. I say to the hon. Lady that if she compares the first two years of this Parliament with the first two years of the previous Parliament, she will find that we are sitting longer than our predecessor. It is also the case that we are regularly sitting in September. We sat in September last year and this year and we will do so next year, whereas we did not sit in September in the previous Parliament, so it is not the case that the House is not sitting as long as it has done.

I announced the dates of the Easter recess well in advance. We did not get the date of the 2010 Easter recess until a fortnight before it happened. The Queen’s Speech will be announced in the usual way. I hope that the hon. Lady will encourage good progress to be made in the other place with the Government’s legislative programme. I made a statement, I think, last year on the fact that the Queen’s Speech will be held in May to coincide with the fixed election dates of every five years, so that matter has already been dealt with. The Chancellor will make his statement on November 29, which will include the Office for Budget Responsibility’s updated forecast.

The hon. Lady asked about the reports referred to in yesterday’s debate. The chief inspector’s report will be made public, as the Home Secretary confirmed yesterday. The other two reports have data protection issues concerning disciplinary matters and will not be made public. On the related matters of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Leveson, it makes sense to await the outcome of the Leveson inquiry and the current DCMS report.

On Select Committee powers, we are committed to publishing a draft privilege Bill, which will be an opportunity for the House to consider issues of privilege. I anticipate that Select Committee powers will be embraced in that draft Bill.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 3rd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for the week commencing 7 November will be as follows:

Monday 7 November—Money resolution relating to the Localism Bill, followed by consideration of Lords amendments to the Localism Bill. In addition, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister plans to make a statement following the G20 summit.

Tuesday 8 November—Motion to approve a European document relating to European budgets, followed by motion to approve a reasoned opinion relating to credit institutions, followed by Backbench Business Committee [un-allotted half day], which will include the presentation of the 10th report from the Transport Committee on high-speed rail, followed by a motion relating to the cost of motor insurance.

Wednesday 9 November—Opposition day [unallotted day]. There will be a debate on youth unemployment and jobs, followed by a debate on individual voter registration. Both debates will arise on an Opposition motion.

Thursday 10 November—General debate on armed forces personnel.

The provisional business for the week commencing 14 November will include:

Monday 14 November—Consideration of Lords amendments.

Tuesday 15 November—Motion relating to fisheries, followed by motion relating to fuel prices. The subjects for these debates were nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

I would like to inform the House that we will meet at 11.30 am on Tuesday 15 November.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 24 November 2011 will be:

Thursday 24 November—A debate on extradition.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for his statement. We meet for business questions in the middle of the first ever Parliament week, which aims to make people more familiar with the vital work that we undertake here. The theme is “Stories of democracy”. From the Levellers to the suffragettes, there are many inspiring stories of the fight for the vote that we should celebrate in this place. It is more important now than ever, in these times of economic upheaval and insecurity, that we cherish and value our democratic traditions.

I am sure that the Leader of the House, like me, is looking forward to welcoming the UK Youth Parliament to these Benches tomorrow. With almost 1 million young people unemployed—the highest level since comparable records began—we certainly need to hear the voices of young people. I look forward to joining them at the start of their debate.

On Monday’s consideration of the Localism Bill, does the Leader of the House feel comfortable with the chaotic way in which the Bill has been handled by the Government? Having resisted our arguments in Committee in this place, they promptly deleted or amended great chunks of the Bill in the other place. Ministers still have a problem with their own side on the national planning policy framework.

Tuesday’s disappointing growth figures confirmed that the UK economy is still bumping along the bottom, when we need strong growth to get unemployment and the deficit down. Thanks to the Chancellor’s rash choice to cut too far and too fast in his spending review last year, we are experiencing the slowest recovery from recession in 100 years. Will the Leader of the House admit that the Government will have to revise down the growth figures and revise up the amount of borrowing for the fourth time in 18 months? How many more times must the Chancellor come to this House and admit that he has got his sums wrong before we get a plan B?

It has been reported in the run-up to today’s G20 meeting that the Treasury is preparing to increase our contribution to the International Monetary Fund bail-out funds, despite the Chancellor giving the impression to this House that there would be no additional contribution from the UK to help solve the eurozone crisis. Has he been entirely frank with the House? Is the attempt to claim that none of this money will end up supporting the eurozone not dancing on the head of a pin?

While nearly 1 million young people are worried about whether they will ever get a pay packet while this Government are in office, one small group of people are doing very well indeed. A report by Income Data Services showed that the total earnings of directors of FTSE 100 companies increased by an eye-watering 49% last year. That comes when public sector workers have a pay freeze and there has been a below inflation increase in the private sector.

In May last year, the Prime Minister trumpeted his creation of the fair pay review led by Will Hutton. The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills said of out-of-control executive pay:

“It is time to return to planet Earth.”

Yet one year on from those comments and nine months after the Prime Minister received the report, executive pay continues to rocket out of control, unchecked by Government action. When will the Government bring to this House concrete proposals to do something about this matter? Does the Leader of the House not accept that until the Government act, no one will take seriously the Chancellor’s preposterous claim that we are all in this together?

