Business of the House

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Thursday 9th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Leader of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lucy Powell]

So there we have it: confirmation that the Government have given up on governing. The Prime Minister’s first and likely only King’s Speech, and what should be his moment of maximum power and authority—yet it was not, because he is too weak, he has no burning agenda, he cannot escape his Government’s own record and he certainly cannot be the change the country is crying out for. The verdict is in: “thin gruel”, “damp squib”, “dull as ditchwater”, “a series of gimmicks”, and a Prime Minister who had

“already checked out, his wheelie was at the door”.

Those are not my words, but those of Conservative Members. The Leader of the House knows it and they know it: yet another failed reset. They are out of ideas and out of road—“drifting to defeat”, as one has put it today.

The programme is so thin it is embarrassing. Of the few Bills announced, five are carry-overs, four are barely longer than a page, three we have seen before and the flagship crime Bill has already been shelved. Despite the big issues facing our country, the Government’s answers are so small. There is nothing to tackle the cost of living crisis, just a Prime Minister deluded that everything is going great, and even getting his own figures wrong. There is nothing on NHS waiting lists or mental health, despite a Bill being promised many times. Education has been consigned to lofty ambitions years away. There is nothing of substance on transport, despite Network North being the Prime Minister’s last big reset—another flunk. However, the Government have found time for the regulation of pedicabs and a Bill to make it easier to sack doctors. Do the Government really think that sacking doctors is the solution to an NHS crisis?

Other Bills are political stunts, not fixing problems. Take North sea gas and oil. Can the Leader of the House confirm that we already have regular North sea licensing and that it has not prevented the worst cost of living crisis in generations? Can she also confirm that, in the midst of that crisis driven by energy bills, the grand offer of this King’s Speech is a Bill that, by the admission of the Energy Secretary, will do absolutely nothing about bills? The only way to bring down bills and get energy security is by going further and faster on cheap renewables. Instead, this Government are retreating and spending billions subsidising gas, the price of which is set globally anyway. It is politics first, country second.

Then there is the so-called flagship crime Bill—a Bill that has had to go back to the drawing board. The Prime Minister is too weak to stand up to his Home Secretary, who wants to criminalise giving homeless people tents because she thinks it is a lifestyle choice—despicable. We all know what she is up to; it is naked. Instead of sacking her, the Prime Minister cowers next to her. He is cowering next to her today, too. She is out of control. She is utterly irresponsible, undermining the police while stoking up division ahead of a difficult and important weekend. She is unhinged. Does the Leader of the House agree with the Home Secretary that police officers are playing favourites in this case? But the Prime Minister is so weak that he cannot rein in the Home Secretary. He is so weak that he could not even get his own ideas into his own King’s Speech—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I do not like the term “unhinged”. I understand that tensions are running very high, but I want us to try to moderate our language.

[Lucy Powell]

I will withdraw that, Mr Speaker, and I will ask my questions instead.

Nutrient neutrality has been dropped to avoid another embarrassing defeat. Whatever happened to the motorists Bill, briefed several times as the Prime Minister’s big idea? It is nowhere this week. The ban on conversion therapy? Dropped.

One of the Prime Minister’s pet projects did make it into the King’s Speech though: a Bill on autonomous vehicles. But the joke being made on the Tory WhatsApp groups is that it is their own Government that is the driverless car. I can tell the Leader of the House that Labour is revving up. There is much that we would do. We would bring in a fiscal responsibility lock, so that mortgage payers never again pay the price of Conservative failure. We would ban water bosses’ bonuses and clean up our rivers; end non-dom tax breaks and have more doctors and teachers; change planning laws to build more affordable homes; levy a proper windfall tax; and set up GB energy. We would make work pay, legislate for proper leasehold reform and rights for renters, tackle crime and violence against women and girls, introduce a skills and growth levy, and pass real rail and bus reform—the list goes on.

The Prime Minister was right about one thing: this country needs change. But his programme offers more of the same: weakness, failure, political stunts and division. This Government have given up on governing and are preparing for jobs in opposition, but take it from me: Opposition is not all it is cracked up to be. It is a privilege to have the power of Government and a majority in this place. Is not the biggest travesty of all that they do not even want it any more?

--- Later in debate ---

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for the work he is doing. He raises an important point, and if he were to apply for a debate, I am sure it would be well attended. The Department of Health and Social Care invests about £1 billion a year in research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research, and that institution welcomes funding applications on any aspect of health research. Its expenditure on cancer research in the last financial year was over £100 million. I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important matter, and I shall draw the attention of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to what he has said.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

Before her rapid rise to her current role as the Leader of the House, the right hon. Lady briefly served as Minister for Women and Equalities. There is—believe it or not—still such a role in this Tory Government. I raise that because recently there have been some absolutely shocking insights into the Government’s attitudes to women and equalities that give us an opportunity to assess her Government’s record, and—spoiler alert for her—it is grotesque.

First, we had the stomach-churning misogyny in language and behaviour described by witnesses at the covid inquiry. I imagine that even the Leader of the House would find it hard to defend the routine and disgraceful attacks on women in a Government she served. It told us so much. We then had the United Nations rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Oliver De Schutter, telling the right hon. Lady’s Government that their record on poverty was “simply not acceptable” and was violating international laws. That surprises no one who sees the effects of her Government’s cruel policies day in and day out. Then a former Tory chair joined the fray by saying that there was “rot at the heart” of the party she was once so proud to be a member of—a rot at the heart of Government.

What we are talking about is the Tory Government’s values, and those values are not Scotland’s values. Their values suggest that the way to help the homeless is to ban charities from supplying tents to rough sleepers—it is a “lifestyle choice” to be homeless, is it not? Those comments were so misjudged that even the Prime Minister was embarrassed. They have the values that say, “We don’t care if we break international laws on poverty and the human rights of the poorest”, and that women can be dismissed in the foulest way imaginable as a part of normal behaviour. Simon Case, the country’s most senior civil servant, said that he had

“never seen a bunch of people less well-equipped to run a country”.

He should know.

Can we have a debate on the Tory Government’s values and what 13 years under this “brutal and useless” Government have done to progress women and equalities and the interests of the most vulnerable among us in this far from United Kingdom?