Business of the House

Matt Western Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell]

First of all, I join Mr Speaker and others in marking the sad loss of John Prescott. He was a true legend, and one of the best campaigners of our movement. He put climate change and real, meaningful levelling up at the top of the political agenda long before they were fashionable. He was groundbreaking and huge fun, and he will be greatly missed. We send our condolences to Pauline and the whole family. As Mr Speaker said, there will be an opportunity for tributes next week.

I am sure the whole House will also join me in marking Parliament Week, when we open our door on how we work in this place. Today is “Ask Her to Stand” day, when we encourage more women to seek elected office.

Let me take this opportunity to point the House to a motion that I have tabled today, which makes some important changes to proxy votes for Members. One of my priorities as Leader of the House is to make Parliament more family friendly. We have more women than ever in this place, and more parents of small children, those with caring responsibilities and disabled Members. We need to change the way that we do things to reflect the times. I have asked the Procedure Committee to continue its wider review of the proxy vote system, and the Modernisation Committee will consider these issues in due course. However, I have heard from Members that the current system has not met some immediate needs, so I am extending the childbirth, miscarriage or baby loss proxy provisions to explicitly cover complications during pregnancy or ongoing fertility treatment. Under this scheme, reasons for proxies remain confidential and are self-certified, requiring no onerous paperwork. I am making the default for all proxies seven months, and I hope the whole House will welcome that.

The right hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) raised a number of issues, but I must say I am losing track of the Opposition’s arguments. They attack our Budget measures, yet they support all the investment. They do not like our decisions, yet they took many of the same ones in government. They duck the difficult issues, yet criticise us for dealing with them. Yes, we have had to make some big choices, but we stand by them because we are on the side of ordinary people, the NHS and public services. We are operating in the interests of economic stability, unlike his party. We will see the impact of the Budget over time, but the Conservatives really must decide whether they support the investment and the extra spending on our public services, or whether they do not want any of it and are against that support.

The right hon. Gentleman picks on the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, but there is not a more accomplished member of the Cabinet. He is driving forward his agenda. He is forthcoming to this House on many occasions, and every time he appears in this House, he wipes the floor with his opponent. Yet again, the Conservatives are on the wrong side of history. We have a very ambitious mission to become a clean energy superpower by 2030—one that we are driving forward. It is vital that we do that. That means taking on some of the inherent issues that they ducked: our infrastructure; the grid; our planning laws; getting the investment where it is needed, which we are announcing that all the time; unlocking new power supplies in nuclear, solar, hydrogen and elsewhere; and establishing Great British Energy, which is well under way, to ensure much needed homegrown production. Taken together, those measures will lower bills, create jobs, and give us the energy security that the right hon. Gentleman’s Government failed to give us.

Is not the truth that Opposition Members are becoming political opportunists? They spent years in government ducking the difficult decisions, leaving a huge black hole and a big mess for us to clean up. Public services were on their knees, strike action was costing £15 billion in lost productivity, pay deals were on Ministers’ desks with not a penny accounted for, and not a single penny was set aside for the compensation schemes. The reserves were spent three times over, and on their watch inflation was at 11%. Living standards fell for the first time in our history under the Conservatives. Now they want to have their cake and eat it at the same time. They want all the benefits from the Budget, but not the hard calls needed to pay for them. In a few short weeks, they have gone from the party of government to the party of protest.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend has illustrated a great many aspects of the mess that this Government have inherited from the last, including longer waiting lists, our crumbling schools and our failing economy, and nowhere is that mess more visible than on the A46 in Warwickshire, between Coventry and Stratford, which adjoins my constituency. Last month, 12 tonnes of rubbish were collected from the roadside because no clearing up had been done for many years—yet another example of the mess that was left behind. May we have a debate in Government time not just on potholes, but on the state of our roads and the mess that the last Government left them in?

[Lucy Powell]

What better symbol could there be of the mess we have inherited than all that mess left on the A46 in my hon. Friend’s constituency? We are committed to tackling the plague of fly-tipping and the vandals who are creating a mess in our communities, and that is one of the reasons why we are cracking down on antisocial behaviour and introducing respect orders so that those responsible can clean up their own mess.