Business of the House

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Ms Rosie Winterton (Doncaster Central) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Sir George Young)]

The business for the week commencing 28 June will include:

Monday 28 June—Conclusion of the Budget debate.

Tuesday 29 June—Opposition day (2nd allotted day). There will be a full day’s debate on local government financing. This debate will arise on an Opposition motion.

Wednesday 30 June—General debate on the progress and prospects in energy efficiency.

Thursday 1 July—General debate on global poverty.

The provisional business for the week commencing 5 July will include:

Monday 5 July—Motion relating to the clear line of sight project, followed by the Chairman of Ways and Means has named opposed private business for consideration.

Tuesday 6 July—Second Reading of the Finance Bill.

Wednesday 7 July—Opposition day (3rd allotted day). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.

Thursday 8 July—General debate on defendant anonymity.

[Ms Winterton]

I thank the Leader of the House for giving us the business.

It is important that today we take the opportunity to acknowledge that the Leader of the House has been working extremely hard this week to fine-tune his leak-prevention strategy. I certainly detected his guiding hand in the reports of the unprecedented move by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to ask journalists to sign a written legal agreement that they would only take photographs of him and not ask any questions, just in case he let the cat out of the bag about anything in the Budget. That was a magnificent move, not least because it vindicated the work that the Opposition have been putting in week after week, making helpful and constructive suggestions about how to get the Leader of the House’s leak-prevention strategy up to scratch. Sadly for the Chancellor, the media refused to co-operate and, frankly, things have been going downhill ever since.

The Secretary of State for Education announced his plans for free schools to the papers and came to the House only because the Opposition tabled an urgent question. The Secretary of State for Health announced to the media the biggest shake-up of the NHS operating framework at 9.25 on Monday morning, but a written ministerial statement did not appear until 12.40. As for the Budget, most of it, including detailed figures, was in the Sunday papers—my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) made a point of order about that this week.

Obviously, an investigation of what went wrong will be in order, but Labour Members are quietly confident that the Leader of the House and Deputy Leader of the House can become the Government’s Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. They might like to have as their prime suspect the ventriloquist’s dummy, the Chief Secretary, who tells us very little when he comes to the House, but may be rather more garrulous with journalists as the Liberal Democrat mouthpiece for Conservative policies. Perhaps the Leader of the House could put in the Library the advice that is being given to the Cabinet about making announcements to the House before making them to journalists.

Why is there no oral statement today from the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on changes to the state pension age, which mean that men in their 50s will lose on average £8,000 of state pension?

Last week, the Leader of the House stated that he had set out in response to a written question how the Government would inform Parliament of the numerous reviews and commissions that are taking place. It is not clear from his reply where the review took place that led on Monday to the Prime Minister’s saying, in response to an intervention from me, that the Sheffield Forgemasters loan was a piece of “financial engineering”. Those remarks have caused huge concern among industrialists in Sheffield and south Yorkshire. The implications of the Prime Minister’s words are that he is backing Japanese and Korean industrialists against UK manufacturing. I urge the Leader of the House to provide more information about the reviews’ terms of reference.

May we have a general debate on today’s findings by the Institute for Fiscal Studies? The IFS shows that, under Labour’s plans, the poorest 10% would have been virtually untouched, but under the Chancellor’s Budget, their incomes are cut by more than 2.5%. Even the Government’s appointed public sector pay commissioner has said that there is no logic to the brutish cuts that the Chancellor proposes. Will the Leader of the House ask the Prime Minister himself to lead the debate on the IFS findings so that he can explain to the House why he said yesterday that it was a fair Budget?

I thank the Leader of the House for granting the general debate on defendant anonymity. That is very welcome.

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for her last comment. I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) on her success in the election for the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee.

I am afraid that the right hon. Lady is wrong about the written ministerial statement on the NHS operating framework. It was issued on time, just after half-past nine, and the document, which was the subject of the point of order, was deposited in the Library at 9.34 am. All the normal procedures were followed in respect of that document.

It is indeed the case that more urgent questions are being granted. I listened to your important speech to the Hansard Society, Mr Speaker, when you said:

“I have also deliberately rescued the urgent question, a device which compels a Minister to come to the House to face a question on a matter which has suddenly arisen”.

The previous Government also experienced that change of approach. We welcome it and are happy to come to the House to answer urgent questions when they are granted.

On Sheffield, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills dealt with that point extensively in his speech in the Budget debate yesterday, and I understand that the Deputy Prime Minister is meeting Sheffield Forgemasters tomorrow in his constituency.

So far as welfare is concerned, the right hon. Lady will know that on Monday the Budget debate will be opened by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. He will deal robustly with the points that she has made. She will also know that, for the first time, the Red Book contains a whole section on the impact of tax and welfare changes on households, from page 63 all the way to page 69. I am sure that she will have read the conclusion about child poverty on page 69, which says:

“Steps have been taken to protect low income families with children from the impact of these changes, by freezing the rate of Child Benefit to partly fund above indexation increases to the Child Tax Credit. This ensures that the overall impact of all modelled Budget changes on child poverty…is statistically insignificant.”

Let me say to the right hon. Lady that of course I take seriously the question of leaks, as I have said before. The House should be the first place to hear of any major changes in Government policy, and we also take seriously the suggestion of any leaks in advance of statements. However, on her general point, the House would take the Opposition more seriously, first, if they exhibited just some remorse for the mess that they left this country in, and secondly, if they indicated how they would fill the £50 billion gap in the public finances that they left us to inherit.