Has the Leader of the House seen today’s damning report from the Fawcett Society, which accuses the Government of being responsible for the greatest risk to women’s financial security in living memory? When will the Government start to listen to the growing chorus of women’s voices that is demanding that they change course?

Finally, the House was shocked to discover that, despite announcements by the Prime Minister’s spin doctors last November that Lord Young of Graffham had resigned, revelations have now surfaced that he never even left the building. We were told that he had resigned for embarrassing the Prime Minister by proclaiming that many people had

“never had it so good”

as since the start of “this so-called recession”. It seems that he has continued to advise the Prime Minister at the heart of the Downing street machine. Can we have a statement from the Leader of the House on this Government’s understanding of the definition of the word “resignation”? Will he please clarify the position of Lord Young—was his resignation a sham or has he somehow been unresigned?

[Sir George Young]

I look forward to welcoming the UK Youth Parliament to this Chamber tomorrow and to making a short preliminary address along with you, Mr Speaker, and the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle). I hope that many of those young people will return in due course as Members when the Chamber is sitting, rather than on a non-sitting Friday.

We are to debate youth unemployment on Wednesday on an Opposition day. I remind the hon. Lady that youth unemployment went up by 40% under the previous Government, at a time when the economy was doing better than it is currently. The Opposition therefore have little to lecture us about on that.

The Localism Bill does not actually include the national planning policy framework. I hope that the hon. Lady will welcome what is happening on Monday, when we will spend a whole day on localism. There are a number of Government amendments that I hope will be welcomed on both sides of the House because we have listened to the debate on the Bill and made some changes.

On forecasts, the hon. Lady ought to know that the Government do not make economic forecasts. That is done by the Office for Budget Responsibility. Its next report will come out on 29 November when the Chancellor makes his autumn statement. Some of the issues that the hon. Lady raised in relation to the IMF have just been dealt with by my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary.

I am sorry that the hon. Lady did not find time to welcome the news from earlier this week about the revival of Stanley dock in north Liverpool, as a result of the regional growth fund, which will help to reduce unemployment in and around her constituency.

Finally, on executive pay, it is worth reminding the House that the average chief executive of a FTSE 100 company earned 47 times the amount earned by the average employee in 1998 and 115 times that amount in 2009, so the gap actually widened under the last Labour Government. I agree with the hon. Lady that there is an unsustainable disconnect between how our largest listed companies perform and the rewards that are on offer. Concern on that comes not just from Government, but from investors, business groups and others. We are considering ways to reform remuneration committees and to empower shareholders, for example by making shareholder votes on pay binding and ensuring that there is shareholder representation on nomination boards. We are consulting on a number of issues, but at the end of the day, it is up to shareholders rather than the Government to determine executive pay.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 27th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for the week beginning 31 October will be as follows:

Monday 31 October—Instruction relating to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, followed by remaining stages of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (Day 1).

Tuesday 1 November—Continuation of remaining stages of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (Day 2).

Wednesday 2 November—Conclusion of remaining stages of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (Day 3).

Thursday 3 November—General debate on the Silk commission.

The provisional business for the week commencing 7 November will include the following:

Monday 7 November—Money resolution relating to the Localism Bill, followed by consideration of Lords Amendments to the Localism Bill.

Tuesday 8 November—If necessary, consideration of Lords amendments, followed by motion to approve a European document relating to European budgets, followed by motion to approve a reasoned opinion relating to credit institutions, followed by business nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Wednesday 9 November—Opposition day [unallotted day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion, subject to be announced.

Thursday 10 November—General debate on armed forces personnel.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 3 and 10 November 2011 will be as follows:

Thursday 3 November—Debate on shale gas, followed by debate on electricity market reform.

Thursday 10 November—Debate on funding of social care.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Last Monday was the 50th anniversary of the first session of Prime Minister’s questions. I am surprised that the Leader of the House did not mention that. I know how much you enjoy those occasions, Mr Speaker.

When I looked it up, I found that the first such occasion featured an old Etonian Tory Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, fielding questions about his negotiations to get us into the “common market.” Fifty years on, the latest Old Etonian Tory Prime Minister spent the day frantically pleading with his own side not to vote for a referendum to get us out of it. Macmillan was famous for his “little local difficulties”. I think that the current Prime Minister now has 81 “little local difficulties” of his own making, and more in the Cabinet. Can the Leader of the House tell us whether the PM will follow Supermac’s example, and resort to a “night of the long knives” to deal with them?

This Government’s flawed choice to cut too far and too fast before the recovery was secure stalled growth in the economy long before the eurozone crisis. Despite the most ferocious squeeze in living standards for generations, their only plan is to abolish employment rights for millions of people in the workplace. May we have a debate on this week’s leaked report from millionaire financier Adrian Beecroft, which calls for the scrapping of protections against unfair dismissal, and says that creating that insecurity for millions of people at work is “a price worth paying”? Can the Leader of the House tell us why owning four Aston Martins and making lavish donations to the Tory party qualify Mr Beecroft to have a worthwhile opinion on anything?

