Business of the House

Roger Gale Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House. We are quite used to business questions being not really about the future business so much as what is currently off the top of the head of the Labour party, but it is normally a bit funnier. I will confine myself to the questions.

There was a question about the Water Bill. We will have the opportunity to debate that Bill on Monday. I think it is rather important that the Bill introduces, in addition to measures that will promote competition in the water industry and more rights for consumers, measures relating to flood insurance, which have been the subject of a detailed and difficult negotiation, but which give people most at risk of flooding considerable reassurance. I look forward to that point being made clear in the debate on Monday.

I am afraid that the shadow Leader of the House continues to propagate incorrect statistics relating to Sure Start centres. There are 49 fewer—about 1%. She should have heard what was said by the Deputy Prime Minister on Tuesday and the Prime Minister yesterday and corrected that fact.

I was not quite sure about the character of the debate that she asked for on the so-called public school elite. I am not sure whether I count myself in that elite. She may recall that I attended a public school on a direct grant, in exactly the same way as the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) did. Whether he is a member of the public school elite, I am not sure. It will be entirely in keeping with the Labour party’s approach that, in the case of the right hon. Gentleman, this is a manifestation of social mobility, whereas in my case it is a manifestation of exclusivity. I cannot imagine why that should be.

I am pleased that the shadow Leader of the House referred to young people. I am proud of what we are achieving in relation to young people. We have 1.5 million new apprenticeship starts since the election. We have a reduction of 93,000 in the claimant count for young people. We have the fewest young people not in education, employment or training. These are vital things, and we are doing more. What is being achieved with not only apprenticeships but the new traineeships will make a big difference to young people in the years ahead.

The hon. Lady referred to the NHS and preparations for the winter. She used another incorrect statistic. The reforms of the NHS did not cost £3 billion; they cost £1.5 billion and, by the end of this Parliament, will have delivered savings of £5.5 billion and £1.5 billion of reductions each year on a continuing basis. It is precisely because, in addition to that, the NHS is focused on delivering £17 billion of efficiencies that are able to be reinvested, that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has in recent weeks been able to allocate £250 million to address some of the greatest pressures in accident and emergency departments and only yesterday made it clear that he would make £150 million more available to tackle those difficulties.

We all know that there are staffing shortages in A and E departments. I inherited those when I came into office as Secretary of State for Health, and I sat with the College of Emergency Medicine and said that we would do everything we could to employ more emergency doctors. However, we cannot just magic up more emergency doctors overnight; it takes a considerable time.

As for nurses, I do not think the shadow Leader of the House has been attending the House and listening carefully, because my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said in his statement on Tuesday that more nurses are now being employed in hospitals in relation to acute general and elderly beds, that according to Health Education England hospitals are anticipating recruiting 3,700 more nurses, and that the ratio of nurses to occupied beds has improved since the election so that there are one and a half to two hours additional time per nurse per occupied bed. I am afraid that, as ever, the facts do not support the Labour party’s approach.

There was one omission in the shadow Leader of the House’s requests regarding future business in that she did not ask for a statement or a debate on bank regulation. Labour Members often do that. As the Prime Minister rightly noted yesterday, they are very keen on inquiries but they do not appear very keen in this respect. I hope that there will be an early opportunity for us to hear from the Chancellor of the Exchequer about an inquiry. I think the public are very concerned about the failure of banking regulation that led to the appointment of a wholly improper person as the chair of Co-op Bank. If the Leader of the Opposition is able to tell the press that he is, I think he said, confident of the integrity of the Labour party’s relationships with Reverend Flowers and others, then, by extension, he must know the facts relating to that relationship, and it is incumbent on him to publish them or to admit that he has not actually undertaken an internal inquiry but just wishes the questions would go away.

[Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

The European Court of Human Rights has drawn attention to the fact that prisoners in this country do not have voting rights, and much consideration has been given to that. Far less consideration has been given to the fact that among the member states of the Council of Europe a large number of countries—Malta is a particularly bad example—hold prisoners for a very long time without charge or trial. Instead of just leaving this matter to the Backbench Business Committee, will my right hon. Friend consider that there ought to be at least one day of the year when this House gives the opportunity to those of us who represent the United Kingdom on the Council of Europe to indicate precisely what we are trying to do about this? A regular debate would be a very good idea.