Business of the House

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Commons Chamber

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

The business for the week commencing Monday 6 September will include:

Monday 6 September—Remaining stages of the National Insurance Contributions Bill.

Tuesday 7 September—Second Reading of the Elections Bill.

Wednesday 8 September—Opposition day (5th allotted day). There will be a debate on a motion in the name of the official Opposition. Subject to be announced.

Thursday 9 September—Remaining stages of the Rating (Coronavirus) and Directors Disqualification (Dissolved Companies) Bill, followed by general debate on the legacy of Jo Cox. The subject for this debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 10 September—Private Members’ Bills.

The provisional business for the week commencing 13 September will include:

Monday 13 September—Consideration in Committee and remaining stages of the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill.

I should like to take this opportunity to wish farewell to someone who has worked first in the House of Lords and then for the Government to support the legislative agenda. Talitha Rowland will be leaving her role as head of the Cabinet Office’s Parliamentary Business and Legislation Secretariat after the summer recess. For the past three years, in not always easy circumstances, she has been ensuring that this House has had a good, well thought through legislative programme. Her contribution as a civil servant to the business of this House has been formidable. It was, of course, Talitha and her team who worked so hard behind the scenes to prepare for the state opening and Her Majesty’s Gracious Speech, delivered on 11 May.

So, having been busily digesting the end-of-term report cards prepared for my children by their excellent teachers, I thought I might attempt one of my own for the House on the progress made in delivering the Government’s legislative agenda. The Government remain committed to delivering their ambitious legislative programme, which will level up opportunities across all parts of the United Kingdom, supporting jobs, businesses and economic growth and addressing the impact of the pandemic on public services.

Between the end of the Easter recess and Prorogation, seven Government Bills received Royal Assent. Six Bills were carried over from the previous Session, including the Finance Bill, which has received Royal Assent and is now the Finance Act 2021, and 25 Government Bills are currently before Parliament, including the Health and Care Bill, the Nationality and Borders Bill, the Building Safety Bill and the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill. That is not to mention the more than 200 statutory instruments laid before the House since we returned from the Easter recess.

The Government’s legislative programme is about unleashing the potential that exists in every part of the United Kingdom. It is a principal function of Parliament to deliver for voters by making laws—a point that I hope is fully grasped by all those who have worked so hard to keep the House operating this term.

As we come to this recess, I join you, Mr Speaker, in thanking all the members of the staff and, as we end the virtual proceedings, in thanking the virtual Parliament team—the broadcasting team—who, from a standing start, worked absolute wonders. It is worth remembering that when we went away for the recess at Easter 2020, people wondered how Parliament would be able to sit at all, yet we were back just a few weeks later. That was a terrific achievement. Keeping Parliament going, although it mainly seems seamless, in fact requires a great deal of work behind the scenes.

I also want to thank everyone else who works here for all they have done to keep the parliamentary show on the road. I thank the distinguished Clerks, who keep their knowledge for us and present it to us in a way that ensures that we legislate properly. I thank the Doorkeepers, those founts of knowledge—as long as the Whips are not listening, I advise any Back Benchers present that if they ever want to know whether there will be a vote on a particular day, they should ask the Doorkeepers, because they will tell you and they will almost always be right.

I would like to thank the cleaners. It is amazing that they have been here the whole way through the pandemic: they have been going round sanitising everything every single day, and they do so without our normally seeing them. They do their work discreetly and quietly and they deserve our gratitude. I also thank the facilities team and the catering staff—it is true that, like Napoleon’s armies, politicians march on their bellies, so we are very lucky to be so well catered for.

I thank the security staff, the police and Hansard—I am always grateful to Hansard because it takes the stuff that I unleash and turns it into pearls. I am very grateful for the grammatical enhancements, improvements and terminological additions that ensure that all our speeches are so elegantly phrased, although it is worth remembering that Dr Johnson got so fed up with writing better speeches for Whigs than they had actually delivered that he gave up reporting on Parliament. I hope that when my speeches are transcribed they will not have that effect on the current generation of Hansard reporters.

I thank everybody and wish everybody a most enjoyable recess.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I thank the Leader of the House for the forthcoming business. I will come to my own thank you list shortly, but I turn first to his report card. He really sounds as if he has been marking his own homework—or perhaps he has been on a creative writing course, I don’t know. Contrary to what he says, the Government’s past year has been so chaotic that if I were going to give them a report that covered any more than the past week, we would have to sit through recess. If they wanted to be graded, it would be Fs across the board. It would take a lot more than summer school and their own lacklustre education catch-up plan before we saw any improvements.

The Government are clearly desperate for a summer recess, but I am afraid that for the rest of us it is another summer of chaos, thanks to them: 1 million children off school last week, businesses facing closure, supermarket shelves empty, millions forced to isolate over the summer— and they will not be able to do so from a country residence—and now more chaos in the sporting arena, as Australia and New Zealand have pulled out of the rugby league world cup on safety grounds. Can the Leader of the House please confirm that it will go ahead and it will be safe?

All this, and the Government still cannot make up their mind about whether to follow the NHS app or about who is exempt. On Sunday, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor clearly thought that it was one rule for them and another for everyone else. The Minister for Investment wrote to businesses saying that the NHS app was an “advisory tool”, and the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) said the same on Tuesday morning, but then No. 10 came out and said that it is crucial people isolate when told to do so. Yesterday, the Prime Minister—the Chequers one, Zooming in for PMQs—offered no answers, so for the avoidance of doubt, will the Leader of the House please clarify what the Government’s position actually is?

