Business of the House
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
I thank all colleagues who will be marking Holocaust Memorial Day this week and, in particular, those taking part in the debate later. Clearly, it has additional significance this year.
I join the hon. Lady in paying tribute to Lord John Tomlinson, and I thank her for her tribute. I also send my deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Sir Graham Bright, the former Member for Luton East and for Luton South. He served this House and his constituents for 18 years, and this included being John Major’s Parliamentary Private Secretary. He is perhaps best known for his private Member’s Bill that became the Video Recordings Act 1984, which required all commercial video recordings offered for sale or hire within the UK to carry a classification. Legend has it that during the passage of the Bill he had to explain to the Prime Minister of the day what particular acts performed on camera warranted particular ratings. Given that that Prime Minister was Margaret Thatcher, that alone would have warranted his knighthood. Many colleagues have spoken very fondly of him over the past few days, and he will be much missed.
Let me also thank two delegations to Parliament this week: the families of Liri Elbag, Eliya Cohen, Idan Shtivi, and Ziv and Gali Berman, who are five of the many hostages still held in Gaza—we must not rest until they are all home—and the Ukrainian delegation, to whom I conveyed our deepest respect and solidarity for all they are doing to protect our freedom. I wish President Zelensky, “Z dnem narodzhennya” and all in the House a happy Burns night.
Let me turn to the hon. Lady’s points. She spoke about the work the House of Commons Commission, on which we both serve, has been doing on the exclusion of Members of Parliament who are considered to be a risk to others on the estate. She will know, because she is on the Commission, that we agree with the proposal that has been brought forward. We were waiting for a motion to be brought to us by the House. That happened late last week, and we will shortly table that motion for Members to see and then bring it forward.
The hon. Lady mentioned the work that the Procedure Committee has done on Lord Cameron, the Foreign Secretary. I thank its members for their work and the hon. Lady for the evidence she gave to that inquiry. We have received that report this week and will shortly be responding to it. I hear her plea to act before next Wednesday, but she should have said next Tuesday, because that is when the next FCDO questions are.
I join in what the hon. Lady says about the work that the Jo Cox Foundation has done through the Commission. It is very important that we protect democracy. We all know that democracy is under attack, and civility in politics is incredibly important, as was demonstrated, as she said, in the form of the late Sir Tony Lloyd.
In that spirit of the Commission’s recommendations, let me deal with the charges that the hon. Lady has made against our record and that Labour has levelled against our Prime Minister. Our Prime Minister is a man whose migrant parents made sacrifices to ensure that he could have a good start in life. He worked hard to make the best use of every opportunity he was afforded—he studied hard, he pushed himself. He had many career options, but he chose a life in public service representing God’s own country. He protected this nation and livelihoods from the greatest financial and health crisis since the second world war. He has risen through hard work, courage and determination to be this country’s first British-Asian Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister has shown global leadership on many challenges facing this country. He is a wonderful dad. He gives quietly to charities. He runs for his local hospice. He is a cricket fanatic. He still attends home games at the football club he supports, despite being Prime Minister and despite it being Southampton. He is a shareholder in three community pubs and patron of the Leyburn brass band. He does not just get Britain; he represents the best of Great Britain—the greatest things we have to offer the world, including our values of hard work, enterprise, taking personal responsibility and helping others.
He is in no way confused about where his duty lies. People will not find him taxing education or denying others the opportunities he has had; voting against strengthening our borders; siding with militant trade unions against the public; compromising our energy security or nuclear deterrent; opposing the deportation of foreign criminals; scratching his head about the monarchy; ducking difficult issues; or supporting the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). If the Leader of the Opposition is a weathervane, our Prime Minister is a signpost. He knows what he stands for, he knows where the country needs to go, he has a plan to get us there and that plan is working.
Further business will be announced in the usual way.
Mr Speaker
That brings me to a slightly difficult problem. Bob Blackman is meant to be representing the Backbench Business Committee, to tell us about its business, but unfortunately he is not here, so I now call the spokesperson for the Scottish National party.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
I associate myself with the remarks about Holocaust Memorial Day. I ask the House to note that tonight is Burns night, when we celebrate the work of Scotland’s great national bard.
A new year, a new Tory civil war—just what the UK needs—with talk of doom loops, massacres and extinctions. If only Members of the Leader of the House’s party had listened to her the last time she wooed them for leadership. She warned them that if they voted for the former Chancellor as leader it would “murder the party”. I know that the Leader of the House is furiously busy with all her “Minister for clickbait” responsibilities—those anti-Scottish articles and sneering videos do not write themselves—but as her Government grind, punch-drunk and exhausted, to an election, should we not debate some of the key legacies of the last 14 years of Tory rule?
Where should we start? There are still the scandalously unresolved scandals, such as infected blood, the WASPI women—Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign—and Post Office Horizon, to name a very few, but has the Leader of the House had time to reflect on recent comments from Sir Michael Marmot, professor of public health at University College London? He said that Britain in 2024 is starting to suffer from Victorian diseases again, and that
“Britain has become a poor country with a few rich people…it’s worse to be poor in Britain than in most other European countries…. Poor people in Britain have a lower income than Slovenia.”
Perhaps the Leader of the House will cast her eye over the latest Joseph Rowntree Foundation report, which says that more than one in five people were in poverty in 2021-22, with about 6 million in “very deep poverty” that same year. Has she not managed to look at that yet? That is unsurprising, as the Tories seem genuinely untroubled by poverty in the UK. My colleagues and I have asked them about it many times, but their eyes just glaze over—comfortable, I guess, with the choices they have made, as the PM has said.
Perhaps we should start our Tory legacy debates with an emerging threat. The Electoral Commission chair warned recently that the Government’s strict new rules on voter ID risk excluding certain voter groups and leave the Conservative party open to the charge of bias. I and many others have thought for some time that this was simply an attempt at voter suppression from the Government, so does the Leader of the House agree with an erstwhile Cabinet colleague that the new Tory rules are simply, as he put it, an attempt at “gerrymandering”? Will she bring a debate on this important issue to the House before the next general election?
Penny Mordaunt
What a bunch of rotters we are, with our anti-Scottish articles. It appears that the hon. Lady is planning to follow in the footsteps of many a great antipodean election guru by using a brilliant new strategy of equating criticism of the SNP’s performance with criticism of Scotland itself. The latter is a landmass of approximately 30,000 square miles, populated by brilliant, creative, stoic people; the former is a ramshackle separatist movement, full of people who have turned maladministration into an art form.
There is one tiny flaw in this new political tactic from the SNP: if we Conservatives dislike Scotland so much, for some reason the hon. Lady never gets round to explaining, why on earth would we strive so hard to keep it part of the Union of the United Kingdom? Why would this Conservative Government give Scotland the largest funding settlement it has ever had? Why would we have offered its citizens who were waiting for NHS treatment additional help and options, which the Scottish Government turned down?
