Oral Answers to Questions

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paice]

My hon. Friend is right to raise this issue. The European auditors decided a couple of years ago that we were not complying with the scheme, so unfortunately those 17 organisations have been suspended. I can tell him that the RPA is working closely with them to find ways to alter their operations so that they meet the criteria and can re-enter the scheme as soon as possible.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

Would the Minister responsible for fisheries be prepared to meet the Yorkshire wildlife trust and other wildlife trusts to discuss the pace at which the Government are moving towards designating marine conservation zones?

[Richard Benyon]

I have meetings with the Yorkshire wildlife trust—I am a great fan—and would be happy to meet it again. The chairman of the Yorkshire wildlife trust is Professor Lawton, who has talked to me about that and other matters. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we are moving ahead as fast as we can. We have a cumbersome process, which we inherited, but I can assure him that we will be able to designate in accordance with the statement I issued before Christmas.

Oral Answers to Questions

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2011 Commons Chamber

The hon. Member for South West Devon, representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, was asked—

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

7. What estimate the Electoral Commission has made of the cost of holding elections for police commissioners.

[Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon)]

The Government included an estimate of the cost of holding elections for police and crime commissioners in May 2012 in their original impact assessment. When the Government proposed to move the date of the elections to November 2012, the commission advised Parliament that additional costs would arise from holding a stand-alone election and that it would be important to ensure adequate resources were in place. The commission has made no separate estimate of the cost of holding those elections.

[Hugh Bayley]

In North Yorkshire—just to give an example from one county—the Government have cut funding for the police from £54 million to £47 million in just two years. Will the hon. Gentleman make representations to the Electoral Commission to do all it can to reduce the cost of the elections and urge the Government to vire the money saved back into front-line policing?

[Mr Streeter]

I think the hon. Gentleman is raging against the policy rather than the Electoral Commission’s role in it. The costs are those incurred by the Government and local authorities, not the Electoral Commission, but I am sure that his plea for the cost of the elections to be minimised will be heard in the appropriate quarters.

Dangerous Dogs

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Hugh Bayley (in the Chair)]

Order. It is clear that there is likely to be more demand than supply when it comes to speeches. I intend to start the winding-up speeches at 10.40 am, so we have about 50 minutes for debate. I do not have any power to stop Members speaking, but I ask people to try to be kind to their colleagues.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Hugh Bayley (in the Chair)]

Order. Three hon. Members are trying to catch my eye, and 12 minutes remain.

Pig Farming

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Dr Poulter]

My hon. Friend is right. The key point, which my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) raised, is the need for a level playing field. We are proud that Britain has high animal welfare and traceability standards, but if our farmers are not competing on a level playing field with farmers in Europe and overseas, with 70% of overseas pork not being produced to the same high animal welfare standards, that is wrong. There is an onus on our supermarkets to show greater corporate responsibility and to make a stand by supporting local food producers and ensuring that they help their customers to understand the issues. I hope that we will hear strong words of support on that from the Minister.

We have talked today about the importance of backing British pig farmers, because we believe in backing British food sustainability and security. We have talked about the fact that there should be a level playing field for British farmers and pork producers, with their high animal welfare and traceability standards compared with the standards of their European competitors. We have talked about the need for honest food labelling, which we will discuss further in the main Chamber in the near future. The Minister is a great friend of farming and we look forward to his reply to the debate and to him telling us how he and the Government will support the British pig industry.

[Hugh Bayley (in the Chair)]

I want to call the Front-Bench spokesmen to start the winding-up speeches at half-past 3, which leaves us time for one further speech.

Flood Risk Management

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

There is a contradiction at the heart of the Government’s policy on flood alleviation. In answer to a parliamentary question about flood risk, the Minister told me that

“The latest UK climate science confirms that rising sea levels and more severe and frequent rain storms are likely to occur—resulting in increasing flood and coastal erosion risk.”—[Official Report, 20 January 2011; Vol. 521, c. 922W.]

He said that the Environment Agency suggests that river flows may increase by 20% by later this century.

