Business of the House

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

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

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Andrea Leadsom)]

The business for next week will be:

Monday 11 March—Remaining stages of the Children Act 1989 (Amendment) (Female Genital Mutilation) Bill [Lords].

Tuesday 12 March—Debate on a motion relating to section 13(1)(b) of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.

Wednesday 13 March—My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will deliver his spring statement, followed by a general debate on housing.

Thursday 14 March—Debate on a motion relating to the NICE appraisals of rare diseases. The subject for this debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 15 March—Private Members’ Bills.

On Tuesday 26 February, the Prime Minister made three clear commitments to this House. I have just confirmed that the meaningful vote will take place on Tuesday 12 March, and I hope that the House will support the Prime Minister’s deal. However, in the deeply regrettable case that the House does not support the deal, I will make a further business statement on Tuesday 12 March in order to fulfil the Prime Minister’s commitments to allow the House to vote next week on whether we should leave the EU without a withdrawal agreement on the 29 March or extend article 50.

On World Book Day, we can all agree with the words of Frederick Douglass, the American social reformer and abolitionist, who said:

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”

World Book Day’s campaign aims to provide every child and young person in the country with a book of their own. It also offers a great opportunity for many children to go to school dressed as their favourite character. If this Chamber were to join in this morning, my choice would be for the Mad Hatter’s tea party as a theme, with my friend the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) taking the leading role.

Tomorrow is International Women’s Day. This year’s theme is “Balance for Better”—promoting a more inclusive world, where equality for women is a right, not a privilege. A balanced world is a better world, and the UK has some way to go until we have a 50:50 Parliament. This is something I hope all MPs will push for so that future Parliaments look more like the society they represent.

Speaking of balance and equality, I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami) is the first male Member to take up proxy voting for baby leave. I am sure we all congratulate him and his family on the arrival of their new baby. We also send our warmest wishes to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) and her family on the birth of their baby.

Last but by no means least, it is Apprenticeship Week, so I want to thank the many apprentices working in the House to support the work of MPs and of Parliament. I am lucky enough to have the support of apprentices in my brilliant Leader of the House’s office, as well as having my ninth annual parliamentary apprentice who is doing a superb job for my constituents.

[Valerie Vaz]

I thank the Leader of the House for the very short business for next week and her very long speech on various other matters. I thought this was business questions.

I am absolutely staggered to hear what the Leader of the House says about the business next week. It would have been more appropriate to fulfil what the Prime Minister set out in her statement to this House on 26 February, rather than doing it the other way around and putting in debates that then have to be moved. That would have been more appropriate in the light of the utmost seriousness of what is going to happen to the country in the next few weeks.

The Leader of the House seems to be openly in defiance of the Prime Minister. We also see that the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs appears to be announcing that the Easter recess will be cancelled. Will the Leader of the House confirm that he said to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee that

“there may not be an Easter recess”?

More Government chaos: the Financial Services (Implementation of Legislation) Bill was pulled before it was debated on Monday. May I ask the Leader of the House why, because a very important cross-party amendment was going to be put to the House? Will she say why, and when is it likely to come back?

Something else that needs to come back to this House is the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union—[Interruption.] I am really sorry, but the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), has had her go. I need to ask the Leader of the House some questions, so would she mind not speaking so loudly?

Something else that has to be brought back to the House is the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union. I do not know whether the Leader of the House heard the point of order from the Chair of the Exiting the European Union Committee yesterday, but he suggested that the Secretary of State is meeting individuals privately and has not said when he is coming to the Committee. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) has made it absolutely clear that the Committee wants to hear from the Secretary of State before the vote on Tuesday. Will the Leader of the House please ensure that the Brexit Secretary—with or without his other half, the Attorney General—appears before the Committee, particular as one of the Government’s red lines was lost in the House of Lords yesterday?

We know that the Government have paid £33 million to settle a lawsuit. Labour Members have totalled up the amount of money that the Secretary of State for Transport has cost the taxpayer, including in his previous guises, and it amounts to £2.7 billion. Imagine if all that was given to police officers, bringing them back on the beat. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner said that there is “some link” between violent crime on the streets and police numbers. Of course there is—everybody can see that. It does not matter whether the Prime Minister is in Cabinet Office briefing room A, B or C, the fact is that west midlands police and crime commissioner David Jamieson has asked for £964,000 to set up a violence reduction unit. All PCCs should be given funds straight away, before another young person dies this weekend. Yesterday, my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) raised a point of order to ask when the Home Secretary or Prime Minister will come to the House to update it on knife crime.

There has been yet another defeat in the courts—yesterday the High Court ruled that the Government’s fracking guidelines were unlawful. Mr Justice Dove said that the consultation was

“flawed in its design and processes”.

May we have a statement on the Government’s policy—well, lack of policy—on fracking, given that High Court judgment?

It may be the 50th anniversary of the Race Relations Act 1968, but the Government’s “hostile environment” policy has caused immeasurable misery for ethnic minorities. A challenge by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants found that the Government’s right to rent scheme is “discriminatory” and in breach of human rights laws, and that evidence “strongly showed” that landlords were discriminating against potential tenants because of their nationality and ethnicity. That, again, is a judgment of the High Court, so may we have a statement on the change in policy following that ruling?

The Public Accounts Committee has published its report on the Windrush generation and the Home Office, and stated that the Home Office has failed to take ownership of the problems it created. The Home Office considered 11,800 Caribbean cases, but failed to renew around 160,000 non-Caribbean Commonwealth cases. When will the Government end their discriminatory polices?

Last week the Leader of the House said that the United Kingdom is doing extremely well, and that we are well prepared for exiting the European Union. I think she needs to correct the record, because the Institute for Government identified eight red areas where the Government will not be able to mitigate fully the major negative impacts of a no-deal scenario in 2019. On Tuesday, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs warned that businesses in Northern Ireland will not be ready for new border procedures if there is no deal. Which is it? The Leader of the House mentioned World Book Day—is she “Alice Through the Looking Glass” or is she going through the cupboard into Narnia?

It is with sadness that we remember Lord Bhattacharyya, founder of the Warwick Manufacturing Group—never has his advice been more important than it is now.

I thank Sir Amyas Morse for all his public service. He said that not enough Ministers “sweat blood” over how they spend public money. That lesson needs to be learned by us all, and particularly the Secretary of State for Transport.

We are celebrating International Women’s Day. It was women’s pay day yesterday, which means that as of today women will start being paid for the work they do—they will not be paid for the work they did in the first 65 days because the current pay gap stands at 17.9%. May we have a statement on how the Government will close that gap? We also celebrate the next generation of young women activists, including Greta Thunberg who started a movement to combat climate change. Our young people are getting ready for their day of action on 15 March. They know that climate change and equality know no boundaries, and that such matters are not about the ego of the few, but that the compassion and co-operation of the many will change the world.

[Mr Speaker]

Just before the Leader of the House responds, I thank her very much, as will other colleagues, for what she said about World Book Day, and I report that my daughter has today gone to school dressed as Pippi Longstocking. I am sure other Members will have examples with which they can regale the House.