If I wanted to do Scotland down, I would join, donate and campaign for the SNP, to whose members I would point out that the trailblazer for bringing back Victorian diseases to Britain is Glasgow. Watching the hon. Lady’s inaction, and that of her party, is like watching your much-loved neighbourhood being clobbered by a bunch of gangsters—let us call them the “hole in the budget” gang—hitting businesses, taking your cash, making your life a misery and keeping the local police force very busy. This new political strategy from the SNP, like everything else that it does, will fail.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to make a statement next week on the instructions to the advocate for his Department at the Holocaust Memorial Bill Select Committee? Yesterday, on a number of occasions, the lead advocate said that the design had not been awarded to Sir David Adjaye, or that he was not the architect.
I refer the Leader of the House to the press notice on 24 October 2017, in which the Department and the Cabinet Office said that Sir David and his team would design the memorial; the then Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sir Sajid Javid), and the Mayor of London congratulated Sir David; and Sir David was quoted as saying that it was “architecture as emotion”.
I believe that the advocate may have inadvertently told the Committee things that are clearly contradicted by the facts six years ago, and by every other quotation until Sir David Adjaye became a name that could not be mentioned.
Will the Leader of the House please ask the Secretary of State to consider making a statement to correct what was said to the Committee yesterday, and perhaps acknowledge the four holocaust survivors who gave evidence, and look at what they said?
Business of the House
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(3 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
The whole House will soon have an opportunity to pay tribute to our late colleague Tony Lloyd. People may not know, and the hon. Lady may not have had an opportunity to do that, so I thank her for her tribute today. Let me place on record my deepest sympathies for all who loved him. The tributes paid to him already illustrate his gentle and kind nature, and the breadth and depth of his public service. As the hon. Lady testified, he was still doing that right up until the end.
I also thank the families of those held hostage by Hamas for again coming to Parliament this week to talk about their loved ones. We will all keep them at the forefront of our minds and do all we can to bring them home. I remind the House that Kfir Bibas turns one today in captivity. I also wish both His Majesty the King and Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales a speedy recovery.
I thank the hon. Lady for again raising the important issue of infected blood. This session follows Cabinet Office questions, in which a number of things were placed on record both by the Paymaster General and by Members. I again remind the House that the compensation study was established acknowledging the moral case for compensation, that the study should be concurrent to the inquiry, and that the inquiry and the study could make reference to each other. The reason for that was to ensure that we could arrive as swiftly as possible at a compensation package for all those affected by this appalling scandal. I do not disagree with any hon. Member who believes that we should not have to wait.
As the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on haemophilia and contaminated blood, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), said in the Cabinet Office questions, the Government now have all the information to arrive at a compensation scheme in those inquiries, which is why the Paymaster General is making progress on exactly that. We are acutely aware of that moral imperative and what both the study and the inquiry have said on this matter so far. This House has also been clear in its desire to see that appalling scandal resolved quickly. I refer the hon. Lady to what the Paymaster General just said at the Dispatch Box with regard to legislation, but I am kept regularly informed of progress that he, the Treasury and other Departments are making on this matter. I expect more news on that important point in the coming weeks.
The hon. Lady referred to my article, and I thank her for the publicity. I argued that we should ensure that the consumer is king again. We have some challenging new monopolies—the natural monopolies of water companies —and the online giants, and we need to ensure that the customer is king. That is what the Government have been doing, through our legislation to improve competition and the work we are taking forward with regulators on a whole raft of things, from energy bills to other consumer issues. We can do because we have a plan. We have a plan on all the issues facing the public.
I expect praise from those on my own Benches, but I was much encouraged at the praise we heard yesterday from the Opposition Benches. One Labour Member, the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson), was urging a focus on reducing the backlog and ending hotel use. She said:
“The Conservatives started this work by employing some temporary new officers and it started to work”.
She went on:
“The Tories have also started smashing the gangs through the work they are doing in France.”—[Official Report, 17 January 2023; Vol. 743, c. 972.]
She was right. On that priority, she could have added that crossings are down by 36% this year, the Albanian returns scheme has seen a 93% fall in arrivals, and we have dismantled, alongside the French, 82 organised criminal gangs. We are making progress on that and other areas. The health statistics announced show that the waiting list figures the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) mentioned are coming down. These are not easy problems, particularly because of the recovery from the pandemic and the global situation on prices and supply chains, but we have a plan and we are methodically working through it with zero assistance from the Labour party.
On any issue and priority, we are sticking to that plan. The reason we can do that and are not being blown off course is that we have some principles backing it up. Unlike the Labour party, we understand our duty to the people of this country, whether that is setting up inquiries into infected blood and the Horizon scandal, or on the people’s priorities, which are also the Prime Minister’s five top priorities. We have never wavered in our duty to the people of this country. We have never wavered in our support to protect our country’s borders and protect the defence of the realm, unlike the hon. Lady’s party which has six current shadow Cabinet members who voted against our continuous at-sea deterrent. We are working to strengthen our borders and stop the boats. The Labour party has voted consistently against that legislation. We believe in supporting minimum service standards on vital public health services, including health and transport. Labour has opposed that. And we have taken tough decisions on helping the economy, including controlling borrowing, which is why inflation is down by 60% since October and the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts inflation falling to 2.8% this year. Labour’s stated policy on fiscal rules and spending means that it will have to raise taxes if it wants to stick to those fiscal rules, but it has not said what and when.
On all those things, we have a plan and it is working. We are going to stick to it, despite what the Labour party is doing. Labour has no plan, just a big fat bill for taxpayers.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
I agree with a great deal of what the shadow Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) said about Tony Lloyd, and I agree with much, if not all, that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said on party politics, having a plan and delivering for the British people.
Next week, the Select Committee on the Holocaust Memorial Bill continues its hearings. It had three sessions this week and transcripts can be made available in the Vote Office. One issue that comes up is the Government’s continued failure to publish the minutes of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation from 2015 to 2016. There was a consultation on a site for the proposed memorial and learning centre. The consultants analysed the responses and shortlisted three. Two days later the Government produced an alternative option, which was Victoria Tower Gardens.
No one outside the Department has seen the comparisons between the merits of Victoria Tower Gardens and other possible sites. No one has seen the minutes of discussion changing the specification behind the backs of the public. Will my right hon. Friend look to see the redactions made by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and why it is continuing to instruct lawyers to oppose the freedom of information request, which is vital to the work of the Select Committee? Through her, may I recommend to the Select Committee asking for that information and making it public?
Mr Speaker
I presume that the Father of the House is asking for a debate on the matter as well.
