Sittings of the House (22 March)

Debate between Angela Eagle and Stephen Mosley

Wednesday 6th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

This may seem a dry issue on which to take up the House’s time. After all, recess dates are rarely the subject of much contention; they are rarely, if ever, noticed, and much less often divide the House. So what is the problem with the sittings motion, and why are we trying to amend it?

We decided to table our amendment because, after two and a half years of experience, we have begun to perceive a pattern in the Government’s behaviour, and especially in that of the Prime Minister. We have realised that he does not much like being accountable to the House at Prime Minister’s Question Time, and that he therefore arranges for the House to rise on Tuesdays as often as he thinks that he can get away with it. The hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) made that point from the Government Benches. That way, the Prime Minister avoids Prime Minister’s questions, which take place on Wednesdays. In contemplating this emerging trend, I thought it might just be one of those random patterns that occurs by accident, until I noticed that our Prime Minister seems to be anxious for the House not to sit long enough for him to have to face Prime Minister’s questions, especially after a Budget.

That is the crux of the issue before us today. For the second year running, the House has been asked to sit on a Friday to accommodate the debate we must have on the Chancellor’s Budget, and to allow the recess date therefore conveniently to fall on a Tuesday, thus letting the Prime Minister off his Prime Minister’s questions duties.

[Stephen Mosley]

Was the hon. Lady listening when the Leader of the House explained that this year we will be breaking up on a Tuesday twice out of six occasions? That is a ratio of one in three, and therefore a minority, so this is not a trend; it is completely the opposite in fact.

[Ms Eagle]

The hon. Gentleman should hear me out, because I have a few other things to say about the trends we on this side of the House have perceived. Perhaps when he has listened to me he might form an opinion, rather than having an opinion before he has heard what I have to say.

Both last year and this year the Government decided to sit on a Friday and begin the recess on a Tuesday, and this year that means the Prime Minister will next have to appear at Prime Minister’s questions and justify the Budget to the House fully 28 days after the date of the Budget. Perhaps it takes him 28 days to plough through all the Budget documentation, but the rest of us have to react instantly, and so should he.

Let me readily acknowledge that when the original sittings motion suggesting this arrangement was put to the House on 17 December last year, the Opposition did not vote against it, and before any Member on the Government Benches leaps up to point this out, I also acknowledge that six days earlier, on 11 December, the Chancellor had announced that the date of the 2013 Budget would be 20 March. I must confess that I was perhaps guilty of feeling a little too much pre-Christmas spirit towards the Government and might even have been lulled by the season into a false sense of security that they were not being Machiavellian with the parliamentary timetable. I now know I was wrong to be so generous to them.

I often worry about the adversarial nature of our parliamentary system putting people off politics, so I considered the possibility that the observation I have made about our current Prime Minister’s strange aversion to the House sitting on Wednesdays might just be partisan criticism on my part.