John Bercow
Main Page: John Bercow (Speaker - Buckingham)Department Debates - View all John Bercow's debates with the Cabinet Office
(14 years, 5 months ago)
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Mrs Gillan
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. As we said in the coalition agreement, and as I said before the election, I am determined to allow the people of Wales to decide in a referendum. It is only polite to accede to the request of the Assembly, which, after all, voted unanimously for a referendum, and I am sad that the previous Secretary of State commenced no work on the question and confined himself to work on the order that we will eventually lay before the House. I am pleased to confirm that I am sending the preamble and question to the Electoral Commission.
Mr Speaker
May I just gently ask the Secretary of State to face the House rather than having her back to the Chair? That would be very helpful.
Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)
May I join in the commiserations to Lord Walker’s family on his death?
May I congratulate the right hon. Lady, especially on being the first woman Secretary of State for Wales? However, as accounts given to the media have traduced the truth, I must ask whether she is aware that as Secretary of State, on Monday 10 May, in the Wales Office, I specifically asked and received an assurance from senior officials that work I had put in train months before would have enabled a referendum to be staged this October. Before she answers, may I remind her that whatever she has been saying to the media, she must not mislead this House, especially as she will not have seen the official papers detailing my preparations for the referendum?
Mrs Gillan
Well, I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question, but I find it hard to make a linkage to—
Mr Speaker
I am sure it will not be beyond the ingenuity of the Secretary of State somehow to respond in order, although I accept that this is a testing one.
Mrs Gillan
I am not sure how I will make that linkage to Armed Forces day, but I would say that for those who are low paid in the public sector I was delighted to see that the Chancellor had chosen not to freeze their pay for two years and to give them an increase of £250 in each year, which I am sure the hon. Gentleman would welcome. I also welcome that our Prime Minister went to Afghanistan and announced the doubling of the pay for our brave soldiers when they are serving on our behalf overseas.
Huw Irranca-Davies
May I add my congratulations to the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) and her ministerial colleague on their elevation to the Government Front Bench, but will she confirm that the previous Secretary of State sat on as many as a dozen Cabinet Committees and his ministerial colleague sat on up to a dozen as well, and in the light of that—and of the delay in the referendum date, as well as the appointment of a lovable rogue whom I like very much indeed but is an arch devo-sceptic as Chairman of the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs, and the attack on Welsh MPs—will she tell us why this is not telling the Welsh that they—
Mrs Gillan
Oh dear me. I think the hon. Gentleman needs to catch up with the procedures of the House because I believe Select Committee Chairmen are now elected. That has nothing to do with the Government. Perhaps if the hon. Gentleman had spent less time sitting on Committees he would know about the changes that were made in the House. I must remind him that what impresses the electorate is not the number of Committees a Member sits on, but what they do for Wales. We have already done more for Wales in the five weeks we have been in office than the previous Administration did over 13 years. The hon. Gentleman might also like to note that we have reduced the number of the Committees that he sat on in his ministerial capacity to 11. It is better to have a small set of fully functioning Committees where relevant people continually discuss related issues than for Members to be able to boast that they are sitting on a lot of Committees.
The Prime Minister
The point that the right hon. and learned Lady has got to address is who left us in this mess. Who left a budget deficit of £155 billion, with absolutely no proposals to deal with it? Who put forward—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I apologise for interrupting the Prime Minister. This level of barracking is unacceptable, and I can tell the House that it is detested by the electorate. It must stop.
Mr Speaker
Order. I gently remind the House that this is a closed question on Afghanistan. Does anybody wish to come in? No. I call Mr Jonathan Evans.
Jonathan Evans (Cardiff North) (Con)
Q14. Bearing in mind the Opposition’s claim that in Europe, Britain is now isolated, will my right hon. Friend indicate how on earth he managed to secure both French and German agreement to the announcement in relation to the bank levy in the Budget yesterday?