Penny Mordaunt
I know that this issue, which my hon. Friend raises almost weekly, is of great concern to him, and that he wants to ensure that the final outcome of the process is as good as it can be. I will again make sure that the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has heard what he has said. The next session of questions to the Secretary of State will be on 22 January, and my hon. Friend may wish to raise the matter with him directly. This is the kind of information that should be in the public domain, so that people can make good decisions, although on some matters—relating to security concerns, for example—it may be sensible to redact.
Penny Mordaunt
I thank my hon. Friend for putting on record his beautiful tribute to Tony Lloyd. It would be wonderful if such tributes could also be heard in Strasbourg.
My hon. Friend is right that it is vital that commissioners are held to account. Our NHS will not function properly without accountability and choice. The former Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), undertook work on patient outcomes data and the quality of commissioning in each board and across the UK, which will help to drive accountability. Now that we have that data, I am sure it will make for a very interesting debate. My hon. Friend knows how to apply for a debate, and he may also wish to raise this matter with the Secretary of State on 23 January.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
I add my condolences to the family and friends of Tony Lloyd. Last night, in the local I frequent in Kennington, Tony was remembered with great fondness by the regulars. The manager, who is also a friend of mine, asked me to make it known that he really respected, loved and missed Tony Lloyd. He will be missed by all in the House. He was probably the nicest Manchester United supporter I have ever come across.
I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business for next week and the Backbench Business debates for Thursday. There will also be a Select Committee statement from the Procedure Committee on Commons scrutiny of Secretaries of State in the House of Lords. If we are allocated time on Thursday 1 February, we have lined up two debates, one on miners and mining communities, and one on freedom and democracy in Iran.
We are approaching the tabling of supplementary estimates, and the Backbench Business Committee will soon publish information on the application process for a day of debates in the Chamber. The Committee is keen to receive applications for Westminster Hall debates, particularly for Thursdays.
I apologise to the Leader of the House, because last week I raised the subject of the Tyne bridge, which I raised again at Prime Minister’s questions yesterday, but it is a matter of urgency and I will quickly explain why. The Tyne bridge and its surrounding buildings are the furthest inland nesting place for kittiwakes. If we do not get the work started before the kittiwakes return from their wintering, it will become increasingly difficult because it will mean disturbing kittiwake nests. We do not want to do that, so we want to get on with the work. There is urgency from an environmental perspective, but also from a financial perspective. The work really needs to be started as soon as possible. I thank the Leader of the House for writing to the Department for Transport on my behalf last week, but I would like her to understand the urgency of why we need to do that.
I apologise, Mr Speaker, that I miss next week’s business questions, as I will be on Select Committee business.
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his very helpful advert to all Members for forthcoming debates. I will ensure that the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has also heard the hon. Gentleman’s concerns about the bridge and, again, I will ask the Department for Transport to lean in.
Business of the House
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(3 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
Happy new year to you, Mr Speaker, and to all colleagues. This week, I was delighted to welcome holocaust survivor Mala Tribich to the Commons, where she viewed the exhibition in Portcullis House. I encourage all Members to see it.
I am sure that I speak for the whole House in saying that our thoughts remain with the hostages still kept captive in Gaza—next week sees us pass the 100th day since they were taken—just as our thoughts remain with all the innocent people caught up in those events.
May I also give a shout out to the Royal Navy’s rowing team, HMS Oardacious, who are rowing across the Atlantic for mental health support? With just 500 nautical miles to go, they may land before next week’s business questions, and they are currently 100 miles ahead of the next team.
I turn to the substantive issue that the hon. Lady raised: the Post Office scandal. She will know about the existing legislation announced on 29 November, but it is to be welcomed that we are now taking unprecedented steps to quash convictions. That work is well under way, and we want to bring it to the House swiftly. The House will be aware of the risks outlined by the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), but I think we will find them necessary.
While the inquiry will look at some of the issues raised in this place, the hon. Lady is right that we should reflect now on what we could learn, and in particular what we should conclude about the powers given to arm’s length bodies of the state and what operational independence should mean for those organisations. Subsequent Conservative Administrations have been right in gripping and trying to resolve some difficult and long-running issues, from Windrush to the apology given by the noble Lord Cameron to the Hillsborough families, the apology given by the current Prime Minister to former members of our armed forces who had been shamed and driven out of service for being gay, and the 2017 infected blood inquiry and the later compensation study, which will make some amends for the decades of injustice and suffering that those people have endured. I am optimistic that we will reach some justice for those affected this year; I know that the Paymaster General is working hard to do that.
We were right to have a full public inquiry into the Horizon Post Office scandal, and we have rightly heard much about that this week, including in statements and urgent questions. I pay tribute to all right hon. and hon. Members and to the noble Lord Arbuthnot for the work they have done on this issue. I also pay tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton. In 2021, as a Back Bencher, he was fighting hard for sub-postmasters, and he has diligently pursued this issue in his ministerial role. That is his record on this issue and on much else, too. I remind the House that when he was chair of the all-party parliamentary group on fair business banking, he helped people whose businesses had been deliberately and cynically destroyed by their lenders, winning compensation from Lloyds, HBOS and Royal Bank of Scotland to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds. He is a very good man, and I know that he will bring forward legislation on this issue quickly.
The hon. Lady mentioned NHS performance data. Monthly performance data shows that in November overall waiting lists fell by more than 95,000 from October, down to 7.6 million. There were also 60,000 fewer patients waiting for care in November than in the previous month, and 112,000 fewer than in September. We have some difficult issues to deal with post pandemic, but the Prime Minister’s plan is working, and the new Secretary of State for Health is bringing forward further measures. As the hon. Lady will know, we have stood up an enormous number of new services and new healthcare professionals as well as immense numbers of new diagnostic centres, and we are vastly increasing the number of operations that can take place.
I do not wish to take any lectures from the hon. Lady on performance in the NHS. I point her to what Labour is doing in Wales, where I think the current situation in terms of waiting lists is four times worse than in England. Nor will I take any lessons on tax from a party that is clobbering British citizens where it is in power. It is doubling rates in Wales, and its London Mayor is clobbering hard-working people and charities with the ultra low emission zone. He has just capitulated to the militant trade unions on transport but does not know where to find the money to do that. Labour is soft on crime; the Met’s £70 million black hole in its budget demonstrates that. Time and again, where Labour is in power, it shows that it is not on the side of the British people.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
My right hon. Friend rightly mentioned the holocaust exhibition, and you, Mr Speaker, will lead the holocaust service in a few days’ time. Recently, I met holocaust survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who said that the proposed memorial in Victoria Tower Gardens was too small for its purpose and too large for the park.