On mask wearing and social distancing, which is still Government guidance, people outside and inside this place have noticed the difference between the Government and Opposition Benches at Prime Minister’s questions. Clearly some people on the Government side do not seem to note that the Government’s own rules are encouraging us to wear masks and socially distance in enclosed spaces—it is clearly one rule for them and another for the rest of us.

Amid all this chaos, we must not forget that more than 150,000 people have died of covid. I met some of the grieving families yesterday and saw the photographs of 650 people—one for every constituency, just a fraction of the total number of deaths. The families are still desperately waiting for a public inquiry. The Government’s mistakes throughout the pandemic must never be repeated. The former Health Secretary, the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), certainly has the time to appear before an inquiry. Will the Leader of the House please schedule time for a debate on that in the first week back?

I turn to the Government’s missing-in-action social care plan. All we have had is rumours of a national insurance hike to pay for it. I have heard one argument that that

“will hit…public sector workers…and someone earning £32,000 will pay exactly the same as someone earning £132,000.”—[Official Report, 17 April 2002; Vol. 383, c. 667.]

Those are not my words, but the words of the Prime Minister. Why has he changed his mind? The Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Health Secretary have not denied the reports of a national insurance hike, but there was more chaos this morning when the Business Secretary seemed to be saying that he did not see how there could be one. Two years after the Prime Minister first promised the social care plan, will the Leader of the House confirm when it will finally be published?

The Nationality and Borders Bill had its Second Reading this week. We have heard lots about a broken asylum system from Conservative Members, but they are the ones who have broken it. In the past year alone, 33,000 people were waiting more than 12 months for an initial decision on their asylum claim, and many were in my constituency—10 times more than in 2010. The appalling crime of people trafficking must be stopped, but the Bill will not do that. It fails on its own terms because there are no commitments on refugee resettlement or family reunion and, despite a lot of rhetoric, safe routes have not been properly reopened. The Dubs scheme closed after having settled just a fraction of the 3,000 children promised. In March this year, just 25 refugees were resettled—so much for safe and legal routes. We have already had the cuts to international aid rammed through. The Bill further undermines the UK’s efforts to tackle the forces of poverty, war and violence that drive people from their homes. It criminalises those who had no other choice. The Home Secretary should think again.

Over the past year, the Leader of the House has kindly committed to ensuring that Members receive timely responses to ministerial correspondence. I thank him for that, but so far there seems to have been little improvement. Will he commit to sorting it out by September?

Finally, I would like to wish Team GB the very best of luck as they begin their Olympic campaign in Tokyo. My constituent Lily Owsley will be playing for the women’s hockey team. We are all very proud of her, and I will be cheering her on.

I would like to thank all the wonderful staff who have kept this place going in exceptionally difficult circumstances. It has been a very difficult year, and I hope everyone can have a peaceful and safe summer.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Lady makes a very important point about the number of deaths from covid. It is right that the House should pause briefly to pray for the repose of the souls of those who have died, and to think of those who have lost family members and friends:

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Requiescant in pace. Amen.

On the hon. Lady’s political points, it really is the pushmi-pullyu Opposition. We have complaints about the Government’s immigration policy from an Opposition who opposed the Nationality and Borders Bill. We have complaints that we are not being tough enough on stopping people coming into this country, yet our efforts to make it tougher are opposed.

This country has a proud record on ensuring that there are routes for refugees. We have settled 25,000 refugees over the past five years, and a further 29,000 refugees through family reunion. We have to make our borders safe. We have to have safe routes for those who have a genuine fear of persecution, but we have to stop the people traffickers.

The Opposition have become the party of people traffickers. They do not want to do anything effective, and they cry crocodile tears while opposing the Government’s efforts to be effective in dealing with our borders. [Hon. Members: “Shame!”] They are the ones who should be ashamed. They chunter on the Opposition Benches, but they could not even find enough speakers to fill up the time available for debate. We ended up with only Members on this side of the House speaking because the Benches on the other side were empty, aside from the most distinguished hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who he is always in his place and always doing his duty, unlike some others I could think of.

As we come to the summer, we still have an ongoing pandemic. Yes, the restrictions have been reduced, and yes, we are able to make decisions for ourselves, which is quite right, but it is also right that people who are pinged should isolate. That is the Government’s strong advice. If you are rung up by Test and Trace, Mr Speaker, which I hope you are not, it is the law that you must isolate. If you are pinged by the app, it is the strong advice of the Government that you should isolate. Advice and law are different, but the Government are right to give a very clear indication of what ought to happen.

On the wearing of masks, I have one in my pocket, along with a handkerchief. It is here in case the Chamber is full, but it is not. There is a good deal of space—an amazing amount of space—on the Opposition Benches, as some Opposition Members may have gone on recess early, but on the Government Benches even my hard-working, enthusiastic fellow Conservatives are not squeezed in, and nor were we at Prime Minister’s questions yesterday. At a normal PMQs, we are squeezed in with hardly an inch between us, but yesterday there was space. It was therefore a reasonable decision for individual Members to take for themselves, in accordance with Mr Speaker’s guidance.

The hon. Lady asked for debates and, as she has an Opposition day coming up in the first week back, she will be able to choose the topics of debate as she wishes. She mentioned that the Australians and New Zealanders have pulled out of the rugby league world cup because they think they will lose. I must confess that it is rather sad. I always thought the Australians, of all people—one of the countries that we in this House love most—would never be ones to pull out of a competition. But they think they are going to lose, so they are staying at home. That is a pity, and I am sure the rugby league will run the competition with enormous effectiveness, ensuring that covid security is followed.

Finally, regarding gossip on social care, the Government have consistently said that it will be announced by the end of the year. Therefore, reading tittle-tattle and coming up with bits and pieces of gossip is not necessarily particularly helpful to the House.