Business of the House

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Thursday 8th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Activists in Honduras have been targeted with a wave of surveillance, intimidation and violence. Last year, as we found out last week, the UK—for the first time ever—approved the sales of interception equipment to the Honduran Government. Will the Leader of the House make time for a statement from the Secretary of State in this House about how the consolidated criteria on arms sales might have been breached by the sales to their sister party, which organised a coup in 2009, and has killed 100 lawyers since then and 50 Opposition members in the past year—their sister party?

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Gentleman raises a point that will be of concern to many Members in this House. He is right to do so and he might want to seek an Adjournment debate, but what I can say to him is that we operate one of the most robust arms export control regimes in the world and a licence will not be issued where there is a clear risk that items to be licensed might be used in the commission of a serious violation of international humanitarian law.

Business of the House

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I commend the hon. Lady for taking part in the conference, and for encouraging young women to talk about issues such as feminism, the rights of young women and their success in the workplace. It is vital for us in the House to act as role models as much as we possibly can to encourage young women to aspire to fulfil their dreams. I urge the hon. Lady to seek an Adjournment or Westminster Hall debate, so that we can further share our experiences in that regard.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

This week the Competition and Markets Authority said that Concordia had overcharged the NHS by £100 million when it raised the price of Liothyronine tablets from £4 to £258. Will the Leader of the House ensure that there is time for the Secretary of State for Health to make a statement in the House—or is that talking down greedy corporate bosses at Concordia?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s concern about that information. If it is true, I am sure that Ministers will want to look into it. As the hon. Gentleman knows, Health questions will take place on 19 December, and if he cannot obtain an answer earlier, I encourage him to raise the matter then.

Business of the House

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend raises a point that I am sure all colleagues across the House would be delighted to join with. If he writes to me, I will certainly take the matter up with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Following another successful Youth Parliament, which the Leader of the House addressed, Mr Speaker chaired and I attended as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on youth affairs, when will the Government dedicate Government time to debating and voting on votes at 16, as that is one of their priorities and our debate was cut so short on our last sitting Friday?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman found time for that debate on votes at 16. He will realise that the issue does not command 100% support across the House, but I am sure he will find other opportunities to debate it in the near future.

Government Policy on the Proceedings of the House

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

This House is rather archaic. Many of these things I can live with: the pomp and circumstance, the wearing of funny clothes—I am one of those who wears their own style—and the walking around with a giant mace. What I cannot abide, however, is when rules and procedure are used, in what seems like an underhand way, to reduce the ability of constituents to hold us to account. Constituents can agree or disagree with their local Member of Parliament, but it is important that they know how their local Member of Parliament views an issue and how they vote on that issue when it comes before them. Voting in that sense is a cathartic process: it allows us to support the process of democracy even if we do not support our particular representative. The problem with not bringing an issue to vote is that it undermines the very process of you, Mr Speaker, hearing the ayes and noes. That will lead to the Opposition forcing votes. It will lead to us wasting time unless it is clear that the silence on the Government Benches is a silence of approval, rather than a silence because they are afraid.

We have heard today that the Government agreed with the two motions, which is fantastic. [Interruption.] On the example we heard about earlier, the House agreed and the Government agreed. I applaud the Government on their turnaround. We heard earlier that in 2009 the Labour Government were defeated on the issue of the Gurkhas—the defeat was quite right in my view. On that very day, the Labour Government came to this House and made a statement on how they would change their course as a result of the vote of the House.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

There is another example: the Conservative Government after the coalition were defeated on the vote over whether we should bomb Syria. The then Prime Minister made a statement from the Dispatch Box to clarify the situation. His words were, “I get the message.” This Government have not got the message yet.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Exactly. It seems that the Government have not got the message that they should be accountable to this House. It is of course welcome that they have announced some minor changes—at the Conservative party conference and to the press lobby—on tuition fees and the public sector pay cap. But the problem with decree through press release is that it reduces the ability of this House to ensure that the detail of the volte-face is actually as the House wished.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

On a simple point of fact, the announcement on the public sector pay cap was a written ministerial statement. It is important that we do not pretend otherwise and that a Government who use legitimate procedures are not misrepresented.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Yes, but the suggested tuition fees amendment was not.

The subject of how we challenge statutory instruments is important in the light of our discussions on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. I sat through a lot of those discussions and Government Ministers tried to reassure me time and again—not that they were very reassuring—that we should not worry about processes through the negative procedure. They said that we should not worry about statutory instruments because if the will of the House was clear, the House would have the opportunity to review and rescind, and to ensure that statutory instruments that overstepped the mark would not be allowed on the statute book. However, what we see here is parliamentary jiggery-pokery.

