Business of the House

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 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 15 March will include:

Monday 15 March—Second Reading of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (day 1).

Tuesday 16 March—Conclusion of the Second Reading of the Police, Crime, Sentencing And Courts Bill (day 2).

Wednesday 17 March—Opposition day (18th allotted day). There will be a debate on a motion in the name of the Scottish National party. Subject to be announced.

Thursday 18 March—Debate on a motion on the UK’s commitment to reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka, followed by a general debate on World Water Day. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 19 March—The House may sit on Friday 19 March for further consideration of private Members’ Bills. This is subject to the progress of business and to the approval of a sittings motion.

The provisional business for the week commencing 22 March will include:

Monday 22 March—Consideration of Lords amendments, including consideration of Lords message to the Trade Bill, followed by the remaining stages of the Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill [Lords].

[Valerie Vaz]

I thank the Leader of the House for giving us the business. I hope he will join me in wishing for speedy boarding of the private Members’ Bills on Friday, with no disruption.

I know that the Leader of the House takes seriously a lack of responses to hon. Members from Government Departments. He will be concerned to hear that my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor) has not received a response from the Department of Health and Social Care to a question from 9 October, or to two from 19 October. I know she has written to the Leader of the House. Can we ensure that she gets a response?

The Leader of the House is very keen to have us back here, but we seem to be having a lot more Zoom meetings. The Minister for Covid Vaccine Deployment, the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), is having a Zoom meeting, and the chair of the Trade and Agriculture Commission has invited us to a Zoom meeting. It is quite difficult in terms of accountability, because not everybody can join these meetings. In addition, the Official Reporters work very hard to make sure that things are on the record. In keeping with what you have just said, Mr Speaker, we need to ensure that things are on the record, and the relevant people need to come to the House to provide accountability.

My hon. Friend the shadow Housing Minister has asked where the Building Safety Bill is. It was published in draft on 20 July, but it has not had its First Reading. It contains important improvements for the safety of residents in high-rise buildings and the building safety regulator. May we have an update?

I know that the Leader of the House will be concerned about the National Audit Office report on local government finances during the pandemic, which was published yesterday, 10 March. Many face significant gaps in funding. We are talking about statutory services such as adult social care and special needs libraries; all those may have to be cut. The shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government has said that councils have lost 60% of their funding in the last decade. Will the Leader of the House confirm that we will have a debate on the NAO report in Government time, particularly as our constituents may have to pay for it in the 5% council tax increase?

We also need a statement on whether councils are actually getting, pound for pound, what they have spent during the pandemic. We know that the Government have got the money, because they had £37 billion for Test and Trace. I know that the Leader of the House, because he is very keen on making sure that public money is spent wisely, will want to debate the Public Accounts Committee report on Test and Trace, which was published yesterday. It said that there is

“no clear evidence to judge”

the “overall effectiveness” of Test and Trace. It was supposed to be a game changer. The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies has said that

“test and trace was having only a marginal impact on transmission”

and the NAO said that there was low compliance, yet there is £37 billion of committed expenditure. We now have Serco, one of the companies involved, paying out dividends to its directors. That is appalling.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for your statement. I am going to ask the Leader of the House whether he will correct the record. Will he write and place a letter in the Library, having checked the Official Report from January 2020 to see what exactly the Opposition did? I will repeat it again. The shadow Secretary of State for Health said, “The House will not be divided on this.”

Let us see what the Minister said. He said that 1% for nurses’ pay would cost three quarters of a billion pounds, so—this is a rough calculation—2.1% would cost £1.5 billion. We know that the £37 billion is in the accounts of the Department of Health and Social Care. The head of NHS England said that 2.1% was allocated when the funding was agreed in 2018. We cannot trust the Government now to keep their word, to protect the NHS, or with the finances. May we have a statement on Monday clearing all this up, as the press secretary apparently cannot, or will not, announce it from the £2.9 million bunker?

It is wonderful news that Nazanin has had her tag taken off and that she will hopefully be home soon. There is no word on Anousheh. He was a dutiful son who was visiting his mother. Kylie Moore-Gilbert has said that if her ordeal was made public, she would not have had a 10-year sentence.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for celebrating International Women’s Day and Commonwealth Day on Monday. It is Mothering Sunday on Sunday. I do not know whether you are aware of the survey by the Office for National Statistics, which said that, in the pandemic, women spent more time on household chores than men, and that three quarters of women were emergency educating compared with just over half of men. A Mumsnet survey found that women are worried that women’s equality is

“going back to the 1970s”

at work and home, and in society. We wish everyone a happy Mothering Sunday, and our thoughts go out to Sarah Everard’s family.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Indeed our thoughts do go out to Sarah Everard’s family. The right hon. Lady is right to raise that and the more general point about the burden that has fallen on women during the pandemic. That is a point very fairly and well made, and the men of the United Kingdom should be very grateful for that. It has been a very difficult time for many families.

