Business of the House

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The provisional business for the week commencing 29 November will include:

Monday 29 November—Second Reading of the Leasehold Reform (Ground Rent) Bill [HL], followed by a motion to approve a Ways and Means resolution relating to the Animals (Penalty Notices) Bill, followed by a motion to approve a money resolution relating to the Approved Premises (Substance Testing) Bill.



Tuesday 30 November—Opposition day (9th allotted day). There will be a debate on a motion in the name of the Scottish National party, subject to be announced.

Wednesday 1 December—Consideration in Committee of the Finance (No.2) Bill.

Thursday 2 December—Business to be determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 3rd December—Private Members’ Bills.

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

I thank the Leader of the House for the forthcoming business and also his colleague, the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), for his various cries. I look forward to seeing him on a Friday.

Today is Equal Pay Day, but it is not a day for celebration. Today, 10 million women in the UK now face working their entire careers without seeing equal pay. This is up from 8.5 million just a year ago. Can the Secretary of State for Women and Equalities or the Work and Pensions Secretary, or both, come to this House and explain why, under this Government, we are going so far backwards and what they will do about it?

What a week! The Leader of the House and I have seen rather a lot of each other across the Dispatch Boxes, and we have also seen the true extent of the Government’s blasé attitude towards corruption. The Prime Minister’s letter, which I believe was sent to Mr Speaker on Tuesday, said that banning MPs from taking roles as paid political consultants or lobbyists would stop them from, “exploiting their positions”. But this Government seem to be saying one thing one day, and then doing entirely another the next—making rules to break them, and facing no consequences for their egregious actions. They could have voted yesterday for our motion, which would have guaranteed—guaranteed—this House a vote on strengthening standards and in a timetable, but instead they chose to support a wrecking amendment, with no clear timetable and no guaranteed vote, and that could see as few as just 10 Conservative MPs affected. Does the Leader of the House agree that such partisanship and what appears to be naked self-interest should never override upholding the principles of public life?

While we are on the Prime Minister and the subject of standards, news outlets are reporting—I do not know whether this has been confirmed—that he said that he had “crashed” the Government car into a “ditch” as a result of the advice that the right hon. Gentleman said, I think, that he gave to the Prime Minister over the affair of the former MP for North Shropshire. Can we have a debate in Government time on dangerous driving and whether that should take place on the Estate?

It is not just on the subject of standards where the Government show nothing but contempt for this House. I am afraid to say that I have raised numerous times with the right hon. Gentleman that Members are still not receiving timely, or in some cases any, replies to letters, written questions or calls to MP hotlines. I know that the Leader of the House shares my concern, so could he take it up again, please?

I am afraid that, at the last business questions, the Leader of the House stated that my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) had received a response to his letter to the Prime Minister sent more than a year ago on Islamophobia. I am sure that the Leader of the House did not intend to make this mistake, but, unfortunately, it seems from what I am told that the response that he referred to was from the Conservative party chair, not the Prime Minister, and related to a completely different letter. I would be grateful if the Leader of the House could correct this and clarify. My hon. Friend has now written to the Prime Minister again, so can he also ensure that the Prime Minister finally replies to this letter before the end of this year’s Islamophobia Month?

The shadow Secretary of State for International Development, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill), asked a named day question all the way back in September on the amount of covid-19 vaccines that had reached their expiry date. This week, it was publicly announced that around 600,000 doses were thrown away in August, but my hon. Friend has still not received a substantive response to her question, which is so critical for our global response to covid. Will the Leader of the House take this back to his Cabinet colleagues and impress on them once again their responsibilities to this House?

This is not my specialist subject, but the annual fisheries negotiations are due to conclude shortly, which is important in ensuring that we reach a good deal for British fishing. I ask the Leader of the House to allocate Government time to debate this, before the December fisheries council?

On behalf of the very many staff who have asked to be able to plan for next year, especially after this past year, will the Leader of the House please give us the recess dates for 2022 next week? They have a right to know those dates, as they have to plan around us and they need to be able to book that holiday to be with their family.

Finally, this week, Azeem Rafiq has given us distressing, but, unfortunately for many of us, not surprising evidence to the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee about his experience of racism—in this case in cricket. It is abundantly clear that there has been an acute failure of leadership—in his case, at club and national level—and that, sadly, this is part of a more widespread problem. There should be no place for racism in sport, in this House, or anywhere in our society. Will the Leader of the House ask the Prime Minister to make sure that the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket’s inquiry into racism in cricket is taken seriously, and that it cannot be swept under the rug, as it has been so many times before?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her questions. May I begin with the issue of cricket? As somebody who has followed cricket since his childhood, I think I can say that this is a matter of shame to all cricket lovers. I look back to when I followed Somerset county cricket in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s when we had the most wonderful players from the West Indies—Joel Garner and Viv Richards particularly, but there were others, too. They were so inspirational, and encouraged excitement in cricket and made everyone in Somerset feel that they were part of our county and huge contributors to it. I am afraid that what has been going on in Yorkshire fills many cricket lovers with sadness. The England and Wales Cricket Board has a strong responsibility to ensure that this is stamped out and dealt with much more thoroughly than it has been so far.

The hon. Lady started by asking about equality. It is worth pointing out that the Government have pushed very hard to ensure that women get the opportunities that they deserve: there is a higher percentage of women on FTSE 350 company boards than ever before, and we have introduced shared parental leave and pay, and doubled free childcare for eligible parents, to help to ensure that women in the workplace have as strong a position as possible. Those policy principles and precepts will be kept to.

The hon. Lady then came to some more controversial matters and talked about partisanship. Well, I have a word or two to say about partisanship, because yesterday the Leader of the Opposition had to apologise to the House and withdraw a word that he had used, which today the same man has tweeted about the Prime Minister. That is not only extraordinarily partisan, but it is enormously disrespectful to this House and to Mr Speaker. To have to withdraw a word in this House, and then scuttle out like a beetle and tweet it, is utterly disrespectful to the House and is not the sort of cross-party leadership that one might expect.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition then went further and tweeted inaccurately about his own motion yesterday, so perhaps he did not even know what he had put his name to. That is partisanship, whereas the Conservative Government have been trying to put things right by ensuring that by 31 January—a clear deadline, in spite of what the hon. Lady said—the Committee on Standards can report, and can do so in a way that makes it clear how the rules can be improved following the 2018 report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, led by the noble Lord Bew. We are the ones who are trying our best to be cross-party against a barrage of partisanship, and we are trying to ensure the highest possible standards.

As regards the letter mentioned by the hon. Lady, my understanding is that the party Chairman was replying on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, but I will obviously look into that, check and respond.

Fishing negotiations are an important matter for the House, but I am sure that the Backbench Business Committee can look into finding time for that important debate.

Finally, the shadow Leader of the House wants to go on her holidays. I quite understand that it is a very important matter, although I think that some Labour MPs may have been on their holidays already this week because the Finance Bill, which can go until any hour and sets out the major principles of legislation from the Budget—one of the most important things that the Government do—fell short. It finished early! Where were all the socialists keen to make their arguments about how the finances of the nation should be guided? It does not surprise me that the hon. Lady, and her hon. and right hon. Friends, are keen to book their holidays, but to facilitate them I will bring forward recess dates in the normal way.