Business of the House

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

If the hon. Lady passes the details to my office, I will make sure they are taken up with the Home Office. There is a hotline, or there certainly used to be a hotline, for MPs to contact the Passport Office. If she and her staff have not used it already, I encourage her to do so.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

Last week, Premier League club Brentford FC announced that it is going to retain its home strip for a second season to save the fans money and to reduce the environmental impact of clothing—polyester, in particular, in this case—so will the Leader of the House congratulate Brentford FC? My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) asked him to congratulate clubs such as Sheffield Wednesday and Brentford on their community impact. Will he also congratulate them on their environmental impact?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Again, I am grateful to the hon. Lady because I know what a burden it is for parents to have to buy the new strip every year. The club keeping its strip will be welcomed by fans and particularly young fans’ parents, who will have a significant saving in the run-up to Christmas. I congratulate Brentford FC and encourage it to continue its community activities. It is very impressive that it is doing good environmental work as well, possibly with a small hit to its bottom line, which makes it even more impressive.

Virtual Participation in Debate

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am disappointed, saddened and alarmed, because this House has effectively been gagged. We are unable to debate two very important motions that were on the Order Paper. With the greatest respect, hon. and right hon. Members should have the opportunity to raise issues in relation to those motions, and that is the purpose of interventions—interventions that the Leader of the House desperately wants because he says that they move the debate along.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making a really important point about this House being gagged. I sat through several debates and questions when the Leader of the House said, “Look around you; we are gagged”—I do not know whether he actually used the word “gagged”, but he effectively implied that covid regulations meant that we could not debate properly. Like all organisations, we have had to adapt. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is a proper piece of business that must be debated, and have the opportunity to be discussed fully and with respect, and that the Leader of the House’s attitude today contradicts every point that he has made when we have discussed virtual debating up to now?

[Valerie Vaz]

I want to address that point. We had a debate last week where a perfectly reasonable person, who passed all the tests that we could possibly have asked of her and more, was prevented from taking up a job. That was an absurd position. I would have liked to have asked the Leader of the House, and I wanted the House to know, whether any of the people who were on the list were members of a political party. That is the transparency we needed—the transparency, not the secrecy. This House is not about secrecy; it is about ensuring that there is open debate.

Business of the House

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Thursday 8th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

May I congratulate the next Member, who ran a virtual marathon and raised over £1,000 for charity?

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

This House will be more covid-safe now that Mr Speaker has required us to wear face masks in shared spaces on the parliamentary estate, but on days when there are votes, the 500-plus of us who are not self-isolating for health or public health reasons are required to be here to vote, crowding into corridors and halls of this building and putting ourselves and staff at additional risk, particularly as so many Members do not seem to respect the Government’s rule on spacing. The Leader of the House keeps saying that we should continue with business as normal, but covid means that all workplaces have had to compromise and adapt. What level of infection here or in the country will it take for the Government to let us return to online voting in this place?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The House has adapted. If you seek a monument, look around—look at this half-empty or quarter-empty Chamber. There is none of the excitement and pizzazz that the Chamber normally has, and I know that it grieves many Members that we have to be like this. We also have to get on and do our duty, rather than democracy being suspended when doctors are at work, nurses are at work and supermarket workers are at work. We are not some priestly caste above the rest of the nation. We are part of the rest of the nation. It is our duty to be here, representing our constituents and voting. Of course Members should be responsible and socially distance in the queues to vote—that is absolutely right—but we have a duty to be here, and I am surprised that Members do not wish to do their duty.