The hybrid Committee will meet on Tuesday and Wednesday next week. Will my right hon. Friend consider talking to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to see whether they could put up scaffolding on a temporary basis to show the amount of space taken by the box of the so-called learning centre, and perhaps some plywood boards to illustrate the 23 fins that are supposed to be there? Then, we could go round the outside of the park to see whether it is visible, and see from inside how much damage it does to that well-loved park.
Penny Mordaunt
I know that my hon. Friend continues to press on this particular project. He will know that I am limited in what I can do to assist him, but I will write to the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to make sure that he has heard, again, what my hon. Friend has said.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
Bliadhna mhath ùr—happy new year to you, Mr Speaker, and to everyone in this place and watching.
Some positive news to start our first business questions of 2024: recent data from the Office for National Statistics and the Scottish Parliament Information Centre—the Commons Library equivalent—shows that Scotland’s gender pay gap is at a record low, and almost half that of the UK as a whole. Women’s weekly full-time pay has risen more than 10% in the last year. Any gap is, of course, too high, but I am sure that the Leader of the House would like to acknowledge the Scottish Government’s gender pay gap action plan, the first in the UK, which undoubtedly has helped to achieve those welcome results.
The Leader of the House’s Government could take several steps to help end the gender pay gap and advance equality right across these isles. After repeatedly shelving the employment Bill, they could finally act to make workplaces fairer, particularly in the current cost of living crisis, which we know impacts women more. They could legislate for mandatory gender and ethnicity pay gap reporting. They could finally deliver compensation for WASPI women—Women Against State Pension Inequality —who have waited far too long to receive justice. More broadly, they could tackle the gender pension gap, as yearly incomes among pensioners are on average more than £7,000 lower for women.
While the Leader of the House considers her response to those suggestions, could she also respond to reports in the media that her Government blocked a minority ethnic woman from joining the board of Channel 4 without offering a reason? I am curious to hear what action she took in response to the recent comments by the Home Secretary, and whether she will condemn them now. They do nothing to dispel perceptions that a culture of misogyny in the UK Government is hampering progress on these issues. As she is a former Minister for Women and Equalities, I am sure that these matters are close to her heart, so will she support a debate on them, where perhaps some solutions might finally be agreed?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank my right hon. Friend both for his question and for the diligent work he and his colleagues have done in raising the profile and shining a spotlight on the incredible heritage of crafts and skills that we ought to celebrate retaining and to educate others about. I shall certainly write to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Given that my right hon. Friend has just missed departmental questions today, I will ask her to inform him about the timetable.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
Mr Speaker, I wish you and Members across the House a very happy new year.
I thank the Leader of the House for the business statement and for announcing the Backbench Business for next Thursday. I give her advance notice that we have a heavily subscribed application for a debate on Holocaust Memorial Day on Thursday 25 January, if we are allocated the time. Holocaust Memorial Day itself is on 27 January.
The Backbench Business Committee would very much welcome applications for debate slots in Westminster Hall. We can secure for Members debate slots on Tuesday mornings and Thursday afternoons. While we have a glut of applications for the Chamber, we very much welcome applications for Westminster Hall debates to be submitted as soon as possible. I am also glad to report that application forms for Backbench Business debates can now be attained from the Vote Office, so Members can now just pick up a form, fill it in and submit it.
On a local issue for my constituency, the Tyne bridge between Gateshead and Newcastle has been earmarked for funding from the Department for Transport to give it a much-needed repair job and upgrade. I am afraid, though, that the money has been promised but has not been forthcoming, and the work very much needs to start as soon as possible. Indeed, if we do not get the work done, it will not be sound, solid and pristine for its anniversary in four years’ time. Will the Leader of the House check what is happening with the Department for Transport and see whether the funds can be released so that we can get on with the work?
Points of Order
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(4 months ago)
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Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Financial Times is reporting that Teesworks Ltd—the so-called public-private partnership to redevelop the former steelworks site on Teesside—has reported an exceptional year, tripling its profits to £54 million. Sadly, the public will see very little of that hard cash, as under the Tees Tory Mayor, 90% of shares in the company were handed over to two local businessmen. That means they get £48.6 million, and the public get just £5.4 million. Personally, I think that is scandalous.
When my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) and I raised questions about the way that business is done at Teesworks, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities ordered an inquiry, which was expected to have reported by now. Will you please advise me, Mr Speaker, on whether you have heard of any plans by the Secretary of State to come to the House to make a statement about why that report has been delayed and when we can expect it?
Mr Speaker
I have had no indication from the Government that the Secretary of State intends to make a statement on this matter, but I am sure that those on the Treasury Bench will have heard the hon. Gentleman’s remarks, and I am sure he will pursue it in other ways. No doubt, if nothing is forthcoming, it might need an urgent question—that is a possible suggestion.
The Leader of the House of Commons (Penny Mordaunt)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. For the convenience of the House, it may assist right hon. and hon. Members if I give some advance notice of Thursday’s business statement.
The business for the week commencing 15 January will include:
Monday 15 January—Committee of the whole House and remaining stages of the Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Bill.
Tuesday 16 January—Committee of the whole House on the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill (day 1).
Wednesday 17 January—Committee of the whole House on the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill (day 2).
I will announce the business statement on Thursday in the usual way.
Mr Speaker
While that was not a point of order for the Chair, I am sure the House will have heard the announcement by the Leader of the House with great interest. I call the shadow Leader of the House.
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Is this not just another example of this Government making it up as they go along, with no real plan, scrabbling around and trying to make something of this failed, unworkable plan? We have had at least three business statements or questions since the Bill first began to be timetabled. Would you not expect, Mr Speaker, such an announcement to be made in a business statement in the usual way?
Dame Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. Normally business statements allow Back Benchers as well as Front Benchers to ask questions of the Leader of the House. This is a difficult precedent because it does not give the Back Benchers a voice. Saying that it is just a matter of convenience for amendments is not good enough when the Government are in charge of the business and could have done this in a more organised way to give everybody a say. I think this is a deplorable development.
Mr Speaker
In general, I would expect the House business to be announced via a statement or in response to the business question. It would of course be in order to ask questions about the timetabling of this business during Thursday’s business statement, but you have made the point and at least you have got it on the record. Let us move on.
Business of the House
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
May I also take the opportunity to wish everyone a wonderful Christmas and a happy new year, especially all the staff who work on and off the estate to help us do our jobs and keep us safe, and all those who will be working over the festive period to serve our nation and their communities? 2023 has been a hard year. The British people have faced many challenges, and I am proud of their stoicism and grit in getting through it. Thanks to them and their efforts, the economy is turning a corner and inflation is coming down. Despite the challenges, we have stood by our allies, in particular Ukraine. We have taken care of each other, and we have crowned our new monarch. I wish everyone a peaceful and restorative Christmas, with good wishes and hope for the new year.
