Business of the House

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Thursday 16th April 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 20 April will include:

Monday 20 April—Consideration of Lords message on the Victims and Courts Bill, followed by consideration of Lords message on the Crime and Policing Bill.

Tuesday 21 April—Consideration of Lords amendments to the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill.

Wednesday 22 April—If necessary, consideration of Lords message on the Pension Schemes Bill, followed by, if necessary, consideration of Lords message on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, followed by, if necessary, consideration of Lords message on the Crime and Policing Bill.

Thursday 23 April—General debate on the contribution of allied health professionals, followed by general debate on reform of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 24 April—The House will not be sitting.

The provisional business for the week commencing 27 April includes:

Monday 27 April—If necessary, consideration of Lords message on the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, followed by, if necessary, consideration of Lords messages.

Tuesday 28 April—Consideration of Lords messages.

Wednesday 29 April—Consideration of Lords messages.

[Jesse Norman]

As the House will know, this has been a week of sporting triumph. I think of the Lionesses’ 1-0 world cup qualifier against the world champions, Italy—or former world champions, I should say—and Rory McIlroy defending his Masters title, which was another great moment. Whether or not we play, watch, or even like golf, it was an extraordinary, gripping achievement.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

And he is from Northern Ireland.

[Jesse Norman]

And he is from Northern Ireland to boot. He is an honest man facing his demons and triumphing. What a contrast with the Prime Minister’s failure to answer, or even to engage with, the question at Prime Minister’s questions. The last four Prime Minister’s questions have focused on the Iran war, fuel duty, North sea oil and gas, and the defence review. Of the 24 responses given by the Prime Minister to the Leader of the Opposition, 23 have ignored the question and changed the subject. Yesterday, Mr Speaker, we even saw the Prime Minister hectoring you in your Chair, on live television, just for doing your job. That is a shameful record, for which the Prime Minister should write to you—and therefore by implication to this House—and apologise. This behaviour is contemptuous—of you, Mr Speaker, of the Leader of the Opposition, and of all MPs, now and in years gone by.

Our job, however imperfectly we may do it, is to pursue the truth on behalf of those we represent. If we give that up, then heaven help us. It is the Prime Minister’s job to answer, and to hold himself accountable for those answers. No Prime Minister likes to do that, but those are the rules. If the Prime Minister does not like the rules, does not want to offer honest answers, or is not up to it, he should step back and let someone else do the job instead. I thank you, Mr Speaker, on behalf of all of us for maintaining the traditions of this House. I have three questions for the Leader of the House today, and I ask him first if he shares my view that the Prime Minister’s behaviour is wholly inappropriate and disrespectful of this House.

This is just part of a wider problem to do with accountability and disrespect for Parliament. My noble Friend Lord Gilbert’s parliamentary question of 16 March asked the Government about authorised Budget briefings to the media. Lord Livermore replied on the Government’s behalf:

“Consistent with these principles, there are occasions where the Government will trail and/or announce policy ahead of a Budget to provide context and help the public understand major fiscal events.”

This is nonsense. The rules are perfectly clear: major events must be announced first to this House. To do otherwise is a breach of the rules of this House, a flagrant violation of the ministerial code and contempt of Parliament. Previous Governments, as we all know, have done this on occasion, since 1997 at least, and previous Chancellors of the Exchequer have been fired for inadvertent briefings to the media before a Budget, but never before has it been a Government’s declared policy to ignore Parliament.

The deeper constitutional point is, of course, that in our representative system of government, the people are Parliament, and Parliament is the people. Nothing good can come of an attempt to undermine the British constitution by this means. I ask the Leader of the House, secondly, to comment on this, and to set out what he will do to get this policy of non-announcement of major measures withdrawn and revoked.

Finally, Lord Robertson spoke of the “corrosive complacency” of current political leadership, and of putting our country at risk. He said,

“We cannot defend Britain with an ever-expanding welfare budget.”

No one has more experience and expertise on defence across the whole of Parliament, in both Chambers. This man, the noble Lord Robertson, was a political activist for Labour since 1961. Just think. He is the last person one could imagine wanting to offer public criticism of a Labour Prime Minister, let alone in these terms—a man Labour to his boots, but a patriot first.

It is impossible to blame previous Governments for this. This Government and this Prime Minister created the defence review and the defence investment plan—no one else. It is their choice and their decision. It matters because in every constituency across the country there are companies wanting to know what the Government have decided. They are waiting for leadership. They need to know the numbers and the commitment, and, of course, our adversaries need to know that we are serious in our resolve, and they need to see the measure of that seriousness. My great fear—perhaps it is also Lord Robertson’s great fear—is that the Government will never publish this document, or they will do so in a completely insubstantial and lightweight way, and that 10 months of delay will end in nothing, and it will all have been a colossal waste of time and energy. The Prime Minister has been utterly hopeless on this. He told the Liaison Committee weeks ago that the document was on his desk, yet nothing has happened. I leave it to colleagues to judge the truth of his remarks.

