Business of the House

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Thursday 13th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

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

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Lidington)]

The business for next week is as follows:

Monday 17 October—Second Reading of the Savings (Government Contributions) Bill.

Tuesday 18 October—Debate on the BBC on a Government motion.

Wednesday 19 October—Opposition day (9th allotted day). There will be a debate on an SNP motion, subject to be announced.

Thursday 20 October—Debate on a motion on BHS, followed by a general debate on industrial strategy. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 21 October—Private Members’ Bills.

The provisional business for the week commencing 24 October will include:

Monday 24 October—Second Reading of the Health Services Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill.

Tuesday 25 October—Opposition day (10th allotted day). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion, subject to be announced.

Wednesday 26 October—Consideration of Lords amendments.

Thursday 27 October—Business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 28 October—Private Members’ Bills.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for October and early November will be:

Monday 17 October—Debate on e-petitions relating to the UK’s exit from the European Union.

Thursday 20 October—Debate on the Education Committee reports on mental health and well-being of looked-after children and on social work reform, followed by a general debate on National Arthritis Week 2016.

Monday 24 October—Debate on an e-petition relating to the local government pension scheme.

Thursday 27 October—Debate on the Defence Committee reports on defence expenditure and the use of Lariam for military personnel.

Monday 31 October—Debate on an e-petition relating to driven grouse shooting.

Thursday 3 November—General debate on the future of the steel industry.

[Valerie Vaz]

I thank the Leader of the House for his warm welcome and for the time he took to speak to me about this role. I also thank my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), for all his hard work in the two jobs that he undertook.

It is the first week back, and there is a crisis. This morning I received a text—an upgrade from an email—from a Jeremy, who says, “We want our Marmite back”, so will the Leader of the House do all he can to make sure that there is Marmite on the shelves? I say to Jeremy: “Cut back on the salt, and if you want to protest, do not sit on the floor and shave your beard!”

It is the first week back, and it has been a bad week for the Government. On Tuesday, the Prime Minister’s honeymoon period, most of which was in the Swiss Alps in the recess, came to an end as she faced her first Government defeat in the other place, which voted through new laws to compensate phone-hacking victims. Quite rightly in the age of legal aid cutbacks, victims should have access to justice and protected costs.

May we have a debate to clarify the policy of the Home Secretary’s proposals for firms to provide a list of foreign workers whom they employ? The Prime Minister said at Prime Minister’s Question Time that that was not what was said, so why did more than 100 business leaders write an open letter to the Home Secretary, calling for the idea to be abandoned, saying that foreign workers should be “celebrated not demonised”? The Government may have back-tracked on the policy, just a week after it was outlined, but we need clarification that it is obsolete. If the Leader of the House went back to his alma mater, the University of Cambridge, he would know that the new Vice-Chancellor is, in fact, Canadian, so would he have to be reported to the Home Secretary? It is the anniversary of the battle of Hastings on Friday—it took place 950 years ago—so this reversal could be seen as one in the eye for the Home Secretary.

At the Conservatives’ annual conference, the Chancellor announced a U-turn on six years of Government policy. You will know, Mr Speaker, that at the time of the party conference, the pound fell—and it is still falling. Since last week, we have seen a loss of 6% against the dollar—usually a headline associated with the Labour party. The Chancellor also said that he is cancelling the plan of the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne) to balance the nation’s books by 2020. Instead, the Government will invest their way out of the deficit and would now borrow to invest. That sounds remarkably like the Opposition’s policy. May we have statement immediately, before the autumn statement in November, on what is being done at the Treasury on the state of the pound?

So this Government are not the Government of business, not the Government of sound fiscal policy and not the Government of the vulnerable. The new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions now says that people with severe, lifelong conditions will no longer face those humiliating six-monthly reassessments—but only those claiming employment and support allowance; claimants of the personal independence payment will still be subject to those inappropriate assessments. Bizarrely, the former Work and Pensions Secretary, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), welcomed this “progressive” reform of the retesting regime, although he introduced the assessments and they were voted for by Conservative Members. May we have a debate in Government time on the state of the assessments and their removal, as called for by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams)?

This is our first week back after the conference recess, and there have been no votes. The first was scheduled for the Opposition day yesterday, but the Government conceded the Opposition’s motion, which basically asked for Parliament to be sovereign. We want our sovereignty back. That was all that was being asked for—making Parliament sovereign in any negotiations that affect the British people.

The referendum posed a simple question: in or out. It did not cover immigration, and it did not cover the single market. All that has to be negotiated and put to the British people through their elected representatives. The great repeal Bill, which will feature in the next Queen’s Speech, will deal only with the incorporation of EU laws in domestic law. May we have a debate in Government time on the framework of the negotiating stance, given that there are only five months—and 170 unanswered questions—before article 50 is invoked?

