Business of the House

Peter Bone Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House for her further questions. On the transparency Bill, she is just trying to rerun the debate we had on Tuesday. All the points she has made were presented in that debate and she lost. The Bill secured a Second Reading and, in particular, the support of the House against the Opposition’s reasoned amendment, which specifically sought a delay.

As I made clear on Second Reading, we will look at some of the concerns that have been raised, but I re-emphasise this point: many of the representations that are being made are based on a complete misunderstanding and a misrepresentation, which is that some change is taking place in the definition of what constitutes expenditure for electoral purposes, as distinct from campaigning on policies and issues. Charities will continue to be able to campaign as vigorously as they wish in putting forward their policies, and if any organisations were to step over the line and try to secure the election of a party or a candidate, that should be treated as election expenditure. That was the case in the past and will be the case in future. If there is any way we can make that even clearer, we will set out to do so.

I am surprised that the hon. Lady did not take the opportunity to respond on behalf of the Leader of the Opposition to the letter I sent him before the recess making it clear that the Bill was available for the Labour party to put forward proposals to give trade union members a deliberate choice on their participation in political funds, which he said they should have. Only yesterday we saw Paul Kenny of the GMB clearly trying to push him off his proposals. If he wants to entrench them, he should come forward next week—he still has time to do so—and table amendments to the Bill so that that can be legislated for and he can show his determination. If he does not do so, we will know that he is not serious about doing it at all.

The hon. Lady asked about the urgent question earlier today, trying to rerun points that I think my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State dealt with very well. Let me say one thing, and I say it from personal experience: he is doing absolutely the right thing to ensure that we deliver the programme on universal credit. It is vital that we do so in order to make work pay and to get the incentives in the welfare system right, which the Labour party failed to do. Stepping into a programme to make changes in order to deliver it on time and on budget is the right thing to do, unlike what Labour did with the NHS IT programme, which was to go into denial about all the problems. When my colleagues and I came into office after the general election we found a broken programme that we had to scrap, but in the process we saved over £2 billion, which enabled my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health last week to announce a major programme for supporting hospitals and the NHS to improve their technology themselves. That is what we should be doing; we should have workable programmes, not top-down, broken ones. [Interruption.] Talking about the National Audit Office, it has said that delivering the NHS reorganisation programme on time is a major achievement and that it is delivering the planned savings: £5.5 billion from the reform programme itself over the course of this Parliament and £1.5 billion every year thereafter.

The hon. Lady asked one thing about business, regarding an update from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I am happy to remind her that he will be at the Dispatch Box on Tuesday to answer questions. I am looking forward to him being able further to remind the House, as the Prime Minister did yesterday, of the events of the summer in relation to the economy, which the hon. Lady did not mention and her leader did not mention at Prime Minister’s Questions. The reason they did not is that the Chancellor will be able to refer to figures showing that employment is up, exports are up, confidence is up, manufacturing is up, services are up, construction is up, housing starts are up, and growth is up. The hon. Lady knows that, as a consequence, the Labour party is going down.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

All parliamentarians in this House will have welcomed the Prime Minister’s courageous decision to recall Parliament last week to have a debate and a vote on Syria before military action could take place. He is really putting Parliament first. Can the Leader of the House confirm that if such circumstances occur in future the Prime Minister will again put a motion before this House before military action takes place?

[Mr Lansley]

The Prime Minister and I have been very clear at the Dispatch Box that we will respect the right of Parliament, as the source of authority, to express a view in relation to the use of military force in any substantial way, save that, as the Prime Minister has rightly made clear, in any emergency or on issues that are urgent or a matter of the defence of the national interest and the security of this country, he must have the right and the discretion to act immediately if he is required to do so.