Proceedings during the Pandemic

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Sometimes the hon. Member for Rhondda makes the point for me more eloquently than I could have made it myself: there is an absolute right of Members to attend Parliament. It is a most antique right. It predates the Stuarts and, as I keep on saying, it goes back to 1340. Members may attend if they wish to.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

Has the Lord President done an estimation of the number of additional Members who will be kept away from this place if, after today, one of the people in this Palace tests positive? Therefore, any one of us—maybe all of us—may have to stay away for up to two weeks. Has he done that calculation and does he have a plan for what happens in that instance?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Well, the answer to that is: look around—if you seek a monument, look around. We are sitting six feet away from each other so that we are socially distanced, and therefore, if one right hon. or hon. Member has the coronavirus, in the track-and-tracing process we would not be notifying them about the people that we are sitting six feet away from. That is the whole point of social distancing. If we look on the floor, we see it says, “Please wait here until the person in front has moved forward”, and that goes back and back at six feet intervals all the way through, so that this can be done on a socially distanced basis, in line with Public Health England guidelines. I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for pointing out how well the House service has done in setting this out in a way that can continue to ensure that Members may turn up.

Let me continue my conclusion. There are many things that make the lives of MPs difficult, and I am not trying to pretend that this is not the case, but we none the less have a duty to the country and voters to fulfil both our collective constitutional function and our individual roles. The collective of Parliament requires that we return physically so we can allow proper redress of grievance, hold the Government to account, deliver on the mandate provided at the election and pass the important Bills that I have listed. I have no doubt that there will be some teething problems with the voting system today. It may be some time until—

Business of the House

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman has raised this point in the House. It is a fundamental principle of banking that the owners of the money should be able to move their money; that is the basis on which people make deposits, and banks that try to frustrate that are not operating properly. He has made his point about the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, and it is now on the record.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

One series of debates that I am not that keen on hearing is the one asked for by Conservative Members, which seems to be about playing the election campaigns of their candidate in the London elections. May I respectfully suggest that this is not the place for running those election campaign debates, given that the candidates are not in this place?

I want to raise the issue of Secretaries of State coming to this House to discuss coronavirus. We are grateful for the work that the Health Secretary has done in coming to this House to answer extensive questions, but many of the issues we are raising cover issues under the purview of other ministries. I did get an answer to a question I raised about the Home Office and immigration, but I have had an email from an under-fives nursery provider in my constituency who has told me that there is no insurance cover for her business in the event of any coronavirus-related closure. That applies to all under-fives nursery businesses and probably to many other businesses in this country, so may we ask that the Business Secretary comes to this place to answer questions for businesses?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am not surprised that Opposition Members want to avoid debating Sadiq Khan—it should not surprise anyone that they want to brush his record under the carpet. However, to suggest that this House should not raise party political matters is the triumph of hope over experience.

In regard to matters that are not specifically the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in relation to the coronavirus, I would advise that those are dealt with by correspondence with the relevant Ministry in the first instance. That may get faster answers than trying to raise everything on the Floor of the House.

Business of the House

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Gentleman raises a really important point and he is absolutely right to do that. The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), is in the Chamber and will have heard his comments, but we also have Electoral Commission questions next Thursday week—28 March—and I encourage him to raise his question there.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

The retrospective loan charge deadline is causing unbelievable stress to tens of thousands of people who thought that they were doing the right thing in respect of their tax affairs, some for up to 20 years. The all-party loan charge group has evidence that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs knows of up to six related suicides, yet yesterday, the chief executive of HMRC denied that. May we have an investigation into this and an urgent debate?

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Lady is right to raise this issue. I also have constituents who have come to me with concerns about the loan charge and I am seeing the Minister responsible shortly to discuss it further with him. She will appreciate that the issue here is one of tax avoidance which HMRC has concluded was not legitimate tax avoidance. It is absolutely vital that we do everything we can to ensure that people are paying the right taxes in this country.

Business of the House

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Lady raises an issue that sounds very concerning; if there is a two-tier system, she is right to raise that in this place. She will be aware that it was this Government who introduced the national living wage and we will be increasing it again in April. That will mean a significant real-terms increase for people on some of the lowest incomes in our country. There is more to do and I encourage her to raise her particular concerns directly with Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Ministers.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

Will we be able to have a debate on the cycle to work scheme, to respond to calls to raise the threshold of the scheme in order to benefit more people, particularly those with disabilities and those on low incomes?

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Lady will be aware that we are always keen to do more for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and young people with disabilities. It is important that we always seek to do everything we can, and if she has some good ideas I encourage her to seek an Adjournment debate so she can share them with Ministers.

