Business of the House

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Thursday 4th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for the week commencing 8 November will be:

Monday 8 November—Remaining stages of the Finance (No.2) Bill.

Tuesday 9 November—Opposition day [5th allotted day]. There will be a full day’s debate on the impact of proposed changes to housing benefits. This debate will arise on an Opposition motion.

Wednesday 10 November—Consideration in Committee and remaining stages of the Equitable Life (Payments) Bill, followed by a motion to approve European documents relating to economic policy co-ordination.

Thursday 11 November—General debate on policy on growth. The subject for this debate was nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 12 November—Private Members’ Bills.



The provisional business for the week commencing 15 November will include:

Monday 15 November—Second Reading of the Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Bill [Lords].

Tuesday 16 November—Consideration in Committee of the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill (Day 1).

Wednesday 17 November—Opposition day [6th allotted day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion, subject to be announced, followed by a motion to approve the Draft Local Elections (Northern Ireland) Order 2010 and the Draft Northern Ireland Assembly (Elections) (Amendment) Order 2010.

Thursday 18 November—A debate on immigration. The subject for this debate was nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 19 November—Private Members’ Bills.

Colleagues will also wish to know that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will open his Budget statement on 23 March 2011.



I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 11 and 18 November will be:

Thursday 11 November—Impact of the comprehensive spending review on the Department of Health.

Thursday 18 November—Debate on the 2010 UN climate change conference, Cancun, for up to two hours, followed by a debate on houses in multiple occupation.

[Hilary Benn]

I thank the Leader of the House for his statement.

This week, Mr Speaker, you have granted two urgent questions because the Government did not see fit to come and tell the House what they were doing. The first concerned the fact that the Justice Secretary appears keener to put convicted prisoners on to the electoral register than he is the 3.5 million missing voters. The second was because the Prime Minister thought that the French President, the media, civil servants and just about everybody else should be told first about two very significant treaties affecting our nation’s security, whereas the House of Commons got to hear about them only as a reluctant afterthought. Does the Leader of the House think that this is a satisfactory way in which to treat Members? Because I do not.

Turning now to broken pledges, will the Leader of the House assure us that enough time will be provided on the Floor of the House to debate the huge increase in tuition fees now facing students and the huge cut in funding for university teaching—a cut described in The Guardian today as “insane”? The House will require a lot of time. First, it will require time so that the Prime Minister can come to the House and apologise for breaking his firm pledge to keep education maintenance allowances, which, as every Member knows, have played a really important part in helping students from low-income backgrounds to get to higher education. Secondly, it will require time so that Ministers can be clear about what will actually happen to funding for undergraduate teaching of non-STEM—science, technology, engineering and mathematics—subjects.

The Minister for Universities and Science, the right hon. Member for Havant (Mr Willetts), told the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee that band C and D institutions

“would essentially lose their teaching grant support”.

The House will wonder how places such as the School of Oriental and African Studies, Goldsmiths college, Leeds Trinity and All Saints college, the Royal Academy of Music and Leeds College of Music will manage when every single pound of their public funding for undergraduate teaching disappears. Yesterday, the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), said in Westminster Hall that

“We will continue to support the arts through the subsidy for teaching in universities."—[Official Report, 3 November 2010; Vol. 517, c. 315WH.]

Which of those statements is actually correct? It looks to me like another shambles.

Thirdly, we will need time so that Liberal Democrats—whether they are currently Ministers or thinking about resigning as Ministers—can explain to thousands and thousands of angry and disillusioned students what exactly they were thinking of when they made their solemn pledge to vote against any increase in tuition fees. It could not have been clearer. Was it just a ploy to win votes? Was it a mistake? Or was it that the Liberal Democrats had no idea what they were doing? Whichever it was, I do not think that they will be getting those votes again.

Has the Leader of the House read the powerful speech made on Monday in the other place by Baroness Campbell of Surbiton about the proposal to take away the mobility component of disability living allowance from people who are in residential care? She cited the case of a couple, both disabled, who say that if that goes ahead they will no longer be able to visit the doctor, the dentist, the bank, the church, the library or shops, let alone their friends and relatives. Why is that the case? It is because they will lose respectively 45% and 69% of their allowances. Lady Campbell said that the plan

“makes neither moral nor financial sense.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 1 November 2010; Vol. 721, c. 1468.]

I agree. May we have a debate on why the Government seem so determined to take away those disabled people’s mobility, whether it is their use of taxis, electric scooters or electric wheelchairs so that they can actually get about? May we also have a statement on whether that harsh proposal was considered by the Government’s own office for disability issues before it was announced in the comprehensive spending review?

Finally, can the Leader of the House confirm that there will be a statement following the G20 summit next week? Will photographs of the occasion by the Prime Minister’s personal photographer and newest civil servant be placed in the Library of the House ?

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his questions.

On Tuesday, the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), made it quite clear that the Government had made no decision on prisoner voting rights. I remind the right hon. Gentleman that in its 16th report of the Session, published in 2007, the Joint Committee on Human Rights criticised the then Government on the issue, stating that the time taken to produce the second consultation paper was “disproportionate”, and that the Government’s failure to enfranchise “at least part” of the prisoner community was “unlawful”. That was three years ago, and during those three years the Government did absolutely nothing. The right hon. Gentleman will have heard what the Prime Minister said about that yesterday. It is another example of the coalition Government clearing up a mess that we inherited from the outgoing Labour Government.

The Prime Minister made an oral statement in the House on Monday, during which he said that the treaty to which the right hon. Gentleman referred would be signed the following day and

“laid before Parliament in the usual way.”—[Official Report, 1 November 2010; Vol. 517, c. 615.]

There is no secrecy about that. The Prime Minister’s statement was followed by a written ministerial statement on Tuesday morning. The Command Papers and explanatory memorandums will accompany each treaty when it is presented to Parliament for scrutiny in the usual manner in the next few days.

On tuition fees, the right hon. Gentleman—and his colleague, the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas), yesterday—gave no indication at all of the Labour party’s reaction to Lord Browne’s report, which Labour itself commissioned. We are determined to have a fair system: a system that is free at the point of access, that enables more students from low-income backgrounds to participate, that offers generous student support and that is progressive by expecting only those who have completed their learning and are earning more to pay more.

On disability living allowance, the right hon. Gentleman raised the serious issue of whether one should align those in residential care funded by the NHS who lose the mobility component with those who are funded by social services who do not. There is an issue of equity between two people in identical circumstances living in the same home who at the moment receive differential treatment, and of course there should be adequate opportunity to debate it.

Finally, on the issue of photographs, it is important not to lose sight of the big picture. The right hon. Gentleman will have seen the statement by my noble Friend the Minister without Portfolio. The previous Prime Minister spent £40,000 a year on an image consultant and Labour spent over half a million pounds on photographs and videos in its last three years in office alone, so I honestly do not think it is fitting for the right hon. Gentleman to criticise this Government for misuse of the media.