Business of the House

Debate between Penny Mordaunt and William Wragg

Thursday 22nd February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

The issue of substance yesterday is a very important and serious matter. I can assure the House that there will be ample opportunities in the future to debate it on the Floor of the House, and I will announce further business in the usual way. I gently say to the hon. Lady that I am not ashamed to be a Member of Parliament, and I was not ashamed to be a Member of Parliament yesterday. I think if I were a member of the Labour party, I would be ashamed of that.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

It is with regret that I have tabled early-day motion 412.

[That this House has no confidence in Mr Speaker.]

May I ask the Leader of the House about a procedural point, as my EDM continues to gather names this morning? Could she confirm from the Dispatch Box the process by which that motion can be brought as a substantive motion to the Floor of the House in order to be debated and voted on?

[Penny Mordaunt]

The Government will always listen carefully to the views of this House, and the Speaker needs to command its confidence. The future of the speakership is therefore a matter for Members of the House, not the Government, but we will of course listen to any requests for debates in Government time. Members will also know other routes by which they can secure a debate. I reiterate that Mr Speaker has made himself available to speak to all the parties, and I am sure that his door is always open to Members individually too.

Business of the House

Debate between Penny Mordaunt and William Wragg

Thursday 16th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank the hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Dover for the work they have been doing on this issue. I will certainly make sure that the new Secretary of State has heard about the hon. Lady’s comments today and is aware of her interest in this matter.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

I bring some sad news to the House this morning: my Conservative predecessor, Sir Thomas Arnold, died on Tuesday. He is known to many on the Conservative Benches for his years of work—a decade or so—as chair of candidates. He was the godson of Ivor Novello, and as well as inheriting the rights to various of his musicals, he also inherited his piano. He was quite a character and was a great support to me, and gave me much wise advice; whether I always followed it is a different matter.

As chair of candidates, Sir Thomas oversaw the 1987 and 1992 elections, and is responsible—or, indeed, culpable—for a number of Members being in this House today. His guiding words were these:

“The Conservative Party…is looking for men and women who have a good working knowledge of contemporary politics and a proven track record of experience…who above all know their own minds.”

With those words in mind, might the Leader of the House be able to facilitate a debate so that we can all learn how parties across the House can attract such candidates to be elected to this place?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I am sure I speak for all Members present when I say how sorry we are at that sad news, and that our thoughts are with Sir Thomas’s friends and family. He achieved the only Conservative gain in the 1974 election, which was the second time he stood for Parliament. He was Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Northern Ireland Office and later in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He was vice-chairman of the party under Peter Brooke in 1983, and I am told that the most enjoyable time he spent in Parliament was when he headed the Commons Treasury Select Committee, which included an investigation into the downfall of Barings bank. He achieved a great deal for this country, and we remember him and his service fondly. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]

Business of the House

Debate between Penny Mordaunt and William Wragg

Thursday 2nd March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

First, let me take this opportunity to place on the record, as I have been unable to do so this week, the fact that my thoughts and prayers are with all those affected by the appalling train accident in Greece. I know that all Members would want to join me in that. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]

I will run through the questions that the hon. Lady has asked me. With regard to the Deputy Prime Minister, there was a statement, in which he would have heard what Members have said and listened to their concerns. However, I will be happy to write to him and make sure that he knows that she has raised the matter this week.

As for the rhetoric we have had from Labour on national missions, I just say to the hon. Lady that a national mission for this country should be the strength of our NHS. If she really wants to get all minds working on that, across all sectors—public, private, philanthropic and charitable—just repeating the rhetoric that large swathes of the population do not care about the NHS is not helpful. We care very much about the NHS. Our record on investment speaks for itself, and she will know that a huge amount of work is ongoing to deal with the very real problem of backlogs because of the pandemic.

The hon. Lady could have spoken about the 92 community diagnostic centres that are open, with diagnostics being one of the main reasons why we still have those waiting list backlogs. She will know that we have massively increased access to GP appointments, with their number per day having increased by 120,000 since this time last year. That is due to the hard work of healthcare professionals, the modernisation that has been adopted, and the hard work of the Secretary of State and his team. She could acknowledge that and move the debate on from some rather outdated rhetoric. I will encourage Labour to do that at every business questions, in all other areas as well.

The hon. Lady invites comparison between the work of the Department for Work and Pensions now and the record of that Department under the last Labour Government, and indeed of the whole Government. I just remind her that we have got 4 million additional people into the workplace, with 2 million being women and 1 million being disabled people who would not otherwise have had those opportunities to work.

I welcome the hon. Lady’s gentle encouragement about the performance of Whitehall Departments. She knows that I take this matter very seriously. I have had permanent secretaries come to see me in my office, particularly, in recent times, the permanent secretary at the Home Office. She will know that we have achieved on the backlog on those questions and the casework that is so important to us in this place—70,000 more pieces of correspondence have been dealt with since this matter was raised in this House. Both Lord True, the Leader of the House of Lords, and I will be seeing all permanent secretaries next week, and we have a list of suggestions on how things can be improved. I will always want Members of this House to have timely access to information, and I shall continue to operate on that basis.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

As my right hon. Friend will know, the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee is a warm and friendly ensemble of parliamentarians, which Ministers enjoy appearing before. I pay tribute to her for doing so, and to all current Cabinet Office Ministers, but is she aware that sometimes our cordial invitation falls on deaf ears when the Ministers concerned are in different Departments but there are matter of interest to our Committee and this House? While she is writing down her little list, may I ask her to add to it the need to remind her colleagues on the Treasury Bench that they should put scrutiny before this House as the foremost obligation in their in-trays?