Let me start with the hon. Lady’s final point about young Liam. I deeply regret her choosing to paint Conservative Members as uncaring and non-empathetic. She knows that is not the case. Indeed, I pay tribute to one of our colleagues, who I think is in The Telegraph this morning, who made heroic efforts to prevent harm from being done to a young man who was homeless on London’s streets.
I can give the hon. Lady that assurance on infected blood, and I am expecting the House to be updated on that important matter by the Minister for the Cabinet Office. She is right that the Minister with responsibility for disabilities is important, and I am sure that that reshuffle announcement will be made imminently. I also remind the House that every Department has a disability lead in place. I echo the hon. Lady’s thanks to all Commission members for the work done on risk-based exclusion. I think Mr Speaker has written to Members today, and we will of course bring a motion to the House early in the new year. I will also ensure that Members are kept up to date with the ongoing and tragic situation in Gaza over the festive period. I know, as I hope do all Members, that FCDO consular services are there 24 hours a day for any hon. Members who have constituents who need assistance.
The hon. Lady raised the issue of our further legislation to stop the boats. I always find it amusing that Labour Members are keen to see this legislation brought forward so that they can stop it. They say that they have changed, but they have not, and I am afraid their actions speak louder than words. They talk tough on borders, but they have voted every time against our measures to strengthen them. They talk about equality while not paying women a fair wage. They talk about a charter for workers while siding with strikers and eco-zealots who prevent them from getting to work. They talk of fiscal responsibility, but would borrow a further £28 billion more. They talk of opportunity, but would tax education and halve apprenticeships. The hon. Lady has talked empathetically on the cost of living, yet is very happy to clobber hard-working people who can least afford it with higher taxes, the ultra low emission zone and lower tax allowances. They talk of hope, but they would bring despair, as many in Wales are now having to endure. I put on record my thanks to Mark Drakeford for his service, but I remind people of Labour’s record in Wales.
It is a good job that the nativity did not take place in Labour-run Wales. Mary and Joseph would have been clobbered for an overnight stay levy. She would have had poor maternity services. The shepherds would not have been able to take the time off to bear witness due to cuts in the rural affairs budget, and the three wise men would have arrived post-Epiphany due to the blanket 20 mph speed limit and the poor condition of the road network. Do not fall for what Labour says; look at what it does when in power. Not all men who wear red and promise free gifts are to be trusted. Further business will be announced in the usual way.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
My right hon. Friend has announced that there will be an Opposition day debate on Tuesday 9 January. Have the Opposition told her that they want to make it on the Leader of the Opposition’s claim that he will bulldoze through local objections to development?
May I draw her attention to the website of a man called Chris Dixon, who says he is in favour of building on the Goring gap in my constituency? He says that people who want to stop that development should vote for me, and those who want to have it built on should invite Angela Rayner to come down and see it. Will the Leader of the House say whether the Labour party is willing to expose its desire to build on green gaps to public debate in this Parliament?
Mr Speaker
Order. I am not sure that the Leader of the House is responsible for the Labour party. I know that the Father of the House must have told the Member who he has brought into question that he would name her today.
Penny Mordaunt
Mr Speaker is always right, and I am not responsible for the scheduling of topics for Opposition day debates. I know that my right hon. Friend will have sent a message today that if that is what Labour is minded to do, he will be there and spoiling for a fight.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
Nollaig Chridheil agus Bliadhna Mhath Ùr a th’uile daoine—[Translation: “Merry Christmas and a happy new year to everyone.”]
Last week, the Leader of the House was unwilling or unable to answer my question about her Government’s latest immigration mess. Instead, she gave Scots another lecture from Westminster, this time about morality and her own global leadership. A lecture on morality from this Tory Government: pantomime season is truly upon us. Was she talking about the morality of her “pile the bodies high” Government, or perhaps recalling the time her Government said, “We are breaking the law, but only in a limited way”? Is it the morality that allows water companies to make a fortune in profits as children get sick swimming in raw sewage off the coast of England, or the morality that forces families of service personnel to live in quarters so riddled with damp and mould that they are judged too poor for human habitation? Perhaps that is the morality she had in mind. Could it be the morality of the return of near-Victorian levels of destitution across the UK? Perhaps she was thinking of the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign. Perhaps she could lecture them about morality and see what they have to say to her.
Before the Leader of the House launches into—mercifully—her last video nasty of the year, I hope she can answer my question today. It is the same question I asked last week, which remains unanswered and mired in confusion thanks to her Prime Minister. This morning’s statement on “Citizens’ rights” might well address it, but we should have debated such drastic changes before now in this place anyway. It is supposed to be the season of goodwill, but so many of our constituents are now deeply concerned and frightened by the announcement, so I will ask again on their behalf: if the spouse or partner of a British citizen is currently living in the UK on a leave to remain visa, can they be deported if their salary is less than £38,700? Yes or no?
Penny Mordaunt
I congratulate my hon. Friend on all the considerable achievements that he and his constituents have secured over the past year. I am reminded of the, very sadly, late Benjamin Zephaniah, who as guest editor on the “Today” programme insisted that it be just about good news. We could all do with that occasionally. My hon. Friend knows how to apply for a debate in the usual way.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the Backbench Business for the first week after the Christmas recess and for the extensive list of recess dates, which we will fill up our diaries with. I mentioned that last week, so it is welcome to get the dates in the bag.
I am afraid to say that I am of such an age that I have been a school governor for 40 years continuously. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I am the chair of governors at a primary school in Gateshead, where 52% of the youngsters are entitled to free school meals. Holiday hunger is not a concept confined to the summer recess. Can we have a statement from the children’s Minister on whether the Government have plans to tackle holiday hunger in the winter break, when cold exacerbates the problem and adds to the misery of hungry children?
Business of the House
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(5 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
I place on record my thanks for hosting the UK Disability History Month event that took place in your rooms last night, Mr Speaker. We had great speeches from hon. Members on both sides of the House about their disabilities and of course the performance of the Music Man Project. I promise you that the video of you dancing Gangnam-style to one of their hits will go with me to my grave.
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) for, and join with, the sentiments she expressed about Israel and Gaza. We all hope that some of the hostages are able to be released in the coming days, and our thoughts are with everyone affected by that. It is incredibly important that this House is kept up to date. She will know that the Procedure Committee is looking at that and will shortly make some announcements on how it thinks the Foreign Secretary can best come to answer questions from hon. Members.
This week I met the director of national security and the director of consular and crisis services in the Foreign Office, as well as Home Office officials, on behalf of Members of this House to look at what they can do to support the families of hostages—not just the British nationals, but those who have a connection to the UK—and I know that they are in touch with those hon. Members directly concerned. A lot of that cannot be put in the public domain, for obvious reasons, but they are in touch with hon. Members on Privy Counsellor terms with things that cannot necessarily be put in the public domain.
