Business of the House

Peter Bone Excerpts

Thursday 1st December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

Let me begin with the hon. Lady’s final question. I will certainly make inquiries of those in the relevant part of the House’s administration department about the lights in Norman Shaw South.

The hon. Lady is right to draw attention to the importance of world AIDS day. As far as the Government are concerned, this country remains committed to ending the AIDS epidemic as a public health threat by 2030. We recently pledged a further £1.1 billion to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, which will provide essential retroviral therapy for 1.3 million people who are living with HIV. That, of course, is in addition to the £2.4 million national HIV prevention and sexual health promotion programme.

The hon. Lady mentioned the recent court case on PrEP. I think it is good that we have legal clarity about where responsibility lies. Clearly, in the light of the court judgment, NHS England will now consider through its normal process of assessment whether and how PrEP should be made available to patients on the NHS.

Given that we have just had an hour of questions to the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the House has been able to discuss the matters raised by the hon. Lady in some detail. However, the importance of ensuring the strength and vitality of the country’s science base—including, critically, its important relationships with universities and scientific institutions—in Europe and globally will of course be an important element of the Government’s approach to the forthcoming negotiation.

I join the hon. Lady in saluting the work done by our great museums, both our great national museums here in London—and, I should add, in Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff—and our regional and local museums, which do tremendous work. I remember, as a small child, being taken off on rainy half-term days to some of the museums in London, and I agree with the hon. Lady that they perform an important educational and cultural role.

In the spirit of these weekly occasions, I am more than happy to pay tribute to the work of the late Jennie Lee. There have been formidable champions of the arts on both sides of the House over the years, but I think that Jennie Lee was the first Arts Minister to be formally designated as such, and she has an important place in the history of public policy on the arts.

The hon. Lady referred to skills. The Government are committed to creating 3 million new apprenticeships during the current Parliament, and to continuing the work to drive up the quality of education that our children receive in schools. It should be a point of remark—not of complacency, but of some celebration—that more children than ever before attend state schools that are categorised by Ofsted as either good or outstanding.

The hon. Lady referred to magistrates courts, and all of us who have been through this process in our own constituencies know it can be a painful one, but in an age when quite a lot of routine court work can now be done more effectively, swiftly and cheaply online, doing away with the need for as many personal appearances—particularly when there is not actually a trial—there is not the need for quite so many individual courtrooms as there used to be. That is why my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor is looking realistically at how our justice and courts system is best equipped to deal with the challenges of the 21st century and the digital age in an effective fashion.

I was disappointed that the hon. Lady made no reference in her comments about benefits to the recent announcement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions that he will do away with the need for reassessments of people who suffer from the most serious disabilities and chronic and degenerative medical conditions. I would have hoped the entire House welcomed that.

I think the hon. Lady is playing to the gallery a bit, frankly, when it comes to benefit sanctions. As the National Audit Office itself pointed out in its report, our current sanctions system has existed since 1996; it was in operation throughout the 13 years of the Blair and Brown Governments, because the Labour party in government recognised that a sanctions system, properly applied, was a necessary part of a fair benefits system. In any month, fewer than 1% of employment and support allowance claimants and fewer than 4% of jobseeker’s allowance claimants are now sanctioned, and we have seen a halving of sanctions in the past year alone. So I think the Department for Work and Pensions is showing it is trying to address genuine concerns, but we do not flinch—as the Labour party in opposition appears to flinch from its record in government—from accepting that a sanctions system is necessary for the fair functioning of our welfare arrangements.

The hon. Lady asked for a debate on the EU-Canada trade agreement. [Interruption.] Of course, under the provisions of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, that treaty will have to be laid before Parliament in the normal way, so there will be an opportunity for such a debate.

While I enjoyed the hon. Lady’s little jibe about music—[Interruption.] I was given a long list of questions by the Opposition. She asked about a serious point in respect of the private Member’s Bill on boundaries. The Member promoting the Bill published it only three days before it was down for its Second Reading debate, and it was not accompanied by any kind of statement or analysis of the costs associated with it. So the Government are now going through the normal process of trying to establish what those costs are before coming forward further to the House.

Finally, the hon. Lady talked about a discordant band. [Interruption.] I have to say that if I were looking for dissonance and atonality, I would be looking at Members on the Benches opposite, who are members of a party—

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Lidington]

It is always good to have the support of my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone). Some 70% of Labour party Members of Parliament have expressed no confidence in their current leader; that strikes me as a party that is engaging in experimental music of the most dissonant kind.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lidington]

The right hon. Gentleman really should not get carried away by the odd newspaper story. The Foreign Secretary, like the whole Government, is committed to getting the right deal in the negotiations on all fronts. Part of that, as the Prime Minister has set out, is accepting that, following the referendum result, freedom of movement as it exists at the moment cannot continue. There will be a need for a national immigration regime when we leave the European Union. Obviously, the exact relationship of this country to the other 27 in terms of the movement of workers, trade, investment and so on is a central part of those negotiations but, at the risk of repeating lines that the right hon. Gentleman has heard from Ministers so often, we are not going to give a running commentary on that detail.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) who speaks for the Scottish National party was slightly wrong. There is a Bill before Parliament now—the Withdrawal from the European Union (Article 50) Bill. That Bill is expected to get a Second Reading on 16 December but, as the Leader of the House knows, there is one slight problem if it progresses: Standing Order No. 84A(5) requires the Government to table a motion so that the Bill can proceed to Committee, because the Committee stage of another private Member’s Bill is taking place. Has the Leader of the House given any thought to that, and will he make a statement about when he will bring forward that motion?

[Mr Lidington]

At a time when the Supreme Court is about to consider all these matters relating to the triggering of article 50, it would be premature of me to speculate about possible future legislative needs.