Business of the House

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Thursday 9th December 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 13 December will be:

Monday 13 December—Second Reading of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill.

Tuesday 14 December—Consideration of Lords amendments to the Superannuation Bill, followed by remaining stages of the Terrorist Asset-Freezing etc. Bill [Lords], followed by consideration of Lords amendments to the Identity Documents Bill.

Wednesday 15 December—Consideration of an allocation of time motion, followed by all stages of the Loans to Ireland Bill, followed by a motion to approve the ninth report 2010-11 from the Standards and Privileges Committee.

Thursday 16 December—Motion relating to park homes, followed by a motion on the work of the Public Accounts Committee. The subjects for both debates were nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

The provisional business for the week commencing 20 December will include:

Monday 20 December—General debate on firearms control.

Tuesday 21 December—Pre-recess Adjournment debate, the format of which has been specified by the Backbench Business Committee.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 13 and 20 January 2011 will be:

Thursday 13 January—A debate on the impact of the comprehensive spending review on the Department of Health.

Thursday 20 January—A general debate on anti-Semitism.

[Hilary Benn]

I am grateful to the Leader of the House for his statement. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us when we can expect the localism Bill to be introduced? Two weeks ago, he said it would appear “shortly”. On the same day, the Minister for decentralisation, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), said it would be published “imminently”. Last week, the Leader of the House said it would appear “very shortly”. However, having searched high and low for this shy and retiring Bill, I can find no sign of it. In a week that has been full of difficulty for the Government, is this Bill yet another little local difficulty that they have not been able to resolve?

May we have a statement on press reports published this week that impostors have been seeking to gain access to the parliamentary estate? It is now clear that a number of individuals seeking jobs here have claimed to be die-hard opponents of lifting the cap on tuition fees, but have turned out to be the very opposite of what they said they were. What can the Leader of the House do to protect us from these potential double agents?

Has the Leader of the House made any progress on getting the Prime Minister to make his much anticipated apology to head teachers and school sports co-ordinators for his disgraceful attack on what they do? When will the heavily signalled U-turn arrive, or is it stuck in a queue behind the localism Bill?

Talking about trust in politics, can we have a debate on the subject? I ask because it is not just the Deputy Prime Minister who has been breaking his promises in recent weeks; it has been the Prime Minister, too—on VAT, child benefit, 3,000 more midwives, no spending cuts to front-line services, the knife crime pledge and education maintenance allowances. On 6 January, at a Cameron Direct event, the Prime Minister said in answer to a question on EMAs that

“we don’t have any plans to get rid of them.”

Two months later, on 2 March, the Education Secretary was even clearer:

“Ed Balls keeps saying that we are committed to scrapping the EMA. I have never said this. We won’t.”

What are our young people, many of whom are watching our proceedings today, to make of such behaviour? Did the Prime Minister and the Education Secretary believe what they were saying or not? Either way, it is no wonder that so many young people think, “Well, if that’s the new politics, you can forget it.”

In case the Liberal Democrats think that they can tell us—if they are courageous enough to put their heads above the parapet today—that the Government’s tuition fee proposals will increase social mobility, may we have a statement confirming that scrapping EMAs will make it more difficult for young people from low-income backgrounds even to get to the starting gate of higher education? To make matters worse, the coalition is also destroying the Aimhigher programme, which is all about social mobility.

Turning to this afternoon’s debate, even with a 6-minute limit on speeches, very many Members will not get the chance to represent their constituents today. For a long time now, we have been told that there will be no up-front fees. We have been told that all students will pay back at the same rate according to how much they earn. This week, the Business Secretary and the Deputy Prime Minister told their party that the proposals will not put anyone off going to university. If that is the case, can we have a statement on why the Government are proposing that some students from the least well-off households will not have to pay fees in their first year? Either the Government believe what they have been saying—in which case, why make this proposal?—or they have finally accepted what we have been saying about students being put off, in which case their whole argument collapses. We need an answer.

Is it any wonder that thousands of young people are now standing outside Parliament demanding a say on their future, while MPs from both Government parties are scurrying around hiding from them? They were promised a fair system for their higher education, only to discover that this coalition Government, with the support of Liberal Democrats, is about to let them down—and they will not forget it.

[Sir George Young]

I said last week that the gestation period for the localism Bill has been a little longer than anticipated. It is now being delivered at high speed to the parliamentary birth centre by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. As I said last week, I hope that it will be before the House well before Christmas.

On the second issue, the right hon. Gentleman bangs on about the position of the Liberal Democrats on tuition fees, but the Liberal Democrats got their Front Benchers behind a policy on this before the Labour party did. They got themselves organised on Tuesday, but it was not until yesterday that the shadow Chancellor claimed in an article in The Times that there was

“a strong case for a graduate tax”.

I have to say that it is he who is a member of the coalition parties when it comes to tuition fees and funding higher education.

The Government will be delivering school sports, but in a different way from the previous Government; instead of having a centralised PE and sports strategy, we want to redeploy resources and people, putting a new emphasis on competitive sport. In answer to the right hon. Gentleman’s specific question, we will be announcing how we will spend the money we have allocated for school sport in due course.

On the education maintenance allowance, we are committed to ensuring that every young person remains in education and training until they are 18. Evidence shows that about 90% of EMA spending goes to students who would have stayed in education anyway. There was an enormous amount of dead-weight. We are replacing the EMA with targeted support for those who face genuine financial barriers to participation.

As for the time allowed for the debate, I think that the right hon. Gentleman is losing his touch. Last Thursday, when I announced the debate, his only question was on when we would have sight of the text on the Government’s proposals. That small spark of interest developed into the conflagration that we saw last night. A business of the House motion was tabled on Friday last week. He could have amended that motion, but the Opposition did not get around to amending it until the debate was well under way and it was far too late. On one of the key issues facing this Parliament, the shadow Leader of the House has been caught asleep at the wheel.

On the other issues that the right hon. Gentleman addressed, those will be the subject of the debate that is about to take place.