On the same day but in answer to another question, the Minister said that the flood risk management budget, paid by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to the Environment Agency, would fall from £354 million this financial year—the Government inherited that figure from the former Labour Administration—to £259 million next year. That is a reduction of 27%. It does not make sense to reduce public investment in flood risk management when those risks, and the costs that flow from those risks, are increasing.

Capital funding in Yorkshire has been hit harder than in any other region. According to a letter from the deputy chairman of the Environment Agency to the Yorkshire regional flood defence committee, funding has fallen by more than 50% compared with last year. Why has my region suffered a larger cut in Government funding than all the others?

The consequences for Yorkshire have been blunt. Three schemes in the Environment Agency’s programme were to have gone ahead in 2011-12. All three have been axed. The York scheme would have provided improved flood defences for the Water End and Leeman road areas of the city. There was a scheme for Thirsk. There was a large scheme to protect Leeds city centre, and York still needs flood defences to be provided in the Clementhorpe area, but that was not included in the original programme.

The Environment Agency tells me that those schemes have been deferred indefinitely, but I was pleased to hear the Minister saying in response to an urgent question in the House earlier today that the schemes have not been cancelled. Will he explain to my constituents the exact status of those schemes? If they have not been cancelled, I presume that it is envisaged that they will go ahead. Will he give us a time scale for when those schemes are to go ahead?

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend not agree that there is considerable urgency for flood schemes in the city of York? I shall be talking about Leeds later, but when I lived in the city of York the Kings Arms was flooded almost to extinction almost every other year. Does he not agree that we badly need these schemes, especially those for York and Leeds?

[Hugh Bayley]

The River Ouse, which flows through the centre of York, drains water from about 3,000 sq km of the Pennines. When there is heavy rainfall, the river rises enormously. At the moment, York has severe floods; the river has risen by about 15 feet above its summer level. When that happens, the Kings Arms public house gets flooded. I am sorry to say that there is no defence in the world that will stop it being flooded several times a year. It almost trades on the novelty of being built in such a way that people can simply hose down the mess and get on with the drinking.

Hundreds of private homes in York—and hundreds of businesses in York; I shall say more about them later—suffer catastrophically when the river rises. In 2000, when the River Ouse rose to its highest recorded level in 400 years, some 350 homes were flooded, and hundreds more came within a whisker of devastation. I left my job as a junior Minister then and went back to York to join Silver Command, which managed the crisis. I remember clearly the November night when hundreds of local residents and 500 soldiers from the 2nd Signal Regiment were sandbagging the Leeman road and Water End area, putting sandbags on top of the existing flood defences to protect the homes behind. Those homes came within a centimetre of being inundated. About 380 homes most certainly would have been inundated, and perhaps another 120 were at risk. Indeed, the leader of York city council was evacuated from his home; he lived in the area at the time.

I shall quote from a statement prepared for this debate by York city council’s chief engineer:

“Water End is shown in the York Strategic Flood Risk Plan as being an area of Rapid Inundation and failure of the existing defences in times of a severe flood could result in a depth of water inside properties in excess of l m, in a very short period of time.”

I remember preparing evacuation plans 10 years ago. Our fear was not that we would have seepage and slowly rising water levels in people’s homes, but that the flood defences might collapse. The engineers believed that that was a real danger, so much so that we tipped thousands of tons of sand and gravel behind the built flood defences to strengthen them. If they had collapsed, we could have had a wall of water running through the centre of York, which would have caused absolute devastation.

The City of York council received advice from the Association of British Insurers about the cost of repairs if the Leeman road and Water End flood defences were overtopped. The calculations were based on 382 homes being inundated. ABI’s advice was that the cost of repairing each of those homes would be between £20,000 and £40,000. The total cost of repairs for one flooding event would be £11.5 million, almost twice the cost of the flood defence scheme that the Environment Agency has deferred. The community largely consists of two-bedroom Victorian railway cottages. Many of them are privately rented, and others are owned by people on low to modest incomes—the priority group that the Government say should be helped by the new flood defence plans.