Last week the Leader of the House told us that rushing forward the debate on EU reform from Thursday to Monday would allow the Foreign Secretary to enrich it with his presence. Can he tell the House how large the Tory rebellion would have been if the Foreign Secretary had not enriched the debate with his presence? And, given that this was the biggest rebellion on Europe in any political party since the dawn of time, can he tell us who is taking the blame? Tory blogger Tim Montgomerie blamed the Prime Minister, accusing him of having a work ethic which is the “opposite of Margaret Thatcher’s”. Apparently our Prime Minister is more interested in the latest box sets than in his red boxes. This week he has obviously been watching too much of “The Sopranos” and not enough “Friends”. [Laughter.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Eagle]

Indeed. Perhaps I should repeat it.

Is it not clear that the Prime Minister’s plans backfired spectacularly, with half his own Back Benchers defying him? Today we learnt that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has threatened to leave the Cabinet if he is ever forced to vote against his Eurosceptic instincts again, and now we learn that the Justice Secretary has been suddenly pulled out of today’s debate on the Council of Europe, just in case he says something nice about the EU and further alienates the Tory rebels. What has it come to in today’s Tory party when Eurosceptics are bullied and pro-Europeans are gagged?

Given that last night’s welcome agreement in Brussels brings the prospect of a treaty change much closer, can the Leader of the House tell us what the Government’s policy on Europe is now, and may we have a debate about it? While he was getting the Whips to bully them, the Prime Minister was trying to appease his mutinous Back Benchers by promising them reform tomorrow. The next day, his deputy vetoed it. The Prime Minister wants to repatriate powers, whereas the Deputy Prime Minister says that that “won’t work” and is “condemned to failure”. Which is it?

Speaking of the Deputy Prime Minister, his reward for rubbing salt in Eurosceptic wounds this week is being allowed to blow an extra half a million pounds a year on seven new Liberal Democrat special advisers. That is apparently intended to “bolster” Liberal Democrat influence in Whitehall. Perhaps, in the light of all this confusion and contradiction between the Prime Minister and his deputy, we should have a debate about what plans the Government have to repatriate powers from the Liberal Democrats. Is it not the case that the past few days have exposed a weak Prime Minister leading a divided Government, too busy fighting internal battles to fight for Britain’s interests?

[Sir George Young]

The hon. Lady is right: this is the 50th anniversary of the first session of Prime Minister’s questions. I think that the Prime Minister enjoys the event more than the Leader of the Opposition.

I remind the hon. Lady that Supermac never lost an election. As for rebellions, she seems to think that they have happened only under the coalition Government, but the last Government endured much bigger rebellions. In March 2007, 94 Labour MPs voted to delay Trident, and even the hon. Lady has a history of dabbling in rebellions on issues such as foundation trusts.

Let me deal briefly with some of the other issues that the hon. Lady raised. We are committed to reforming employment law, supporting business and encouraging growth, while—crucially—ensuring that we do not weaken the employment rights of workers up and down the country; and we do not comment on leaked reports such as the one to which the hon. Lady referred.

We have just heard a statement on Europe, in which the Chancellor addressed the issue of treaty change. My party is united behind the Prime Minister’s vision for reform in the European Union, and indeed that is an aspiration shared by many across the continent. I agree with Lord Ashdown, who said in an interview yesterday:

“I don’t think Europe needs to be as intrusive as it is and so does Nick Clegg.”

As for the treaty, the hon. Lady will know what the coalition agreement says:

“We will examine the balance of the EU’s existing competences”.

That remains the position. The coalition parties are in total harmony on the issue.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 20th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House please give us the forthcoming business?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for the week commencing 24 October will be:

Monday 24 October—Motion relating to a national referendum on the European Union. This subject has been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee. In addition, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister plans to make a statement on the European Council.

Tuesday 25 October—Remaining stages of the Public Bodies Bill [Lords].

Wednesday 26 October—Opposition day [unallotted day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.

Thursday 27 October—A general debate on the UK chairmanship of the Council of Europe.

The provisional business for the week commencing 31 October will include:

Monday 31 October—Instruction relating to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill, followed by remaining stages of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (day 1).

Tuesday 1 November—Continuation of remaining stages of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (day 2).

Wednesday 2 November—Conclusion of remaining stages of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (day 3).

Thursday 3 November—Business nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 27 October will be:

Thursday 27 October—A debate on NHS care of older people.

I remind the House that the week commencing 31 October will be Parliament week. This is an exciting new national initiative, exploring how democracy affects citizens and how they can participate in it. Of particular interest to Members during Parliament week will be the fact that the UK Youth Parliament is holding its annual debate in the Chamber on Friday 4 November. I look forward to welcoming all those taking part on that day, and I am sure that other hon. Members will take an interest in the proceedings.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his answer. I certainly hope that the business remains the same until we get to Monday because we have had two very drastic changes in less than 24 hours.

I pay tribute to the outgoing Serjeant at Arms, who will be sorely missed when she leaves in the new year. She is the first woman to hold the post and she has served the House with distinction for 18 years.

Never let it be said that business questions does not achieve results. Just 24 hours after my first appearance here as shadow Leader of the House last week, the Prime Minister answered my call to include more women in his Cabinet. If he is going to take my advice that quickly, I start today by calling for an immediate general election. [Interruption.] They are already out there campaigning.

