Business of the House

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 20th 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 will be as follows:

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

Tuesday 25 October—Second Reading of the Criminal Finances Bill.

Wednesday 26 October—Opposition day (10th allotted day). There will be a debate on Concentrix, followed by a debate on Yemen. Both debates will arise on an Opposition motion.

Thursday 27 October—A motion to approve the first report 2016-17 from the Committee of Privileges, followed by a debate on a motion on the Youth Parliament Select Committee report on young people’s mental health. The subject for this debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 28 October—Private Members’ Bills.

The provisional business for the week commencing 31 October will include:

Monday 31 October—Second Reading of the Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) [Lords] Bill.

Tuesday 1 November—Consideration of Lords amendments.

Wednesday 2 November—Opposition day (11th allotted day). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.

Thursday 3 November—Business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 4 November—Private Members’ Bills.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 17 and 24 November will be as follows:

Thursday 17 November—A debate on the first report from the Environmental Audit Committee on soil health.

Thursday 24 November—A debate on the first report from the International Development Committee on UK implementation of the sustainable development goals.

[Valerie Vaz]

When I was first appointed to this job, I was told, “There’s no power.” I am therefore pleased that after I raised the issue of Marmite last week, we got a result by the end of the day. Bob Dylan has been awarded the Nobel prize for literature but has not contacted the academy, so we say to Bob, “Please contact the academy.” I thank the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) for his kind comments last week. As a composer, perhaps he can spot the subliminal messages to Bob.

We are governed by a Government of urgent questions and, if we are lucky, statements. Now we are to have a statement on the crisis in the funding of pharmacies. However, it took an urgent question by my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Michael Dugher), which you granted, Mr Speaker, to get the Minister to come to the House today. May I ask the Leader of the House, why a statement and not a debate? The Minister responsible has said that the Government have proposed a way to reduce the £2.8 billion currently paid to the sector, but that the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee has rejected it. In February, the Health Secretary said that

“pharmacists have a very important part in the future of the NHS.”—[Official Report, 11 February 2016; Vol. 605, c. 1775.]

So why the cuts?

On 25 April, the Health Secretary commended the important role

“that pharmacies can play in solving absolutely any problem that the NHS faces.”—[Official Report, 25 April 2016; Vol. 608, c. 1170.]

And in July this year, he said that

“this is the right moment to rethink the role of pharmacies, and consider whether we can be better at tapping into the incredible skills that pharmacists have as trained clinicians, which I do not think we make the most of.”—[Official Report, 5 July 2016; Vol. 612, c. 733.]

So why the cuts? The Health Secretary is a jokerman. If it’s all good, why is he cutting the budget for the sector, much of which is made up of small businesses on which many communities rely as a lifeline?

For the second time this week, we have government by urgent question. Only last week I mentioned the reversal of the economic policy of the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne), and here comes another reversal. May we have a full debate, not just a statement or an urgent question, on the sale of annuities? Dragged to the House on a U-turn so spectacular that we cannot see around the bend, the poor Minister responsible said that after extensive research, it was clear that a secondary market would not be able to offer this scheme. There were many unanswered questions. For instance, when did the Government first do the extensive research? Did the former Chancellor not look at the evidence in March 2015, or was this just a means of stimulating the economy using people’s hard-earned savings while pursuing austerity measures? The answer, Mr Speaker, is blowin’ in the wind.

Will the Leader of the House make a statement to explain what the Secretary of State for International Development meant when she said that the Government cannot reveal their hand on negotiations to exit the EU because one does not do so when one plays poker? Poker, Mr Speaker? Are the Government gambling with the lives of the British people? Even Margaret Thatcher had a negotiating position. It was “No, no, no”, or “I want a rebate”. The Government say that they cannot reveal a negotiating position; we say that that is basic accountability. The only answer from the Government is that a hard Brexit’s a-gonna fall.

The debate or statement on airport expansion in the south-east, which was scheduled for next week, has now been postponed yet again. The Prime Minister made her intentions clear, but only in a response to the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) at Prime Minister’s questions. She said that

“this Government will take a decision, but then a formal process has to be undertaken. The Government will identify their preferred site option. ?That will go to a statutory consultation, and then the Government will consider the results of that consultation”.—[Official Report, 20 October 2016; Vol. 615, c. 802.]