With your indulgence, Mr Speaker, may I also—to prove that I am in a good and charitable mood this morning—wish my right hon. Friend a very happy birthday for this weekend? It would be ungallant of me to say the age but, frankly, I cannot believe it.

[Penny Mordaunt]

I am the grand old age of twenty-thirty this weekend. I thank my hon. Friend for that very kind remark. He will know that, having been a frequent flyer before his Committee, I take what he says very seriously. I shall certainly ensure that any Secretary of State whom he has invited to give evidence is encouraged to do so.

Ministerial Code/Register of Ministers’ Interests

Debate between Penny Mordaunt and William Wragg

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Paymaster General (Penny Mordaunt)]

The right hon. Lady raises issues about the ministerial code, the arbiter of which is the Prime Minister; the work of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which is a matter for that Committee; and the role of the independent adviser. She also touches on various reviews that are taking place and matters for the House authorities. As you pointed out, Mr Speaker, these are not things it would be appropriate for me to pontificate on, but I will try to answer the general thrust of the accusations the right hon. Lady makes today, and I shall speak frankly, because I know she appreciates that.

The charge the right hon. Lady makes is that the people she names are somehow on the take. That is the charge she is making here today on the Floor of the House: that they have not been focused over the past 16 months on working their socks off to save lives, to get a vaccination programme up and running and to do the things that the public need us to do, but that they have, unbelievably, entered into politics, made sacrifices and overcome the obstacles that she will be aware of to get into this place not to serve in public life but to do a mate—more accurately, a Tory mate—or someone they vaguely know, or met in a lift once, or perhaps do not know at all, a favour. That is the accusation that she is making today. I am afraid that that is why the Labour line of attack is not getting traction, well rehearsed though it is. It is not getting traction with the public because it is not plausible. It is based not on fact but on speculation, innuendo and smear.

Perceived conflicts of interest are not those that the right hon. Lady has made up. The public care about scrutiny—they do. They care about accountability, transparency and standards in public life. What they see through though is the performance she has given today, which is designed to smear decent colleagues and denigrate British business. I would direct the right hon. Lady to the National Audit Office report, which refutes the accusations she has made about MPs, civil servants, business and members of the public—but I am sure she already knows that. I would suggest to her that an Essex MP is perfectly entitled to forward an offer from the Essex chamber of commerce to help in a pandemic. MPs do it all the time—it is part of our job—but the right hon. Lady already knows this, too, and so does everyone else. The urgent question today has more to do with Labour’s internal politics and divisions than the conduct of Members of this House and enterprises that have been working to help the NHS and to save lives.

The right hon. Lady has made particular accusations today about colleagues, and I want to make a final point, Mr Speaker. If you were to take every single MP she has made an allegation about this afternoon, if you were to look at all the political donations they have received since the pandemic started, since January 2020, and if you were to add them all up and then double them—no, quadruple them—you would just about match what the right hon. Lady herself has received in the same time period. She should thank her lucky stars that we do not play the same games that she does.

The right hon. Lady is in a new position shadowing the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who now looks after some of the most pressing issues facing this nation: the Union of the United Kingdom, devolution, the recovery from this crisis, national security, community resilience and the British brand around the world. That is what we are focused on. I hope that, after her debut today, she will be too, and I wish her well.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

The role of the independent adviser is an important one, and I personally was impressed by Lord Geidt’s evidence to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee last week. Ostensibly, the delay in the publication of the Register of Ministers’ Interests was due to the vacancy in that important position that arose after the resignation of Sir Alex Allan. What does my right hon. Friend suggest be done should such a vacancy arise again, so that the register is not delayed in the future?

[Penny Mordaunt]

My hon. Friend makes some very good points. He knows, because I have appeared before his Committee regarding this and other matters, that there have been delays to certain things, in part because of what the Government have had to deal with over the past 16 months, but those appointments are in train now. As he also knows from the evidence his Committee took, the register is due to be published very soon. I am sure that things will be on a much more stable footing as, hopefully, we come out of the pandemic.

Future Relationship with the EU

Debate between Penny Mordaunt and William Wragg

Tuesday 9th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank the hon. Lady for those questions. At the start of her response, she made a powerful argument for not extending the transition period. If we have learned anything over the last few years, it is that that would only extend the negotiations. I agree that business, our citizens across the EU, and the rest of the world, with which we are also focused on trade negotiations, want to have certainty about the future, so we must press on with that. That is one of the many reasons why we will not extend the transition period.

The hon. Lady is also right to draw attention to the fact that the covid crisis is going on. I know that she is aware of the huge amount of work that was done last year on no-deal preparations, and the tremendous work that civil contingencies and all Government Departments have been doing to ensure that supply chains remain strong, that we can quickly adapt, and that we have stocks of all sorts of goods, including the medicines that we need. These are challenging at times, in the light of what the world is facing, but they are our focus. I assure her of the incredible work that those civil servants are doing to ensure that our citizens have what they need when they need it.

I take a keen interest in those areas as a former employee of the Freight Transport Association. We will shortly be saying more about our border operations. A tremendous amount of work has gone on to improve on our communication with businesses from every part of the UK last year to ensure that is good, and that we are not just giving people the right information, but picking up solutions from the sector, because that will be key to getting it right.

On the hon. Lady’s remarks about rights, animal welfare, security, zero tariffs and zero quotas, our policy has not changed. We will of course respect the Good Friday/Belfast agreement and we expect the EU to do the same.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

Regrettably, is not the insurmountable blockage in this entire process the refusal of the EU to accept the UK as a sovereign nation and, therefore, its refusal to countenance a large-scale copy and paste of existing arrangements with the likes of Canada, South Korea and Japan to reach a mutually beneficial trading partnership?

[Penny Mordaunt]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. The areas where we still need to make progress will be helped when the EU remembers that we are a sovereign equal.