Business of the House

David Drew Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Gentleman is right; that was a well-attended debate, and I think all of us have received emails from our constituents thanking Parliament for having the debate and at last recognising a condition which all too often simply gets ignored. He is right to seek further information from the Department of Health and Social Care on its response to that debate. Perhaps he could raise it at the next Health questions or seek an Adjournment debate, so that he can ask Ministers those questions directly.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

With reference to the earlier exchange between the Leader and the shadow Leader of the House, DEFRA is still struggling to get through 88 statutory instruments before the end of March. The Government have cancelled the debate on the REACH directive next week and one on air quality on Wednesday. How can the Opposition be expected to do the right job of scrutiny if things get cancelled and we do not have the resource to pull things together at relatively short notice? Will she think about giving us some more money so that we can do this job of scrutiny properly?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am not entirely sure what the hon. Gentleman’s question is. As I made clear to the Leader of the Opposition, I am closely monitoring the passage of secondary legislation, as well as primary legislation, and I remain confident that SIs that need to be made before 29 March are being brought forward as necessary. It is a carefully managed process—in fact, a new process introduced in this Session—to make sure that we can manage all the business that is needed by the time we leave the EU.