Business of the House

Tony Baldry Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

As the hon. Lady knows, the Department for International Development budget is protected, so any work in the third world funded by that Department will not be affected by any decisions in the CSR. I will certainly bring to the attention of the Home Secretary and the Justice Secretary the concerns about the impacts of decisions taken in this country. There might be an opportunity to ventilate those issues at greater length in the debate announced for Thursday 14 October.

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Yesterday, the Northern Ireland Secretary said that every Cabinet Minister had found a number of prawns stuffed behind the radiator. Will the Leader of the House encourage the commissioning, printing and publishing of a Command Paper to be put in the Library that sets out in full detail all the prawn sandwiches that previous Cabinet Ministers left stuffed behind their respective departmental radiators—from the lunacy of the Building Schools for the Future programme, where £250 million of expenditure was incurred without a single brick being laid, to the staggering £38 billion overdraft, completely unfunded, left at the Ministry of Defence?

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend made good progress in his question in producing the list that he has asked the Government to provide. It is certainly the case that a number of Secretaries of State found unfunded commitments when they took office. When we come to the comprehensive spending review, we will have an opportunity to reveal in more detail just how those unfunded commitments are to be dealt with. The Labour party was committed to some 20% of cuts if it had come into government, so it would be helpful if we heard from Labour Members at some point exactly how they would have balanced the books if they had won the election.