Business of the House

Greg Knight Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

May I begin by thanking the right hon. Gentleman for his welcome back, which is reciprocated? He clearly spent the summer recess further honing his skills of performance at the Dispatch Box, and we had another sparkling example this morning.

With regard to 9/11, he may know that there will be a commemorative service at Grosvenor square tomorrow, at which the Government will be represented, which will provide an appropriate opportunity to remember the UK citizens who died in that tragedy. On the riots, we need an appropriate opportunity to discuss the aftermath. The Government have established a number of groups to look at some of the implications, and I know that the House will want to revert to that subject in due course.

There will be an opportunity on Monday, when we debate the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill, to consider the Government amendment to postpone the elections for police and crime commissioners until next November, and I am sure that he will want in principle to support the idea of the electoral accountability of the commissioners. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said yesterday, we are not quite clear why the Labour party is so frightened of having elections.

On e-petitions, I have regular discussions with the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), who chairs the Backbench Business Committee, and am of course happy to have further discussions with her so that we can make e-petitions a success. I was pleased to see in the press notice that the Committee put out yesterday that it thinks that

“the e-petitions site is a very welcome initiative.”

I want to work with her to ensure that this really takes root.

On the autumn statement, I would have thought that the one thing that had become absolutely clear during the summer recess is that those Governments who did not take a firm grip of the fiscal situation ran the risk of losing market confidence and then paying a very high price to regain it. One of the things the coalition Government have done is avoid the loss of market confidence by taking firm action last year. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to go down the route of plan B, he runs the risk of losing market confidence in the same way other European countries have done.

On the question of tax, I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will welcome the fact that in the last Budget and the next one, around 25 million taxpayers will benefit from the increase in personal allowances and over 1 million people will have been taken out of tax entirely.

On waiting lists, I followed the exchange yesterday during Prime Minister’s questions. Overall there has been very little change in waiting times since the general election. In one case, that of in-patients, waiting lists have gone up, and in the case of out-patients they have gone down, but overall there has been a huge increase in the number of people being treated, thanks to the extra resources we have put into the national health service, which Labour would have denied it.

On planning, the right hon. Gentleman will know that there is a document out for consultation, the national policy framework consultation, which ends next month. In the meantime, discussions are being held with the National Trust and others. He will have read the article by my right hon. Friends the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, which made it absolutely clear where we stand on planning.

On Bombardier, the right hon. Gentleman will know that the tender process was initiated and designed by his Government. We used the criteria they set out to assess the tender, and on those criteria it would clearly benefit passengers and taxpayers to allocate the tender to Siemens. I was pleased to see that some 2,000 jobs will be created in this country by Siemens doing part of the work here.

On Steve Hilton, I am happy to say that he is a fellow cyclist, and therefore I am normally happy to defend what he says, but at the end of the day I have to say to the right hon. Gentleman that it is Ministers who make policy, not special advisers.

[Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

Can the Leader of the House tell us why in the near future we are to go through the ridiculous ritual of putting our clocks back by one hour, thereby plunging parts of the country into darkness by mid-afternoon? Can we have a statement on what the Government intend to do to make better use of daylight hours? If, as I suspect, the only opponents of change are a handful of Scots, should not they be told, “Look, you’ve got your own Parliament, if you don’t like it we’ll give you the power to set your own time zone”?

[Sir George Young]

My right hon. Friend will know that the issue is the subject of a private Member’s Bill, and I personally have form on it, in that I supported a private Member’s Bill in a previous Parliament, proposing reform in that direction. I am not sure whether he was in Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport questions, when my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys) raised the same issue, but in response the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), spoke on behalf of the Government in advocating a slightly more cautious approach than that advocated by my right hon. Friend.