Business of the House

David Amess Excerpts

Thursday 25th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

May I join the right hon. Lady in wishing everybody a happy Easter? I also thank everybody who ensures that the House of Commons runs so efficiently and so effectively. There is always an appropriate time—there is never an inappropriate time—in which to thank the Doorkeepers for their magnificent work. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] They are such a visible show of the dignity of the House of Commons when they are seen on television and such an unfailing help to Members. I also thank everybody else who is involved behind the scenes, who have been here when Members have been zooming in. Without them, Members would not have been able to zoom in. It is the behind-the-scenes staff who have allowed us to do our constitutional duty and I am sure that we would all like to record our thanks.

May I join the right hon. Lady in paying tribute to my noble Friend, Lord Fowler, who is retiring? He has been a very distinguished public servant—a statesman, it would be fair to say. He is famous for many things, not least for developing the term, “Retiring to spend more time with his family”, which became code when people left Government at one point for perhaps more profound disagreements, but, none the less, on this retirement, I hope that he genuinely will be spending more time with his family.

I do not know Dr Chris Handy, but what the right hon. Lady says of him is so impressive. Trying to give people a second chance and getting prisoners to have homes is a very important statement about the society in which we believe, so I wish him a very happy retirement.

The Queen’s Speech is scheduled for 11 May, and that has now been announced. The motions that are being laid before the House and which will be debated with the motions on the coronavirus restrictions will take us through to 21 May and are based on the advice that the Government are using on the road map.

I share the right hon. Lady’s criticism, shock and outrage at hate crimes that lead to people being killed. Society must do absolutely everything to stop that. The law must be upheld and the law must be enforced.

On online news organisation, I refer to what the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said last week:

“We regret that this audio has been deliberately and selectively clipped to distort the Foreign Secretary’s comments.”

The effect was to leave a fundamentally false impression in the mind of the reader. This is why I encourage all journalists to ensure that quotes fully reflect the audio available. I hope that the right hon. Lady agrees with that and would do the same. Let them huff and puff, but they will not blow this particular House down.

The right hon. Lady rightly raises, every week, the issue of dual nationals held improperly overseas. The Foreign Secretary obviously takes this very seriously. We have discussed before the limitations of what Her Majesty’s Government can do, but within their powers, Her Majesty’s Government do what they can. There is regular engagement not only with the families concerned to offer them support, but with the Governments concerned to try and pursue the interests of those British nationals held overseas. I think the treatment of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe is so outrageous that the Iranian Government should be ashamed of how they have treated her.

The changes to Public Health England were announced some months ago, so I do not think it is unreasonable that further information is becoming available and is made available to the House in a written ministerial statement—half the time the right hon. Lady asks me for more statements and then, when we give more statements, she says we have too many and that is unfair. It is inevitable; we have had so many oral statements recently—I think we have had five this week and six last week, in addition to the urgent questions that have been asked—so there has been real effort to keep Parliament up to date. There are always constraints on the time available, so there are often things that we would like to give statements on but we cannot have a third statement on a particular day. That is the normal organisation of business and it is perfectly reasonable. Before a recess, all Governments always put out a larger number of written statements for the very obvious reason that there is an obligation in the ministerial code to tell Parliament first. Anyone who has worked to a deadline will know that the deadline of a recess encourages Government Departments to put out their statements, quite rightly.

Let me finish on the wonderful achievements of the Mayor of the west midlands, who has done such a fabulous job in making the west midlands a place where people want to do business and are succeeding in doing business. It has been an area of prosperity under his excellent and benign leadership. I visited, in the right hon. Lady’s constituency, a fantastic brownfield site development that was being led—energised—by the Mayor for the west midlands, and I wish him every possible success in the upcoming local elections, where I am sure he will triumph because he has been so good at doing his job.

[Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con) [V]]

On the eve of the launch of the Dame Vera Lynn memorial fund appeal, will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on the distribution of discretionary grants to businesses by local authorities during the coronavirus pandemic? I have had a number of local companies, including sole traders, complaining about delays in receiving funds, the interpretation of eligibility by my local authority and no commonality with other councils. Surely with the Government giving the money to local authorities to distribute, it is their duty to make sure that it reaches businesses that need the support as soon as possible. I do wish everyone a very happy Easter.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The Government have introduced an unprecedented package of support for businesses throughout the pandemic and are working closely with local authorities to ensure that funding can get to the right places as quickly as is practicable. The additional restrictions grant continues to enable local authorities to put in place discretionary business support. Local authorities are free to provide support that suits their local area, including support for those businesses that are not required to close but whose trade has been severely affected by restrictions, and those businesses that fall outside the business rates system, such as market traders. But it is a discretionary system and if we believe in local accountability and local decision making, sometimes we have to accept that the local decisions will not be the decisions that we ourselves would have made.