Business of the House

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House give us the future business, please?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Chris Grayling)]

The business for next week is as follows:

Monday 21 March—Continuation of the Budget debate.

Tuesday 22 March—Conclusion of the Budget debate.

Wednesday 23 March—Proceedings on the High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill, followed by consideration of Lords amendments, followed by motion relating to Section 5 of the European Communities (Amendment) Act 1993, followed by motion relating to Short money.

Thursday 24 March—Debate on a motion relating to court closures, followed by matters to be raised before the forthcoming Adjournment. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee. I should add that, as you will be told formally, Mr Speaker, owing to the absence of one of the two of us, you will see a duel next week between the Deputy Leader of the House and the shadow Deputy Leader of the House. We look forward to that with interest.

Friday 25 March—The House will not be sitting.

The provisional business for the week commencing 11 April, when we return from the Easter recess, will include:

Monday 11 April—Second Reading of the Finance Bill.

Tuesday 12 April—Debate on a motion on reform of support arrangements for people with contaminated blood. The subject for this debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee. Following this, the Chairman of Ways and Means is expected to name opposed private business for consideration.

Wednesday 13 April—Opposition day (unallotted day). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.

Thursday 14 April—Business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 15 April—The House will not be sitting.

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

Thursday 24 March—General debate on the NHS in London.

[Chris Bryant]

The Leader of the House means that I am not going to be here next week, so my eminently capable deputy, my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), is going to be taking up the cudgels on our behalf.

What a dreadful two-fingers Budget! Two fingers up to the most vulnerable in the land—people who cannot dress or clean themselves—and two fingers crossed behind the Government’s back in the hope that the £56 billion black hole will all come right by the end of this Parliament. And what a turnaround, isn’t it? Only weeks ago, the Chancellor told us that the future was sunny but now he says that storm clouds are on the horizon. That is a quick-change routine that Dame Edna Everage would be proud of. Every single target has been missed—he is no William Tell either, is he? Growth figures—wrong. Productivity—wrong. Trade—wrong.

The deficit was meant to have been abolished by 2015. Now the Chancellor hopes beyond hope to have a surplus of £10 billion in 2020. Does anyone really believe that? Does even the Leader of the House believe it? The Institute for Fiscal Studies certainly does not. Is this not yet another pledge not worth the vellum that it is not printed on? More leaks than Wales. More spin than a whirling dervish in a washing machine. The Chancellor actually boasted yesterday about extra money for school sports when he is the person who cut it in the first place. That is like a burglar going to the police and begging for a reward for turning himself in. And frankly, burglars can’t be choosers.

Will the Leader of the House explain the commitment to turn every school into an academy? There are 15,632 schools in England that are not yet academies. The cost of converting a school to academy status is £44,837. That comes to a total of £700 million, but the Chancellor allocated only £140 million to academisation, so where will the shortfall of £560 million come from?

Mind you, Mr Speaker, I have to say that there were some things in the Budget to rejoice about. I am particularly glad that the Severn bridge tolls will be halved, thanks to the campaign by my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) and her colleague sitting next to her, my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn). As I am sure you will remember, Mr Speaker, I announced last week that the obesity strategy would be out soon, and now we have it—or at least part of it: the sugar tax. I am delighted that the Chancellor has finally realised the dangers of Coke. [Laughter.] It is just a shame that he could not bring himself to use the word and said “cola” instead. Perhaps the Leader of the House can explain why.

Will the Leader of the House explain how the changes to personal independence payments will be introduced? Should they not be in primary legislation? [Interruption.] I think things have just been explained to the hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis). Seriously, though, the changes should be brought through primary legislation to enable proper scrutiny in both Houses. Given other recent cuts in disability benefits, will the Government publish a cumulative impact assessment? There is something deeply distasteful about imposing a £3,000 per person cut on the 200,000 most vulnerable people in our country while the richest get a £200 tax handout. I am unsurprised that Graeme Ellis, a lifelong Conservative voter and disability campaigner from Lancaster, has resigned from the Tory party. We will fight the changes. I warned the Leader of the House not to try to pull a fast one on working tax credits by using unamendable secondary legislation and I do so again now.

Incidentally, yesterday saw the Government defeated three times in the House of Lords on the Trade Union Bill and by big majorities, too—nearly two to one in every case. There is more to come. Is it not time for the Government to give up on this vindictive and partisan piece of legislation?

I have been told to be calm about this bit, Mr Speaker. I see that the motion on Short money is tabled for next Wednesday. Our usual channel discussions have been productive, and I thank the Leader of the House for the part that he has played. I hope that the House will be able to welcome the package when it is finally published, but will that be this afternoon or on Monday?

