Business of the House

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House please update the House on the forthcoming business?

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

The business for the week commencing 19 March will be:

Monday 19 March—Second Reading of the Secure Tenancies (Victims of Domestic Abuse) Bill [Lords] followed by general debate on Welsh affairs.

Tuesday 20 March—Consideration of a business of the House motion followed by proceedings on the Northern Ireland Budget (Anticipation and Adjustments) Bill.

Wednesday 21 March—Consideration of a business of the House motion followed by proceedings on the Northern Ireland (Assembly Members, Regional Rates and Energy) Bill.

Thursday 22 March—A general debate on the economy.

Friday 23 March—The House will not be sitting.

The business for the week commencing 26 March will include:

Monday 26 March—Second Reading of the Laser Misuse (Vehicles) Bill [Lords].

As part of this year’s celebration of the centenary of women’s suffrage, on Wednesday the Cabinet Office will be launching a campaign pack for parliamentarians to use as we visit schools in our constituencies to talk about the amazing achievements in the fight for equality.

This week is Shakespeare Week, and he has a solemn message for us in this House as we seek to stamp out bullying and harassment:

“Think’st thou that duty shall have dread to speak

When power to flattery bows?”

Let us hope that all’s well that ends well.

You might be aware, Mr Speaker, that I am a huge fan of England rugby, and we face a great challenge against Ireland on St Patrick’s Day this Saturday. I am proud of our strong United Kingdom. I would like to wish both teams a superb match, and also to wish everyone a very happy St Patrick’s Day.

[Valerie Vaz]

I thank the Leader of the House for giving us next week’s business. It is an interesting programme.

I am sure that the Leader of the House will know that the Bill to be debated next Monday consists of only one clause—actually, two clauses: the long title and the main clause. May we have the list of ministerial responsibilities, which has not yet been published? When will the debate on restoration and renewal finally be scheduled, as the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill is still in the other place and is not due to come back until, possibly, May?

The shadow Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), raised a point of order after the debate on Tuesday about the Government not pressing ahead with plans to phase out childcare vouchers for the next six months. I know that the Leader of the House has said that we have to wait 12 weeks before a Minister responds. However, we now have two time limits— 12 weeks and six months. Could we have a bit of clarity on this for our constituents?

Given that there is nothing scheduled after 26 March, could the Leader of the House please schedule an Opposition-day debate? Or perhaps we could have a debate on early-day motion 937, which deals with the statutory instrument abolishing nursing bursaries for postgraduate nursing students.

[That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Education (Student Support) (Amendment) Regulations 2018 (S.I., 2018, No. 136), dated 5 February 2018, a copy of which was laid before this House on 6 February, be annulled.]

I have asked for this before. We thought that the Chancellor would make an announcement in the spring statement, but obviously as it was a spring statement he could not do that.

The Chancellor now describes himself as “Tiggerish”. If he has read the tweets of some of his Back Benchers, he will know that they are asking him to bounce out of the Cabinet. He may be Tiggerish about the growth forecast, but the OECD says that the UK’s economy is the slowest growing of all the G20 countries, so when he goes to Buenos Aires he will be last in the queue—and this is even before we leave the EU.

I want to share this really interesting point that the Prime Minister of Luxembourg made on the EU:

“We had a special relationship with the UK, before they were in with a lot of opt-outs and now they are out, they want a lot of opt-ins.”

I think that kind of sums up exactly where we are. I did not quite glean from the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union whether he has actually visited Brussels. Will the Leader of the House place in the Library information on whether he has, or on when he last visited? He did not say that he had visited the Northern Ireland border within this millennium. Will the Leader of the House urge him to do so? Has the Prime Minister visited the Northern Ireland border?

In yesterday’s statement on the Green Paper on the integration strategy, Walsall was mentioned. I was a bit upset that the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government did not alert me to the fact that he was going to mention Walsall as one of the key areas. People in my constituency have already contacted me about this because they resent the fact that Walsall is seen as a place that is not integrated. I heard at 10 o’clock this morning that the Secretary of State was visiting my constituency. It would have been helpful if he had spoken to me and I could have shown him some decent areas.

In July 2015, I raised at business questions, from the Back Benches, the ESOL—English for speakers of other languages—mandation funding from Walsall adult community college. We had to fight to get it back. My constituent, Ray Simmonds, is now offering training courses to women in childcare and in levels 1, 2 and 3 numeracy and literacy. He struggled to get a place to hold those training courses. He tried to get Pleck library, but that has been closed, as have over 500 other libraries, 300 children’s centres, and 500 playgrounds. My Sure Start Palfrey children’s centre, which was twice rated “outstanding” by Ofsted, has been outsourced to a private company. These are the places for social cohesion.