I ask the Leader of the House, thirdly, if he will give this House a cast-iron guarantee on behalf of the Government that the defence investment plan will be published, and not simply shelved and forgotten. The one-year anniversary is in July.

[Sir Alan Campbell]

First, my thoughts are with our servicemen and women currently serving in the middle east. As the as the situation unfolds, our highest priority is to ensure the safety of our people in the region. My thoughts are also with those affected by the terrible attempted attack on the Finchley Reform synagogue. I am sure that the House will join me in thanking the police and emergency services for their swift action.

This week has seen the 37th anniversary of the disaster at Hillsborough. My thoughts are with the family and friends of those who died. As the Prime Minister reaffirmed yesterday, the Government are committed to delivering legislation and introducing a duty of candour across all public services.

I also want to pay tribute to Lord Jeremy Beecham. Lord Beecham was an incredibly influential and dedicated politician who was respected across the political divide. His dedication to the city of Newcastle changed the city into what it is today. I know that the whole House will join me in sending condolences to his family and friends.

During recess, we published our plan to halve knife crime. At the core of that plan is prevention, providing safe spaces in communities and supporting schools and families to address root causes. That means giving an alternative path to young people, which will literally save lives.

We have also announced our intention to invest £237 million to expand community diagnostic centres across England. Four CDCs will open, 17 will be expanded and 15 will receive enhancements to boost diagnostic capacity and get patients seen quicker. That means patients will be able to get swifter results, which is really important, and get them closer to home, which again is important. This week, over 500 new free breakfast clubs also began to open their doors, helping parents with the cost of living and giving children a healthy start to the day.

I turn now to the remarks of the shadow Leader of the House. If I may, I will deal broadly with his first two questions together. He referred first to the way in which the Prime Minister addressed the questions put to him yesterday, and secondly announcements made outside the House and whether the House should be the first to hear. The right hon. Gentleman has been here a very, very long time—[Interruption.] Well, a long time—let me put it that way. Not as long as me, but a long time. Frankly, we have both been here long enough to know better than to ask the questions he did. I know why he did so, and I understand exactly what the point is at the heart of it, but all Prime Ministers deal with Prime Minister’s questions in their own way. It is not unusual for any Prime Minister or any Minister not to give the answer that the Opposition want on a particular day, so let us not kid ourselves that we are entering a new chapter on that.

The shadow Leader of the House talked about announcements to the House. He actually said that the previous Government “on occasion” made announcements outside the House. On occasion? I think it was on occasion that they actually made the announcements in the House.

But there is a serious point, which I will address. I am absolutely clear, and I have said from the Dispatch Box before, that serious announcements should be made at the earliest convenience in the House. But we understand that politics is done in a different environment from how it was done a decade or two decades before: to some extent, it is a moving environment, and Government is working in that environment, too. However, I do take the shadow Leader of the House’s point, and I have said that announcements should be made in the House at the earliest opportunity.

Let me turn to the comments of Lord Robertson. The Prime Minister made his and the Government’s view clear on that. The shadow Leader of the House asked about the defence plan. It will be delivered, and the House will have an opportunity to debate the plan. I do accept that perhaps it has taken longer than any of us would have wished; let me give the House three reasons why that is so. The first is that we inherited a defence budget that was totally out of control and which had been mismanaged for the past 14 years. It had been, in the words of a previous Defence Secretary, hollowed out—and that was not a previous Labour Defence Secretary but a previous Conservative Defence Secretary. That is the first reason why it takes time to put this right and turn it around.

The second reason, and I think the shadow Leader of the House knows this because he is a distinguished member of the Defence Committee, is that we inherited an economic mess. If we are going to put defence right, we have to have the money to do that. Again, the right hon. Gentleman understands that, because he has all but admitted in this place that he is a secret Keynesian at heart. [Interruption.] He has admitted to it. Don’t worry; he has owned up to it. The point is that he understands, as do most people, that our economic inheritance was absolutely appalling, and we have to get that right too before we can press ahead with our commitments to properly fund defence.

The third point that is relevant here is that the botched Brexit deal left us diplomatically isolated, and the Prime Minister has personally invested a great deal of his time and energy to build alliances with our allies, not least in Europe. Those alliances are important as we look at the question of defence in a moving international situation and of where defence will be as we move forward. I cannot accept the analysis or the suggestion by the Leader of the Opposition that somehow, at the election, it was day zero and nothing that happened before that has any impact on the way in which this Government are forced to face up to those difficult decisions. We will publish the plan and there will be an opportunity to debate it.

Let me finish on this: I understand the shadow Leader of the House’s point about companies, and obviously there needs to be some certainty. However, let me just rid him of the suggestion that everyone is waiting for announcements and nothing is happening. Contracts are being issued all the time, and more than 80% of contracts in the last two years have gone to British companies, which is in stark contrast to the performance of the previous Government.