Business of the House

Chuka Umunna Excerpts

Thursday 1st July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

The hon. Gentleman has almost persuaded me that we ought to find Government time for that debate. I will give it very careful consideration indeed.

[Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

The Chancellor of the Exchequer came here last week and declared that he would be the model of transparency. He said:

“I am not going to hide hard choices from the British people or bury them in the small print of the Budget documents.”—[Official Report, 22 June 2010; Vol. 512, c. 167.]

He added that the British public would hear those hard choices straight from him, in that speech.

The Deputy Leader of the House has already brushed aside concerns raised by the shadow Leader of the House about the memo that discloses Treasury predictions of 1.3 million unemployed. The Leader of the Opposition has already raised the matter with the Prime Minister, only to be ignored. Why can we not have full disclosure of this document, and a proper debate in this House? The Deputy Leader of the House is supposed to be a champion of Parliament, and there are clearly differences of view as to the content of the document. Why can we not have a debate on it?

[Mr Heath]

I thought that I had made it plain that we are having four debates in the next two weeks on that subject. I would have thought that that would be sufficient to satisfy the hon. Gentleman. Perhaps we ought to debate the pre-Budget forecast based on the policies of the March Budget—a Labour Budget—which showed a reduction of around 500,000 public sector jobs by 2014-15. I think that that would be a very worthwhile debate.