Business of the House

Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?

The business for the week commencing 2 December includes:

Monday 2 December—General debate on the Grenfell Tower inquiry phase 2 report.

Tuesday 3 December—Second Reading of the National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill.

Wednesday 4 December—Opposition day (4th allotted day). Debate on a motion in the name of the official Opposition, subject to be announced.

Thursday 5 December—Debate on a motion on detained British nationals abroad, followed by a general debate on improving public transport. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 6 December—Private Members’ Bills.

The provisional business for the week commencing 9 December will include:

Monday 9 December—Remaining stages of the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill.

Tuesday 10 December—Committee of the whole House on the Finance Bill (day 1).

Wednesday 11 December—Committee of the whole House on the Finance Bill (day 2).

Thursday 12 December—General debate on Lord Etherton’s independent review into the treatment of LGBT veterans, followed by a debate on a motion on the performance of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. The subject for this debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 13 December—The House will not be sitting.

I am sure that the whole House will want to join me in wishing a very happy Thanksgiving day to all our American friends and family, and a happy big birthday today to the Clerk: the Joe Root of the parliamentary estate. Huge thanks to him for his stylish and expert first century—half-century, I should say!

Mr Speaker, a man of your wide culture and extensive learning will doubtless be familiar with the film “Mad Max”. I am no expert, but the image that it conjures up of a desolate, chaotic landscape with wreckage strewn everywhere is the perfect metaphor for the Government’s recent Budget.

Let us take hospices, for example. In Herefordshire, we are blessed to have the extraordinary St Michael’s hospice. St Michael’s supports hundreds of in-patients a year with end of life care, and thousands more as out-patients and with visits in the community. It has a dedicated staff, assisted by some 800 volunteers. This is extraordinary. I shudder to think what it would cost the state to provide that kind and quality of care—certainly more than £20 million a year. What has this Labour Budget done to St Michael’s hospice? The changes to national insurance alone will cost the hospice an extra £250,000 next year, but that is only part of it. At the same time, the Budget has directly and indirectly pushed up the wage bill by a further £450,000. That is £700,000 annually in extra costs—a vast amount for an organisation that offers incredible care, and actually saves the NHS £20 million a year. Hospices in almost every constituency will be affected, and so are the interests of almost every colleague in this House.

This disastrous outcome was clearly never intended by the Treasury. It is another completely unnecessary blunder with potentially tragic consequences. As with GPs, pharmacies and mental health and social care charities, no compensation whatsoever has been offered for this tax raid. When will the Government publish a proper impact assessment and explain why none has been offered?

I join the right hon. Gentleman in congratulating the Clerk of the House on his very special birthday. As someone recently on the other side of that same special birthday—obviously, I know I do not look it—I welcome him to the half-century club, and I hope his party is as good as mine was. We will leave that conversation for another day.

This week, we marked White Ribbon Day. I am proud that this Government have pledged to halve violence against women and girls. I am also proud to have announced the debate on Lord Etherton’s review of the treatment of LGBT veterans today. I am particularly pleased for my friend and Manchester resident Carl Austin-Behan, who, after years of decorated service in the RAF, was dismissed the day the RAF found out he was gay. He deserves recognition and much more, as do many others.

I know that the shadow Leader of the House is fairly new to opposition, like most of his colleagues, but I gently say to him that the idea of opposition is to oppose the Government, not his own record in government. Last week he attacked our plans to meet climate goals, yet when he was the Minister with responsibility for decarbonisation, he seemed to take a very different view, touring the studios to champion net zero. Here we are yet again: he is attacking our plans on national insurance contributions, but I checked the record and noticed that when his Government raised national insurance contributions—and not just on businesses but on workers —he was the Financial Secretary to the Treasury at the time, and said in defence of the measure, from this very Dispatch Box:

“It is a profoundly Conservative thing to do”—[Official Report, 8 September 2021; Vol. 700, c. 326.]

He seems to have been for it then but is against it now. I am not sure what his position is—I am quite confused about it.

May I say to the hospice that he mentioned, and to the many hospices like it, that we have made a record investment in the NHS? The hospice sector was left on its knees by the right hon. Gentleman’s Government. As he knows, the Health Secretary will soon come to the House to explain how the record allocation of resources that he has received will be distributed, including to the hospice sector.

This year marked the 51st anniversary of the Summerland disaster on the Isle of Man, in which 50 people, including 11 children, lost their lives after a fire engulfed the Summerland leisure complex. My constituent Valerie Daniels and her younger sister were both impacted by that horrifying tragedy. Two young men from Warrington died in the fire. A report into the disaster was released in the following year and catalogued a series of failures—from the design of the building to the fire safety regulations—but to date no individuals or groups have been singled out for blame for what happened. Will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on the issue, so that survivors and the families of those who lost their lives can finally get justice?

I am really sorry to hear about that tragedy that affected my hon. Friend’s constituents. These are incredibly pertinent issues, ones that we should be debating in this House. She might want to raise them as part of the Grenfell inquiry debate that will take place next week; if not, I am sure there will be other opportunities for her to raise them.

