Oral Answers to Questions

John Bercow Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

When the Deputy Prime Minister talks to the bishops and the archbishops about their futures, will he gently remind them that the overwhelming majority in Parliament, in the country and in the Church of England want women to be able to become bishops, and that it might not be in the interests of the House of bishops to try to amend or water down the current measure before Synod this week?

[Mr Speaker]

I am sure that that question refers to membership of the upper House by women bishops. I am sure that that is what the right hon. Member meant.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I was struggling to see what I could usefully contribute to this issue, as I do not think it is a matter for Government, but I admire the strength of feeling with which the right hon. Gentleman has expressed himself on this important issue.

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[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

T5. My right hon. Friend and I stood for election on a key manifesto commitment to lift the income tax thresholds —[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Let us hear about which commitment the hon. Member for Cambridge wishes to speak.

[Dr Huppert]

I am sorry the party that introduced fees feels the need to shout about it.

We stood on a commitment to lift the income tax threshold to £10,000 and that has started to happen, but we need to go further and faster so that we can help more people across the country. What discussions has my right hon. Friend had with the Conservatives in the Government to try to take that forward?

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[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As the Health Secretary has explained many times, the central purpose of the Bill is to ensure that those who know patients best, the GPs, surgeons, nurses and clinicians, have a greater say—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. First of all, Members should not shout their heads off at the Deputy Prime Minister; it is deeply discourteous. Secondly, I say to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) that if he had yelled like that when practising in the law courts, the judge would have kicked him out. We cannot have it.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

It would be so much easier to take the Labour party members seriously on the NHS if they committed to actually spending more money on it. They will not. In their manifesto at the last election, they said they believed in “bold reform” of the NHS, yet they will not tell us what that is. It was under the Labour Government that £250 million of taxpayers’ money was wasted on rigged private sector contracts which never ever delivered a single thing for a single NHS patient. It is this Government who are making it illegal to provide the sweetheart deals for the private sector that occurred under Labour.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We have much to do and very little time in which to do it. We must progress.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

T12. How will the Deputy Prime Minister assess the value for money of the constitutional changes he is putting forward? Will he put a more detailed note in the Library setting out how that will be assessed?

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[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady is following her instructions dutifully, and I congratulate her on doing so. I think that she is referring to—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The House must calm itself. I am worried about the shadow Justice Secretary. I have a concern about his long-term health and well-being, and I am not sure that he is safeguarding it.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I think that the hon. Lady was referring to Harry Potter. I suppose that the Labour party and Harry Potter have something in common—they both believe in magic. How else can we explain the Labour party’s economic policies and its complete, collective amnesia about its responsibility for failing to run the national health service effectively so that, as in so many other areas, we have to clear up the mess that it left behind?

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[The Deputy Prime Minister]

It is truly ironic that the hon. Gentleman gets on his high horse once again to talk about the private sector in the NHS when it was his Labour Government—I am not sure whether he had disowned them—who crowbarred into the NHS sweetheart deals with the private sector that were deliberately designed to undermine the publicly owned parts. Some £250 million of taxpayers’ money was wasted by his colleagues in government on private sector contracts that delivered nothing. It is this coalition Government—two parties coming together—who are making privatisation by the back door illegal.

[Mr Speaker]

I call Zac Goldsmith—[Interruption.] Order. The House must calm down. Let us hear Mr Goldsmith.

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

The proposals for a register of lobbyists will require lobby groups to list their members, but when those groups meet Ministers, will they be required to list on whose behalf they are meeting them?

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[The Solicitor-General]

That is a deeply uncontroversial statement to make.

[Mr Speaker]

I call Mr Gerry Sutcliffe. Not here.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

7. What recent assessment he has made of the management and disclosure of evidence by the Crown Prosecution Service.