Business of the House

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2026 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 (Sir Alan Campbell)]

The business for the week commencing 19 January will include:

Monday 19 January—Remaining stages of the Public Office (Accountability) Bill.

Tuesday 20 January—Consideration of Lords amendments to the Sentencing Bill, followed by consideration of Lords amendments to the Holocaust Memorial Bill, followed by consideration of Lords amendments to the Diego Garcia Military Base and British Indian Ocean Territory Bill.

Wednesday 21 January—Committee of the whole House and remaining stages of the National Insurance Contributions (Employer Pensions Contributions) Bill, followed by motion to approve the draft Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 (Remedial) Order 2025.

Thursday 22 January—General debate on Government support for the fishing industry, followed by a general debate on the impact of import standards on the agricultural sector. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 23 January—The House will not be sitting.

The provisional business for the week commencing 26 January includes:

Monday 26 January—Second Reading of the Armed Forces Bill.

Tuesday 27 January—Consideration of an allocation of time motion, followed by all stages of the Medical Training (Prioritisation) Bill.

Wednesday 28 January—Opposition day (16th allotted day). Debate on a motion in the name of the official Opposition. Subject to be announced.

Thursday 29 January—General debate on Holocaust Memorial Day. The subject for this debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 30 January—The House will not be sitting.

[Jesse Norman]

I thank the Leader of the House for the clarity he has given us on the business of the House, and in particular for the rescheduling of the Diego Garcia Bill immediately after it was going to be debated, following the changes made to the Hillsborough law.

I know the whole House will want to join me in expressing our continuing concern for the people of Iran in the face of the vicious repression that they have faced and apparently may continue to face.

If I may, I want to raise two issues: one that is big and one that is small but, in its own way, also big. First, on defence and security, the Chief of the Defence Staff was in front of the Defence Committee this week. He revealed that the strategic defence review was not fully costed, despite all the assurances that were given to the Committee and to Parliament at the time.

As a result, the defence investment plan has been repeatedly delayed—until March, as it appears—because the Treasury is apparently seeking to come to terms with the fact that we are in a pre-war situation and that the actual cash spending power of many of our armed forces will barely grow over the next two years. This is an enormously important topic for the whole House. I would be grateful for the assurance of the Leader of the House that he will speak to No. 10 and the Cabinet Office to ensure that my shadow Cabinet colleagues continue to receive the appropriate security briefings that they require to do their job.

Secondly, the issue of pubs and hospitality has consumed so much of the power, concern and interest of the House. We are always apt to get lost in generalities. In a way, that is a condition of politics: we debate the laws and the general issues of the country. It is also important, however, to zero in on a particular factual situation from time to time and use that to get a wider sense of what is happening.

I will put before the House the facts of a specific case relating to hospitality. In my constituency, the Bay Horse Inn is a great country pub that sits on the outskirts of Hereford. It supports local people and serves my constituents. From April, its business rates are scheduled to rise from £31,000 to over £51,000 a year—a 67% increase. The landlord Neil tells me that energy costs have also risen to £5,500 a month. Unlike households, there is no price cap for commercial energy. Indeed, pubs are charged risk premiums and are locked into prices of nearly 40p a unit, while domestic customers pay around 28p.

The pub already pays above the minimum wage. Neil estimates that the rise in the national living wage will add £18,000 a year to his costs. Meanwhile, monthly national insurance contributions have risen by nearly 170%, and that is made worse because the higher employer contributions now exhaust the employment allowance more quickly. That is a direct tax on employing people, especially young people, and it lands hardest on small, labour-intensive businesses such as pubs. Neil has a few guest rooms at the Bay Horse, so he does not even know if he will be helped by the latest rumoured U-turn on rates support.

That is the reality of the Government’s unwillingness or inability to join up policy in relation to a key set of sectors in the economy that affect hospitality. All those increases are the result of current ministerial decisions. Every Member of the House—including every Government Member—will have pubs and hospitality businesses in their constituency in the same situation.

The Bay Horse is not just a business: it has raised over £60,000 for the Hereford Lions club; it installed a defibrillator at the landlord’s expense; it provides a place for supervised, responsible drinking; and it supports schools, the hospice and local causes year after year, yet Government policy treats it as expendable. When will Ministers start talking to each other? When will they put away the rhetoric of helping and actually get on with assisting small businesses? Can we have a debate in the House that goes into not just the specific issue of hospitality, but the generality of all the different Government policies across different Departments that make life so difficult for these hard-working, struggling local businesses?

[Sir Alan Campbell]

I certainly join the shadow Leader of the House in sending our thoughts to the people of Iran and the region at this very difficult time.

I also send our congratulations to Lord Forsyth, who was announced as the new Lord Speaker earlier this week, and I pay tribute to Lord McFall, the outgoing Lord Speaker, for his service and commitment.

I am glad to welcome the shadow Leader of the House back to his place. Last week he was on a shadow Cabinet awayday. I thought that he might want to give us a read-out on that and whether a place was set at the top table for the Leader of the Opposition’s new adviser, Nadhim Zahawi, who shortly afterwards had his own awayday when he defected to Reform. I understand from breaking news that things have got worse for the Leader of the Opposition, who has just sacked her rival and shadow Justice Secretary amid rumours that he was about to join Reform too. We watch developments with interest.

The shadow Leader of the House raised the issue of defence. As a member of the Defence Committee who takes a keen interest in these matters, he will know how difficult these decisions are, but the Government are committed to increasing defence expenditure and to taking whatever decisions are necessary to defend our country. As far as briefings are concerned, he raises an important matter about access to the information that the official Opposition require. He knows that I am a strong advocate of the role of the official Opposition—I spent quite a long time in opposition myself. It is important that the Opposition get access and I will take back to No. 10 and others his request and ensure that that happens.

The right hon. Gentleman is perfectly entitled to raise the issue of pubs, and there are some fantastic pubs in his constituency and that part of the country. I would gently remind him that 7,000 pubs closed under the Conservatives, and in the Budget we put in £4.3 billion of support over three years to help pubs deal with the transition from the support that they previously received. On top of that, other measures that we have taken include easing licensing to help pubs offer drinks more flexibly, maintaining our cut to draught alcohol duty and capping corporation tax. We do recognise that pubs are still worried and many of them are in a difficult situation, and that is why the Chancellor has commissioned work examining a pub support package. That is not just words, as the shadow Leader of the House suggested: it is action.

In terms of joined-up policy across Government, of course the Government are joining up our approach, especially on the economy. The House may have noticed this morning that performance statistics show that waiting lists are down by 312,000, and more people are being treated within 18 weeks. November saw the second biggest monthly drop in waiting lists in 15 years. The Government also announced this week that we will deliver Northern Powerhouse Rail, a multibillion pound investment that will create a turn-up-and-go railway across the northern growth corridor of Liverpool, Manchester, Bradford, Leeds, Sheffield and York. We have also launched the first ever town of culture competition, which will boost local pride and celebrate the unique stories of our towns, not just in urban areas but in rural areas. Today is national pothole day—although the Leader of the Opposition may think it is national dig-yourself-into-a-hole day—and the Government have provided a record £7.3 billion of funding for local roads, announced in the Budget, allowing councils to get on and fix our roads. That demonstrates that this Government are getting on with the job.