Business of the House

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House please give us the forthcoming business?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)]

The business for the week commencing 28 June will include:

Monday 28 June—Second Reading of the Rating (Coronavirus) and Directors Disqualification (Dissolved Companies) Bill, followed by motion relating to the appointment of lay members to the Committee on Standards, followed by motion relating to the membership of the Parliamentary Works Sponsor Body.

Tuesday 29 June—Estimates day (1st allotted day). There will be debates on estimates relating to the Department for Education; and on the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

Wednesday 30 June—Estimates day (2nd allotted day). There will be a debate on an estimate relating to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. At 7 pm, the House will be asked to agree all outstanding estimates.

Thursday 1 July—Proceedings on the Supply and Appropriation (Main Estimates) Bill, followed by general debate on Windrush Day, followed by general debate on Pride Month. The subjects for these debates were recommended by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 2 July—The House will not be sitting.

The provisional business for the week commencing 5 July will include:

Monday 5 July—Remaining stages of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.

Tuesday 6 July—Second Reading of the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill.

Wednesday 7 July—Opposition day (4th allotted day). There will be a debate on a motion in the name of the Scottish National party. Subject to be announced.

Thursday 8 July—General debate on fuel poverty, followed by debate on a motion relating to the implementation of the recommendations of the independent medicines and medical devices safety review. The subject for this debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 9 July—The House will not be sitting.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I thank the Leader of the House for giving us the business.

It is stretching the bounds of my football knowledge to know to send Scotland commiserations and to wish Wales and England good luck, but it is heartfelt. Meanwhile, in my own game of choice and on my own patch, Gloucestershire county cricket ground welcomed the Indian and English cricket teams last week, and the women really showed just how exciting the beautiful game can be.

I thank the Leader of the House for working constructively with me on repairing the inconsistency between the independent complaints and grievance process and the parliamentary Committee on Standards for triggering recall for MPs. I hope that the Member currently suspended recognises that these changes would have applied to him. Given that his constituents cannot currently remove him, he should do the decent thing by staff, Members and the public and resign.

The Government are letting people down. They use covid as an excuse for problems that they promised to fix years ago. They cannot blame all this on the past 18 months. They have had four years since Grenfell to fix the cladding and fire safety crisis affecting millions of innocent residents, many with Tory MPs. Why are the Government letting them down? It is nearly two years since the Government announced their review on support for terminally ill people. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) said last week, thousands have died since then waiting for a decision. Why are the Government letting them down?

It is nearly two years since the Prime Minister said that he already had a plan to fix social care. Since then, thousands of people have had to sell their homes to pay for care, and millions have been turned down for support. Why are the Government letting them down? It is three years since the Windrush scandal broke; yet victims still wait for compensation and some have died waiting. Why are the Government letting them down? Then there is the harm facing the world’s poorest people, with cuts to aid commitments made before the pandemic. Lives will be lost. Why are the Government letting them down?

The Government have blamed waiting times in the NHS on covid, but before the pandemic more than one in six patients were already waiting more than 18 weeks for a routine treatment. Why are the Government letting them down? Climate change has been around for a while; yet the Government are all mouth and no delivery. The Committee on Climate Change is sounding alarm bells. Why are the Government letting us all down?

The Government are letting down rape victims, with conviction rates plummeting for years before the pandemic. At Prime Minister’s questions yesterday, the Prime Minister appeared not to understand the anger of rape victims such as those who have told me of appalling delays from before the pandemic, and the anger of those of us who represent them. Ministers mention £4 million for advocates for sexual violence victims, but that is just £15 per reported rape victim per year. They refer to police officers being recruited, but they have cut more than 20,000 experienced skilled officers over the past decade.

Recruiting new police now does not help rape victims who have already waited years, unable to move on with their lives. In the final insult, the Prime Minister flipped away from the subject and back to his scripted-for-clipping punchline, referring to the Opposition as jabbering while the Government jabs—after my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) had asked about rape. Why are the Government letting rape survivors down?

Here is a list of questions for the Leader of the House. Will the Government sort out the cladding crisis once and for all, and bring that plan to estimates day next Tuesday? Will the Leader ask the Prime Minister to find his plan for social care, wherever he has mislaid it? Will the Leader ask the Home Secretary to apologise to victims of the Windrush scandal who have still not received compensation?

Will the Leader ask the Health Secretary to come to the House with a plan to give the NHS the resources that it needs? Will he ask the Chancellor to present a funded plan for the essential measures to tackle climate change? Will the Government give us a vote on aid cuts? Will the Leader ask the Cabinet to do the right thing by rape victims and support Labour’s Bill on violence against women? Will the Government stop letting people down?

