The Economy

John Bercow Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I inform the House that I have selected amendment (e) in the name of the Leader of the Opposition and amendments (a) and (b), which will be moved formally at the end of the debate.

I should advise the House that 53 hon. and right hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye in the debate and I am sorry to say that inevitably some will be disappointed. Depending on the length of the Front-Bench speeches, I will make a judgment on how exacting the time limit on Back-Bench speeches will need to be. We need to hear and probably will hear fully from the shadow Chancellor and the Chancellor, treating all the issues, but if they feel able to tailor their contributions in a utilitarian spirit to minimise unhappiness and to maximise their colleagues’ happiness, they will, I think, be widely applauded.

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[Mr Osborne]

I am answering the hon. Gentleman’s intervention.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We deal with these matters in an orderly and sequential manner. The Chancellor is seeking to respond to the intervention; the hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) can always try his luck again in a moment. Ministers should not be hectored in these circumstances. Let the Chancellor reply first.

[Mr Osborne]

The point I make to the hon. Gentleman is that national debt started rising in the very first years of the beginning of this century—in 2001 and 2002. It rose through the boom years, when the Labour Government should have been paying down the debt and should not have been running a deficit. One of the things on which the various leaders of the Labour party all seem to agree at the moment is that the deficit was too high going into the crash.

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[Clive Efford]

Make it up as you go along!

[Mr Speaker]

Order. If the Chancellor wants to give way, he will, and if he does not, he will not. A Member should not continue to stand in an attempt to intimidate a Minister or anybody else into giving way. [Interruption.] Order. A Member should not continue to stand as if their intervention was inevitable. Seriously, that is an established point of parliamentary procedure. The hon. Member for Eltham can have a go, but if the intervention is not accepted, he will have to resume his seat.

[Clive Efford]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. For the record, I want to apologise—I did not want to intimidate the Chancellor.

[Mr Speaker]

Whether the hon. Gentleman wanted to or not, I am happy to concede that he was not doing so.

[Mr Osborne]

I am not feeling particularly intimidated by the hon. Gentleman because he is spouting the same old anti-aspiration, anti-sound public finances nonsense that we have heard from the Opposition for the past five years.

Let me make progress and come to the central point. We have to tackle the endemic weaknesses in the British economy that no Government have been able to solve in the past: we are not productive enough and we do not export enough, save enough, train enough or build enough.

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[Mr Sheerman]

Can I ask the Chancellor about—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman has been here for 36 years, and he ought to know that you do not pose the question before permission to make the intervention has been granted. I think the Chancellor has acceded to the intervention; let us now hear what it is.

[Mr Sheerman]

The right hon. Gentleman knows that I try to play fair in these things, but on his question about my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), I think a sense of humility is needed in this Chamber today. The Tory party has just got 30% of the popular vote; the Labour party got 31%. A hell of a lot of people in this country did not vote Conservative and did not vote Labour, and if we are not looking at why we do not enthuse the people, we are not doing our job.

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[Chris Leslie]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is the usual convention, if there are significant changes to the estimates and supply that support public services, that the documentation and details for every single Department are laid before the House of Commons, so that all Members can be informed of what is happening with our public services within a financial year. This is ripping up any semblance of long-term continuity, and it is a shabby way to treat Parliament and the public services.

[Mr Speaker]

The shadow Chancellor has spoken, but this is not a matter with which the Chair needs to deal. He has made his point and it is on the record, but the Chancellor will now continue.

[Mr Osborne]

We made this announcement to the House of Commons, and the detail is there for people to examine. There will be estimates debates as usual, but there is a very simple question: does the Labour party support further savings in public expenditure? If it does not, that means the Labour party wants to increase borrowing, increase taxes and take this country back to square one and repeat all the mistakes it carried out in office—and, indeed, repeat all the political mistakes that meant it went down to a historic election defeat just a month ago.