May we have a debate on the National Audit Office report which found that councils are spending less on services and more on social care, and that Government funding has fallen by 49.1% in real terms? The report also suggests that about 15 councils will be at risk of following Northamptonshire County Council in imposing emergency controls. It is the funding of the infrastructure of local government that helps with social cohesion. It is austerity that fuels division as people think there are not enough resources to go round and blame other people who seem to be taking them. May we, then, have a debate on the National Union of Teachers and Runnymede Trust report on visible and invisible barriers to black, Asian and minority ethnic teachers, or an urgent statement on the young black boy who was tied to a tree in Bath and hit by white boys as he was called names? There is no Government strategy to tackle that.

Finally, I do not want to end on a sad note, but I am afraid I have to, in acknowledging the passing of some very eminent people who have made a major contribution to our country. Brenda Dean, from the other place, was the first female general secretary of a British trade union, having joined a trade union as a teenager. Professor Stephen Hawking was 52 years a fellow of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. I have read “A Brief History of Time”—I will have to read it again—and I have visited the large hadron collider at CERN and seen how scientists from all the different countries collaborate. He was also part of the litigation to stop the accountable care organisations, which recently won a cost-capping case on judicial review. In his memory, we must ensure that the UK continues the fantastic collaboration in science with the rest of Europe. He said that a publicly provided NHS was the most efficient system, and so those who say we cannot afford the NHS are wrong; we cannot afford not to have an NHS. Finally, Sir Ken Dodd. I actually saw him at the Palladium when I was younger—a long, long time ago. We hope to see his like again. We will miss not only his jokes and songs, but the image of a man wielding a feather duster.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I join the hon. Lady in her tributes to Brenda Dean, Professor Stephen Hawking and, of course, Sir Ken Dodd—what a fantastic and humorous man he was. I also join her in paying tribute to Stephen Hawking’s commitment to an NHS free at the point of delivery. That is vital. There is consensus right across the House that the NHS should be free at the point of delivery, and that will always be the case under this Government.

The hon. Lady and I have had this discussion about ministerial responsibilities a number of times. I have chased the matter, and I am told that the list will be published with the next quarterly transparency round, next Friday—so let’s hope, hey? I am on her side on this. I shall also be updating the House Commission on Monday on when we will bring forward the restoration and renewal debate, and I have been speaking with parliamentary counsel about the drafting of the Bill. We need to get it ready and bring it forward as soon as possible. Again, she and I agree on that.

On Opposition-day debates, I hope that the hon. Lady will be pleased, as I was, that we had the day’s debate on some of the statutory instruments that the Opposition had prayed against. I was delighted, as no doubt she was not, that the Government managed to win, with decent majorities, each of the votes on the statutory instruments, one of which is very important for young people in expanding the number of young people receiving free school lunches by more than 50,000 by the time universal credit is rolled out. We had an Opposition day last week, for Plaid and the Democratic Unionist party, and others will be brought forward through the usual channels.

The hon. Lady talks about our new Tiggerish Chancellor. I was delighted to see this new Disney reference, and long may it last. She says that it is misplaced, but manufacturing output has now grown for nine consecutive months for the first time since records began in 1968; we have had the best two quarters of productivity growth since the financial crisis; we have the lowest year to date net borrowing since 2008; the number of first-time buyers is at an 11-year high; and employment is at a near record high. These are reasons to be optimistic and to believe in our fantastic economy.

I am delighted that the hon. Lady has such faith in my ability to determine where the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union and the Prime Minister should go. It is very flattering of her to suggest that I can determine their travel arrangements, but I am not sure I can quite do that. She mentions the excellent work on the racial disparity audit and this Government’s determination to ensure that where there is inequality, we take strong measures to try to remove any barriers to the success of people of all races, all ethnic backgrounds and all religions in this country, so that they can progress. She mentions that her own area, Walsall, will be part of the initial pilot scheme. I welcome that, and I hope she does.

The hon. Lady also mentioned the horrifying story of a young black boy being tied to a tree. I think we all feel disgust and horror at that inappropriate and utterly awful experience, and I hope that we in this House are at all times united in stamping out any behaviour of that sort wherever we see it.