Business of the House

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mark Spencer]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his place. It is a pleasure to be able to accommodate him on Monday. He is twice the man of the usual SNP spokesman, I think the House will agree. I am grateful to him for his comments about Keith Palmer and for once again expressing the unity across the House in our response to Russia.

The hon. Gentleman talks about the Government’s approach to tackling poverty and he is right to do that. I hope he recognises that the best way out of poverty is through work and for that work to pay, and for those people who are in employment to pay as little tax as possible. That is what the Chancellor set out yesterday when he reduced the amount of tax for those in the lowest paid employment. In previous Budgets, he set out a reduction in the taper levels for universal credit, so people retain more of their income. That is the right approach to fiscal responsibility and to ensuring the economy continues to grow, so that we can afford to pay people who are in employment more money and they can retain more of their wages. That is the right way to approach people working their way out of poverty and we are making great progress in that direction.

The hon. Gentleman went on to talk about refugees and made reference to the airplane with the children on, which I hope has now landed. I congratulate him on his role in securing that safe flight for those individuals. Of course, there is more we can do and we continue to do more. We in the United Kingdom are actually one of the most generous nations in the world when it comes to supporting refugees. We have an excellent programme, which is available to support as many people as possible coming here. We are opening up to nearly 100,000 school- children, who will receive support through the education system. At the same time, we also have a great package of humanitarian support, as well as military support, going to Ukraine, and I think that is the right balance. We are playing our part and we are leading the international community in doing that.

The hon. Gentleman made reference to a debate on the armed forces on Monday, which I think we have granted. I thank him for his questions.

[Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

The Leader of the House will be aware that the joint Commissions—the House of Lords Commission and the House of Commons Commission—in their meeting on 17 March on restoration and renewal, decided yet again to employ more consultants. Surely, whether one wants to decant or not, what we ought to do in this House is make up our mind what we want to do. It is costing us £100 million every year we delay and it is costing us £130 million every year in maintenance. Will the Leader of the House please provide for a debate in Government time, so that we can debate the whole matter of this huge project and try to find a sensible way forward?

[Mark Spencer]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. Restoration and renewal has always been a parliamentary programme and it remains so. It is for Parliament to decide how the programme evolves. We have stressed throughout that there can be no blank cheque for this work. That is why the Commission was concerned when in January it considered estimates ranging from £7 billion to £13 billion and decanting for between 12 years and 20 years. Both Commissions have therefore taken an initial decision to change the sponsor function. This is, of course, a House matter and the Government will seek to facilitate bringing that and other related decisions to the House for consideration once the Commission has completed further work on the proposed approach.