Business of the House

Martyn Day Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

What was achieved at the beginning of the pandemic was to make sure that people who needed money got it, whether they were on the furlough scheme or universal credit. The numbers of people the universal credit system was dealing with on a daily basis were multiples of what was ever expected. It was so important to make sure that people in potentially desperate situations got money. Of course, that increased the risk of fraud—everybody knew that at the time and they knew it was a risk with the furlough scheme as well—but what were we supposed to do? Were we supposed to sit idly by and let people have no money? Were we supposed to sit idly by and let people worry that their jobs were not going to exist? It was a fundamental urgency.

Everybody knows that with any accounting mechanism speed and detail do not go hand in hand, but the urgency was fundamental. I therefore defend what was done by the Department for Work and Pensions and Her Majesty’s Treasury in dealing with a very urgent situation. Just imagine, Mr Speaker—cast your mind back for a moment—what the noise would be from those on the Opposition Benches had the situation been the reverse and we had said that we could not hand out money to people who had no money because we had to go through some massive bureaucratic system. They would have rightly howled us down.

[Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)]

EU documents that define the best available techniques under the industrial emissions directive published since the beginning of this year no longer have direct legal effect. Can we have a statement from the Government to give certainty to businesses in my constituency that are concerned that the timescales and the requirements needed to meet the mechanisms for complying with the new regulations that will come in force remain unknown despite having been anticipated from early autumn?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

One of the joys of our current situation is that we have left the European Union and therefore what the European Union says about regulations is no longer binding upon us. We have our own effective parliamentary system to ensure that things happen. We have just passed the Environment Act 2021, which sets up relevant systems. We should have confidence in our ability to do things for ourselves, because we will do it better.