Business of the House

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 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 the week commencing 4 January will include:

Monday 4 January—The House will not be sitting.

Tuesday 5 January—Remaining stages of the Financial Services Bill.

Wednesday 6 January—Opposition day (14th allotted day). There will be a debate on a motion in the name of the official Opposition. Subject to be announced.

Thursday 7 January—Business to be determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 8 January—Private Members’ Bills.

Subject to the House’s decision later, we will rise for the Christmas recess at close of business today. Hon. and right hon. Members will recognise that talks with the European Union continue and, should a deal be secured, it is the Government’s intention to request a recall so that Parliament may pass the necessary legislation. Parliament has done and continues to do its duty, and has long shown that it can act quickly and decisively when needed. I am sure that the whole House will agree that the country would expect nothing less.

The Government realise that that duty falls not just on MPs and peers but on the parliamentary staff who make this place function, and to whom we are very grateful. While we may therefore sit again in the coming days, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the staff of the House, civil servants and Members’ assistants for the commitment and dedication they have shown in keeping the parliamentary show going throughout this extremely difficult year. Hon. Members are always grateful for the hard work of the ever-informative Doorkeepers, the cheerful cleaners who have gone about their work regardless of the perception of risk, which was particularly high at the beginning of the pandemic, and the wise Clerks, whose intelligence does not seem to have been affected by the loss of their wigs, which I used to think were essential to keeping their brains warm and up to full speed—

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am glad to note your intervention, Mr Speaker, which has, I hope, been recorded.

We are grateful to the smartly behelmeted police officers, who cheer us with their badinage and keep us safe with their blunderbusses; to the catering staff, who have not lost their appetite for keeping us well nourished; the broadcasting team, who have probably been under more pressure than any other part of our community but have none the less gone about their work quietly and effectively; and the Hansard team, who always correct my errors and smooth away the knots and gnarls of an extempore text.

I hope that all those whose work supports the smooth running of the United Kingdom Parliament feel proud of their contribution in tackling the pandemic this year. I know that should the House be recalled, they will continue their dutiful service to our democracy. For that, Mr Chri—I mean Mr Speaker, not Mr Christmas. You see, Mr Speaker is a very Father Christmas-like figure, spreading goodness and cheerfulness wherever he goes. For that, Mr Speaker, they deserve the highest praise and a restful Christmas. I can deliver the first, but I fear that I cannot promise the second.

[Valerie Vaz]

That is a very long business statement. I thank the Leader of the House for the statement and for the Opposition day. I know he is a person of his word and he will not take it away, as he has done previously. It will be Epiphany and he knows that the Opposition will come riding to the rescue of the House and the country with gold, frankincense and myrrh.

Normally we have advance sight of the business statement, but I will not thank the Leader of the House for the advance speculation about when we would rise because that is a ridiculous way to do business. Nick Watt speculated on “Newsnight” on Tuesday about what the Leader of the House would say, when the date has been announced for quite some time.

In his podcast, the Leader of the House said that he wanted to “retrospectively correct” domestic law to recognise the agreement. May I ask him when and why? He went on to say:

“Normally, you would expect a treaty to be ratified before it comes into force”—

yes, that is the legal way—

“but if both sides accept that ratification is done in a different way, that is theoretically possible”.

This is a democracy, not a tutorial. The European Parliament might agree the deal on 28 December. What will happen? What is the legal position if the House does not come back between 31 December and 5 January? Why was this slipped out in a podcast and not said in the House? Despite the Government’s majority, they clearly do not have confidence that the deal will be passed by the House.

Why is the Equalities Minister making statements outside the House about no unconscious bias training and how equalities will change?

The Minister for vaccines has not bothered to come to the House to tell us how many vaccines have been administered. That is so important. Last week, the Health Secretary said he did not know and the Department for Health and Social Care said tens of thousands. Why do we not know? If we can keep track of our parcels, why cannot we keep track of our vaccines? It is important because we need to know whether the Government’s criteria are being applied, and because we have the most deaths in the whole of Europe.

We also have the worst growth. We will hear later in a statement that taxes will be passed on to our constituents—that local authorities will be tasked with raising taxes from our constituents.

I know that the Leader of the House wants to be transparent and accountable. On Tuesday the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution said in a written statement:

“Transparency is a key principle of public procurement. Openness underpins accountability for public money, anti-corruption and the effectiveness of procurement.”—[Official Report, 15 December 2020; Vol. 686, c. 14WS.]