I know that the Leader of the House is keen to restore Parliament’s reputation. On Tuesday, he will have seen Parliament at her best—as will you, Mr Speaker, when you were in the Chair—and I am sure he will agree with me that it was incredible to see members of all parties present petitions as part of the Women Against State Pension Inequality campaign for fair transitional arrangements, led by my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley). My hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) put the figure at roughly £2 billion. Given the strength of feeling among all our constituents throughout the United Kingdom, may we have a statement to do justice to the WASPI women?

May we also have a debate on the report “The Good Parliament” by Dr Sarah Childs, which recommends making Parliament user-friendly to men, women, families and those with disabilities, and could that debate be consolidated with the debate that is to be held on restoration and renewal?

You will have noted, Mr Speaker, that peace has broken out—in Colombia. I congratulate its President, Juan Manuel Santos, on a hard-won peace, and on his Nobel peace prize. We look forward to his visit on 1 November.

The Prime Minister said yesterday that she was speaking for the British people who voted to leave. Well, that amounts to just 51.9%, because 48.1% voted to remain and 28% did not vote at all. If the Prime Minister is representing only 51.9%, my colleagues—each and every one of them, with their talents and skills—are ready to serve all the British people.

[Mr Lidington]

I warmly welcome the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) to her new responsibilities. I am sure that she will bring to the role the wit and good humour, as well as the commitment to the House, that we have grown to expect of her during her time here. Let me also thank and pay tribute to her predecessor, the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), for his service. He is the living embodiment of the principle that age is nothing but a number. Throughout his parliamentary career, he has continued to express his views, and to speak on behalf of his constituents and his party, with all the passion and commitment that brought him into politics in the first place.

The hon. Lady made various points about work and pensions matters. The Government will, of course, respond in the way that they normally do to petitions that Members present to the House, and Members in all parts of the House will have an opportunity to put questions to DWP Ministers about their responsibilities as early as next Monday, when DWP questions will take place.

I think that the hon. Lady tempted providence slightly when she talked about honeymoons. I have yet to see the Leader of the Opposition’s honeymoon even begin, let alone end.

I am sure that Members on both sides of the House will have sympathy for the hon. Lady’s call to restore our Marmite. The best advice I can give her, in relation to her email correspondent, is to advise Jeremy that a number of own-brand yeast extracts will be available during the current commercial dispute between the wholesaler and the retailer, and I am confident that in an area such as Islington there will be a wealth of traditional and organic alternatives available to the discerning customer.

I shall now touch on some of the other points that the hon. Lady raised. I shall take back and reflect on the points she made about a debate on the Childs report, “The Good Parliament”, and whether it would be appropriate to link that to the debate that we are going to have on the restoration and renewal report in due course. I know that the Select Committee on Women and Equalities is looking into the implications of “The Good Parliament” report as part of its own work at the moment. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, my right hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Sir Patrick McLoughlin) and the Leader of the Opposition gave evidence to that Committee on some of those matters earlier this week.

The hon. Lady raised questions about foreign workers. The position on this is perfectly clear. The Government have made it plain that there is no question of naming individual employees or trying to shame companies, but it is not unreasonable for the Government to go out to consultation—which is what is being planned—on whether firms should be asked to supply evidence about the proportion of their workforce that is made up of workers from outside the UK. For one thing, that might be a way of providing independent evidence about labour shortages and informing the Government’s approach to what we and British industry might do address that issue. This system already operates in the United States of America, after all, so I do not think that a consultation of that sort is unreasonable in the way that she suggests.

The hon. Lady also asked about European matters. The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), said yesterday during his speech, and I reiterate today, that we will make Government time available for debates on the European Union on the Floor of the House. At the moment, we are considering exactly when that will happen and what form those debates might take. I was glad that the Opposition accepted the Government amendment yesterday, but before the hon. Lady gives lectures on democracy, she really needs to have a word with some of her shadow Cabinet colleagues. I yield to no one in my open support for the remain cause during the referendum, but if we are democrats, we have to accept the outcome. It remains the case that, as recently as 11 September, the shadow Foreign Secretary, the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), said on “The Murnaghan Programme” that that was not enough. She said:

“I think that we have to have some form of democratic, an injection of democracy in some way…I think we need to go back to the British people in some way”.

That is at odds with the message that came from the Opposition Front Bench yesterday about the Opposition accepting the referendum outcome, whatever view any of us took during the campaign. So I hope that we will see greater consistency from the Opposition in future.