At the beginning of the week we all saw the astonishing pictures of the Minister of State, Cabinet Office taking his regular early morning strolls in the park. He is well known for his wisdom. He recently startled a group of his own Back Benchers by announcing that the Government would run out of ideas by 2012. Some of us think that they already have. He then upset the Deputy Prime Minister by saying:

“We don’t want more people from Sheffield flying away on cheap holidays.”

Now it appears that the Prime Minister’s policy supremo and blue-sky thinker has developed a penchant for al fresco filing and is the subject of two official investigations as a result. Is not the real problem that he has been throwing away the wrong things? Next time he is out for an early morning stroll in the park he should be throwing the Government’s failing economic strategy and their wasteful NHS plans in the bin, rather than disposing of his constituents’ private details. May we have a debate on Ministers who think that the rules do not apply to them?

Speaking of which, in his statement yesterday the Leader of the House said that it was time to move on from the scandal engulfing the former Secretary of State for Defence. Will he accept that we cannot move on while serious questions remain? In that context, it has been widely reported that the former Secretary of State used his then parliamentary office to run his discredited charity, Atlantic Bridge. Has the Leader of the House conducted an investigation into this issue, and if so is he satisfied that no parliamentary rules were broken by that unusual arrangement?

If yesterday saw the House at its most combative, Monday saw the House at its most consensual. The injustice and raw emotion still felt by the Hillsborough families was movingly reflected in this House on Monday in one of the most powerful debates I have witnessed in all my time as a Member of this place. Will the right hon. Gentleman join me in congratulating the Backbench Business Committee on the speed with which it facilitated that important debate? Members on both sides of the House now recognise the urgent need to release all the documents relating to the disaster to get finally at the truth and bring some comfort to the families. Following the disgraceful comments yesterday by Sir Oliver Popplewell, who accused the families of harbouring conspiracy theories, will the Leader of the House ask the Home Secretary to join Opposition Members in condemning unreservedly those crass and insensitive remarks.

The Leader of the House has just announced last-minute, wholesale changes to next week’s business. There have been two major changes to business in less than 24 hours, and the right hon. Gentleman has brought forward the Public Bodies Bill and shifted the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill back by a week. That Bill has been ambushed by Tory hangers and floggers, and torn to pieces, both in the press and by the legal profession. It is all too obvious that the Ministry of Justice is in a mess and cannot even bring its Bill to the House.

The most revealing announcement from the Leader of the House was about the Government’s decision to rush forward the debate proposing a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union from Thursday to first thing Monday. Fifty-nine Conservatives have already declared their intention to defy their leader, and there are reports that at least five ministerial aides are on the brink of resignation, so is that not proof of a growing Tory mutiny that has the Prime Minister running scared, the Whips Office in a panic and a Government split from top to bottom? Will the Leader of the House confirm that if he thought he could have got away with it, he would have scheduled this debate on Sunday evening during “Songs of Praise”?

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for those questions, and I endorse entirely what she said about Jill Pay, the Serjeant at Arms, who has been a doughty servant of the House for so long, and who will be much missed when she retires in January.

The hon. Lady rightly pointed out that within 24 hours I responded to her request for more women in the Cabinet. On the issue of calling a general election, I have announced an Opposition day, and it is perfectly open to the Opposition to table a vote of no confidence in the Government. I am sure that she had the approval of the Leader of the Opposition in laying down that challenge.

We held a debate on the economy last week, and we spent some time on the issue. It remains our view that an essential ingredient of growth is low interest rates, and we believe that the policies advocated by the Opposition would prejudice that. A 1% rise in interest rates would, on average, increase mortgage costs by £80 a month, which would not be welcomed by householders.

I agree that the debate on Monday was a very, very moving debate that showed the House at its best, and it was a credit to the Backbench Business Committee that it scheduled. It was the product of the e-petition system that was introduced at the beginning of this Parliament in response to a coalition agreement commitment, and it was a credit to that system, too.

I have not read the comments by Justice Popplewell, but I would condemn any insensitive comments, particularly at this moment in time. I think that the House is united in urging everyone to work constructively with the independent panel so that the public can finally learn the truth.

The final issue raised by the hon. Lady was the business for next week. When I first became a Member of Parliament, we received the business for one week ahead, and that was it. A few years ago, it was changed, so one week was fixed and business for the second week was provisional. The deal was always that the second week was provisional. We try not to make any changes, because we know that that causes disruption, but occasionally it is necessary. Last Thursday I announced that next Thursday would be devoted to a debate approved by the Backbench Business Committee. The motion was not tabled until yesterday—Wednesday—which was when the Government saw the motion on an EU referendum.

My view—I hope that it is shared by the Backbench Business Committee and the House—is that the debate would be enriched by the presence of the Foreign Secretary. He is available on Monday; he is not available, because he will be at the Commonwealth Heads of Government conference in Australia, on Thursday. That is why we brought the debate forward to Monday, and I think that the House would welcome a debate addressed by the Foreign Secretary. I hope that that is generally understood. Consideration of the Public Bodies Bill in Committee ended two weeks ago, and it is entirely appropriate that we deal with the remaining stages next Tuesday.