Ten years ago, 100 or so homes in the Clementhorpe area of York were inundated. It received a lot of attention because one of the streets involved is called River street. The papers all carried pictures of firemen evacuating people by boat. That area, too, needs protection. A temporary scheme has been provided by a private benefactor, but it does not work as the council would like, so it is not being used at the moment. Before this debate, I asked the Association of British Insurers and individual insurers, and I am grateful for their advice. For obvious reasons, insurers are always cautious about telling the public how much they pay out in claims. One told me that in York it has paid out £12.5 million in claims for flood damage—800 claims in all—over the past decade. The claims peaked in 2000 when it paid out in respect of 286 properties, and again in 2007 when it paid out in respect of 247 properties. The average claim per property flooded was £25,000.

When we debate the problems and risks of flooding, we often talk about home owners and households. It is quite right that individual people—our constituents—should be at the front of our minds, but we must not forget that businesses are very seriously affected, too. I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Tony Cunningham) is nodding his head. He has had a much more recent experience of flooding than, thankfully, we have had in York.

In response to the Government cuts in capital flood defence schemes, Gary Williamson, the chief executive of the Leeds, York and North Yorkshire chamber of commerce said:

“I find it extremely concerning that the Government would take such a gamble with York and North Yorkshire economies. The cost of flood damage can have a devastating effect on businesses and is something that small, independent businesses and retailers may struggle to recover from.”

The impact of the floods in 2000 on businesses in York was catastrophic. Visits to main attractions, such as York Minster and the Jorvik Viking Centre, dropped by 94%, from 5,425 in November 1999 to 356 in November 2000. Once the flood had gone, the number of visits was down by 86%. Bed occupancy in hotels was down by a third. Retail business was down between 30% and 50%—it varied from shop to shop—in the busy pre-Christmas shopping period. The York Minster shop suffered a 72% fall in sales. Overall, as a result of the floods in 2000, there were 200,000 fewer visitors to the city, costing something in the region of £10 million, and that ignores all the other business and commerce in the city that suffered as a result of the flood and the subsequent severing of a railway line. The railway is an extremely important commercial highway, pipeline or communication link for York. When the line just south of York in Selby was severed by the flooding, it cost the city far, far more.

What will the Minister do to get the Leeman road and Water End scheme back on track, working with me, as MP for the city, and the local authority, the City of York council? Like all hon. Members, I understand that the country’s macro-economic position is weak. In the last published quarterly figures, we learned that the economy had contracted by 0.5%. Economists are now asking what the Chancellor’s plan B is should the country fall back into recession; in other words, two consecutive quarters of contraction of the national economy. Of course Labour has argued that the deficit must be brought under control, but the way in which the Chancellor is doing that is too fast and the cuts that he is implementing are too deep. In the run-up to the Budget, the Chancellor will obviously be considering his options. He may not announce it in the Budget, but it is perfectly obvious to all of us in this Chamber that the Treasury is considering a plan B. If the Chancellor were to respond to the worsening economic situation by relaxing the pace of public expenditure cuts, the most obvious place to provide an expansion—or perhaps a lesser contraction—of public expenditure would be in relation to capital schemes. We know that there is a current account deficit, but even when Governments are running a current account deficit, they continue to invest over the long term, and rightly so. When someone buys a house, they take out a mortgage for 25 years. When the Government invest in flood defences, they also need to borrow and pay back over a long period of time and pay back, because flood risk is a long-term risk and the flood defence will be there for 50 or 100 years and the capital scheme needs to be financed over that period.

[Tony Cunningham (Workington) (Lab)]

Perhaps the best example that I can give my hon. Friend is Carlisle in Cumbria, which was flooded a number of years ago. In 2009, as a result of a £35 million investment in flood defences, Carlisle did not flood. As a Government, we spent £35 million to prevent flooding. If we had not spent that amount and Carlisle had been flooded, it is estimated that it would have cost between £70 million and £80 million to clean up and repair the damage. Surely that is a good example of how we need to spend in the short term to ensure that we are not stacking up long-term problems.

