Business of the House

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 24th September 2020 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 (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)]

The business for next week will include:

Monday 28 September—General debate on covid-19.

Tuesday 29 September—Remaining stages of the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill.

Wednesday 30 September—Second reading of the Non-Domestic Rating (Lists) (No.2) Bill, followed by a motion under the Coronavirus Act 2020 relating to the renewal of the temporary provisions, followed by all stages of the Sentencing Bill [Lords], followed by a debate on motions relating to planning.

Thursday 1 October—Consideration of a business of the House motion, followed by all stages of the Social Security (Up-Rating of Benefits) Bill. 

Friday 2 October—The House will not be sitting.

The provisional business for the week commencing 5 October will include:

Monday 5 October—Second reading of the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill. 

Tuesday 6 October—Consideration of Lords amendments to the Prisoners (Disclosure of Information about Victims) Bill, followed by consideration in Committee and remaining stages of the Private International Law (Implementation of Agreements) Bill [Lords], followed by a motion to approve the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (No.2) (England) (Amendment) (No.4) Regulations 2020. 

Wednesday 7 October—Second reading of the Pension Schemes Bill [Lords].

Thursday 8 October—Debate on a motion on planning reform and house building targets, followed by a general debate on the spending of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on support measures for the DCMS sectors during and after the covid-19 pandemic. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee. 

Friday 9 October—The House will not be sitting.

[Valerie Vaz]

I am grateful to the Leader of the House for giving us the business for the next two weeks.

The Leader of the House did not give me a reply on Anousheh’s diplomatic protection. As he will know, Nazanin has this week had to file a complaint about being harassed by revolutionary guards. We hear that the Iranian Foreign Minister has offered a complete prisoner swap with the United States, and I thought that was the reason why we were being held back. May we have a statement on our British nationals? I know the Foreign Secretary has been abroad. Will he give a statement next week? I hope that we will have something on Luke Symons in the Yemen debate later on today.

May we have a debate on the unjust policy of the child maintenance service? I have two constituents who have been told that they have paid everything, but have then suddenly received a letter, even though they have a letter saying that they have paid everything, that they have to pay more back. I have written to the Minister concerned, but received a response from the officials rather than the Minister. I point out that this is a policy issue. There is a third constituent who has said that parental alienation is being incentivised under this scheme, because, basically, if a child is staying with one parent, that parent gets paid on the basis of how long the child stays with them. Can we have a debate on these apparent injustices in the Child Maintenance Service?

It was great to see the Prime Minister come to the House on Tuesday rather than appearing outside. Ministers are now coming to the House. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster came to the House to confirm that there will be a border in Kent. We will just wait for the announcement on the border in the Irish sea. Sadly, though, the Chancellor decided to speak to the media, and not the House, about scrapping the Budget. The shadow Chancellor has asked him 40 times—it will be 41 later on— about his plans for the ending of the furlough scheme. We are trying to support our folk in these difficult times. They are in this situation through no fault of their own.

Will the Leader of the House have a word with the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy? I understand that he is interfering with witnesses on the Select Committee. He intervened and did not authorise a witness to attend. He also issued a ministerial direction to force through a deal. The Leader of the House will know that Erskine May says that

“a select committee has the power to send for persons”

and that

“that power is unqualified”.

Can we have a debate then on the Floor of the House—if the Secretary of State will not allow witnesses to the Select Committee—on the OneWeb deal?

It is a great anniversary of Lady Hale’s judgment today. She has said that Parliament “surrendered” its role over the emergency legislation. I know that there is a debate on covid, but that is not what she was talking about. She was talking about the fact that the Coronavirus Act 2020 gave sweeping powers and that it was not surprising that the police were as confused as the public. We do not all have the luxury of going to the rose garden for our pleas in mitigation.

Mr Speaker, you will have seen the seventh report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which expressed concern about the amount of legislation that is coming into force before it is laid. I know that the Government have had to write to you, Mr Speaker, 25 times since March to explain why legislation has come into force before it was laid. I thought Parliament was sovereign. Will the Leader of the House please ensure that anything that is laid is discussed in Parliament first?