Cabinet Secretary Report (Government Response)

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Wednesday 19th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the Cabinet Secretary’s report on the allegations against my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox). In the interests of transparency, the Prime Minister published the report in full yesterday afternoon and copies were made available to Members immediately after publication. The Government have come to the House at the earliest appropriate moment following the report’s publication. It is not usual for the Government to make an oral statement following the resignation of a Minister. However, given the wider implications of the Cabinet Secretary’s report, it is right that the House has an opportunity to consider the Government’s response.

Before coming to the report, I would like first to set out to the House the changes to the regulations governing Ministers which this Government have already introduced. In May 2010, the Prime Minister published a new ministerial code and committed the Government to an unprecedented level of transparency. The Government are publishing on a quarterly basis details of all Ministers’ meetings with external organisations, including lobbyists, and including meetings with senior media executives; all hospitality received by Ministers; all gifts given and received by Ministers over £140; all Ministers’ visits overseas; contracts over £25,000; special advisers’ salaries over £58,200, and estimated pay bill; special advisers’ gifts and hospitality received; spend on Government procurement cards over £500; and senior officials’ hospitality expenses and meetings with external organisations.

The Prime Minister also significantly tightened the rules regulating former Ministers when they leave office. Former Ministers are now barred from lobbying Government for two years, as well as having to get the advice of the independent Advisory Committee on Business Appointments for any appointments or employment they wish to take up for a period of two years after leaving office, and the code makes it clear that former Ministers must abide by the advice of the Committee.

Turning now to the matter in hand, following speculation in the media my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset requested that the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence investigate the allegations. The Prime Minister then asked the Cabinet Secretary to establish the facts of the case in relation to allegations in the context of the ministerial code. The interim report prepared by the permanent secretary found that

“there are areas where the current guidance on propriety and the management of Ministerial Private Offices needs to be strengthened”.

As the ministerial code makes clear, it is the Prime Minister’s duty to enforce the ministerial code, having consulted the Cabinet Secretary. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has therefore acted at all times in accord with the proper process.

Last week, my right hon. Friend resigned as Defence Secretary. As he said in his resignation letter to the Prime Minister:

“I mistakenly allowed the distinction between my personal interest and my government activities to become blurred”.

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister accepted my right hon. Friend’s resignation from Government and his reasons for resigning while making it clear that he viewed him as a superb Defence Secretary, who had implemented fundamental changes that will help to ensure that our armed forces are fully equipped to meet the challenges of the modern era—and I wholeheartedly endorse that view.

The report by the Cabinet Secretary confirms that my right hon. Friend did indeed breach the ministerial code. The ministerial code requires Ministers to ensure that no conflict arises, or could reasonably be perceived to arise, between their public duties and their private interests, financial or otherwise. My right hon. Friend’s actions constituted a clear breach of the ministerial code which he has already acknowledged. However, as recognised in the Cabinet Secretary’s report:

“Dr Fox has stated to Parliament Mr Werritty had no access to classified documents and was not briefed on classified matters. There is nothing in the evidence we have taken to contradict this.”

The report also says that

“there is no evidence from this review that casts doubt on Dr Fox’s statement to Parliament that public funds were not misused”

or

“that Dr Fox gained financially in any way from this relationship”.

The permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence has already accepted that there should have been much tighter procedures within the Department and is taking steps to strengthen them to ensure that the ministerial code is properly adhered to.

The Cabinet Secretary’s report concludes that my right hon. Friend’s close and visible association with Mr Werritty in the UK and overseas, and the latter’s use of misleading business cards, has fuelled a general impression that Mr Werritty spoke on behalf of the UK Government. The risks of my right hon. Friend’s associations with Mr Werritty were raised with him by both his private office and the permanent secretary. My right hon. Friend took action in respect of business cards, but clearly made a judgment that his contact with Mr Werritty should continue. This may have been a reasonable judgment had the contacts been minimal and purely personal and had not involved Mr Werritty’s frequent attendance at meetings in the MOD main building and on overseas visits. The damage arose because the frequency, range and extent of the contacts were not regulated as well as they should have been, and that was exacerbated by the fact that the Department was not made aware of all the various contacts.

The Cabinet Secretary also concluded that the links and a lack of clarity in the roles meant that the donations given to Mr Werritty could give rise to the perception of a conflict of interests. He went on to say that there was an inappropriate blurring of the lines between official and personal relationships. Mr Werritty should not have been provided with access to my right hon. Friend’s diary and itinerary. Nor should he have been allowed to participate in the social elements of the then Defence Secretary’s overseas trips in a way that might have given rise to the impression that he was part of the official party. He should not have had meetings in the MOD with such frequency, as that access may have provided others with a belief that Mr Werritty was speaking for Government and was part of an official entourage. That impression was, of course, reinforced by the business cards that Mr Werritty provided to people.

The Cabinet Secretary has recommended further strengthening of procedures across Government. There are five specific recommendations in his report and it is worth setting those out in full. The first is:

“Where discussions take place with external organisations which raise substantive issues relating to departmental decisions or contracts and where an official is not present Ministers should inform their department.”