I think that is Davies part 2. What of the timetable for implementation—the second part of the question that was not answered—and the further work on noise pollution, environmental issues and compensation from Davies part 1? Will those take place? Members of the Cabinet are on different sides of the debate—they are all tangled up in blue.

I want to place on record my thanks to the former Prime Minister and his wife Samantha for their unstinting support for epilepsy charities, much of which goes unnoticed.

Tomorrow, we remember the 50th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster in which 114 children and 28 adults lost their lives. I hope that wherever a flag is flown in our one nation tomorrow, it will be at half-mast.

Our colleague, friend and supporter of the vulnerable, Jo Cox, gave great service to her country through her public service, and so rightly deserves a plaque in this Chamber.

Jean, Gordon and Kim Leadbeter and Brendan Cox should not have had to bury their daughter, sister and wife, and her adored children should not have had to grow up without their mother. Our love to them all. May she rest in peace.

[Mr Lidington]

May I first deal with the two very serious points that the hon. Lady raised at the end of her remarks? I am sure that every single Member of the House will want to mark the appalling tragedy in Aberfan when the anniversary is commemorated tomorrow. None of us can ever forget—even if we were fairly young children at the time—the searing impact of the photographs and news coverage of what happened there. The images and the visible grief of the families are still clear in the memory. So too, as my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said yesterday, is the fact that those who might have been able to prevent the tragedy in the first place did not act in fulfilment of their responsibilities and did not, until forced to do so, own up to their responsibilities until we had an independent inquiry some years later.

Solidarity with Aberfan will unite the House, as will sympathy with the family of our late colleague, Jo Cox. I know that the matter of the commemorative shield is very high on your agenda, Mr Speaker. I pay tribute to the Parliament choir, which exists as an all-party parliamentary group and, with the agreement of Jo’s family, has commissioned a new choral composition that will be performed in her memory at a forthcoming concert.

On the political points, I was not sure whether the hon. Lady was complaining about there having been too many urgent questions. I felt that there was a certain retrospective character to her comments. On pharmacies, as she knows, there will be a statement by the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat), after business questions this morning, in which he will set out in detail the Government’s approach to community pharmacies. It is very important that we ensure not just that the money going to the national health service is sustained and increased, as the Government are doing, but that every last penny that goes to the NHS is spent to give patients the best possible value. We need to look at community pharmacy within primary, secondary and tertiary health care to ensure that we get the best possible value out of every penny of precious NHS funding that is spent.

On the hon. Lady’s point about the sale of annuities, as my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury said yesterday, the Government made a thorough and honest assessment of the prospects for a genuine market in secondary annuities, and we reluctantly came to the conclusion that to have gone ahead with the measures originally envisaged would not have been of benefit to the very group of consumers who were looking to a secondary annuities market to provide them with some relief, because the products were simply not going to be available to give them the additional safeguards and opportunities that they were seeking.

I struggle to understand the Opposition’s position on the negotiating position that the Government are adopting for the forthcoming European Union negotiations. I would have thought that whether we are talking about politics, business or any other walk of life, if we are about to start a very important and wide-ranging negotiation, the last thing that we should do is advertise the detail of our negotiating position so that the people with whom we are negotiating can see everything spread out in front of them. The Opposition need to wake up and realise that the people who would be most delighted if they got their way are the people with whom we will be negotiating across the table.

Finally, on the hon. Lady’s point about airports, as the Prime Minister said, the Government will make an announcement in the near future about which of the options proposed in the Davies report we will adopt. The Davies report said that any of the three options that it proposed would be deliverable and sustainable. The Government will, of course, comply with the requirement of statutory consultation following that announcement, which the Labour Government put in place. That helps to account for the delay about which she is now complaining.

I have to say that if there is one thing that is blowin’ in the wind this morning, it is the coherence of the Labour party’s ideas about policy. I do not know whether Labour Members are sleeping well at night, but it is very clear to me that there is no place they’re going to.