Lucy Powell
Main Page: Lucy Powell (Labour (Co-op) - Manchester Central)Department Debates - View all Lucy Powell's debates with the Leader of the House
(4 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Penny Mordaunt)
The business for the week commencing 11 March will include:
Monday 11 March—Continuation of the Budget debate.
Tuesday 12 March—Conclusion of the Budget debate.
Wednesday 13 March—Consideration of an allocation of time motion, followed by all stages of the National Insurance Contributions (Reduction in Rates) (No. 2) Bill.
Thursday 14 March—Estimates day. There will be debates on estimates relating to the Department for Education, in so far as it relates to special educational needs and disabilities provision; and the Home Office, in so far as it relates to asylum and migration. At 5 pm, the House will be asked to agree all outstanding estimates.
Friday 15 March—Private Members’ Bills.
The provisional business for the week commencing 18 March includes:
Monday 18 March—Proceedings on the Supply and Appropriation (Anticipation and Adjustments) Bill, followed by consideration of Lords amendments to the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill.
Tuesday 19 March—Remaining stages of the Trade (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) Bill [Lords].
Further business will be announced in the usual way.
Lucy Powell
This week, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology made a grovelling apology and retracted baseless allegations she made against a member of her own advisory body on her personal Twitter account—allegations that were based on a dodgy dossier produced by a Conservative think-tank. Remarkably, the damages paid out came from taxpayers’ money from her Department. This is a new low for ministerial standards, so perhaps the Leader of the House can clarify a few things. Was the £15,000 paid in damages the total cost borne by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology? Apparently, the Secretary of State was given appropriate advice, but did she follow it, or were her accusations against the advice she received? If they were, surely she should personally pay the costs.
Will the Leader of the House urgently ensure that the Secretary of State is accountable to Parliament? The Government cannot have it both ways: if the money was paid by taxpayers because it related to the Secretary of State’s ministerial responsibilities, she must come to Parliament as a Minister and account for that. Other Ministers were told that their Twitter accounts were matters for them personally. Does the Secretary of State still have the confidence of the Leader of the House?
All we got from yesterday’s Budget was old news, briefed and leaked to the papers before it was given to Parliament. The next time that the Leader of the House cries crocodile tears for the rights of this place, she could reflect on the Government’s failure to stand by the parliamentary convention that Budgets are delivered in the Chamber first. I am sure that she was relieved that her marginal constituency did not get a namecheck, because her colleagues were all complaining that their namecheck was the kiss of death.
On the substance, the verdict is now in. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that tax receipts as a proportion of GDP are set to rise to their highest level since the second world war. The Resolution Foundation says that the big picture has not changed: taxes are heading up, and this will be the first Parliament in modern history in which living standards fall to be lower at the end than they were at the start. The Institute for Fiscal Studies agrees that households are worse off since the last election, and no sooner had the Chancellor sat down than the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), criticised a key plank of the energy plans on Twitter.
The public’s verdict is also in. A snap poll revealed that three in five voters think that the Government’s plan is not working. The Sky News panel of 2019 Tory voters could not have been more damning: one voter said that the Budget was “absolutely farcical”. Another said that the Government have “no plans”, and thought that the Budget was “a great vote loser” and “A waste of time”;
“time for them to go”,
said a third. That is because on the big issues, this Budget changes nothing.
On taxes, for every 5p the Government are giving, they are taking 10p in tax rises. Millions more middle-income families are paying more and more tax on their earnings, as they are dragged over higher tax thresholds. Taxes are going up to their highest level in 70 years; the Government hate it, but that is the reality. That is the truth of this Conservative Government. On the public finances, borrowing has been revised upwards, with the Chancellor’s measures in the Budget adding £4 billion to borrowing, and debt as a share of GDP at its highest since the 1960s. Borrowing to fund tax cuts—how irresponsible.
On growth, after everything the Chancellor announced was taken into account, growth forecasts were revised down from November. Growth figures would have been even worse were it not for higher predictions of net migration. The Government hate that too, but is the truth. We are in a recession; the economy is smaller than when the Prime Minister entered Downing Street, there has been the biggest fall in living standards since records began, and real incomes are below what they were at the last election. That is the Conservatives’ record, and it has the Prime Minister’s name written all over it.
Finally, disgracefully, the Chancellor made no mention at all of infected blood compensation or Horizon scandal redress. The slowness in righting these wrongs is raised here most weeks. The Business and Trade Committee’s highly critical report, out this morning, calls for a legally binding timetable for delivering redress to sub-postmasters, and for that to be taken completely out of the hands of the Post Office. Does the Leader of the House agree? Given everything she has said on both these injustices, does she understand the anger that no new money was allocated, and no timetable was given, for those compensation schemes in yesterday’s Budget? Was not that omission just another short-term, cynical act that will store up problems for the next Government to sort out? As ever, it is party before country. These are the final acts of a desperate, dying Government.