Many Members have had recent difficulties with banks, which have been implementing the laws on money laundering in a disproportionate manner. We all want to tackle money laundering across the EU, but it is crazy that MPs, their family members and even their friends are now being denied bank accounts simply because they are connected to a “politically exposed person”. Will the Government ensure that a proper debate on the matter will be held in Government time so that we can get the balance right and tell the banks where to go?

Holy week starts on Sunday, so I wish all Members, their families and staff a happy Easter. It is also Purim next week, when Jews remember the attempt to kill all the Jews in Persia. That was not, of course, the last attempted annihilation of the Jews. Seventy-four years ago today, the first Polish Jews were gassed at Belzec extermination camp. Sadly, anti-Semitism is still alive today, and I am sure that the Leader of the House will join me in saying that we must do everything in our power to stop religious intolerance and racial hatred infecting our politics and our political parties. That means calling out anti-Semitism wherever we find it, even if that is inconvenient to ourselves, and expelling from our political parties those who peddle such vile arguments. I hope that the Leader of the House will agree that all religious prejudice is equally despicable and will disown the Tories campaign against Labour’s candidate for Mayor of London, which is the most desperate, divisive and racially charged campaign that London has ever seen. They should be ashamed.

[Chris Grayling]

I echo the words of the shadow Leader of the House about wishing a happy Easter to all those who work in the House.

I will start by briefly addressing Members’ security again. There were a number of incidents at Members’ offices following a recent vote, which is and will always be completely unacceptable. I hope that the police will deal with things in the strongest possible way. I remind Members that the new Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority security package is now available both to them and, importantly, to their staff. If any Member experiences teething problems with the new package, I ask them to tell either myself or the Chairman of Ways and Means and we will seek to get things sorted.

We have just heard a lot about the Budget. To be frank, we heard more noise from the Opposition Benches today than we heard when the Leader of the Opposition was speaking yesterday. I can always tell when Opposition Members are embarrassed. It is normally easy to catch the shadow Leader of the House’s eye—he is always chatting across the Chamber—but when the Leader of the Opposition was speaking yesterday, I could not catch the shadow Leader of the House’s eye for one moment, because he knew just how bad it was. Next week, we will see a continuation of the Budget debate. I could not make head nor tail yesterday of what the Leader of the Opposition was saying he would do, but at least this week we have another insight into Labour’s economic policy. It turns out that the shadow Chancellor draws his inspiration from Marx, Trotsky and Lenin, an approach that has clearly influenced his current policy, given that Lenin once said:

“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”

That is precisely what Labour’s current policies would do, not just to the middle classes, but to working people up and down this country. On this morning’s “Today” programme, the shadow Chancellor could not even say that he supported capitalism—that is where Labour has got to as a party.

The shadow Leader of the House raised a question about the changes to personal independence payments. We will publish details of our plans on that front in due course, and of course all measures are produced with an impact assessment. He mentioned the Trade Union Bill in the Lords. I simply remind the House that what we are seeking to do is give trade union members the choice about whether or not they contribute to the Labour party. Donations to my party come from people who choose to donate to our side of the political spectrum. Labour has to depend on people who are obliged by the current system to donate, and that is what has to change.

On the Short money motion, I am also grateful for the collaborative discussions that have taken place. The motion will be published shortly and in good time for next week.

On the money laundering point, I absolutely agree with what the hon. Gentleman said and this concern should be shared by hon. Members in all parts of the House. We cannot have a situation where not only individual Members, but members of their families are affected by a change that, in my view, would be utterly unacceptable. We have discussed this matter with the Treasury and received its assurances that it believes people should not be affected, but clearly they are being affected. I will therefore treat this as a matter of great importance, as we all should, collectively, across the House.

The hon. Gentleman made the point about anti-Semitism. It has featured recently in a number of political activities and events, and that is wholly unacceptable and should always be so. He makes a comment about the election in London at the moment, but I remind him that anti-Semitism was also present a year ago at the general election in London, and not from our side of the political spectrum. I hope he will take the words he has said today and make sure that they are properly put into action in his party. It is not acceptable in any part of our life for there to be anti-Semitism. It must not occur ever. It has occurred and it should not happen.

Finally, this week we had the revelation that the shadow Leader of the House does not want to be the shadow Leader of the House at all. He wants to be Speaker, so much so that he appears even to be preparing a campaign team. Of course there is not actually a vacancy for your job, Mr Speaker, but I did have an idea for him. This week is apprenticeship week and I wondered whether you might consider taking him on as an apprentice Speaker. But of course there is one small problem: if he wants to be the next Speaker, he really does need to remember one thing, which is you do actually need to be popular and respected across the House. I think he has still got some work to do.