Business of the House

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 14th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

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

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

If you will allow me, Mr Speaker, I will first say that the shadow Leader of the House, myself and the Scottish National party spokesman all have something in common this morning. We should feel slightly anxious after the march of the deputies at business questions just before the recess. I congratulate all three of them on doing a star turn. [Interruption.] There will be another opportunity shortly, as well.

The business for next week is as follows:

Monday 18 April—Debate on a motion on the introduction of the national living wage and related changes to employee contracts, followed by debate on a motion on educational attainment in Yorkshire and the Humber. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Tuesday 19 April—Remaining stages of the Bank of England and Financial Services Bill [Lords].

Wednesday 20 April—Consideration of Lords amendments to the Energy Bill [Lords], followed by debate on a motion on recognition of genocide by Daesh against Yazidis, Christians and other ethnic and religious minorities. Debate on a motion on record copies of Acts. The subject for this debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Thursday 21 April—My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will propose an humble address, to mark the occasion of Her Majesty the Queen’s 90th birthday; I am sure the whole House will participate.

Friday 22 April—The House will not be sitting.

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

Monday 25 April—Consideration of Lords amendments, followed by debate on a motion on education funding in London. The subject for this debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Tuesday 26 April—Remaining stages of the Policing and Crime Bill (day 1).

Wednesday 27 April—Consideration of Lords amendments.

Thursday 28 April—Debate on a motion on World Autism Awareness Week, followed by a debate on a motion on Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs’ “Building our Future” plan. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 29 April—The House will not be sitting.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 25 April will be:

Monday 25 April—Debate on an e-petition relating to the meningitis B vaccine.

[Chris Bryant]

I, too, congratulate my deputy, my absolutely wonderful and magnificent hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), and all her opposite numbers, on their impressive appearance at the last business question. I think that was the first time that all three Front Benchers at business questions were women, so in the words of Annie Lennox, “Sisters are doin’ it for themselves”. [Interruption.] I will come to the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) in a moment.

I also wish my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) and her fiancé Richard well for their wedding on Saturday. I note that not many Tories are in the Chamber today. I gather that is because there is an away day for the Conservative party, or perhaps two away days in different parts of the country. Apparently it is a dress-down event, and I have a horrible image in my mind of the hon. Member for Lichfield preparing his outfit; I will leave that there. [Interruption.] I have seen it before, yes, and it is not very pretty.

Mr Speaker, on 10 March I asked whether you could hear the slow ebbing down the beach of the authority of the Prime Minister, and boy wasn’t I right?

“When there is so much still to be done to improve the life chances of the most vulnerable, it is difficult to justify putting middle class tax cuts before the needs of the working poor, and the socially disadvantaged”.

That is not me; it is the Conservative hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter). Even Tories admit that the Prime Minister is now a busted flush, and we had a classic example of that yesterday during Prime Minister’s questions. I bet the Prime Minister thought that he was giving a helpful plug for the production of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time”. However, the author of the book, Mark Haddon, was absolutely horrified when he heard that, and he immediately tweeted his agreement with Johnny Marr of The Smiths, who wrote:

“David Cameron, stop saying that you like The Smiths, no you don’t. I forbid you to like it.”

There are 63 private Members’ Bills on today’s Order Paper, and two new ones were added this week. When their proposers, the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), were asked, “Second Reading, what day?” by you, Mr Speaker, they replied “28 April”, even though they, you, I, and everyone else knows that we will not be sitting on that day or any other Friday this Session. Incidentally, why on earth do you say, “Second Reading, what day?” as if you are Yoda in “Star Wars”? Why can’t you just say it in proper English? Mind you, you do quite a good impersonation, especially when you call “Andrew Selooous”.

Yesterday there was an excellent debate on all these matters in Westminster Hall. Many hon. Members think that the current system of private Members’ Bill is a complete waste of time that frankly brings the House into disrepute. When the Procedure Committee produces its forthcoming report, will the Leader of the House make proper time for us to debate changes if that is what the House wants?

Will the Leader of the House do something about the small business Minister—I mean the Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise—who has become terribly patronising of late? She called me “darling” on “Question Time” last week, and all I can say is that I have been patronised by much better women than her. I also have a terrible fear that she thinks she is becoming Maggie—Maggie Smith, that is, the dowager countess in “Downton Abbey”. She cackles away through debates so much that she almost makes me seem calm and reasonable.