Can we have a debate on the Government’s own report, the McGregor Smith report, which was commissioned by the former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid)—he of the “Cummings and goings”. There were 22 recommendations. The noble Baroness said that

“unconscious bias is more pervasive and…more insidious”

than “overt racism”. She recommended free online unconscious bias training. Her Majesty’s Opposition have already done it; I have done it. I got 100%—I may not have got 100%, but I tried nevertheless. Everywhere where sentences are meted out, black, Asian and minority ethnic people are more likely to be affected than anyone else; they are over-represented. I hope that the Leader of the House will encourage his colleagues to undertake this unconscious bias training that the House is putting forward.

We have lost two giants. We have all lived and grown up with the cultural icons of Sir Terence Conran and Sir Harold Evans, who have both died. They are giants of design and investigative journalism.

Finally, I know that the whole House will agree to raise a cup of coffee to Macmillan Cancer Support. Many of our colleagues are going through difficult times. We also know family and friends who are doing so. They will know that tomorrow, as we raise that cup of coffee, they are not forgotten.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right: we should of course have a cup of coffee tomorrow to help Macmillan, which I know is trying to raise a larger amount of money than it raised last year. My coffee of choice is Alta Rica, which I strongly recommend to anybody who enjoys a nice cup of instant coffee. People may also want to have a cake with it.

May I also join the right hon. Lady in her condolences to the families of Sir Harry Evans and Sir Terence Conran? Sir Harry Evans was my father’s opposite number at The Sunday Times for 14 years, while my father was editing The Times. My father thought of him as one of the finest editors of his generation and his campaigns were really very remarkable; he made The Sunday Times a truly great newspaper.

Coming to Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anousheh Ashouri, there will be opportunities to raise issues with the Foreign Secretary in coming weeks. I always pass on to the Foreign Office issues raised by the right hon. Lady. I note her particular inquiry about the diplomatic question for Anousheh Ashouri, and I will take that up specifically to try to get her a direct answer on that.

The right hon. Lady says that responses from officials are not satisfactory. I thought this might come up. It reminds me that when I was at school, if something was handed in that was unsatisfactory, it was given back by the schoolmaster with a little tear at the top of the paper and it was asked that it be redone. I would suggest that if Members have responses from officials that they think are unsatisfactory, they do exactly that and send it back to the Ministry asking for a new response. Responses are expected from Ministers. It was known as a rip. So if you want to let rip, send these letters back, because it is deeply unsatisfactory and has been coming up more and more often at question time.

On unfairness in child maintenance, as a constituency MP I deeply sympathise with this. I have found the various guises of the child maintenance organisations to be one of the hardest issues to deal with on behalf of my constituents. We need to continue to bring to the attention of Ministers the fact that these organisations ought to provide a better service for families. As the right hon Lady mentions, it is desperately unfair when somebody has done the right thing, has made all the payments, and then finds that a further claim is made, usually because of administrative inefficiency.

That is, I am afraid, where the agreement comes to a sad end. Ministers have come to the Dispatch Box with great regularity and have made statement after statement. They have brought things to the House. The Prime Minister has been here. The Chancellor will be here very shortly. The Health Secretary has been here. The Foreign Secretary will be here shortly. The House has been kept up to date. Baroness Hale has now, of course, retired from the Supreme Court, and is as entitled to her opinions as any other Member of the House of Lords. [Interruption.] Of course the noble Lady is, and she can make speeches in the House of Lords that I am sure people will pay great attention to and be interested in. However, I think she is out of date as to what is going on in this House and the level of scrutiny that we have—indeed, that we are having next week, with the general debate on covid-19 but also the debate on the six-month extension of the regulations if that is what the House wishes to do. It will be a decision of this House, as the legislation was in the first place. The idea that the House is not doing its job is absurd. There is regular scrutiny and regular debate, and quite rightly so.

On the question of statutory instruments being made, the point at which they are laid and subject to subsequent debate is a form of this House—a form that this House has used for many years to ensure that swift action can be taken where necessary. The debates that are required will be held. Statutory instruments that are made on that basis have to be approved by the House; otherwise they fall if the House were not to approve them. That is very important.

I note what the right hon. Lady says about BEIS and the Select Committee. The House does have the power to call for persons and papers. That is a power delegated to Select Committees, which can of course use various methods to increase pressure on people to come. I will take up with the Secretary of State the specific issue she raised, but there are sometimes good reasons why officials cannot be present at Select Committees.

Finally, the House has made unconscious bias training available, and if people want to do it, that is a matter for them.