Chris Bryant
Main Page: Chris Bryant (Labour - Rhondda)Department Debates - View all Chris Bryant's debates with the Leader of the House
(4 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Rees-Mogg
May I add to the right hon. Lady’s words about the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who will be very much missed from these sessions? It always amazed me how a man of such gentleness, courtesy and kindliness in private always managed to be so fiendishly angry in the Chamber. I look forward to seeing whether the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard), who I know is also a model of kindliness, will be similarly angry when he gets up to speak in a moment, but I look forward to our exchanges.
The right hon. Lady asked 11 individual questions, and I will do my best to answer them all. The House will always be updated by the Government on really important issues. The Prime Minister, in the last Session of Parliament, averaged 36 minutes a day at the Dispatch Box during the time he was Prime Minister, so I think he has been ahead of almost any other previous Prime Minister in his assiduousness.
As regards the Christmas recess—absolutely. We want to ensure that there is reasonable notice for all recesses, which I think is of general help not just to Members but to the staff of the House for planning their lives. This is important for all of us, so we will try to give the longest notice we can, though I cannot yet give the length of the Session—
Mr Rees-Mogg
Rhondda always wants to chip in. We might have thought that, after a little peace and quiet over Christmas, Rhondda would have calmed down, but no such luck. Because there is so much business to be brought forward, and that will depend on the progress of business. That is a completely normal approach.
As for sitting Fridays, we have only just had the ballot, but of course we will bring those forward, and the motion, as soon as is practicable. On the machinery of Government changes, I got a little bit worried by a memo that said, “MOG changes”. I am not necessarily so keen on such changes; I am rather used to being the Mogg that I am. However, I can absolutely assure the right hon. Lady that any changes that are made will lead to consultation with the Opposition about any changes to Committees. It is hoped that the motion in relation to the sharing out of the Committees will be put on the Order Paper by the end of business today. That is not an absolute promise, but I understand that good progress has been made on coming to an agreement.
I am indeed grateful to the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) for passing on a list of overhanging proposals from the Backbench Business Committee for debates. Whether there will be a lot of time for non-legislative business in the next few weeks, I am not absolutely certain, but it is useful to have that and to be aware of it.
The Budget date—giving people plenty of notice—is perfectly reasonable. I make announcements about the business for a week or possibly for two weeks; I do not intend to announce the business for March, so I think it would be unusual for me to be announcing that. I do hope that in this Session of Parliament my appearances at the Dispatch Box will be once a week to set out the business, rather than once or twice a day, which I think was beginning to pall on everybody in the House.
The IR35 review is extraordinarily important. It is a matter of concern to many of our constituents, and something that came up in the election on a number of occasions. It is important that it is done in such a way that people know what their tax affairs will be in April.
On the takeover of Cobham, the Government have to act within the legal parameters and the approach that we generally take to takeovers, and announcements must be made punctually. Sometimes when the House is in recess announcements still have to be made. Saying it was done just before Christmas is not a reasonable criticism, because business goes on.
May I share in the right hon. Lady’s condolences to Andrew Miller’s family? It is always sad when we lose a distinguished former Member of this House who has invariably been influential and important in the careers of existing Members.
There is indeed a statement coming on the Australian bushfires. I think all of us feel the deepest sympathy for the people of Australia, who for so many of us are kith and kin, and there is therefore always a particular concern with what is happening in Australia.
The Ukrainian plane crash is something that needs to be investigated thoroughly so that we find out what the cause was. Our concern is for the British citizens, but also for all the lives that were lost.
As always, I am so glad that once again the right hon. Lady reminds us about Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and of course all the other dual nationals who are held improperly, unlawfully by the Iranian regime. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary spoke to the Iranian Government on 6 January. The Government are doing everything that we can to secure her release and that of others, but the Government’s power, regrettably, is not unlimited in this area.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I have a certain sympathy because the great western line was also meant to be electrified, but then it was found to be too difficult to do around Bath, which is the station I use—
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am always getting heckled from Rhondda! Everyone else is so well behaved in this new Parliament. We have this new image and row upon row of people who sit there politely listening, other than the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant).
The hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) raises an important point. There will be oral questions to Department for Transport Ministers in due course, and I think that is the right time to raise the subject initially as it may not constitute a full debate on its own, but it will also be possible to raise the matter at various points in the debate on the Queen’s Speech.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am glad to say that Midsomer Norton and Keynsham in North East Somerset are also benefiting from a deal. Previous town deals are benefiting many of us, up and down the country. I can answer my hon. Friend’s wish because I can give slightly more detail, which may save the House the time that would be taken by a full debate.
On 27 July, the Prime Minister announced that a £3.6 billion towns fund would support an initial 100 town deals. The Government have announced 100 places that will be invited to develop proposals for deals, including some that have been the birthplaces of industry, centres of commerce for centuries, or bastions of the maritime economy along our coastline. The Government will work with local people from the 100 communities to agree proposals to spend up to £25 million in each place. The Government are committed to decentralising funding and decisions away from Whitehall. We have invested in the growth of local economies, developing powers through green, ambitious city growth deals, devolving more than £9 billion of funding to local enterprise partnerships, and introducing eight metro Mayors in England. This is all part of a general programme, and I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) is pleased with the success of the Greater Grimsby deal.
Chris Bryant
For a start, the name of my constituency is pronounced Rhon-tha, not Rhon-da. I hope the Leader of the House will practise in front of a mirror later today.
I am not an unreasonable man, so I am not asking when the next Prorogation of Parliament will be, but I am asking how long the Government intend to run the Session in the broadest sense. It would be perfectly legitimate to run it to next November and return to the old system of having State Opening in that month. May is a daft time to have a State Opening, because the Government are caught in purdah thanks to local elections, making it much more difficult to do it properly. Will the Leader of the House give us a clearer idea of the Government’s broad intention, not least because we would like to make sure that we get 20 Opposition days a year, and not just 20 a Session?
Mr Rees-Mogg
Patience! The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil), when I was newly elected, very generously took me to the Smoking Room and gave me a couple of glasses of Scotland’s finest produce to help me to learn how to pronounce his constituency, whereas the hon. Member for Rhondda merely bellows at me across the Chamber. For that reason, I may try harder with Na h-Eileanan an Iar than I do with Rhondda.
Regarding the length of the Session, if the hon. Gentleman were to divide the number of Bills listed following the Queen’s Speech by the average number of Bills passed during the course of a year, he might get a rough idea of how long the Session is likely to last, other things being equal, but that is not a promise.