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[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Just before I call the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst), I advise the House that the six-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches will now apply. Droves of colleagues wish to contribute, including a number of potential maiden speakers. The Chair will do its best to accommodate colleagues, and I absolutely understand why maiden speakers wish to speak, but, once and for all, may I ask Members not to come to the Chair inquiring where they are on the list or pointing out exactly how many members of their family are present? I understand these considerations, but there are wider considerations of which the Chair has to take account. We will do our best, but I am afraid that it is part of parliamentary life that, at the end of a debate, some colleagues are content and others are not. That, I am afraid, is the reality, but we will do our best.

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[Tom Brake]

Hold on. “But”, we are told,

“a spokesman for the Judicial Office at the Royal Courts of Justice, which issues statements on behalf of senior judges, said the pet had ‘had nothing to do with’ the judgement allowing the man to stay.”

So, unfortunately, it was just that: a story about the Human Rights Act—a story which just happened not to be true. If there are other aspects of the Act that the Government want to get rid of, such as the right to life or the right to privacy, I think we are entitled to know that, but at present there is no real clarity about the nature of their concerns.

I am sorry that the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) is no longer in the Chamber. I do not agree with him that it makes no difference how much a party spends on its campaign, particularly if there are ways of spending that get around the constituency spending limits, but I do agree with what he said about the European convention:

“I personally think it is unthinkable to leave the European convention on human rights…It is the way we uphold the values we strive for which are the rule of law, individual liberty, justice for all, regardless of gender. The convention is the bedrock of that.”

I also agree with the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) that the European Court of Human Rights is,

“on a daily basis, producing decisions of great importance in improving human rights in Europe which are inevitably ignored here because they tend to concern countries in eastern Europe”.

I agree with those respected Conservative politicians that scrapping the Human Rights Act and leaving the convention would be a disaster for the United Kingdom’s credibility. It would send countries such as Belarus and Russia the message that it is possible to take or leave, or pick and choose, human rights as if they were favourite dishes on a Chinese restaurant menu.

Let me now say something about the snoopers charter, which clearly has business implications. Start-up businesses would be required to collect and store data in a way that would not be in their interests. As we know, David Anderson has been examining the current surveillance and intercept laws. He handed a report to the Prime Minister on 6 May. I wonder whether the Government had time to take it into account when they presented their proposals for an investigatory powers Bill. We need to see what is in that Bill, and we also need an explanation of why the United Kingdom Government are proceeding with proposals that the Americans have just rejected. The Americans have no mandatory communications data retention requirement for communication service providers, and I think we need to know why this country has such a requirement. Do the Government believe that the Americans are putting the lives of their civilians at risk?

I fear that the new report by Sir Nigel Sheinwald may well not be released, but I urge the Government to make a copy available to the public, even if it has to be redacted. It is quite possible that the report will show that there is no need for a snoopers charter, and that an international treaty could be used instead, allowing countries to agree to release data if required to do so by the security services.

Finally, let me touch briefly on the issue of the right to buy. During the general election campaign, there was clear agreement that we needed to build more homes, but I am afraid that the Government’s proposals are very unlikely to achieve that. When asked about the right to buy, the Mayor of London said that it was

“obviously one of the issues…that it would be potentially extremely costly to this body”,

meaning the Greater London Assembly. He added:

“We would have to make up the difference. Housing associations are private bodies, as we all know. It would involve massive subsidies.”

However, in a tweet—I think that he was tweeting as the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip rather than as Mayor—he said that the right to buy was a very good policy, and that the Conservatives’ proposals were

“a good way of ensuring it is funded.”

We need some clarity, but I suppose that those with two jobs often have to contradict themselves, and that is obviously what the Mayor has had to do.

Time does not allow me to touch on other matters, such as the Liberal Democrats’ free childcare and tax threshold. I should love to have an opportunity to discuss them on another occasion.

[Mr Speaker]

I call Chris White.