Finally, Ministers are fond of pivoting to “But the vaccine!” to divert attention. I have news for them: British people are not stupid. They know when the Government are pulling a fast one. They know that it was scientists who researched the vaccine, and it is the NHS that vaccinates. British people deserve better. They deserve the best. The Government, who should be getting on with learning the lessons of the covid crisis by launching an inquiry urgently, are instead shamefully using it as cover for all the ways that they are letting the British people down.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am, as always, very grateful to the hon. Lady for her list of questions, which she was kind enough to give to the House twice—once in her long list and then in a shorter list of much the same questions.

The hon. Lady mentioned the football. I am very sorry that Scotland is no longer in. As I said last week, I had a vested interest in that, but I wish England and Wales well. Let us hope that we have a final, if this is possible—I do not know how the draw will work—between England and Wales. Then we will all be on the edge of our seat, some of us not knowing which part of our heritage to back. There was a very interesting cricket match between New Zealand and India and I congratulate New Zealand on winning the first multinational Test series to make them world Test champions.

I agree with the hon. Lady about the hon. Member for Delyn (Rob Roberts), who is currently suspended. As I have said before, I think that a Member in such a situation should resign. I would not criticise his constituents for feeling that someone who had been found guilty of something so serious was not an ideal representative.

The hon. Lady accused the Government of pulling a fast one with the vaccine. I agree—it was remarkably fast: an incredibly fast delivery and service of a vaccine that means that millions of people have now received both doses. I think that that applies to over 60% of the country and all the highest risk categories have had the opportunity to get both jabs. That is a success of the NHS—indeed, the NHS that has been properly funded by the Conservatives since we have been in office, effectively since 2010. It is a great achievement, for which the British people, in their wisdom—as the hon. Lady rightly said—will thank Her Majesty’s Government, under the inspired leadership of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.

We come to the variety of issues that the hon. Lady raised. I think she is trying to show up the Leader of the Opposition for not asking such a range of questions and sticking rigorously to one subject on Wednesdays. On building safety and cladding, £5.1 billion of taxpayers’ money has been provided to fund the cost of remediating unsafe cladding for leaseholders. The remediation works are either completed or under way on 96% of the high-risk residential buildings that were identified at the start of last year. That is important and continues to be rolled out. It is right that that is being done, and the Building Safety Bill will provide further details on how we deal with the remaining problem. A great deal of work has already been done, and not all forms of cladding and not all high-rise buildings are dangerous.

The hon. Lady referred to climate change. The Government have a most remarkable and successful record on climate change. From 1990 to 2020, there has been a 43% cut in emissions with 75% economic growth. This is the key. We are not going to be Adullamites; we are not going to be cave dwellers. We are not going to make constituents have miserable lives. We are going to improve the standard of living of the people of this country, and make the country greener, too. That is why Her Majesty’s Government is the first major economy to commit in law to net zero by 2050, with the target of cutting emissions by 2035 by 78% on their 1990 levels.

The Committee on Climate Change does not want us to eat meat. I disagree with them. I like eating meat and my constituents like eating meat, and I will not be told by fanatics not to eat meat. Let us be meat eaters. Let us support our agriculture. The Opposition always go on about the need to protect our farmers, then they join forces with the anti-meat brigade. There is a discontinuity in that approach.

As regards Windrush, 13,000 documents have been provided so far and £20 million out of £30 million of compensation has been paid. The Prime Minister apologised yesterday for the terrible situation that was created, but I thought what he said was inspiring: that we should think of Windrush as the Mayflower; as an occasion when something great happened to our nation—something really important when people came—that we should celebrate and rejoice, rather than its being something that is thought about in terms of failure.

On aid, the hon. Lady asks and I give. I do my best as Leader of the House, and on the second allotted estimates day:

“There will be a debate on an estimate relating to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.”

A vote will take place if people shout, “No.” There are votes on estimates if people want them. It is a matter for the hon. Lady and the Opposition Whips to decide whether they wish to divide the House.

The Government introduced the end-to-end rape review because of the failures that had become apparent and the need to make things better. It is worth pointing out that the Leader of the Opposition was Director of Public Prosecutions for quite a time, so one would hope that the fact that there are problems in the Crown Prosecution Service does not come as news to him. It is clear that too many victims of rape and sexual violence have been denied the justice they deserve as a result of systemic failings. That is why an action plan has been set out with clear measures for police, prosecutors and courts in order to return the volume of rape cases going through the courts to at least 2016 levels by the end of this Parliament, with steps to improve the quality of investigations, improve the culture of joint working and, for the first time, make sure that each part of the criminal justice system will be held to account through performance scorecards.

This is what the Government are doing—it is real and genuine action—and then we get the cheap point about gibbering and jabbering and drooling Opposition. That is what the Opposition do: they gibber and jabber and drool, and they do this the whole time on all sorts of subjects. The Prime Minister gave full and comprehensive answers on rape yesterday—I heard him; I was listening to him—but then he made the general point about the vacuity of Opposition. The hon. Lady sometimes manages to prove my right hon. Friend’s points.