[Hugh Bayley]

My hon. Friend gives an extremely good example. The Environment Agency says that the cost-benefit ratio of its schemes in the pipeline are 8:1, which was confirmed by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee’s recent excellent report on flood and water management legislation. That means that we get back much more than we pay. If we leave it to each individual to try to insure themselves—if they are able to insure themselves—the cost to them and the private insurance companies will be much greater than the cost of investing in flood protection. Moreover, if we were to relax the squeeze on publicly funded capital schemes, the jobs that would be created would be in the private sector, precisely where we need to create jobs to pull the economy back on track and to get the Government’s fiscal position looking better than it does now.

I ask the Minister to talk this matter through with the Treasury in the run-up to the Budget. I do not expect any feedback in the purdah period before the Budget. None the less, I hope that his Department will make representations, so that if the Chancellor is talking about relaxing the squeeze on public expenditure, he looks at capital works, particularly the cost-effective investments in flood alleviation.

I will try to be brief because I know many Members want to speak. The City of York council and the Yorkshire regional flood defence committee are considering alternative sources of funding for the Leeman road and Water End scheme, including the possibility of funding from the European Union, which is available to support businesses. I have talked earlier about the enormous impact that flooding can have on commerce. Is the Minister prepared to work with the council and the Environment Agency to try to get support for such a scheme?

Consultation documents from the Minister’s Department reveal that the Government are seeking to transfer part of the cost of providing flood defences from central Government budgets to local communities. I am not making a particular point about that, but I hope that the Minister will listen and focus on what I am saying. He can describe it slightly differently if he wants. It would be a mistake to have a flood tax added to local authority taxation because the boundaries of local authorities do not match the boundaries of river catchment areas. If we are planning to deal with flood waters, we need to plan for the river catchment as a whole.

When York floods, we provide a service for places upstream, because we take the water away from them and prevent them from flooding. Equally, when Selby floods it does a service for the city of York, as it takes our water away and saves us from flooding. That is precisely what Selby is doing at the moment and hopefully it will not flood as a consequence. We are interdependent—that is how nature works—and the funding response needs to take account of how nature works and be based on river catchments rather than local authority areas.

One way in which we might do that is through giving responsibility, in part or in whole, to water and sewage management companies, which of course have been set up to follow river catchment areas. We talk about the “Severn Trent” region. Why is that a region? It is a region because anyone extracting water needs to follow the river courses. Equally, anyone dealing with flood water needs to follow the river courses.

It would be wholly unfair if people in York had to pay for draining water away from upland areas on the east side of the Pennines—the 300,000 square kilometres of land that York drains—or if Leeds city centre had to pay for draining water away from people living upstream in the Wharfe valley. Yet it would be fair for people living in those valley catchments to work out collectively how to deal with the water as a whole. That is what the Environment Agency says they need to do.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Hugh Bayley]

I will give way in just a moment.

I see excellent work that the Environment Agency has done upstream from York, creating small ponds on agricultural land, planting trees and building dams that can be closed at times when there is a lot of water, so that water can be stored. If we can slow the run-off, we can convert an 18-foot flood over 24 hours in York, which would be catastrophic, into a 15-foot flood over three days in York, which would be quite manageable. The Minister will have seen such schemes. They exist because we cannot expect small communities—working village by village, town by town, city by city—to protect themselves without a scheme being worked out for the catchment area as a whole.

I ask the Minister to consider an interesting proposal that has been put to me by Yorkshire Water that the company could perhaps buy flood defence infrastructure from the Environment Agency, which would give the Government a capital receipt. Yorkshire Water would be able to do so because it can go to equity markets, which a Government cannot do. Of course such a scheme would increase the cost of water, because the company would have to repay the cost of managing floods more effectively. However, it would mean that those increased charges were spread across the river catchment area as a whole—upstream and downstream communities—rather than on downstream communities exclusively.

[Neil Carmichael]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Hugh Bayley]

I said that I would give way to the hon. Gentleman. I will do so, then I will give way to the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) and then I will sit down.

[Neil Carmichael]

I just want to support what the hon. Gentleman has been saying about the need to think strategically. In my constituency of Stroud we have the Slad valley, which is a relatively small valley. However, if we had a co-operative Environment Agency, a less rigorous interpretation of the water directive and a general willingness to allow local people to do what they think should be done we would solve a huge number of problems for Stroud, which has nearly 5,000 houses in total that are vulnerable to flooding. My appeal is for more local flexibility, so that we can take action and implement flood alleviation measures.