The second is:

“On Ministerial visits, whether in the UK or abroad, departments should make sure there is no confusion about who is and is not a member of the Ministerial party”,

and the third states:

“Officials should accompany Ministers to all official visits and meetings overseas at which it is expected that official matters may be raised, and should seek guidance from the FCO if there is any uncertainty about the status of such meetings or the attendance of non-officials at them.”

The fourth is:

“Permanent Secretaries should discuss with Ministers at the time of their appointment and regularly thereafter whether any acquaintances or advisers have contractual relationships with the department or are involved in policy development. The Minister and the Permanent Secretary should take action as necessary to ensure there can be no actual or perceived conflict of interest in line with the principles of the Ministerial Code.”

Finally:

“Permanent Secretaries should take responsibility for ensuring departmental procedures are followed, and for raising any concerns with Ministers, advising the Cabinet Secretary and ultimately the Prime Minister where such concerns are not resolved.”

The Prime Minister has accepted those recommendations in full and the Cabinet Secretary is writing to permanent secretaries today to set out the processes that now need to be followed.

Finally, I will turn briefly to wider action that the Government already intend to take to ensure greater transparency between Ministers and external organisations. The coalition agreement committed us to regulating lobbying through introducing a statutory register of lobbyists, ensuring even greater transparency. It is worth noting from the Cabinet Secretary’s report that:

“Whilst Mr Werritty was not a lobbyist, the Government’s commitment to consult on a statutory register of lobbyists will bring further transparency to this area.”

We intend to produce a consultative document setting out our proposals next month, with an aim of legislating next year. This work is being taken forward by the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), and my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House.

At the end of the last Parliament, public trust in Parliament was at an unprecedented low. This Government are committed to working to rebuild confidence in our political and democratic institutions and we will continue to put in place any measure necessary to ensure that the highest standards rightly expected of our elected representatives are met.

I commend this statement to the House.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

I thank the Leader of the House for his statement, but what a condemnation it was of the way in which government is being run in this country. It is a matter of deep regret that the Prime Minister has chosen not to deal with this statement himself. It is the Prime Minister and not the Leader of the House who is the guardian of the ministerial code, and who has the final say on who is fit to be in his Government. Today, he has ducked those responsibilities.

When news of the potential wrongdoing at the Ministry of Defence first surfaced, the former Secretary of State for Defence announced an inquiry into himself, but only after he had called the allegations “baseless”. As the revelations mounted daily, the Prime Minister belatedly announced this limited inquiry by the Cabinet Secretary. By then, it was apparent to everyone that the ministerial code had been breached. The Secretary of State admitted as much. Why then did the Prime Minister not refer this case to the independent adviser on Ministers’ interests, Sir Philip Mawer?

What we have today is a far cry from such a full, independent, external inquiry. The Cabinet Secretary has been forced to rely on the word of Adam Werritty and the former Defence Secretary, whose explanations have repeatedly unravelled at the first hint of scrutiny. This report merely scratches the surface of potential misconduct in government. Consequently, it raises more questions than it answers.

Even in its narrow and limited form, the Cabinet Secretary’s report is damning. It finds the former Defence Secretary’s conduct

“not appropriate and not acceptable”.

It reveals, in stark detail, multiple breaches of the ministerial code. The former Defence Secretary has knowingly circumvented the long-established rules that are in place to prevent conflicts of interest from arising. The report shows that wealthy individuals funded Adam Werritty. He was, in effect, a privately funded special adviser. The former Secretary of State’s shadow political operation routinely undermined our civil service structures and their accountability. The report fails to expose the full facts about the money trail. There is no investigation into the benefits that Adam Werritty received. There is no full disclosure of his funders and the purpose behind the donations. Given the Prime Minister’s failure to answer this question earlier today, can the Leader of the House give the House a categorical assurance that no similar practices are taking place anywhere else in this Government?

I turn now to the details of the report. We need answers on the following issues. The role of the Sri Lanka Development Trust is not considered in the report. Mr Werritty’s presence in Iran, Washington and Israel remains unexplained. We do not know whether Mr Werritty profited from his association with the former Defence Secretary, although we do know about the five-star nature of his taste in flights and hotels. We do not know what those secretive donors, who were in effect Mr Werritty’s paymasters, were promised for their money, nor indeed if they got it. We do not know whether the former Defence Secretary commissioned any work from the MOD as a result of the offline and irregular meetings brokered by Mr Werritty. We do not know which other Ministers and senior staff have met Mr Werritty, because the Prime Minister has refused to publish a full list. That is totally unacceptable. A full list must be published. In order to deal with all those issues, will the Leader of the House agree that further investigation is both essential and urgent?

Will the Leader of the House also tell the House whether he has initiated an inquiry into the use by the former Defence Secretary of his parliamentary office to run Atlantic Bridge as a charity, and whether he is satisfied that that was proper under parliamentary rules? Some of the key funders of Atlantic Bridge were the key funders of Adam Werritty. They are also the key funders of the Conservative party. The links are complex, but they are deep and well-established.

We learned yesterday of the meeting between Adam Werritty and two members of the existing Defence team. They must give the House a full explanation of the details of those meetings and their connections to Adam Werritty.

