Business of the House

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 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 the week commencing 12 September will be as follows:

Monday 12 September—Consideration of Lords amendments to the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill.



Tuesday 13 September—Opposition Day [20th allotted day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.



Wednesday 14 September—Remaining stages of the Energy Bill [Lords].

Thursday 15 September—Motion relating to food security and famine prevention in Africa, followed by general debate on human rights in the Indian subcontinent. The subjects for these debates were nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

The provisional business for the week commencing 10 October will include:

Monday 10 October—Remaining stages of the Protection of Freedoms Bill (day 1).

[Hilary Benn]

I am grateful to the Leader of the House for that reply, and I welcome him and Members on both sides of the House back from a busy summer.

As this Sunday will mark the 10th anniversary of the 11 September attacks, I am sure that the whole House will wish to remember all those who lost their lives, including the 66 British citizens. Our thoughts are with them and their families.

The inquiry on the recent riots will produce an interim report in November. Will the Leader of the House assure us that the Government will provide time for it to be debated? Can we be told how many police officers’ jobs could be saved by not spending £25 million on a delayed poll for costly police commissioners—just, it seems, to placate the Liberal Democrats?

We welcome the opportunity that e-petitions will give the public to get things debated in Parliament, but the Leader of the House will be aware that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, says that there are quite a few problems with that. Will he allocate more time for those and other Back-Bench matters to be debated?

Will the Leader of the House confirm that the autumn statement is when the Chancellor will finally announce plan B, because plan A clearly is not working? The Government’s growth forecasts will have to be downgraded yet again, consumer confidence has never been lower and the head of the International Monetary Fund has just warned countries to adapt their austerity programmes by taking steps to improve growth, but the Chancellor is not listening. Indeed, the only thing he seems keen to do is abolish the 50p tax rate. Does not that send a clear message to hard-pressed families—that this Government are more interested in millionaires than they are in middle England?

As we have seen this week, despite its famous pause, the Health and Social Care Bill has failed to win the confidence of those working in the NHS. Meanwhile, more patients are waiting longer for operations, and yesterday the Prime Minister was completely unable to explain why. Is it because attention is being diverted elsewhere?

On that subject, may we have a statement from the Secretary of State for Health on reports that the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust has considered selling off St. Mary’s hospital in London—the place where penicillin was discovered—for property speculation? It seems that it went as far as to start a tendering process involving six architects. How much NHS cash did that cost?

Something else that is not safe in the Government’s hands is our countryside. After the forests sell-off fiasco, we now have the planning punch up. It takes a special talent to make a sworn enemy of the National Trust, but calling critics “nihilist” and “semi-hysterical” was not very clever, was it? When can we expect a statement on the further revisions to that guidance, which are now inevitable?

Yesterday, a delegation from Bombardier came to the House to plead with the Government to reconsider their decision to award the Thameslink train contract to Germany instead of Derby. The Government’s refusal once again to listen, even though they have now admitted that they can reopen the process, has angered Derby city council. Its Conservative leader, Philip Hickson, was blunt:

“I do not think they have grasped the widespread anger… the Government have simply got things wrong”.

Finally, in recent months the Prime Minister’s strategy chief, Mr Steve Hilton, has proposed scrapping maternity leave and health and safety laws, closing jobcentres and replacing Government press officers with bloggers—there could be an opening there for the Leader of the House—all ideas that have been slapped down by No. 10. This week it is reported that Mr Hilton secretly asked a QC to advise on how to challenge new employment rights for temporary workers being introduced by the Business Secretary. The Business Secretary was distinctly unimpressed. A source in his Department said:

“Vince makes decisions on this policy… not Steve Hilton”.

A Lib Dem observed:

“Hilton is just a renegade.”

I had thought that Mr Hilton was the Prime Minister’s chief special adviser, but when I pressed No. 10 on this I was told that the Prime Minister knew nothing about it. Could we be told how much this legal freelancing cost and who exactly Mr Hilton works for? He seems to come up with so many bad ideas, so may we have a statement from the Prime Minister listing his good ideas? I am sure that that would appeal to you, Mr Speaker, because it would not take very long.

[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.