Business of the House

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 6th July 2017 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 10 July—Second Reading of the Telecommunications Infrastructure (Relief from Non-Domestic Rates) Bill.

Tuesday 11 July—Consideration in Committee and remaining stages of the Air Travel Organisers’ Licensing Bill followed by motions relating to the Hybrid Bill procedure.

Wednesday 12 July—General debate on the Grenfell Tower fire inquiry.

Thursday 13 July—General debate on the commemoration of Passchendaele, the third battle of Ypres.

Friday 14 July—The House will not be sitting.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 13 July will be:

Thursday 13 July—Debate on supply of homes and affordable homes to buy followed by debate on the introduction of an opt-out system for organ donation in England.

Colleagues will want to be aware that the election of Select Committee Chairs will take place on Wednesday 12 July from 10 am to 4 pm in Committee Room 8.

Finally, Mr Speaker, I was delighted to hear of the hard work that both you and the Lord Speaker have put into ensuring that Parliament properly marks Pride weekend. Among other activities, the rainbow-coloured flag will be projected on to the Palace for the duration of the weekend. I am sure that Members from across the House, in this, the most diverse Parliament ever, will join me in sending our best wishes to all who are celebrating this weekend and the rest of Pride month.

[Valerie Vaz]

I join the Leader of the House in her good wishes to everyone taking part in Pride weekend. We are in the business of equality for everyone. Perhaps you need to wear a rainbow tie next week, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

I will probably not require any encouragement.

[Valerie Vaz]

I thank the Leader of the House for the forthcoming business. She made no mention of the specific debates that I asked for last week on the High Court judgments concerning the plan for clean air and the benefits cap. She also made no mention of Opposition days, the last of which was in January. She made no mention of when she will schedule the debate on the statutory instrument on tuition fees, which the Opposition prayed against. That is particularly important in view of the latest Institute for Fiscal Studies report, which states that students will graduate with average debts of £50,800 after interest rates on student loans are raised to 6.1% in September, and points out that such interest rates are very high compared with current market rates. The report goes on to state that with their

“higher principal debt, students…from the poorest 40% of families now accrue around £6,500 in interest during study.”

The First Secretary of State said in a speech earlier this month that there is

“a national debate that we need to have”

about university tuition fees. I do not know where he was from 3 May to 8 June, but he actually got an answer: a minority Government. Will the Leader of the House please honour the parliamentary convention and let us debate that statutory instrument? It seems as though young people are being rejected by this minority Government.

May we have a debate on early-day motion 63, on the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign, which has so far been signed by 124 hon. Members from all parties?

[That this House believes it has a moral duty to ensure that there is a fair transition for women born on or after 6 April 1951 regarding their pensions; recognises the need for a non-means tested bridging pension that will secure the financial stability of those affected by the 1995 and 2011 Pension Acts and compensation for those at risk of losing in the region of £45,000, creating a fairer pension system for all; and calls on the Government to bring forward transitional arrangements to provide pension certainty for the women disproportionately affected by this system.]

The debate in Westminster Hall yesterday was totally oversubscribed—it was standing room only—so will the Leader of the House find time to debate this injustice to 1950s women, or are 1950s women also rejected by this minority Government?

So far, the financial black hole includes the £1.5 billion for the deal; the £2 billion hole in the public finances over the next five years left by the national insurance U-turn; the concession that was, quite rightly, made last week in support of women in Northern Ireland, but which not been costed; and the extra money that many Secretaries of State are asking for, such as the £1 billion for education and the money asked for by the Health Secretary. The financial black hole is getting bigger. The Government announced in the Queen’s Speech that they will have three Finance Bills over the course of this Parliament, so will the Leader of the House say when we will have the summer Finance Bill? The Treasury has suggested such a Bill—that has certainly been picked up by the shadow Treasury team—unless, that is, there is to be no debate in Parliament, but just an announcement in Manchester in October.

Guess who said:

“tell others who’ve got their own opinion to shut up…There is a sense you have at the moment of everybody doing their own thing…Nobody actually asserting very clearly what they want to do in the national interest…We can’t go on living from hand-to-mouth in this sort of shambolic way.”

It was the former Tory party chairman Lord Patten, and this is why he said it. This is the response on 3 July to a written question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West):

“The government’s manifesto includes a free vote on the Hunting Act 2004, but we are not planning to bring forward a free vote in this session.”

That is a U-turn. On free school meals, a Minister responded this week that the Government have decided it is “right to retain” the existing universal infant free school meals provision. That is a U-turn. On grammar schools, the Secretary of State for Education, again in a written answer to my hon. Friend, has confirmed:

“There was no education bill in Her Majesty’s Most Gracious Speech, and therefore the ban on opening new grammar schools will remain in place.”

That is another U-turn. On the triple lock on pensions, which the Government wanted to scrap by 2020, they have made another U-turn. On the winter fuel allowance, the Government’s planned means-testing has been dropped, which is another U-turn. Everything in their manifesto has been dropped; there is no policy. What is left? Oh yes, “strong and stable”—I think that is another U-turn.

Mr Speaker, you will remember that the Prime Minister was billed as the second incarnation of another female Prime Minister, whose nickname, for those of us who can remember it, was TINA—“there is no alternative”. We in Her Majesty’s Opposition—here we are—say: there is an alternative.

[Andrea Leadsom]

On the subject of what the hon. Lady calls U-turns, as she and all hon. Members know, the result of the general election was not what we wished—we do not have the majority we wished for—but Members can be satisfied that the proposals the Government have brought forward are therefore focused on measures that we can all support.

Those measures are, first, about making a success of leaving the European Union and making sure that we can continue to trade and collaborate with our EU friends and partners. Secondly, there are measures to strengthen the economy by bringing forward new proposals on matters such as being a world leader in electric and autonomous vehicles, commercial space flights and other industries that will create the jobs of the future. Thirdly, there are measures to improve our society: we want strengthened support for people affected by mental health problems and measures to protect people from domestic violence. Those are measures that the whole House can get behind. Lastly, there are more measures to strengthen the United Kingdom, to prevent extremism and to protect us from terrorism. Those are the sorts of measures that the Government will bring forward, and I urge all Members to look at them and take them very seriously. They represent the real progress that this Government will make.

Let me turn to some of the hon. Lady’s specific points. On the court judgments, such cases remain with the judges, so as she will know, we cannot comment on them in the way she wishes.

Arrangements for Opposition days and for private Members’ Bills on sitting Fridays will be brought forward in due course. We are looking at them very carefully. The number of them will be at least in line with the number of days provided for in the Standing Orders, but additional days will be provided through the usual channels.

The hon. Lady asked for a debate on student fees, and mentioned the interest rates on student fees. I should make it clear to the House that student debt is not like normal commercial loans: student fees are made available to all students, regardless of their financial history; they are repayable according to income, not according to the amount due; and they are of course written off by the taxpayer after 30 years. They are less like a commercial loan, and more like a contribution—only a contribution, because the taxpayer continues to pay significant sums—towards the cost of a degree that will mean the individual concerned earns more during their career than taxpayers who do not have the benefit of a degree. The system attempts to be fair to the student and to the taxpayer who does not have such a benefit.

Finally, I want to point out that our measures to improve apprenticeships—there was a commitment to nearly 3 million of them in the last Parliament, and there is a commitment to many millions more in this Parliament—are offering real alternatives for young people who do not want to go to university. The Prime Minister made the point at Prime Minister’s questions that disadvantaged 18-year-olds are seeing the highest ever level of entry to higher education, which is a good thing and should be celebrated by the whole House.