On Tuesday, the Minister praised the role that the Community union has played in the steel crisis, which is absolutely right. However, she and her colleagues in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills are the very Ministers who are forcing the Trade Union Bill through Parliament, which is an utterly partisan piece of legislation that tries to cut the legs off trade unions and is being cut to ribbons in the House of Lords. Would she be far better off listening to Community, which says that the Bill is a bad piece of legislation that will severely damage the finely balanced relationships between trade unions and business?

May we have a debate—this cannot be an Opposition day debate, because the Leader of the House has not given us one—on boardroom pay? The chair of the remuneration committee at BP, Professor Dame Ann Dowling, is giving its chairman a 20% pay hike, taking his remuneration to £14 million in a year when the company has made its biggest ever losses and cut 25% of its workforce. What message does it send from the Government that Professor Dame Ann Dowling has been a non-executive board member of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills since 2014? Why do the Government not just have a great big sign printed and put up over the Department saying, “There is one rule for the rich and quite another for the rest of you”? In fact, why do they not just get 20 of them printed and put them over the Treasury, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and Downing Street? Fundamentally, that is the Government’s motto today, is it not?

Finally, may we have a debate on underachievement? Some people on the Conservative Benches seem to think that if you are not a millionaire you are a failure, but let me tell them who really achieve something in life. It is the woman who gets up at 4 am to walk two miles to catch the bus to clean a hotel for 13 hours for the minimum wage. It is the widower who does two jobs to make sure he can put food on the table for his children. It is the middle-aged woman who gives up her job to care for her elderly dad. It is the teacher, the squaddie, the nurse or the dinner lady who goes way beyond the call of duty. Frankly, I would be proud to sit in a House full of people like that, rather than have to face that bunch of real deadbeats over there: a Health Secretary who has completely alienated the whole of the NHS; a Business Secretary who does not know where Mumbai is; and a Chancellor who produces a Budget so unfair that it even made the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) cry.

[Chris Grayling]

May I first thank all those who were involved in organising the security stand in Portcullis House yesterday? I hope Members on all sides of the House will take advantage of the package and the equipment on display. I am very pleased to have learned that they ran out of equipment, such was the degree of interest. I am grateful to all those involved.

The shadow Leader of the House started by talking about poverty. Let me just remind him that under this Government child poverty and inequality are falling, and that the proportion of tax paid by the wealthiest in our society is rising. I will take no lessons from the Labour party after its shambolic decade in government left 2.5 million people unemployed and communities struggling with a failing economy. We have turned it around in a way that they could have never done.

The hon. Gentleman raised the Procedure Committee’s report on private Members’ Bills. It is, of course, open to any Select Committee to bring a matter to this House. I am very responsive to the thought that we should have a detailed discussion about the Committee’s recommendations. We should always look at ways to improve the system.

I was a little surprised to hear a “Star Wars” joke from the Jar Jar Binks of the Labour party, and I have to say it was a little unfair. I have always regarded you as a man of greater stature than Yoda, Mr Speaker, and I am surprised that the shadow Leader of the House would even make that comparison.

I remind the hon. Gentleman that the purpose of the Trade Union Bill is to stop trade unions holding the public to ransom. We see time and again relatively small groups of workers bringing our transport system to a halt and doing damage to far more workers. That is why we are the party of the workers: we represent the millions travelling to work, not a tiny minority of trade unionists who want to cause trouble for our country.

On boardroom pay, it is of course a matter for private companies and their shareholders what they pay their directors, but I would never condone inappropriately large pay rises. I hope all those involved in scrutinising businesses and attending annual general meetings of shareholders will always look very carefully to ensure the message that boardroom pay sends out is consistent with a well-managed company and a motivated workforce.

I am very happy to have a debate on underachievement. Actually, we have one every Wednesday at Prime Minister’s questions, because the biggest underachiever in this House is the Leader of the Opposition.

I, too, will be joining the Conservative party away day this afternoon. The truth is that Labour would really struggle to hold an away day, such are the divisions in that party and the desire to remove its leader. It is extraordinary to see a once-proud party scrabbling to try to find an identity for itself, and to see Labour Members sitting stony faced behind their leader, who underachieves week after week after week—[Interruption.]