Virtual Participation in Debate

Debate between Wes Streeting and Valerie Vaz

Tuesday 24th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I still do not have an answer to that. I hope that I will get an answer, partly because the normal courtesies of the House were not applied and I was not even informed—I was waiting to come in to speak and the motions were just not moved. That is not the right way to do business.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

I believe I made the Chair’s curfew on speeches, so I will not intervene a lot. To go back to the point about childcare, last week more than a million pupils throughout the country missed out on school, and most of them were forced to self-isolate. This pandemic is throwing into chaos lots of parents’ routines. Does my right hon. Friend agree not only that it often impacts women and mothers disproportionately, but that if we proceed on the basis suggested by the Leader of the House, lots of dads in this place are not going to be able to fulfil the responsibility to their children that they want to fulfil? That is why the motion is wholly inappropriate and the amendment is very welcome.

[Valerie Vaz]

My hon. Friend makes an important point and I absolutely agree with him. We are now moving to a different stage—this is why we were part of the change of the hours—because many young men came into the House and there were some fathers who also wanted to be hands-on parents.

--- Later in debate ---

[Valerie Vaz]

I would say: do not look them too closely in the face. We have to be 2 metres apart because that is what the Government guidance is. But the hon. Member is back to the same old thing. We are doing our work. I do not know but I hope not a single hon. Member does a face-to-face surgery. I started my telephone surgeries in March because I knew this was coming up; we had heard about the pandemic from China in December. So I think it is important, if the Government are going to give out guidance—[Laughter.] I do not think it is very funny when we are talking about people dying of covid and, if you are too close to them, they could pick it up—[Interruption.] Let me carry on.

So it is back to the same old thing. We are working. We are just working in a different way. I do not know any hon. Member who is not working 24/7. Absolutely every single hon. Member or right hon. Member is opening mail, or checking their WhatsApp. They are working. We are all working. We have a completely different job, and it is right that we do that. On people contacting us in the workplace when they want reasonable adjustments, that is our job. People contact us because sometimes employers are unreasonable. Sometimes people and institutions are unreasonable. People contact us to write those letters for them to make sure that they can get their work done. I am talking about reasonable adjustments.

[Wes Streeting]

We have heard key public sector workers invoked: “How will we look them in the face?” They will understand the rules perfectly well; they are abiding by them. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, given the reported public sector pay freeze, I do not know how any Conservative MP would look any public sector worker in the eye?

[Valerie Vaz]

I think that is a really important intervention. Perhaps the hon. Members would go to their public sector workers, look them in the eye and say, “Sorry, we couldn’t find any money for you to have a pay rise, but we”—[Interruption.] Well, I think it was an important intervention.

Let us go back to the broadcasters.

Business of the House

Debate between Wes Streeting and Valerie Vaz

Wednesday 27th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) for the business of the House motion, and I hear what the Leader of the House has said. We are living in unprecedented times, and that is why this business of the House motion has been moved by the right hon. Gentleman. It saddens me to look around the Conservative Benches and see some of the most wonderful, fantastic former Ministers, who have now left the Government because they are frustrated and do not see a way forward.

We on this side of the House are going to support the motion. We know that these are unusual circumstances. The House has decided that it wants to proceed in this way, and all hon. Members that I have spoken to today have made this decision. They are Members who have been working here for a long time, including a former Attorney General, the Chairs of Select Committees, the right hon. Member for West Dorset—who has written manifestos for the Conservative party and played a vital role in it—and a former vice-chair of the Tory party. They are excellent people, and they all agree that something has to be done. Mr Speaker, it is you who has to control the business of the House. I am not talking about personalities; I am talking about the office of the Speaker.

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House for giving way. The Leader of the House claimed at the Dispatch Box that she spoke for this House in Government. How can we possibly take that at face value when she would not take a single intervention, even though the House has made it clear that the business today was to be decided by the House? And this is where it becomes jaw-droppingly hypocritical, when she says—

[Wes Streeting]

Out of respect for you, Mr Speaker, and for the rules of the House, I will certainly withdraw the word “hypocritical”. However, it was pretty jaw-dropping to hear the Leader of the House claiming that it was the Speaker’s responsibility to select every amendment when she herself believes that we should not vote on a single amendment today and when she will not be casting a vote one way or another on any of them. Is this not just a complete farce?

[Valerie Vaz]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Hon. Members have mentioned that the House is listening and that the Prime Minister is listening. The Prime Minister has met hon. Members, but she has not listened to them. The fact is that we are in unusual times. This is a hung Parliament, and the Government are governing on the basis of a confidence and supply agreement and nothing else.

Higher Education and Research Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Wes Streeting and Valerie Vaz

Committee Debate: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 8th September 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Valerie Vaz]

The stakeholders may not have asked for it, but that does not mean that people cannot have an idea of their own, take soundings or look at the face of the Bill and see what strikes them. I have not missed the point, as the Minister said, because clause 2(1)(b) says that the OFS is needed

“to encourage competition between English higher education providers in connection with the provision of higher education”.

Anything to do with students, universities or higher education is also about collaboration and public good. I wanted to flag up the fact that the name, as it currently stands, does not incorporate the idea of putting students at the heart of it, for reasons that I will not go through again. It is open to very clever civil servants to come up with something that reflects this debate. With that, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Schedule 1

The Office for Students

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 2, in schedule 1, page 63, line 17, leave out “twelve” and insert “ten”.

This amendment would maintain the maximum number of OfS members as twelve when taken together with amendment 3.

Higher Education and Research Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Wes Streeting and Valerie Vaz

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 6th September 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)]

made a declaration of interest as a member of the advisory panel for the University Partnerships Programme Foundation.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

asked whether there had been any discussions about how the change in the machinery of government would affect the Bill, given that it would be split between two Departments.