[Hugh Bayley]

I am glad to receive support from the hon. Gentleman. However, I hope that he will join me in saying that these risks, which people in both our constituencies face, are present and real risks now and that we need Government funding now to address them. I say that because by the time that we work out a new system in five years’ time, our constituencies might have flooded.

In fairness to everyone else who wants to speak, I will take an intervention from the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed and then I will draw my remarks to a close.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

I just want to make the point that upstream flooding, which the hon. Gentleman describes as a form of alleviation in main urban centres, has a cost for the agricultural communities in the areas concerned. Even as far away as Northumberland, we were aware that in east Yorkshire there was considerable resistance to such schemes, but they are an essential part of flood management. Nevertheless, it requires a lot of co-operation and discussion with the farming community, to ensure that a proper balance of interests is recognised.

[Hugh Bayley]

That is obviously right and it is a very important contribution. We cannot get flood risk management for free, whether it involves building flood defences in York city centre or paying farmers to let their winter cropping fields flood at a time when they would otherwise be planting root vegetables or some other crop. However, it might be both cheaper and more environmentally sustainable to pay the farmers to grow more trees, create ponds and use other measures to retain some of the water long enough to protect downstream areas from inundation.

I could say much more about the consultation documents, about what the insurers are telling me or about the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee report, but I will sit down now so that other Members can have their say.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fabian Hamilton]

I strongly disagree with the hon. Gentleman.

[Hugh Bayley]

I have fought hard for 10 years for flood defences to be improved in York and I would accept—

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Why did the Labour Government not do anything about it?

[Hugh Bayley]

Will the hon. Gentleman listen for a minute? I accept that the Labour Government, who put in millions of pounds and improved many flood defences, protecting some areas of the city, did not finish the job. However, I should tell the hon. Gentleman, who I hope will have the opportunity to speak, that while Labour was in power, we increased Government funding to the Environment Agency for flood risk management from £249 million in 2000 to more than £500 million in 2008-09—in other words, we more than doubled it. We provided funding for more flood management and protection schemes than was the case before. Our concern is that this Government are reducing funding.

[Jim Sheridan (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions are getting a bit long.

Flood Defence Allocations

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

A 50% cut and ring-fenced funding for the future could not have been defended. That is absolutely impossible. I honestly urge the hon. Gentleman to look at the realities of the situation. There is a 50% capital cut. Whichever party had been in government now would have had to take difficult decisions. We have protected the floods budget as best we can, and he should recognise that.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

Has the Environment Agency’s flood defence scheme for Water End and Leeman road in York, which defends more than 300 low-income households, been cancelled? It was due to go ahead this year and was funded to go ahead this year. If it has not been cancelled, when will it go ahead?

[Richard Benyon]

The scheme has not been cancelled. It has been deferred. There are technical difficulties with it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hugh Bayley]

How long?

[Richard Benyon]

We will shortly debate the matter in Westminster Hall, when I will be happy to give the hon. Gentleman more details. I can assure him that the scheme has not been cancelled.

Public Forest Estate (England)

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

The National Trust has come out this morning and said that the Government’s plans are absolutely no way to manage the public forest estate—I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has seen the news today—and the Woodland Trust has a big petition on its website saying, “Save our forests”. He needs to look at what they are saying. They will not pay their members’ subscriptions to the Treasury to buy something that we already own.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

Literally hundreds of my constituents have written to me saying that something must be done to stop the sale. On Saturday week I am holding a public meeting to discuss—[Interruption.] The Minister of State may laugh, but we will be discussing how they can respond to his consultation. Will my hon. Friend come to York on that day to meet people and hear what they have to say?

[Mary Creagh]

I thank my hon. Friend for that invitation. I shall certainly make the journey to York to hear what his constituents have to say, and I hope that Ministers go out and listen to what the country has to say on the matter.

--- Later in debate ---

[Angela Smith]

rose—

[Hugh Bayley]

rose—

[Mrs Spelman]

I will give way in a minute.

