Business of the House

Thangam Debbonaire Excerpts

Thursday 2nd March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)]

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

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Penny Mordaunt)]

The business for the week commencing 6 March will include the following:

Monday 6 March—Committee of the whole House and remaining stages of the Social Security (Additional Payments) (No.2) Bill, followed by consideration of Lords amendments to the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill.

Tuesday 7 March—Consideration of Lords amendments to the Public Order Bill, followed by a motion to approve the draft Alternative Fuel Payment Pass-through Requirement (England and Wales and Scotland) Regulations 2023, followed by a motion to approve the Non-Domestic Alternative Fuel Payment Pass-through Requirement and Amendment Regulations 2023.

Wednesday 8 March—Estimates day. There will be debates on estimates relating to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, in so far as it relates to adult social care; and the Department for Education, in so far as it relates to childcare and early years. At 7 pm the House will be asked to agree all outstanding estimates.

Thursday 9 March—Proceedings on the Supply and Appropriation (Anticipation and Adjustments) Bill, followed by a general debate on International Women’s Day, followed by a general debate on brain tumour research funding. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 10 March—The House will not be sitting.

The provisional business for the week commencing 13 March includes the following:

Monday 13 March—Business to be determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

I also remind colleagues that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will deliver his Budget statement on Wednesday 15 March.

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I thank the Leader of the House for the forthcoming business.

Yesterday, the Deputy Prime Minister announced proposals for a public advocate to act on behalf of the victims and the bereaved after public disasters like Hillsborough, the Manchester Arena bombing and Grenfell, but I am afraid that, unlike the proposal of my right hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), the public advocate will have no independence, there will be no data controller and they will not act only at the behest of families—they will effectively be directed by the Secretary of State. Anyone who has been following the infected blood scandal, for example, knows that a public advocate has to be truly independent. It should have been clear to the Deputy Prime Minister from the response to his statement that MPs on both sides of the House want him to go much further. Even Members on his own side raised significant concerns.

If the Deputy Prime Minister will not listen to the Labour Member for Garston and Halewood, who has worked tirelessly, will he listen to his own Back Benchers, including a former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), and beef up his proposals? Will the Leader of the House please make it clear to the Deputy Prime Minister that this House wants justice for victims and the bereaved?

Labour’s successful motion on Tuesday called on the Government to end the 200-year-old non-domiciled tax status, which costs taxpayers £3.2 billion a year. The next Labour Government will end that tax dodge and invest part of the money in one of the biggest NHS workforce expansions in history, as part of Labour’s plan to grasp the root cause of the crisis in the NHS. The Leader of the House, the Prime Minister and the rest of the Tory party did not even bother to turn up to vote. They sided with wealthy tax avoiders over NHS patients and staff. I wonder why.

I asked the Leader of the House to explain to her constituents why she did not support a similar Labour motion last year. Unsurprisingly, she did not answer at business questions then, so perhaps she will have a go now. Why, in January alone, did more than 5,500 of her constituents and 7,000 of mine have to wait more than two weeks to see a general practitioner? If she will not admit the sorry state to which the Tories have brought the NHS, may I suggest that she at least goes back to the Cabinet to demand that the Government respect the will of this House and implement Labour’s plan to invest in the NHS workforce?

After that, we set out our plan to get Britain back to work. Recent employment support schemes have underperformed and underspent. As a result, the number of economically inactive people is higher than before the pandemic. What will the Government do about it? Labour is calling for the reform of disability benefit assessments, targeted help for people over 50 and those who have long-term ill health, and the devolution of employment support to local areas. Who could disagree with that? Well, not some Tory Back Benchers. The hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley), the leader of Nottinghamshire County Council, has said as much:

“Fixing economic inactivity needs a radical pro-devolution mindset.”

That is all part of Labour’s plan to grow the economy and to boost public finances and household incomes. Does the Leader of the House also agree with Labour? If not, where is the Government’s plan?

