Business of the House

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Thursday 16th 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 20 December will be:

Monday 20 December—General debate on firearms control. In addition, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister plans to make a statement on the European Council.

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

The House will not adjourn until the Speaker has signified Royal Assent. The House will meet at 11.30 am and be subject to Wednesday timings should it agree to the motion at the end of today’s business.

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

Monday 10 January—Second Reading of the Armed Forces Bill.

Tuesday 11 January—Consideration in Committee of the European Union Bill (day 1).

Wednesday 12 January—Remaining stages of the Postal Services Bill.

Thursday 13 January—Remaining stages of the National Insurance Contributions Bill.

The provisional business for the week commencing 17 January will include:

Monday 17 January—Second Reading of the Localism Bill.

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

Thursday 13 January 2011—A debate on the impact of the comprehensive spending review on the Department for Communities and Local Government.

Thursday 20 January 2011—A general debate on anti-Semitism.

May I take this opportunity to wish you, Mr Speaker, and all right hon. and hon. Members a very happy Christmas and new year, and to thank all those who have kept the House running smoothly this year, particularly the security staff, the police, the Serjeant at Arms and the team who have kept the House running without interruption? I should also like to thank the staff involved in providing services and a welcome to new Members following the general election, including the Clerks, the Officers and staff of the House, the Doorkeepers and the cleaners. A merry Christmas to all.

[Hilary Benn]

I thank the Leader of the House for his statement. Following the decision of the deputy Chief Whip this morning to break the convention that the party holding a seat moves the by-election writ in the case of seats declared void after an election, which is what happened in Winchester in 1997, can the Leader of the House confirm that nearly 1,000 students in Oldham East and Saddleworth are likely to be disfranchised in this by-election because they will not have returned to university by 13 January, which is the date that the coalition has picked, whereas they would have returned by 3 February, which is the date that we would have moved? Does this not show that the coalition is running scared of the judgment of students at the ballot box?

Does the Leader of the House have any news on when the Prime Minister will come to the House to explain why, week after week, he is breaking promise after promise? When he does appear, will he also explain something else? All summer long, he and the Chancellor have been telling us triumphantly that everyone supports their economic policy. Well, not any more they don’t! What are we to make of the leak of a memo from the country’s top civil servant, Sir Gus O’Donnell, telling the Prime Minister that in case plan A on the economy does not work, he needs to have a plan B? May we have a debate, therefore, on what plan there is to stop unemployment continuing to rise next year, as people in the public sector—including, as the people of Oldham will see, the 1,387 uniformed police officers in Greater Manchester who are to go—are thrown out of their jobs by the very Government they loyally serve?

Last week, the Justice Secretary, having told us he wants prisoners to have the vote, said that prison is not succeeding. A few days later, the Home Secretary flatly contradicted him when she said that prison works. When will the Prime Minister sort out this squabble? Perhaps he could set up a court—assuming he can find one that is still open—summon them both, hear the evidence and deliver a verdict. I suppose, technically, that would mean making a statement on which of these warring Cabinet Ministers is speaking for the Government.

Last week, the ConservativeHome website reported that there was a pretty difficult meeting of the 1922 committee, with a lot of cross MPs, on the subject of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority—I have to say that we all know the feeling. Following last night’s meeting, may we have a statement on what the Government plan to do about IPSA? The grumpiness on the Tory Benches shows that it is not so much the season of good will as seething ill will and loathing. One Tory MP said last night:

“The coalition is an imperial clique”.

I am open to suggestions on who on the Government Benches is Caligula and who is Nero.

The former head of the Prime Minister’s social mobility taskforce, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), talked of sheer hostility towards the coalition leadership. Apparently, he went on to say that it was about a lot of things, including fees and being taken for granted, but especially about the Liberal Democrats being allowed

“to say what they like and do what they like”.

I have a lot of respect for the right hon. Gentleman, but has he only just noticed that about the Lib Dems? They have been doing it for years. Will the Leader of the House therefore assure his Back Benchers that there will now be a debate on how to stop Lib Dem Members getting in the way of Tory Members’ upward ministerial mobility?

With all this unhappiness, Mr Speaker, may I join the Leader of the House in wishing you, the Deputy Leader of the House, all hon. Members and all the staff, who serve us so well, a merry Christmas and a happy new year? As for Christmas presents, I hope that everyone gets what they wish for, although I am sorry to say that, for Lib Dem voters, even though their stockings were hung by the chimney with care in hope that St Nicholas would soon be there, they will not be receiving that shiny new tuition fees pledge they were promised, because St Nick has let them down.

[Sir George Young]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his response, his Christmas wishes and indeed his Christmas card. Of course, for the Labour party this is always a time of giving. I have been looking through what he has been giving over the past few business questions—he digs deep into his sack each time. He has promised higher spending on child benefit and housing benefit, lower VAT in the new year and more university funding. We all applaud him on his festive generosity, but until the Labour party comes up with a credible way of paying for it all, it will have no more credibility than Santa Claus. I ask him—[Interruption.]People will not believe in the Labour party any more than they believe in Santa Claus unless the Opposition come up with some decent answers.

The right hon. Gentleman could have had a debate on the writ for the by-election. However, the Labour party chose not to do so, so it is a little rich of him to ask me for one now. The Opposition could have had a debate if they had objected an hour ago to the writ being moved. It is astonishing that they do not want the by-election to be held, when their own candidate has said:

“I can’t wait until polling day,”

so what is all the fuss about? The precedent from Winchester quoted by the right hon. Gentleman is simply not accurate. There is a collective loss of memory on the Opposition Benches about what happened in Winchester. The seat was previously held by a Conservative Member of Parliament, and the Liberal Democrat Chief Whip moved the writ. Therefore, in the most recent precedent of a seat being declared void, the Chief Whip of the party previously holding the seat did not move the writ.

Moving quickly through the other issues that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned, let me say that the Prime Minister is here every week to answer questions, and he will continue to do so.

On the Sentencing (Reform) Bill, the right hon. Gentleman will know that the Green Paper published last week was a collective document, published by the Cabinet and the Administration as a whole. In the robust evidence that my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor gave to the Select Committee on Justice, he made it clear that there was not a cigarette paper between him and the Home Secretary.

On plan A and plan B, at least we have a plan A. The Labour party does not even have one coherent strategy on the economy. Indeed, yesterday the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), criticised the Leader of the Opposition for his performance at Prime Minister’s questions, saying that

“we have a huge responsibility to take these arguments to the country but we can’t do that if we are dividing amongst ourselves.”

On unemployment, the shadow Leader of the House will have seen the forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility, which stated that unemployment is set to fall next year and every year thereafter, and that the fall in employment in the public sector is more than counterbalanced by the rise in employment in the private sector.

Finally, on IPSA, the position is absolutely clear. We had a useful debate on IPSA—I think on 2 December—and the Government abide by the resolution, passed without Division by the House at that time, that IPSA should be given an opportunity to review the regime and come up with an alternative by 1 April.