May I also thank the hon. Lady for what she said about security? It is incredibly important. I refer Members to what I said last week on that point: we should be free in this place to use our judgment and vote accordingly, and we should not face intimidation for doing our duty to this House. Although it is a growing and moving challenge, I am confident that we have the tools to tackle misinformation online. She will know that we have stood up new services in the House of Commons Library, strengthening its ties with Government Departments—particularly the Department for Culture, Media and Sport —as well as with our security agencies.
The hon. Lady mentions the facts relating to the autumn statement and the OBR, and I am happy to remind the House of those facts. Inflation is now at 4.6% and will fall to 2.8%, and at the end of next year, towards 2025, we will be back to 2%. Headline debt is now 94% by end of forecast, down from a predicted 100%. Underlying debt next year is expected to fall to 91.6%, and we are due to meet our fiscal rule of having underlying debt fall as a percentage of GDP by the end of the next financial forecast. We have the second lowest debt in the G7.
The hon. Lady talks about the cost of living. On average, a person on benefits will be £470 better off, pensioners £900 better off, and those on housing allowance £800 better off. The national living wage has gone up. Our total commitment on cost of living measures is now over £104 billion, which includes £3,700 on average toward a person’s energy bills. She will know that the energy price guarantee remains in place until March next year.
On our ambitions to grow the economy, the hon. Lady will also know that we have a strong and resilient economy. That fact is evidenced by our continuing to attract inward investment. I very much welcome Nissan’s announcement of its commitment to continue making the Qashqai and Juke models in Sunderland. Yesterday, we made expensing permanent, as well as other measures to help businesses large and small, particularly on our high streets and in the hospitality sector. We have new investment zones, one of which is in her beloved Greater Manchester.
The hon. Lady mentions Stockton North, which will benefit from £20 million of levelling-up funding for Billingham town centre. With regard to the charge that she makes against the Home Secretary, he denies it and I believe him.
The economy is predicted to grow. We would like it to grow faster, and that is why we are focused on productivity. We have been able to cut tax through the tough decisions that have enabled us to create that headroom. We were able to do what we did during the pandemic, on furlough and other support, only because we paid down Labour’s deficit by 80%. Labour has opposed every measure that we have brought in to balance the books. Labour has blocked every measure to reform welfare in favour of denying people with disabilities the dignity of a pay packet.
Labour has blocked every measure to protect access to public service and cut waiting lists, in favour of militant unions. Labour has blocked every measure to make us more energy secure, in favour of Just Stop Oil. Labour has blocked every measure to raise education standards, and now wishes to tax education and halve apprenticeships. While we have been reducing fuel duty and holding down council tax, Labour put both up by 42% and 104% respectively. Where Labour is now in power, it taxes the lowest paid out of work. The ultra low emission zone has wreaked havoc in London and cost livelihoods. Sadly, I understand that those measures will shortly be coming to Wales.
Labour Members say that they have changed, but their actions past, present and planned for the future say otherwise. Further business will be announced in the usual way.
Penny Mordaunt
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on a successful, if lengthy, campaign, and I congratulate him and everyone who has worked on it on their diligence and on never giving up. I do not know about a debate—it sounds like we ought to be having a party to celebrate this. In all seriousness, I know that it means a tremendous amount to the local community. They are known as the crown jewels locally. I understand that some of them are very heavy—if they need a hand carrying them around, I know someone who can help.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
Things became a bit clearer for us all this week. For a time, we have been wondering what the Leader of the House meant when she delivered her infamous “stand up and fight” battle cry. She told us 12 times in 90 seconds that she wanted to have a fight with somebody, but we were not quite sure who the enemy in her head was. We know in Scotland that she likes having a fight with us; she is always telling us off for disobedience or treachery. In Tory Britain, we Scots really should know our place. But the Chancellor helpfully revealed who else her Government want to fight with.
If you are unable to work because of ill health, get ready for battle with the Tories. If you are among the 4 million families destitute in the UK, forget it—there will be no real help for you in your daily struggle to survive. As is clear from the covid inquiry, if you are a scientist or—God forbid—an actual expert, gird your loins. In England, Tories fight NHS workers. They fight teachers. They fight local councils. They fight the low-paid. If you are on pensions or benefits, sure, they threw you a few crumbs yesterday from their table, but the Office for National Statistics says that food prices are 30% higher than they were two years ago, so they will fight you at the checkout tills. There was not a word about fighting billionaires’ tax evasion, fighting dirty money being laundered through London, or fighting the corruption and fraud drenching this Government in sleaze.
When the Chancellor sat down yesterday, the independent OBR assessed that his measures would bring the largest reduction in living standards since records began. But never mind; I see the other place was debating the Pedicabs (London) Bill last night, so we can all calm down, knowing that this Government are focused on the things that really matter. And people ask us why we want to see Scotland independent and away from this bedlam of a place!
I realise that I will wait in vain for any actual answers to these questions—questions like, how is it exactly that the right hon. Lady’s Government can find fiscal headroom in their Budget when some of my constituents in Edinburgh North and Leith cannot afford to feed themselves? Is it not time her profligate Government stopped fighting everybody and held an inquiry into themselves and the many billions they have squandered over the last four years?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank my hon. Friend for all the work he is doing to support his farmers—I know it is a lot. He is a consistent champion for their interests, and he is right to encourage them to stand firm. I am pleased that NFU Sugar and British Sugar are resuming negotiations on next year’s sugar beet price, and I hope they can work together to agree a mutually acceptable deal as soon as possible for the benefit of both growers and processors. My hon. Friend may wish to raise this matter on 7 December with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
I am always very grateful, Mr Speaker—thank you very much.
Business of the House
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Penny Mordaunt
I agree with the comments that the hon. Lady made about Armistice Day and Remembrance weekend. I thank all Members who took part in events around the country and overseas to commemorate and thank our servicemen and women, and to remember the fallen. I particularly thank the police, who had an incredibly difficult job on their hands in London at the weekend.
It is a gift that every one of us in this place can raise issues in debates via amendments and other devices. As a Member and as Leader of the House, I will always defend that right, but it does not absolve us from thinking through the consequences of one course of action over another. The debate last night showed the House, including its two main parties and the bulk of Members, united in its support for Israel’s duty to protect her people, an end to suffering for all civilians and a long-term peaceful solution.
Since the vote last night, I know some Members have come under increased stress. No matter which way people voted, it will have been a considered decision. No matter whether people agree with them or not, it is their duty to exercise their own judgment. Today, all Members should think about what they can do to defuse such threats made against our colleagues in this place.
I thank Mr Speaker for his care in ensuring we can go about our business and do our duties. I thank the families of those held hostage by Hamas for their time coming into Parliament this week to talk to parliamentarians. I know I speak for all here when I say that we will do all in our power to bring them home.
