Business of the House

William Cash Excerpts

Thursday 20th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

She would have believed anything about Liberal Democrats. Unlike me—I am very fond of my Liberal Democrat colleagues.

The hon. Lady asked about judicial review. As we come to the debate on Lords amendments a week on Monday, the Government will set out what we propose to do about the amendments in the other House. On the question of civic society and volunteering, the hon. Lady ought to have mentioned that the number of people now volunteering in the big society in this country has gone up to 74%, from 66% five years ago. That is the change that has taken place over the past few years.

On the vote on pubs—and I yield to no one in my expertise on pubs in Yorkshire in particular—the Business Secretary set out the position just a few moments ago at Business questions, because he congratulated the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) and told him he had won, and that can be taken as an official statement of Government policy. Let us hope that some of the feared consequences of that do not come to pass, but we will see.

The hon. Lady asked whether we were now on a three-day week. I have to tell her that if we sit the days that are indicated on the calendar now in the Vote Office, this Parliament will have sat for more days than any of the three Parliaments of the last Government, so we need no lectures on that. On the question of turning up, she asked about the issues of judicial review in the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill. I seem to remember that when that was first debated in this House only three Opposition Members took part, and one of those was a Whip who was sent to the Back Benches in order to speak, so we do not need any lectures about turning up.

On the votes on the European arrest warrant, the result of this week’s vote was remarkably similar to the result of the vote on Monday last week, because the House was voting on essentially the same issue. But it is quite right that the Opposition provided time, because it was their motion to move the previous question that denied the House the opportunity to have a debate a week last Monday. Either way, that has now been resolved.

The hon. Lady said that the Prime Minister had been savaged. It is not a very good week for Opposition Members to talk about leaders of parties being savaged after what happened to the Leader of the Opposition the other night. This is a week where the Prime Minister stood up to President Putin and the Leader of the Opposition could not stand up to the other guests on an evening television show. If we are going to trade comments about leadership styles and behaviour, we should remember that barely a day goes by without, in this case, a senior Labour MP stating that

“this is not one or two backbenchers—there’s an angst across the Labour party. We are desperate.”

Another senior figure is quoted as saying that

“there are two deficits—the deficit he ignores and the deficit of economic competence.”

That is very true.

Once again, the real gap in the demand for debates from the Opposition is on economic questions. Since our last business questions, newly published figures have shown more people in work than ever before in the history of the country, youth unemployment at its lowest since the 1970s, redundancies at a record low, the UK new car market enjoying its longest period of continuous growth, and the difference—I am surprised the hon. Lady did not raise this—between the average earnings of men and women in the UK narrowing to its smallest gap since records began in 1997. When the gender pay gap widens she wants to ask about it, but when it narrows there is not a mention of it from the Opposition, and that is the result of a long-term economic plan that we will continue to pursue.

[Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

The European Scrutiny Committee is concerned about the lack of progress in scheduling its recommended debates, one of which relates to the European police college, on which my Committee reports this morning. The Government have failed to schedule a debate on whether to opt in to the measure, despite that being recommended by my Committee at the beginning of September, and the opt-in deadline is next Monday. Will the Leader of the House now take urgent steps to live up to the Government’s rhetoric on the role of national Parliaments and schedule all the debates that we have recommended on such matters as free movement of EU citizens, the ports, and, most importantly and urgently, the European police college?

[Mr Hague]

Given the number of days between now and the end of this Parliament, and certainly between now and the end of the year, I cannot promise that all these matters will be discussed, but my hon. Friend makes important representations about them, and I will take a look at what can be done.