We also learned in the report that the risks of the former Defence Secretary’s association with Mr Werritty were raised with him by his private office, the permanent secretary, a former permanent secretary and a former Chief of the Defence Staff. He chose to ignore those warnings. Why was he allowed to make that choice? What did the permanent secretary at the MOD then do? Were any of those concerns raised with the Cabinet Secretary and, if so, did the Cabinet Secretary raise them with the Prime Minister? Why was this situation allowed to continue for so long? Why was the former Defence Secretary allowed to treat the ministerial code as if it was an optional extra?

The report recommends that senior civil servants have greater oversight of ministerial behaviour. Yet the fact remains that it is Ministers who are responsible for their own conduct and the Prime Minister who is the guardian of the ministerial code. He is expected to enforce it, not allow it to be broken multiple times.

Before the last election, the Prime Minister promised to end the

“cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money”.

That promise has now been broken. This scandal has only damaged public confidence in the Government further. Meetings without civil servants; money off the books; luxury social visits in between visits to our brave servicemen and women; and today, the Prime Minister’s contempt on the matter was revealed. Simply saying that the Defence Secretary has resigned is not good enough. The Government need to take responsibility for this self-inflicted crisis. The House needs answers to the unanswered questions, or people will only conclude that this Government have something to hide.

Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Monday 17th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

The trustees will continue to administer the scheme. The chairman of the trustees might want to catch your eye, Mr Speaker. Under our changes, the rules that govern the scheme will no longer be made by the Government or the House; they will be made independently by IPSA. After the process of transfer on 1 April next year, the scheme will continue to be administered by the trustees until such time as IPSA makes any change. If it wants to make changes, it must consult the trustees. The motion indicates that the first change should be an increase in the contribution rate. It then suggests that, along with other public sector schemes, a new scheme, perhaps moving from final salary, should be introduced by 2015, but the scheme will continue to be administered by the trustees, and I pay tribute to the work they do.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm my understanding that the arrangements being put in place for the trustees, some of which come from the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act, are in line with best practice for other pension schemes?

[Sir George Young]

Yes; I believe that to be so. There has been no representation on the issue the hon. Lady raises. There are some changes in the composition of the trustees to reflect IPSA’s responsibility, as part of the 2010 Act.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir George Young]

rose—

[Ms Eagle]

The right hon. Gentleman is rising, so there may be a different interpretation. I am happy to give way.

[Sir George Young]

The hon. Lady is right. Paragraph 12 of schedule 6, which deals with the MPs’ pension scheme, makes it absolutely clear that it is up to IPSA to devise the scheme. There are rights of consultation, but it is an independent scheme set out by IPSA.

[Ms Eagle]

The question from the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) that I was answering was about the duties of the trustees. My understanding, from reading the primary legislation, is that it does not impact in any differential way on the legal duties of trustees.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 13th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House please give us the forthcoming business?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for the week commencing 17 October will be:

Monday 17 October—Motion relating to MPs’ pensions, followed by motion relating to disclosure and publication of documents relating to the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. The subject for this debate was nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Tuesday 18 October—Remaining stages of the Pensions Bill [Lords].

Wednesday 19 October—Opposition day (unallotted day). There will be a debate on energy prices followed by a debate on individual voter registration. Both debates will arise on an Opposition motion, followed by consideration of Lords amendments to the Armed Forces Bill.

Thursday 20 October—General debate on national planning policy framework.

Friday 21 October—Private Members’ Bills.

The provisional business for the week commencing 24 October will include:

Monday 24 October—Remaining stages of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (day 1).

Tuesday 25 October—Continuation of remaining stages of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (day 2).

Wednesday 26 October—Conclusion of remaining stages of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill (day 3).

Thursday 27 October—Business nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

For the convenience of the House, I wish to announce the proposed calendar for the coming year. We intend for the House to rise at the close of play on Tuesday 15 November, returning on Monday 21 November, meaning that we will not sit on two days—Wednesday 16 November and Thursday 17 November—as previously planned. The House will rise for the Christmas recess at the close of play on Tuesday 20 December, returning on Tuesday 10 January 2012.

The House will rise for the constituency break at the close of play on Thursday 9 February, returning on Monday 20 February. We will rise for the Easter break at the close of play on Tuesday 27 March, returning on Monday 16 April. We will rise for the Whitsun recess at the close of play on Thursday 24 May, returning on Monday 11 June. The summer recess will start at the close of play on Tuesday 17 July, returning on Monday 3 September. Finally, we will rise for the conference recess at the close of play on Tuesday 18 September, returning on Monday 15 October. All those dates will be put before the House for approval, and the dates for the Queen’s Speech and private Members’ Bill Fridays for the second Session will be announced in the usual way. All dates are subject to the progress of business, and a calendar is now available from the Vote Office.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Eagle]

May I thank the Leader of the House for his statement, especially for his giving us early notice of the annual calendar? Even if it changes slightly, it is an innovation that I think all Members of all parties will appreciate. May I also take this opportunity to welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) as my deputy, and to pay tribute to the work done by my immediate predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), who even as we speak is wrestling with the intricacies of the local government grant formula in his new shadow Cabinet role? I look forward to shadowing the Leader of the House. I note that he first came to the House in 1974, when I had only just arrived in big school. I hope that I can achieve a triumph of youth over experience on at least a few of these occasions.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister promised to look at publishing a full list of all the meetings of Ministers and officials with the Defence Secretary’s self-styled adviser Adam Werritty. With further irregularities surfacing by the day, when will this list be published? Following the BBC’s revelations on secretive wealthy donors running a shadow operation at the heart of one of Whitehall’s most sensitive Government Departments, what are the implications for accountability and probity?

