Business of the House

Philip Davies Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for announcing next week’s business and for giving us a hint of what might follow thereafter. This week, we marked Holocaust memorial day and the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The sheer scale of the evil perpetrated by the Nazis almost defies belief. Does the Leader of the House agree that the testimony of the survivors will help us to ensure that that obscenity is never repeated? Will he join me in welcoming plans for a new holocaust memorial in this country that will honour the memory of all the victims? Does he also agree that this anniversary must motivate us to redouble our efforts to combat anti-Semitism and other forms of prejudice, including racism, homophobia and religious hatred, which are on the rise across the world today?

I notice one thing missing from this week’s business is any reference to plain packaging for cigarettes. After the Government had supported it, the House then backed it. The Government then changed their mind and opposed it, but last week the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison) U-turned on the U-turn late at night in an Adjournment debate, presumably when she thought tobacco lobbyist Lynton Crosby was not looking. Given the reports that more than half of Conservative Back Benchers are willing to rebel against the Government and oppose plain packaging—

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Hear, hear!

[Ms Eagle]

That has just been confirmed. Given those reports, will the Leader of the House acknowledge that he is going to have to rely once again on Labour votes to pass the measure? Will he also confirm that he will bring this debate to the Floor of the House before Dissolution?

I notice that, just in the nick of time, the Government yesterday appointed someone to review the impact of their gag on free speech in the run-up to the election. But the man they have chosen to review the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014 is a Conservative peer who did not once vote against the Government on the Bill and who voted with them on some of its worst aspects. Yesterday, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), the deputy leader of the Labour party, was forced to write to the Culture Secretary about the disgraceful and overt political bias of another Conservative peer, the supposedly impartial deputy chair of Ofcom. This morning I have been reading about the extent of this Government’s pork barrel politics, abusing public money to prop up their candidates in marginal seats, and refusing to admit how much they are spending on it. So will the Leader of the House now arrange to publish full details of Government spending in marginal seats? Will he also arrange for a statement from the Cabinet Secretary on this Government’s widespread neglect of the Nolan principles for public appointments, as these appointments seem to have little to do with impartiality or integrity and much more to do with membership of the Conservative party? Given that Ofcom has today said that Baroness Noakes’s comments were clearly inappropriate, will the Leader of the House explain why she is still in her job?

Yesterday, we saw the Prime Minister refusing to acknowledge that all the hospital units he stood outside and promised to save before the last election have been closed or downgraded while he has been Prime Minister. More than 1,000 ambulances a day are now queuing outside accident and emergency units, overstretched hospitals are cancelling 1,500 operations a week and all the Government have done is make it harder for hospitals to declare major incidents. The Tories’ pledge to protect the NHS is now in tatters. They promised they would put patients first, but instead they gave us a £3 billion top-down reorganisation and an NHS in crisis. They promised they would cut the deficit not the NHS, but borrowing has soared and they have missed every target they ever set themselves on the economy. They promised a recovery for everyone, but they gave us queues at food banks, record insecurity at work and tax cuts for their millionaire mates. I am not the only one who is glad there are only 98 days left of them.

This week, the Liberal Democrat Transport Minister, Baroness Kramer, turned up in Taipei on a rail mission with a very special gift. Local journalists looked on in horror as she gave the city’s mayor a watch, which is taboo in local culture because it suggests that the recipient’s time is running out. She should have given it to her party leader. The mayor was less than impressed, saying:

“I can just re-gift it to someone else or take it to a metal dealer and sell it for cash.”

I just wish we could get as much use out of other Lib Dem offerings. Someone else who has been struggling with timepieces is the invisible man, the Tory Chief Whip. In Cabinet, he inadvertently interrupted the Chancellor with a sudden musical outburst. His Cabinet colleagues looked on in horror as Beyoncé’s latest hit began blasting from the Chief Whip’s new smartwatch. Any watch that is smart enough to play Beyoncé should surely be able to tell him when business questions is.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hague]

That is also an entirely legitimate subject for a debate, particularly given that many different Departments may have an interest. It sounds like a wholly suitable subject for an Adjournment debate, and I recommend that the hon. Lady pursues the matter in that way.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

With regard to the idiotic nanny-state proposal for plain packaging—why on earth we need plain packaging for a product that is already behind shutters, Lord only knows, not to mention the fact that it will put many good jobs in Bradford at risk—will the Leader of the House promise that when the matter is further considered, it will not be passed through some Committee upstairs and so sneaked through, but will be debated on the Floor of the House, and that there will be a vote at the end of it, and that that vote will be a free vote for Ministers as well as Back Benchers?

[Mr Hague]

My hon. Friend always states his case very clearly and moderately. I explained earlier the time constraints on this, and that such regulations cannot be made—they can be laid, but not made—before 2 March. No decision has been made on how both Houses of Parliament consider the regulations—both will need to do so. That can be done on the Floor of the House or in Committee; a decision will have to be made about that in due course. Decisions about whipping will of course be made by other authorities sitting not far from me.