The right hon. Lady knows the importance I place on our role as scrutinisers. That includes timely and good-quality answers to written parliamentary questions. Why, to take one example, cannot my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth), the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, get answers on whether the Government’s existing policies are even making a difference? He has asked, among many other questions: how many people secure a job after taking part in the sector-based work academy programme? How much funding is allocated to each jobcentre? How many universal credit claimants are undertaking training or education that counts towards their work-related requirements? The list of unanswered questions goes on.

Perhaps the Leader of the House could give this a go, because responses such as “This information is not available,” “The information is not collated,” and, “No such specific assessment has been made,” are very familiar to Members on both sides of the House, but they are not good enough. Will she remind Ministers that they need to answer the questions they are asked? If Ministers in the Department for Work and Pensions are not confident about their policies, perhaps they ought to clear their desks and make way for Labour’s brilliant Work and Pensions team, which has a bold plan to get Britain back to work.

I end with another simple request. After the ministerial merry-go-round of the last few years, I might have thought the Minister for the Cabinet Office would be a dab hand at updating the list of ministerial responsibilities. It is essential that MPs, staff and our constituents have a clear understanding of who is responsible for what and how best to contact them. Following the latest reshuffle and Whitehall restructuring, I asked the Cabinet Office for an update, and I was told that one will be published in due course. That was more than 10 days ago. Will the Leader of the House give the Minister for the Cabinet Office a nudge? “In due course.” “Soon.” “Before too long.” That sort of language sums up the Tories’ answers to everything. “Just wait a little longer and it will all be okay,” is what they seem to think. We have had 13 years of this stuff. The British people should not have to wait longer. It is time for a fresh start and a Labour Government.

[Penny Mordaunt]

First, let me take this opportunity to place on the record, as I have been unable to do so this week, the fact that my thoughts and prayers are with all those affected by the appalling train accident in Greece. I know that all Members would want to join me in that. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]

I will run through the questions that the hon. Lady has asked me. With regard to the Deputy Prime Minister, there was a statement, in which he would have heard what Members have said and listened to their concerns. However, I will be happy to write to him and make sure that he knows that she has raised the matter this week.

As for the rhetoric we have had from Labour on national missions, I just say to the hon. Lady that a national mission for this country should be the strength of our NHS. If she really wants to get all minds working on that, across all sectors—public, private, philanthropic and charitable—just repeating the rhetoric that large swathes of the population do not care about the NHS is not helpful. We care very much about the NHS. Our record on investment speaks for itself, and she will know that a huge amount of work is ongoing to deal with the very real problem of backlogs because of the pandemic.

The hon. Lady could have spoken about the 92 community diagnostic centres that are open, with diagnostics being one of the main reasons why we still have those waiting list backlogs. She will know that we have massively increased access to GP appointments, with their number per day having increased by 120,000 since this time last year. That is due to the hard work of healthcare professionals, the modernisation that has been adopted, and the hard work of the Secretary of State and his team. She could acknowledge that and move the debate on from some rather outdated rhetoric. I will encourage Labour to do that at every business questions, in all other areas as well.

The hon. Lady invites comparison between the work of the Department for Work and Pensions now and the record of that Department under the last Labour Government, and indeed of the whole Government. I just remind her that we have got 4 million additional people into the workplace, with 2 million being women and 1 million being disabled people who would not otherwise have had those opportunities to work.

I welcome the hon. Lady’s gentle encouragement about the performance of Whitehall Departments. She knows that I take this matter very seriously. I have had permanent secretaries come to see me in my office, particularly, in recent times, the permanent secretary at the Home Office. She will know that we have achieved on the backlog on those questions and the casework that is so important to us in this place—70,000 more pieces of correspondence have been dealt with since this matter was raised in this House. Both Lord True, the Leader of the House of Lords, and I will be seeing all permanent secretaries next week, and we have a list of suggestions on how things can be improved. I will always want Members of this House to have timely access to information, and I shall continue to operate on that basis.