[Jeremy Quin]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

No. This parliamentary jiggery-pokery was used not only to ensure that the debate did not come in time to be able to withdraw the statutory instruments, but to prevent a vote in the House. Therefore, the will of the House seems less strong to members of the public. That is the reality of what happened.

If the Government had stood at the Dispatch Box that day and said, “We won’t be calling a vote because we agree on the two issues”, there would be no problem. The problem was that Government Members spent the whole day arguing against the content of the motions, but then did not vote on them. That is the concern. It is fine—in fact, I am more than happy—for the Government to change their mind after listening to our compelling arguments. I applaud them for that, but let us have a statement about how their mind has changed and, therefore, how policy has changed.

It is no good that members of the public are unclear about the position of this House and that people are left in limbo. They need to be able to hold their politicians to account. They need to be able to hold their Government to account, and the Opposition parties and Back Benchers need to be able to do that too. Therefore, I call upon Members of the Treasury Bench to stand up and make a statement about how and when they reflected on the motion passing unanimously, when they will bring forward the changes called for in both motions and the details of how they will do it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

I contribute to this debate from quite a privileged position, as someone who has served both my Parliaments: as a Member of the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood in Edinburgh; and as a Member of our Parliament here in Westminster in London. Of course, in both Parliaments, I have served under minority Governments, so I am well placed to speak about how Oppositions deal with debates in both Chambers.

We hear a lot from our Scottish National party colleagues about minority government here at Westminster, but very little about the fact that their party is in minority government in Holyrood—we heard a couple of sentences about it today from the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), but not much before that. It is therefore worth repeating that Nicola Sturgeon went into the last Scottish parliamentary elections with a majority and came out with a minority, largely because the number of Scottish Conservative MSPs more than doubled—from 15 to 31.

The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire said many interesting things. After 13 minutes of criticising and attacking the Government and Conservative Back Benchers, he told us that he was being helpful and consensual. That was the only helpful thing he told us, because up until that point it did not seem that he was being particularly helpful or consensual. He also said—I wrote this down because I was very interested—that nobody expects the Government to change policy after being defeated in an Opposition day debate. That was quickly followed by an intervention from the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), who disagreed entirely. That just shows the confused position among the Opposition parties in today’s debate. It is perhaps because the party of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire has a minority Government in Scotland that he does not believe that Governments should change policy due to a defeat in a Chamber.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

It is nice to hear about the Scottish example, but I am interested to know whether the hon. Gentleman thinks that the Government should change course when they are defeated in a Chamber, instead of just hearing him attack the SNP, which I do not have much truck with either.

[Douglas Ross]

I am a Scottish Conservative Member representing a Scottish constituency, so if the hon. Gentleman bears with me, I will speak about Scottish issues in the House of Commons. I will also speak about Governments being defeated when this Government are defeated. They have not been defeated in this House, but the party of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire has been defeated. I want to come on to the point that I tried to make when I intervened on his speech. Hansard will show that I asked clearly about the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012, but that the hon. Gentleman never once mentioned that piece of legislation in response.

Scheduling of Parliamentary Business

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Again, I think the hon. Gentleman is premature. The issue is the month lost between May and June. We have the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, and we have gotten used to having elections in May. We therefore expect these things to be up and running in time for the summer recess, which I absolutely accept, but he misses the point that the election was under not the normal procedure but the extraordinary procedure of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. We therefore assembled a month later, closer to the summer recess. The process of electing Select Committee Chairmen and Select Committee members takes a little time, and the Opposition are simply being unreasonable. If we were having this debate in September, they would have a fair point; and if we were having it in October, they would have an outrageous point if they did not have any Opposition day debates by then.

This Session has hardly begun. It is in its infancy. It is like Sixtus, my newborn son. It is still in the mewling and puking stage. It has not reached the stage of toddling, walking and taking bold steps.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that, when raising a child, one must try to instruct that child in good behaviour from the very beginning and not let it misbehave early on? Therefore, surely our role is to ensure that the Government do not misbehave early on.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman is a harsher authoritarian than I am. The strict disciplining of a child not yet a fortnight old would be unreasonable by any standards. All I can say is that I am glad not to be an infant in his household.

This debate is too early, and the problem with it being too early is that it comes when things of real gravity are happening. We are in as uncertain a time as I can recall. There is so much of gravity with which we need to grapple. I have said that I think and hope that you would grant any reasonable request by the Opposition for a Standing Order No. 24 debate, Mr Speaker, and there are so many debates for which they could have asked. In her opening speech, the hon. Member for Walsall South listed about a dozen things that could have been debated. If any of them had been requested under Standing Order No. 24, we could have had a sensible debate that added distinction and lustre to this Parliament. But standing here—I am as guilty of it as anyone else, but I have admitted that I am a procedural bore—and discussing the intricacies of procedure when so much is going on is not in tune with the nation and is not serious opposition; it is opportunism. If they can, the Opposition should withdraw the motion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the maiden speeches of my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) and the hon. Member for Angus (Kirstene Hair).