Not for now, but for future pandemics. That is the theory. Will the Leader of House therefore explain why Fleetwood Strategy, run by a person who played a key role in the last election, was given £123,500 for research into Government communication? We do not need research; we just need the Government to communicate. A former Tory director of communications during the election campaign received £819,000 for focus groups. Will we see the results? What about special advisers—those friends of the Government, or FOGies—getting a 50% pay rise when our teachers, our public service workers and our police officers are not? Worse still, £200,000 of costs for a FOGey who wanted to continue with action against a person he had sacked would pay for six nurses.

The Leader of the House has been assiduous in responding to our questions, particularly on Nazanin and Anousheh. He will know that Ruhollah Zam was an Iranian journalist who was executed. While the Foreign Secretary is on his tour to India, hopefully sorting out our constituents’ relatives—the farmers in India—will he also look at whether Anousheh and Nazanin can come home for Christmas? Of course there is also Luke Symons.

Sadly, I must pay tribute to David O’Nions, who used to work for this House and died in March. His colleagues, friends and family have not had a chance to pay tribute to him. I hope we will get an opportunity to do that.

Finally, I thank you, Mr Speaker, all the Deputy Speakers and all your staff for getting this House together. You set up the taskforce. Marianne Cwynarski was absolutely brilliant in keeping us safe. The Clerk of the House, the Clerk Assistant and everyone in the Table Office have worked continuously to make sure we do our work. John Angeli in the Broadcasting Unit actually got better as we went along. I thank the Serjeant at Arms, Phil Howse and all the Doorkeepers, who also kept us safe, and the Official Reporters. The catering staff kept us fed and watered, and of course, the building has been cleaned so thoroughly. I thank all our Chief Whips on all sides, and the Whips, who have worked really hard—I know it is hard work casting all those 200 proxies—as well as every right hon. and hon. Member, and all their families. I hope they have a peaceful Christmas and a very happy new year.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

If I may continue in the spirit of good will, I thank the right hon. Lady, who is an absolute pleasure to deal with in the way that things have to be dealt with. She is a very important advocate for her own party, but does so with enormous charm. I am not winning her over to conservatism, but it is always a pleasure doing business with her, and indeed with the Scottish National party spokesman, the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard). It is a pleasure working with all the people we work with in the House.

The right hon. Lady paid tribute to David O’Nions—may the souls of all the faithful departed, by the mercy of God, rest in peace, and I hope that he will be commemorated properly. She also raised, quite rightly, the people held illegally. I do write to the Foreign Secretary every week after business questions to ensure this is highlighted, and will do so again. I am very grateful to her for raising these points, because I think it is important that they remain at the forefront of the political debate.

The right hon. Lady made a point about Opposition day. Yes, it is indeed the feast of the Epiphany, and we are hoping—though this may be the triumph of hope over experience—that we will see some wisdom from the Opposition on that day. It is a hope that has been dashed many times in the past.

The right hon. Lady also asked about how business has been organised. Business has been organised so that the key Bills will receive Royal Assent today: therefore, we have achieved what we needed to achieve, and the one thing outstanding is an unknowable. We have to wait and see whether or not a deal will be achieved, in which case there will be legislative consequences. I am very flattered that she listens to the Moggcast—informative and interesting podcast that it is, done fortnightly through the auspices of ConservativeHome—but that is not a statement of what is going to be going on in the House. It is a discussion about theoretical aspects, and the question that was raised was “Theoretically, could a treaty be ratified ex post facto?” The answer I gave was that this would be legally extremely abnormal and open to challenge, so I am not sure that the right hon. Lady paid as close attention as she ought to have done, although the episode is still available to be downloaded and listened to should she wish to spend Christmas paying closer attention to precisely what I said.

As regards the vaccines Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), he was here in the House a couple of days ago for questions. The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has been absolutely assiduous in updating the House, and there will be a statement from the relevant Ministry after I have spoken. The right hon. Lady suggested that taxes were going to be going up; I do not know how she knows this, because the Chancellor guards these matters very closely to his own chest in the period before a Budget, so that will be a matter for him. However, the manifesto commitments of the Conservative party were extraordinarily clear in relation to our being the party of low taxation.

Regarding procurement, the procurement had to be done quickly. The right hon. Lady has criticised the communications, but it was absolutely essential to see that the messages were getting across effectively—to see whether they were the messages that worked, that persuaded people to change their behaviour, because it was the most extraordinary level of change in behaviour ever known in this nation. People were not allowed to visit each other’s homes; people were not allowed to go to the shops, or to restaurants. We had to know that the message was getting across effectively, and therefore having a degree of focus group and research into how effective it was seems to me a sensible use of Government—taxpayers’—money.