Business of the House

Martin Vickers Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I think that I still have fractionally more hair than Dr Evil.

As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have great affection for him as a parliamentarian and very much enjoy debating with him, but I cannot help but feel that today we are getting some slightly mixed messages. For one extraordinary moment I thought that he was about to reinvent himself as a champion of the House of Lords, but then he returned to his view that it should be abolished, raising my expectations and then dashing them at a stroke. Whatever my views might be—I happen to have great regard for the other place, as well as for him—I am afraid that I do not have the power to suspend the House of Lords. Therefore, I counsel him not to believe everything he reads in the newspapers.

I also encourage the hon. Gentleman not to be quite so cynical about compassionate conservatism. Let us look at a couple of things that have happened under this Government. We are seeing child poverty come down, not up, despite all the warnings from the Labour party. One of the achievements I am most proud of is the fact that our party, both in coalition and now in a majority Government, has overseen a rapid drop in unemployment and in the number of children growing up in workless households. To me, that makes a crucial difference for the development of the next generation. That is something I will always be proud of, and something that I think lies at the heart of a compassionate Conservative party and what it is achieving for this country.

The hon. Gentleman also talked about the debates on tax credits, but I am afraid that he has a rather misguided view of our approach to the poor. I remind him that we are cutting the rents of social tenants, increasing childcare, perhaps to the tune of £2,500 a year, cutting taxation for people on low incomes and boosting the national living wage for people on low incomes. This is a Government who care about people on low incomes and are doing practical things to help them. However, we cannot continue to have a high-tax, high-welfare and low-wage society. We have to change that, and that is what we are doing.

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s comments about what the Government are doing for the steel industry. Many of my constituents are affected by the redundancies in Scunthorpe, so we need regular information to pass to them. Will he give an absolute assurance that the Business Secretary will come to the House regularly to make oral statements, particularly after visiting Brussels for talks with the European Commission in the coming days?

[Chris Grayling]

That is an issue I take very seriously. I can give my hon. Friend an assurance that Ministers with responsibility will want to keep the House informed. Indeed, the Prime Minister has addressed the issue on more than one occasion. We will do everything we possibly can to ease the problems caused by a deeply distressing change in world steel markets and to protect the livelihoods of workers in this country, but at the same time we will continue to pursue a policy that has succeeded in bringing down unemployment right across the country. It is much better to deal with these challenges in the context of an improving labour market, rather than a worsening one.