If we get time today, we may get to a debate on the Youth Parliament. I am probably one of the only Members of the Youth Parliament when it was set up in 2000 and 2001 who has now become a Member of Parliament. I reflect on that experience compared to this one. The kind of behaviour we now see from the Government—cutting down the opportunity for debate and discussion—would have been unheard of in the Youth Parliament. This is meant to be the mother of Parliaments, but it seems perfectly acceptable to play jiggery-pokery with the timetable. I wonder about the responsibility of the Government, and what this looks like for constituents out in the wider world.

Today my constituents were queuing around the block for more than an hour, not for a gig or a music activity, but to see the local doctor in Peacehaven. That is a regular thing for my constituents. Why? Because, of course, doctors’ workloads have doubled, and the resources to our NHS have reduced. Equally, we do not have enough houses. Independent research shows that teachers’ pay has reduced by £3 an hour in real terms and that their workloads have increased since the Conservative party took power. [Interruption.] Members on the other side of the Chamber may wish to chunter about that, but I suggest they read the research.

My constituents would be flabbergasted to think that we are effectively reducing our workload by covering the same amount in two years as we would in one. I am afraid that saying, “Oh, it is all because that is what it says in the Standing Orders” is a weak response. We need to take the moral high ground, not just the letter of the Standing Orders.

[Mark Pritchard]

May I suggest that the facts contradict the hon. Gentleman’s opening remarks? Today we are having a debate about future debates, and that is democracy, whether he likes it or not. However, does he agree that we need a strong economy to pay for a strong NHS? Is the British model or the Venezuelan model the best way to pay for a strong NHS?

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

We can take from the best all around the world—from Scandinavia, Germany and so on. Germany, for example, has a strong economy and a fairer society, unlike under this Government, where we have a bigger divide between rich and poor, and where people have not been able to access vital services.

Last week, a woman came into my surgery and said she had been on the waiting list for a council house for two years. I had to tell her that she was likely to remain on that waiting list for another three or four years, because the reality is that not enough houses have been built under this Government, under previous Governments and for a generation. Surely, we need to talk about making sure we can hold the Government to account for their policies. My constituent asked me to make sure her voice is heard in this Chamber. If I go back to her and say, “I’m terribly sorry, but we didn’t quite get enough Opposition days to raise your urgent needs,” she will feel as if her voice, through me, has been taken away—and she will feel like that quite rightly, because it has been taken away. A lack of debate and Opposition time takes the voice away from constituents from all constituencies across this country.

This has happened not with a vote in Parliament but just with an announcement in the papers that we will now have a two-year period rather than a one-year period. [Interruption.] Session. I do not think constituents will really care what you wish to call it. They will care about the fact that the Government are denying them a voice in Parliament, not about the petty name politics that some Members wish to play.

I am a relatively new Member—I have been here only a few weeks—but if I were an employee and I suddenly said, “I’m not going to do my work in a year. I’m going to take two years to do it,” I would be put on capability, and I would probably not have a job. Well, I suggest that this Government are put on capability and that they should not have a job, because extending the amount of time in which to do the same amount of work in is not on in the workplace, and it should not be on in our Parliament.

What the Government could do is very simple: they could come here and pledge to do three things. They could say the same number of days per year will be offered for Opposition and Back-Bench business as there are in the Standing Orders per Session—easy-peasy. They should say that, make a pledge and make a commitment. Then we will not need to shoot our guns early; we will be able to sit down and relax.

The second thing the Government could easily do is say that there will be the same number of days in this Parliament for all these things as there were in previous Parliaments. That would be nice and easy to do. They could make that statement now, and, again, we could relax.

Finally, the Conservative party could get on with selecting its Select Committee representatives. They could get on with allowing us to scrutinise legislation. They could get on with the work. It is easy. The Labour party has managed to hold an election today. Our election shut 10 minutes ago. We will be announcing our representatives. Conservative Members could have been busy doing the same. Why have they not done that? They have been fiddling while democracy burns. Get on with it! That is what members of the public want: they want you to get on with it. That is what Opposition Members want: they want you to get on with it. The Government should agree the times, agree the days, make a statement, allow us to debate the issues that matter, and stop wasting our time by their prevarications.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the scheduling of parliamentary business by the Leader of the House and the implications of a two-year session for Standing Orders requirements.

Adjournment (November and Christmas)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 25),

That this House—

(1) at its rising on Tuesday 7 November 2017, do adjourn until Monday 13 November; and

(2) at its rising on Thursday 21 December 2017, do adjourn until Monday 8 January 2018.—(Andrea Leadsom.)

Question agreed to.