Business of the House

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Lucy Powell)]

I shall. The business for the week commencing 10 March includes:

Monday 10 March�Second Reading of the Crime and Policing Bill.

Tuesday 11 March�Remaining stages of the Employment Rights Bill, day one.

Wednesday 12 March�Remaining stages of the Employment Rights Bill, day two.

Thursday 13 March�General debate on the future of farming, followed by a general debate on mental health support in educational settings. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 14 March�Private Members� Bills.

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

Monday 17 March�Remaining stages of the Children�s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, day one.

Tuesday 18 March�Remaining stages of the Children�s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, day two.

Wednesday 19 March�Consideration of Lords amendments to the National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill, followed by Opposition day, first allotted day, second part: debate on a motion in the name of the official Opposition, subject to be announced.

Thursday 20 March�General debate on knife crime among children and young people, followed by a general debate on coastal communities. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 21 March�The House will not be sitting.

[Jesse Norman]

Mr Speaker, may I first associate myself very strongly with your kind remarks about Peter Hipkins and his service to this House?

We join all colleagues in celebration of International Women�s Day this Saturday. I am sure the whole House will also share my deep concern at the latest news in relation to Ukraine and will wish to send all of our best wishes to the Prime Minister and other European leaders in doing everything they can to support that country.

It is now three months or so since I became shadow Leader of the House, and I am sad to say that these joyous Thursday morning sessions seem to have fallen into a little bit of a rut. [Interruption.] �No, no!�, I hear you cry, �Business questions are still as fresh, lively and engaging as they ever were, if not more so,� but sadly I fear that is not true. It is our function on the�Opposition Benches to press public concerns and raise questions about the Government�indeed, as His Majesty�s loyal Opposition, it is not only our function, but our constitutional duty to do so. It is the Government�s job to respond to those questions and concerns and, in so doing, to make the case publicly for the policy choices and decisions they have made and to say whether they have an underlying strategy.

Unfortunately, as you will have noticed, Mr Speaker, the Government are not doing that in our sessions. In fact, the Leader of the House rarely, if ever, responds to the important public questions and concerns that I raise. Instead, I am sorry to say that we get the same endlessly reheated mishmash of standard party political lines, personal jibes and irrelevant comment.

Hon. Members will recall that I first raised this issue at business questions on 5 December, when I highlighted a series of occasions on which the Leader had been unwilling to answer or even address some obvious examples of Government economic incompetence. As I pointed out:

�Many different responses were open to her. She could have said, �I agree with you.�� �[Official Report, 5 December 2024; Vol. 758, c. 458.]

She could have said, �The shadow Leader is wrong for the following reasons,� or even, �I don�t know.� If she did not want to respond at that time, she could have said, as so many other Ministers do, �I will look into it,� �I will reply to you,� or, �I will ask a colleague to investigate and respond�. We just heard the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster say those things.

In fact, on none of those occasions did the Leader of the House bother to give any kind of proper answer at all. Instead, her approach was to change the subject and attack the previous Government, rather than to defend the record of her own Government�which is, after all, the whole point of these exchanges. More troubling still is that she herself has so often called for transparency from Ministers, and that a failure to be accountable�is itself a breach of the rules of this House, of the Nolan principles and of the ministerial code of conduct.

I wish I could report that anything has changed since December. If anything, however, I am afraid that matters have got worse. A recent low point was at business questions on 13 February, when I raised five important issues relating to the Government�s approach to the rule of law, including the potential clash between domestic and international law, the level of risk that the Government sought to take and their attitude towards judicial review. I am sorry to say that the Leader of the House did not bother to respond to any of those questions: instead, we had yet another series of irrelevant political attacks.

We need a better way to track and monitor those evasions, so, in the spirit of openness and transparency, I propose a new approach, which we can call �Leader�s bingo�. Colleagues get a point every time the Leader of the House blames the previous Government, attacks Members of the Opposition, changes the subject or uses the words �gently remind�, �take no lectures� or similar in her response. I would not for one second suggest that colleagues shout �Bingo!� in the Chamber, but there may be other ways in which they can indicate when they have filled their card.

That is a light-hearted suggestion, but it has a serious purpose. I know how strongly you, Mr Speaker, feel about the importance of parliamentary accountability, transparency and the proper scrutiny of Government decisions. I ask the Leader of the House again if she will reaffirm her commitment to those values and engage properly with the questions I ask in the future.