Turning to the questions raised by the shadow Leader of the House, her first point was about Rwanda. She will expect me to say that further business will be announced in the usual way, but as she will have heard from the Prime Minister, we want to introduce this legislation swiftly. It is part of a plan of action that he has set out and that has been worked on by the Home Office and other Departments, together with the largest ever small boats deal with France; a new agreement with Albania, which has already returned nearly 5,000 people in the last 10 months and cut Albanian small boat arrivals by more than 90%; an almost 70% increase in the number of illegal working raids; a tripling in the number of asylum decisions since the start of the year; a plan to close the first 50 asylum hotels; and the legislation that we have brought forward.
There are many points of difference, but one key difference is that we believe there must be a deterrent element to our response. The hon. Lady’s party voted 70 times against the legislation that we have brought forward and Opposition Members also supported blocking the deportation of foreign criminals. The people of this country want our borders to be protected and controlled. They want to ensure that we are free and able to help those we wish to and have the greatest obligation to. Under the last Labour Government, the mode of illegal travel here was largely haulage. We ended that. Brexit has also given us many more options to shape who comes here legally.
We must end the scourge of these appalling people-traffickers. My right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman), assisted by my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove), my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) and others, have helped us thus far, and I thank them for all the work that they have been doing. It has been difficult work. There is more to do, but we are a step closer to the deterrent that we seek. I urge the shadow Leader of the House to support us in our efforts. We will introduce legislation; it is quite normal, as she knows, to do that even if it is not included in the King’s Speech. There are many potential situations for that to arise on a number of issues facing Parliament in this Session.
The hon. Lady raised the issue of the new Foreign Secretary, a person who has done a tremendous amount on the last topic that she raised—combating illegal migration —through his work with Professor Paul Collier and the work that he has done on conflict states. He was ahead of the curve on that issue, and I think that he will make an excellent Foreign Secretary. She is right that the House must be able to hold him to account. This is not an unusual situation; it has happened before with the noble Lords Mandelson, Adonis, Frost, Morgan and I think others.
The hon. Lady should be reassured that Mr Speaker has taken advice on the matter. My understanding is that the Procedure Committee will be consulted on the best way forward. She alluded to some of the options that may be required of the new Foreign Secretary, who I know will want to be accountable to this House. There are very important matters in front of us. Next year will be an unprecedented year for elections across the world, with significant consequences for this nation and an ever- increasing set of complex issues that I know all hon. Members will want to question the Foreign Secretary on. She has my assurance in that respect. Further business will be announced in the usual way.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
The House and my right hon. Friend will know of my personal and political interest in residential leasehold reform. When might the leasehold and freehold reform Bill come to the House, and will she join me in giving more publicity to the consultation, “Modern leasehold: restricting rents on existing leases”, which started a week ago and will last for another five weeks? The ground rent issue affects up to 6 million households. Most people do not know that the Government are considering five alternatives for restricting it. Will she help to publicise that, and say when the Bill might be introduced so that the House can consider the issue?
Penny Mordaunt
My hon. Friend, who is very experienced, has already provided a solution to one part of his question by getting that on the record and advertising it to all hon. Members. I will certainly ensure that the Secretary of State has heard of his particular interest. He will not be surprised to hear me say that further business will be announced in the usual way, but I shall endeavour to ensure that he is kept informed by the Department of progress on the Bill.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
People in Scotland learned something this week: however much we dislike and distrust this Tory Government, it is nothing compared with how much they utterly loathe each other. Those letters, emails and WhatsApp messages show that they spend their time attacking each other, leaving no time to help people struggling with the Tory mortgage and rent bombshell or with rocketing energy bills, and no time to reduce NHS waiting lists in England, now approaching 8 million, or to cap food inflation, which is still running at over 10%. They are way too busy fighting like rats in a sack. Even their squalid, unlawful Rwanda scheme has fallen apart.
However, I bring good news to the Leader of the House to cheer her up—news from a part of the UK where a Government are getting on with the job; where not a single day has been lost in the NHS to industrial disputes; where teachers are the best paid in the UK; where the Scottish child payment is taking tens of thousands out of poverty; where the railways have been taken into public ownership; where there are free school meals for all pupils, P1 to P5; where there are more GPs per head than anywhere in the UK; where those aged 60 and over get free bus travel, along with our under-22-year-olds; and where we offer free university tuition, free prescriptions, free eye tests, and free personal care to our older folk. That is in Scotland under the SNP-led Scottish Government, as the Leader of the House knows, but her Government have a cunning plan to make everything come good: a new Minister for common sense—a wokefinder general, to search out woke thinking and eliminate it. The job is in the safe hands of someone who is allowed to attend Cabinet, but is prohibited from speaking in meetings—and anyone who knows the new Minister knows that a period of silence may be her first and overwhelming challenge. For some light relief in this very bleak week for her Government, could the Leader of the House help many of her baffled colleagues and try to give us her definition of “woke”?
Penny Mordaunt
First, may I place on the record—on behalf of everyone in this place, I am sure—our thanks to my right hon. Friend for all the work she did in her former Department? I know she was incredibly passionate about that work, going right back to when she was a junior Minister in that Department, and she should be very proud of the many things she enabled to happen on her double watch. I thank her for raising this issue in her constituency, which I know she is very concerned about. The Secretary of State has made it a priority and is giving it a lot more attention and focus, and I shall make sure that she is aware of my right hon. Friend’s particular interest.
Mr Speaker
I call and congratulate the unopposed Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, Ian Mearns.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
I am very grateful, Mr Speaker. I have had the privilege of being in that role since June 2015, although I have a funny feeling this will be my last term in it, for a whole range of different reasons—[Hon. Members: “No!”] Well, the holder has to be a member of the Opposition. As we speak, the Committee cannot yet meet, but I understand that all political parties have made or are making nominations to the Committee of Selection. As soon as it agrees the nominations, the Backbench Business Committee can get up and running again. I hope that the first meeting can take place as soon as Tuesday 28 November. If it can happen before then, we certainly will try to ensure that it does. I understand from the Clerks that there is already a queue of applications to be presented to the Committee; we will try to get that all together as soon as possible.
Bus drivers and other staff employed by Go North East are on indefinite strike in a pay dispute. They seek pay parity with their company colleagues in the north-west region. The strike leaves constituents almost totally stranded and unable to get to work, places of study, hospitals and shops. Can we have a statement from the Secretary of State for Transport about his intentions to bring an end to this dire paralysis in my Gateshead constituency and across the wider north-east region? Go North East provides bus services to a large part of the north-east region, and I am afraid to say it is no go at the moment.
Business of the House
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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?
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.
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?
