Business of the House

Sarah Wollaston Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

On the point about the debate on the adviser to the Prime Minister, the hon. Lady is now asking us to do what her Government consistently refused to do, which was to allow the Prime Minister’s adviser to initiate inquiries. She will have to listen to the response given by my ministerial colleague in the debate that I have just announced, which was selected by the Backbench Business Committee.

On the Barclays debacle, as the hon. Lady knows, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will make a statement, but it strikes me as a failure of the light-touch regime introduced by a previous Minister.

So far as the House of Lords is concerned, the Opposition seem to be in a total muddle. They say that they support the Bill but that they will oppose the programme motion, before they even know what it contains. I ask the hon. Lady, who I know supports reform, to listen to what her leader said in his first conference speech in 2010:

“This generation has a chance—and a huge responsibility—to change our politics. We must seize it and meet the challenge… we need to finally elect the House of Lords after talking about it for…a hundred years.”

That is what he said in 2010, yet yesterday the shadow Leader of the House of Lords said that

“it is not a priority”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 27 June 2012; Vol. 738, c. 237.]

The only thing that is consistent is the sheer opportunism of the Labour party on this subject.

On the usual knockabout about the coalition from the hon. Lady, I would simply say that two parties are now working together in government more harmoniously than one party did in government for 13 years.

Finally, on fuel, I admire the cool performance of the Economic Secretary in the face of some very aggressive interviewing by Jeremy Paxman. The Opposition accuse the Government of a U-turn, but let us consider their position. First, they introduced a fuel duty escalator—[Interruption.] Secondly, they asked us not to go ahead with their tax rise. Thirdly, when we do not, they complain. The alphabet does not contain a letter describing that manoeuvre.

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend please provide a debate on setting up an inquiry into the very serious allegations made against one of my predecessors, Raymond Mawby? These serious allegations, amounting to treason, need to be fully and fairly investigated, because he is not here to defend himself. It is in no one’s interest to have trial by media.

[Sir George Young]

I admire what my hon. Friend has just done in defending one of her predecessors—a man with whom I served in the House from 1974 to 1983. As she said, so far only one side of the story has been put into the public domain, and it is imperative that the other side also be put forward, in the interests of the friends and family of Ray Mawby. I would like to make the appropriate inquiries to see how we might get the full story into the public domain, so that we can find out exactly what happened to him in the years to which she referred.