Business of the House

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2011 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 next week will be:

Monday 16 May—Motion to approve the 15th report 2010-2012 of the Standards and Privileges Committee (HC 1023), followed by general debate on the middle east, north Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan.



Tuesday 17 May—Motion to approve a Ways and Means resolution relating to the Localism Bill, followed by remaining stages of the Localism Bill (Day 1).

Wednesday 18 May—Remaining stages of the Localism Bill (Day 2).

Thursday 19 May—Motion relating to the BBC World Service, followed by motion relating to rural broadband and mobile coverage. The subjects for both debates were nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.



The provisional business for the week commencing 23 May will include:

Monday 23 May—Opposition Day (16th allotted day). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.

Tuesday 24 May—General debate on matters to be raised before the forthcoming Adjournment, as nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.



Subject to the approval of the House, colleagues will wish to be aware that the House will meet at 11.30 am on this day.

Colleagues will also wish to be reminded that subject to the progress of business the House will rise for the Whitsun recess on Tuesday 24 May 2011 and return on Tuesday 7 June 2011.

[Hilary Benn]

I am grateful to the Leader of the House for that reply. May I begin by expressing our deep sadness at the untimely loss of our dear friend and colleague, David Cairns? He was a lovely man, he was a principled man, he was a fine Minister, and he will be missed by all of us greatly.

Will the Leader of the House tell us when we will have a statement on the shortfall in funding at the Ministry of Defence following the strategic defence and security review? The Defence Secretary told the Defence Committee that he would make a statement after the elections, and Members from all parts of the House are anxious to hear the outcome. When will the Armed Forces Bill return to the House so that the Government can honour their commitment, as we have been urging them to do, to enshrine the military covenant in law?

May we have an urgent statement from the Home Secretary to explain what she plans to do following the humiliating defeat of her proposals for police commissioners in the other place yesterday?

May we have a debate on the Prime Minister’s broken election pledge to make Britain the most family friendly country in Europe? This week, the Centre for Social Justice, the think-tank founded by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, said that the coalition has failed to support marriage, unfairly penalised middle-class parents, and done “almost nothing” to address the breakdown of families.

What about the greenest government ever pledge? This week, a leaked letter revealed that the Business Secretary is arguing for a lower carbon reduction target than that recommended by the Committee on Climate Change. May we have a statement on whether the Prime Minister is going to accept or reject that target?

On Sunday, the Deputy Prime Minister said about his own Government’s NHS reforms:

“I am not going to ask Liberal Democrat MPs…to proceed with legislation on something as precious and cherished as the NHS unless I personally am satisfied that what these changes do is an evolutionary change in the NHS and not a disruptive revolution.”

So now we know that the Deputy Prime Minister, who originally backed the Bill, actually thinks it is disruptive, when will we see the significant and substantial changes that the Prime Minister has repeatedly promised the House?

Will the Leader of the House explain why we have still not seen the higher education White Paper, when a bit of it was announced on the “Today” programme on Tuesday rather than in Parliament? The Universities Minister got himself into a terrible mess with his idea of well-off students paying for off-quota places at university. I suppose that with internships having been sold off at a Tory fundraiser, one could see that as the logical next step for social class mobility. Downing street, however, was not amused, and said so. It stated:

“We are not quite sure what he was trying to say but it wasn’t very helpful.”

So while the Minister was forced to come to the House to deny the rumour that he himself had started, the House waits in vain for a coherent policy.

May we have a statement on free schools, now that nearly nine out of 10 applications have been turned down? A disappointed Downing street source—they have been very busy dumping on Ministers this week—admitted that free schools had not been a success and said:

“I guess you’d give Michael a six out of 10”.

It is not just Cabinet Ministers who have been done over. What does the Leader of the House make of the Downing street source who, talking about the Prime Minister’s dismal performances at Prime Minister’s questions, said:

“It’s just not working. We’re not winning enough. The Flashman image is very damaging and we need to address it before it becomes an accepted stereotype”?

As the House saw yesterday, it is far too late for that already.

Finally, may we have a debate on the state of the coalition? It has been a shambolic week for a dysfunctional Cabinet, with the Prime Minister and his deputy now openly arguing with each other just 12 months after they took their coalition vows. Perhaps that was why, smarting from electoral defeat, the Business Secretary finally gave vent to his feelings over the weekend when he described the Prime Minister’s party as

“ruthless, calculating and thoroughly tribal.”

We could have told him that, but has it really taken him a whole 12 months to notice it? If so, does not that degree of naivety prove that he is, after all, part of the greenest Government ever?

[Sir George Young]

May I begin by endorsing what the right hon. Gentleman said about David Cairns? He was a decent, able man, and it is a tragedy that he has been taken from his friends and from the House at such a young age.

The Secretary of State for Defence will want to keep the House informed of the latest position on the Ministry of Defence budget. On the Armed Forces Bill, as I think I have said before, we want the House to have the military covenant before Third Reading. Work is continuing on finalising the covenant and it will be placed before the House relatively soon, and shortly after that we will have Third Reading.

As far as the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill is concerned, we are of course disappointed by the defeat in the House of Lords, because the election of police and crime commissioners is part of the coalition agreement and was part of the Bill that was passed from this House to the other place. It is regrettable that the other place has decided to take the steps that it has. The Bill will, of course, return to this Chamber, and I hope that when it does we will have the support of the shadow Policing Minister, the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), who made it very clear in 2008 that

“only direct election, based on geographic constituencies, will deliver the strong connection to the public which is critical.”

I hope that Labour Front Benchers will therefore join us in seeking to overturn the amendment made in the Lords.

The shadow Leader of the House asked for a whole series of debates on a range of subjects. I have just announced that there will be an Opposition day on Monday week, so he can choose to debate any of the subjects that he mentioned.

On the fourth carbon budget, the right hon. Gentleman should not believe everything he reads in the press. We are committed to announcing before the end of next month the target for 2023 to 2027, and I anticipate that we will make a statement quite soon and that the draft statutory instrument will be laid before the House in good time for it to be debated.

We debated the NHS on Monday in Opposition time, when a rather weak attack from them was easily seen off by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health.

The higher education White Paper was dealt with in an urgent question by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Universities and Science. It will be published before the summer recess.

The shadow Leader of the House then asked about the coalition. I note that yesterday, the Deputy Prime Minister said:

“We will stand together, but not so closely that we stand in each other’s shadow.”

It is manifestly obvious to anyone that the Deputy Leader of the House and I could never stand in each other’s shadow. As ever, the shadow Leader of the House painted a rather dismal picture of the Government, but one must ask this question: if we are doing so badly, why is he not doing better?

Perhaps on the next Opposition day, we can hear from some of the right hon. Gentleman’s colleagues. The hon. Member for Glasgow South (Mr Harris) said that Labour’s disastrous adventures in Scotland last week were the result of 30 years of “arrogance and complacency” and that “Labour deserved to lose.” Last night, in a spectacular own goal, the shadow Culture Secretary was forced to rewrite a speech that admitted that Labour was seen as a

“party which overspent without delivering sufficient value for money”,

before warning that on the current strategy, the Labour party would lose the next general election.

All that confirms that while there are some lively debates between the two parties in the coalition, they are nothing compared with the civil war in the Labour party.