Points of Order
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(6 months, 2 weeks ago)
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John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The House rises tomorrow for 10 days, I believe. Regrettably and sadly, it may be likely that a ground invasion of Gaza will commence during that period. This not only has consequences for the Palestinians and the Israelis, but could create turmoil and destabilise the whole middle east. I appreciate that it is the Government who determine whether or not Parliament is recalled but, in your conversations with the Government, will you advise them that the House should be recalled to debate such a serious issue?
Mr Speaker
You are absolutely right that it would not be for me under the normal rules, although I recognise the importance of a major escalation and what could happen in the middle east. You are correct that it would be for the Government—not for me, unfortunately—to recall the House. I will work through the usual channels to try to ensure that, quite rightly, we look to see what can be done in what would be special circumstances, because obviously the House will have prorogued. I do not lose sight of what you have said, and I take it on board. I will work with others behind the scenes to see how we would manage such a situation.
The Leader of the House of Commons (Penny Mordaunt)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I can assure the House that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, my office, and other Departments across Whitehall are very aware that this House will want to be kept updated about the ongoing situation. Many right hon. and hon. Members will have constituents directly affected, and we are working with the House of Commons Library to ensure that people are updated about the situation during the recess.
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek your guidance to understand how we can table written questions about the Government’s policy of evicting Afghans from hotel accommodation—a project run by the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs out of the Cabinet Office. I have given the Minister notice that I would raise this issue.
Despite the Minister’s having given multiple statements to the House this year on the housing of our Afghan friends, my Front-Bench colleagues and I are unable to table written questions to the Cabinet Office, which instead are being reallocated to either the Home Office or the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. The Table Office staff are great, but I think a bit of parliamentary plumbing needs to be put in place to make sure that effective scrutiny via written question of the Minister leading this area is possible. Please could you advise how I can ensure that the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs can be successfully scrutinised by written parliamentary question for the area he leads on in Government?
Mr Speaker
I am concerned by what the hon. Member has raised and grateful to him for giving me notice of his point of order. He will know that the Table Office is guided by Government Departments about the matter of which Ministers respond to questions and on policy areas. I will look into the matter; I take it very seriously and I am very concerned. We all know that the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs is very concerned about veterans, so I am sure he will be disappointed to know that those questions are not reaching him. I will investigate.
The Leader of the House is here, and I am sure that she will assist me. I am sure that we can work together, because no Member should be unable to lay questions to the Minister. Ministers are answerable to this House. All Members, from whatever party, should have that ability. I am very disappointed by what I have been told. We will get to the bottom of it.
Business of the House
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
First, I thank my right hon. Friend for all the work he is doing at what must be a very worrying time for his constituents who are affected. He will know that the Government are currently considering the recommendations in the final report from my noble Friend Lord Best’s working group on the regulation of property agents. Of course, the Financial Conduct Authority currently has a limited role, and although we are not seeking to expand its role, we want to ensure that it can be a more innovative, assertive and adaptive regulator.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
I associate myself with all the remarks about Sir David.
The Leader of the House has previously commented on how much she enjoys our exchanges at business questions, as do I. It is the weekly forum where I challenge her on our deep and profound differences in policies and priorities, and there will be plenty of opportunities in the next few weeks and months to tackle her on her Government’s shortcomings. However, today, like so many people, my thoughts are with the civilian populations in Gaza and Israel. People across all nations of the UK share this House’s revulsion and fear of what we see unfolding—revulsion at the barbarism of Hamas and fear of what the future holds for innocent children, women and men in both Gaza and Israel. A huge number of MPs have constituents who are worried sick about friends or relatives who are caught up in these events, and of course communities across the UK will be anxious about what we are witnessing and its potential impact. As the House will know, Scotland’s First Minister, Humza Yousaf, and his wife and family are directly affected in the most terrible way, and my thoughts are also with them today.
The UK Government have several roles to fulfil in this crisis, and there is an urgent need for action, as we all know. In the first instance, they must direct their efforts to the enormous humanitarian aid needs in southern Gaza—medical supplies, water, food, basic power. Twenty trucks is a start, but there are apparently 100 standing by and they must get through. However, they need to travel safely through, so calling for an immediate ceasefire to facilitate the provision of aid in Gaza and to give evacuees a safe passage out is vital, as is the release of all the hostages—one’s heart breaks to think of them—and the use of every possible diplomatic effort to stop an escalation into a wider regional conflict. The Government should join First Minister Humza Yousaf in calling for a worldwide refugee scheme similar to that established for Syrian, Afghan and Ukrainian refugees. In the longer term, they should use all their powers to keep the two-state solution alive and keep a dialogue for peace open. They must rise to many challenges, and we wish the Prime Minister well in his endeavours today. Will the Leader of the House confirm that he will deliver a statement about the outcome on his return?
Of course, we will return to the business of scrutinising the Government’s actions in the usual way when politics returns to some sort of normality, hopefully very soon.
Penny Mordaunt
I thank my hon. Friend for all the work she is doing to support her constituent, and to ensure that those affected and infected by that appalling scandal get justice swiftly. If she secured a debate on this issue, it would be most welcome and well attended by many across the House. I have said this before, but we should recognise that even though we are talking about a small number of individuals as a percentage of the population, this issue is relevant to everyone in this country. What happened to those individuals could have happened to anyone in this country, and how we respond to that is important. That is why I am pleased that this Government have set up the inquiry, why I set up a compensation study to run concurrently with the inquiry, and why we must ensure that we press forward with getting those people some recompense for all they have suffered.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
I am grateful, Mr Speaker. May I ask you and the Leader of the House to help us by helping to facilitate the re-establishment of the Backbench Business Committee as soon as possible after the King’s Speech in the new parliamentary Session? I will be writing to the Leader of the House with a list of as yet unaired debates from this Session which might be held prior to the re-establishment of the Committee in the new Session. We have applications for debates in this Chamber and in Westminster Hall on subjects such as protection for children with allergies, heritage pubs, floating offshore wind generation, knife crime, and several others.
I declare an interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on rail in the north. Yesterday I had a meeting with the Rail Industry Association’s northern section, and we were reflecting on what the chair of the National Infrastructure Commission said yesterday in urging the Government not to sell off too quickly land acquisitions for High-Speed 2 on cancelled northern routes. Those land acquisitions may well facilitate other schemes in the northern regions, and we hope that the Government would not sell those assets off too quickly.
Finally, as part of the crisis in Israel, Palestine and Gaza, a number of families in my constituency have been affected. Prior to the horrific Hamas attacks was the Jewish festival of Sukkot. A number of families from my Orthodox Haredi Jewish community were in Israel celebrating Sukkot and then became stranded and could not get home. Some have had to pay eye-watering sums to travel home by alternative means, because lots of flights were cancelled. Will the Leader of the House help me and those who have had to pay out sometimes whole-life savings to get their families of six or seven back home from Israel?