With unemployment hitting a 17-year high, youth unemployment at nearly 1 million and the highest levels of joblessness among women for more than 20 years, is it not time that the Government admitted that their economic plan is just not working? Even the Conservative Chairman of the Treasury Select Committee recently described the Government’s action on growth as “piecemeal, contradictory and incoherent”, so it was no surprise to see him being strong-armed round the corner for re-education by the Prime Minister’s spin doctors at the Tory party conference.

Is not the utterly inadequate response from the Government in yesterday’s debate on growth and jobs the clearest proof yet that they are in denial about the plight of millions of people now languishing on the dole? Will the Leader of the House therefore consider bringing forward the autumn statement so that we can take urgent action to implement Labour’s five-point plan on growth and jobs and begin to deal with the soaring unemployment and the waste of potential that it represents.

Speaking of potential, I notice that the Prime Minister yesterday hosted a reception of FTSE 100 companies, exhorting them to promote more women into their boardrooms. With only four women in the entire Cabinet, is this not a case of the Prime Minister telling people to “do as I say, not as I do”? Perhaps if the Prime Minister had more women in his Cabinet he would be spared further embarrassment from some of the men he has in it. And while we are talking about the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, given our debate later today on electronic devices and tweeting from the Chamber, will the Government provide him with urgent training on how best to keep his fingerprints off the increasingly frequent briefings against his Cabinet colleagues?

[Sir George Young]

May I begin by warmly welcoming the new shadow Leader of the House to her post? She has been a Member since 1992 and has held a number of ministerial and shadow ministerial posts as well as serving on Select Committees as a Back Bencher. She is well placed to take on her new responsibilities and help us in our efforts to strengthen the House. I look forward to working with her and her deputy, the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), whom we also welcome, but the latter may have to clarify her role. I see from her website that she says:

“Along with the Shadow Speaker of the House, I intend to make sure this government is held to account for its actions right in the heart of Parliament.”

I am not sure whether you, Mr Speaker, will welcome this development and this new position.

Along with the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle), I pay tribute to the previous shadow Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), who had a deep understanding of, and affection for, the House. He will be much missed, as his bravura performances at the Dispatch Box every week were enjoyed on both sides of the House. Indeed, I believe he had to be moved because he risked overshadowing his leader on the Wednesdays. He now shadows my right hon. Friend the Communities and Local Government Secretary, and he may find that shadow a rather different profile from mine!

I welcomed what the hon. Lady said about the early announcement of the parliamentary calendar. I think that that is in the interests of the House and all who work here. In 2010 we were given the Easter recess dates two weeks before the Easter recess.

I am sure that the Prime Minister will honour the undertaking that he gave the House yesterday on the list of visits to Ministers as soon as the information has been dealt with. As for the other issue that the hon. Lady raised, the Cabinet Secretary is, as she knows, dealing with all outstanding issues and unanswered questions, and will complete his inquiry as soon as he can.

Yesterday’s unemployment figures were grim. We debated the issue at some length yesterday in Opposition time, and the Prime Minister made clear that every job loss was a personal tragedy. We need to do all that we can to get people back to work. Youth unemployment, sadly, has been rising every year since 2004 and, given that it was rising during a period of growth, it will obviously be difficult to get it down during a period of challenging world recession. I will not repeat what the Chancellor said about 360,000 new apprenticeships, new sector-based work academies and the rest. We have had an Opposition day, and we are always ready to arrange another.

As for being in denial, I think that the Opposition are still in denial on the deficit. During the Opposition day debate, the shadow Chancellor could not bring himself to discuss the central Opposition policy that was announced in the Labour leader’s conference speech. Perhaps that is proof that when it comes to constructive policies on the economy, the Government are the producers and the Opposition are the predators.

I will pass on the hon. Lady’s comments about the need for more women in the Cabinet to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.

Business of the House

Debate between Angela Eagle and Lord Young of Cookham

Thursday 27th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend’s bid is in pole position, because it is the only bid that we have received so far for a topical debate, and it would be appropriate. Of course, once we get a Back-Bench business committee up and running, it will decide the subjects for topical debates.

To pick up a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), it might be easier to have a topical debate on IPSA rather than him applying for an Adjournment debate.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on the difference between this Con-Dem Government’s rhetoric and reality? There has been lots of rhetoric about slimming down government, but so far they have created 33 commissions or other forms of inquiry—and that number is rising.

[Sir George Young]

All the work will take place within a constraint on public expenditure, so it does not follow at all that those commissions of inquiry will lead to an explosion in public expenditure. The hon. Lady will recall from 1997 that the then incoming Government set up one or two commissions in order to clarify, get a better outcome from, and inform their policy.