Fifthly, we are refocusing the work of the Forestry Commission so that rather than devoting expertise and resources to commercial activities that should not be performed by Government, it can focus on conducting research on combating the challenges of new tree diseases, maintaining and enforcing access rights, providing expert advice, giving grants, and discharging its duty as a regulator.

[Mrs Spelman]

Permissive rights apply to 2,000 hectares of the public forest estate, which itself accounts for 18% of the woodland cover of the country.

[Hugh Bayley]

Talking of facts, I have here a parliamentary answer given to me by a former forests Minister in 1996. It records that under the previous Conservative Government 209,956 hectares of Forestry Commission land were sold. What proportion of that retained public access, what proportion went to community trusts, and what proportion of the new sales will go to such trusts?

[Mrs Spelman]

In 1996 I was not a Member of Parliament. I am dealing with a new policy, and that, it seems, is what Opposition Members are opposing.

What is most saddening about the debate is that rather than setting out her reasons for opposing our measures, the hon. Member for Wakefield insisted on sowing further misinformation and fear about what we are consulting on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Miss McIntosh]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention, but I would go further. I would like to know the precise mechanism being proposed. If it could be achieved through an amendment to the Public Bodies Bill, we should agree to it now and it would remove many of the anxieties that we are debating this afternoon. If the Minister responded on that point, it would progress the debate and allay many of my anxieties and those of my hon. Friend’s constituents.

I would like clarification on the written ministerial statement to which the Secretary of State referred. It stated:

“I am today publishing tightened criteria for those sales under the Forestry Commission's programme to deliver £100 million in gross receipts during 2011-15.”—[Official Report, 27 January 2011; Vol. 522, c. 17WS.]

Does that relate to 85% or 100% of the sales? I would like to explain to my constituents how the sums add up and what the exact financial figures will be.

I am surprised that in introducing the debate, the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) did not mention the role of woods, trees and forests in promoting flood defences. The Forestry Commission is playing a flood defence role in the Pickering pilot scheme. It is planting a number of trees that will create a carbon sink and retain water, which will prevent Pickering from being at risk of flooding in the future.

[Hugh Bayley]

The hon. Lady makes an extremely important point. However, if the Forestry Commission is not there, does she think there will be the same investment in tree planting on Forestry Commission land and private land to reduce flood risks?

[Miss McIntosh]

I would put that question directly to the Minister, as I have done before. I want an assurance that the Pickering project, if it is successful, will be the forerunner of many similar projects in areas such as mine across the country. I want an assurance today that the trees will be planted and that the investment will be made. The hon. Gentleman prompts the question of why we should rely on the state to make that investment. We have moved a long way from the previous Government’s mistake of selling off the national treasure of Rigg wood in the Lake district without guarantees of access, the enjoyment of benefits and the continued biodiversity for which we have called.

I should like assurances on the economics, including what the gross receipts will be, and on continuing access. If, as the Woodland Trust states, ownership is not the key, I should like to know what guarantees there can be about how management and commercial interests will fund the commercial forests. In the case of heritage forests, I may be being very simple, but I should like to know how the Government are going to fund investment in the charitable funds that will run those forests.

Energy and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Huhne]

Much as I admire the chutzpah with which the shadow Secretary of State approaches this leadership speech, I see no recognition in his remarks of the appalling legacy that he has bequeathed us.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Hugh Bayley)]

Before the shadow Secretary of State replies, I remind new Members that the procedure is that you do not intervene on an intervention, even if it is a rather long one.

[Edward Miliband]

So there we have it—the Greek defence. A person may vote Liberal Democrat, but along sails the Greek defence, which means that one does not need to keep one’s promises. Promises do not mean anything from the Liberal Democrats if something happens in Greece. The Secretary of State will have to do a lot better than that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. At this point in the proceedings, I must remind hon. Members that Mr Speaker has imposed a limit of 12 minutes on Back Benchers’ speeches.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. On a procedural note, I should perhaps explain to all Members of the House that it is helpful if they rise when seeking to catch the Chair’s eye, which will give an indication of the number of people who are still trying to get into the debate.