Baby Leave for Members of Parliament

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Miller]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right: we need more women at every level of our democratic process. I must say that I have a phenomenal team of women in my Basingstoke constituency. Nine of the 14 councillors are women, and that is even more astonishing given that a number of them are young women with very young children. Others should look at what is happening in councils such as mine to encourage more young women to come forward, and to prevent doing so being seen as incompatible with having a young family.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs Miller]

I will of course give way, but I will then make some progress.

[Ruth Cadbury]

I thank my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) and the right hon. Lady for securing this debate. The right hon. Lady makes an important point about local government. I gave birth 23 and 25 years ago, while I was a senior councillor in Hounslow. Although that was difficult, there are two fundamental differences between being in this place and being in local government. In local government, people are near to home, and the times they have to vote, and to be recorded as voting, are measured and occasional. This place is very different for both those reasons.

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Lady used to be a member of my Committee, and I have worked with her and know her well. She makes a point to which I will return, because although the motion is really important, we need to think about other aspects of this place if we are to make it work for everybody, regardless of their caring responsibilities. I will now try to make a great deal of progress, Madam Deputy Speaker, so that you do not have to remind me that we are short of time.

1 wholeheartedly support the motion in its own right, because a new addition to the family—a new baby or a newly adopted child—is a wonderful thing, but a huge change as well. When the rules and conventions of this place were established, women had no place here and men had little or no role in their children’s lives. The rules and conventions were not established on the basis of any research or facts, but reflected the way in which men lived their lives many years ago. Men’s lives have changed, and women’s lives have changed. Women can now become MPs and our lives have changed, but the demands of having a child have not changed. Allowing MPs to decide to take some time away from this place, without disenfranchising their electorate in the process, is an important step in its own right, and one that I fully support.

The proposal is, however, just one small step. I speak as the mum of three kids. When I entered the House, my youngest was three, and for me the transition was very easy. I had worked full time before, and I had the best childcare in the world—grandparents, who were there to look after my children—but not every Member of Parliament has that built in and not every Member of Parliament is as lucky as I was. That is why I believe this is just one small step.

This is one small step in a change to Parliament’s workplace culture that is long overdue. We recognise the importance of workplace culture for the people we represent, whether it is the culture at the BBC that has allowed women to be underpaid, or the culture in Hollywood and the entertainment industry that has allowed the likes of Harvey Weinstein to thrive and to abuse the people around them. When we scrutinise the effectiveness of laws, we often conclude that culture needs to change so that those laws work better. We have heard about the example of shared parental leave, which was introduced by the coalition Government, and about the right to request flexible working. They are all things that people want, but when we do the research, we find that the uptake is low, because the culture in the workplace has not changed to reflect changes in the law.

We have a duty not only to pass laws, but to influence culture. That is why it is so important that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is bringing forward a new disciplinary process on sexual harassment, and it is why we also need to show that culture change in relation to families is also important. This should apply not only to MPs with new children, but to MPs with a wide range of caring responsibilities, such as for older children, for older family members—I have such responsibilities—or, indeed, for disabled family members.

As we consider the motion—I hope we will agree it—I hope not only that we will take this small step, but that other steps will follow. I want to give the particular example of the importance of predictability in working life. Before I entered this place, I was a director of an advertising agency. It was a very difficult and challenging job, but I could do it, because I could determine how to make my working life work for me. It is very difficult to have such a level of predictability here, particularly in relation to votes. Following the motion, I advocate our looking at a voting hour to create more predictability in how this place works so that people with caring responsibilities can better work them around their overwhelmingly important responsibilities here.

To those who say that introducing baby leave is the thin end of the wedge, I have to say that they are right if that will mean that we can show compassion to a colleague who is fighting cancer, or to a colleague who has to attend the funeral of a close relative, rather than disenfranchising their constituents while they are being human beings. We need to make this change so that we can allow people to get the balance in their lives that, sadly, is so lacking at some points in the parliamentary calendar at the moment.