I share the right hon. Lady’s pleasure that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has had her tag removed. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister spoke to the President of Iran and made absolutely clear that there is no reason to hold, detain or keep Nazanin any longer. She ought to be free to leave. As the right hon. Lady knows, this is an issue that the Government take very seriously and have been working on consistently, and we must and will continue to do so.

I agree with the right hon. Lady that it would be good if the private Members’ Bills that are down for tomorrow were attended to speedily, though that is out of my hands. I do know some of the tricks of the trade when it comes to filibustering, and I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends will not feel that they wish to use those tricks of the trade next week.

The right hon. Lady made the point that people coming to the House to make statements that are on the record is better than endless Zoom calls. That is quite right. I think that Zoom calls do have a place and it is very helpful to give cross-party briefings, but the Floor of the House is where the real business takes place.

As regards the draft Building Safety Bill, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is certainly working on that. That is a matter of Government policy and the Government intend to bring that forward.

Moving on to the right hon. Lady’s more contentious questions, starting with support for local councils, £35 billion is not bad going, is it? It is helpful to councils up and down the country, and £4.6 billion of that has been un-ringfenced, so there has been very, very considerable support. That has gone across the country, so £9.5 billion has gone to the north, with £6 billion for the midlands, £7 billion for London and £4 billion for the south-west. Councils have received huge financial support from the taxpayer. Ultimately, there is only one taxpayer and how taxes are paid is merely a question of how we divide it up. Great support has been given.

As regards Test and Trace, it has done astonishing things. I wonder whether the right hon. Lady is aware that 9.1 million people have been contacted, thanks to Test and Trace, who might otherwise have spread the virus. We are carrying out a minimum of 750,000 tests a day, and with the return to school and the lateral flow tests, that has gone to over 1 million in recent days. People are being contacted. They are being tested and, yes, of course this involves the private sector, but the private sector is part of how our economy is structured. We cannot say with any sense of reasonableness that the drug companies—big pharma—that have helped us to get the vaccine are marvellous, but that the companies involved in the roll-out of Test and Trace are somehow improper. They are not. They have done a fantastic job and it is a considerable success, in spite of what the much-respected Public Accounts Committee has to say. Even Homer nods, would be my answer to that.

Regarding the issue of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s comments, the right hon. Lady seemed to change the goalposts a bit. She started talking about a vote a year ago, whereas the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition referred to something two years ago, so there is a lack of clarity about what on earth the Opposition are asking about. If the Opposition cannot bring themselves to answer clear questions, it is not surprising that they then do not understand the answer.

[Valerie Vaz]

Can you clear it up then?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am delighted to clear it up. Her Majesty’s Opposition voted against the Queen’s Speech at the beginning of this Session. The increases that this Government proposed in NHS funding were a centrepiece of the Gracious Speech, and their votes against the Queen’s Speech were an attempt to stifle the Government’s agenda before it had even begun. The Queen’s Speech made clear our intention to establish in law for the first time the NHS’s multi-year funding settlement, a testament to how seriously the Government take funding the NHS. We have delivered a 12.8% increase in nurses’ pay over three years and we are seeing a 34% increase in nurses’ applications. The right hon. and learned Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition did not ask about a Bill. He asked about a document, and it seems to me that the Queen’s Speech is a document because it is printed, on very fine paper normally—it used to be on vellum.

We have to live within our means. Everyone recognises that. There is not a single person in this country who does not recognise the phenomenal contribution made by the NHS over the last year, by doctors, nurses and all those who work in the NHS, but the Government—the taxpayer—have an enormous deficit, one of the biggest in our history, and what is happening is reasonable within the context that nurses have already received a 0.7% increase. They will receive a further 1% increase in the next financial year, as will all NHS workers. It is worth bearing in mind that the last time there was a 1% increase in NHS pay, it led to an average 2.7% increase for the average worker in the NHS because of grade increments. So actually, the situation is considerably better than is being painted by the Opposition, and the admiration and appreciation of what people who work in the NHS have done is shared across the whole country, but the country has to live within its means. That is a hard truth that the Opposition seek to run away from.