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

Yesterday marked Fuel Poverty Awareness Day, and just last week Ofgem unveiled another increase to the energy price cap for this winter—an increase of 1.2% in January 2025. This follows a 10% rise in October and multiple occasions on which the Government have failed to prioritise energy support for this winter. For example, the warm home discount scheme will not benefit households until 2025, and financial energy support for 1.2 million pensioners was removed under changes to the winter fuel payment. Recent polling from the Warm This Winter campaign has found that almost half of those polled—47%—are worried about how they will stay warm this winter. When can the House expect a statement from the Government on tackling fuel poverty this winter?

I thank the hon. Lady for that question. I also noticed that her leader is out on the airwaves today with a separate campaign. I wish him well with that and hope that he is not another one-hit wonder when it comes to those issues.

We have inherited a really difficult situation when it comes to energy supplies and energy prices. As the hon. Lady knows, the energy price cap is set by Ofgem, and reflects its consideration of how energy was bought a few months ago. We are taking this issue incredibly seriously, which is why we have a plan to get to net zero by 2030. It is only by switching our energy supplies to renewables that we will be able to bring prices down for longer and have the energy security we so desperately need.

The hon. Lady asked about the situation this winter, particularly for pensioners and others. She will know that there is the £150 warm home discount, as well as cold weather payments that will get triggered. We have extended the £1 billion household support fund into this winter; that payment of either £150 or £200 is now being made in places such as Manchester to those on council tax support, so just above the pension credit threshold. We have also seen the biggest ever increase in the number of people applying for pension credit, so we are taking action. We will support people this winter, but more importantly, we will take the long-term action that we need to get our energy bills lower.

Liverpool women’s hospital in my constituency offers the only specialist gynaecology and maternity services in the country, yet those services are under threat due to the NHS case for change. Will the Leader of the House grant a debate in Government time to consider the necessity of retaining those specialist services at the current Crown Street site?

I am very familiar with the important services in my hon. Friend’s Liverpool constituency that she describes. The hospital programme we inherited from the previous Government was a work of fiction, and we are determined to make sure that any commitments around local hospital services are both deliverable and fundable. That is what we are setting out to do, but I will certainly make sure that the Health Secretary has heard my hon. Friend’s plea today, and that she gets a full reply about her local hospital.

I call the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee.

I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to the Leader of the House’s native city on Saturday night, and I thank her club for the hospitality of allowing us to score four goals with none in return. By the way, that makes a net aggregate of seven to nil across our visits to Manchester.

On behalf of the Backbench Business Committee, I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business for the Chamber. In addition, if we are granted Thursday 19 December, that will be a full day’s debate on the Christmas recess Adjournment. In Westminster Hall next Tuesday we will debate the domestic production of critical minerals, and on Thursday we will debate pelvic mesh and the Cumberlege review, and then there will be a further debate on the financial sustainability of higher education. In addition, Mr Speaker, with your agreement, on Tuesday 10 December there will be a debate on rare autoimmune rheumatic disease.

Right now, the spiritual leader of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness—it runs Bhaktivedanta Manor in Elstree, the largest Hindu temple in this country—is under arrest in Bangladesh, and Hindus across Bangladesh are being subjected to death, with their houses and temples being burnt. There was today an attempt in Bangladesh’s High Court to rule that ISKCON should be banned from the country, which is a direct attack on Hindus. There is now a threat from India to take action, and we have a responsibility because we enabled Bangladesh to be free and independent. Whatever the change of Government has been in Bangladesh, it cannot be acceptable that religious minorities are persecuted in this way. So far we have had only a written statement from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Could the Leader of the House arrange an oral statement on the Floor of the House so that we can bring to the world’s attention what is going on in Bangladesh?

I thank the hon. Member for that, and I hope he had a good time in Manchester. I do not know whether he was there for the football, but I was at the Man City game on Saturday—the less said about that, the better. If he is looking for the allocation of time for future business, he should please not mention the Tottenham game to me ever again, thank you very much.

The hon. Member raises an important matter, which was also raised with me on a previous occasion by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). We have such a debate today, albeit about Pakistan, and he is absolutely right to highlight these issues. We support freedom of religion or belief everywhere, and that includes in Bangladesh. I will certainly ask Foreign Office Ministers to look at coming forward with a statement about what is happening to Hindus in Bangladesh.

My constituent Amir Khan’s beloved daughter Sanna was in her first year at university when she died in her sleep from sudden unexpected death in epilepsy, also known as SUDEP. Ten people every week die of SUDEP, many of them young people, yet with the right research and more public awareness, this number could be reduced. Will the Leader of the House allocate time for a debate on this under-reported issue, to give some comfort to families such as Mr Khan’s?

My hon. Friend raises an important issue that has been brought to him by his constituents, and may I send my condolences to Sanna’s family and friends? I did not realise quite how many people were affected by SUDEP, and I think this would make a really good Adjournment debate. The Government are committed to supporting people with epilepsy and their families, but I think he should consider a further debate to highlight these issues.

Members may recall that large parts of Northamptonshire and Bedfordshire were flooded after heavy rainfall in September, including Grendon in my constituency. Will the Leader of the House ask the Environment Secretary to make a statement to the House on when local authorities can expect to receive the extra funding to aid recovery that he promised when he visited my area, given that in the meantime, with Storm Bert, areas such as Bugbrooke in my constituency have been flooded severely again?

I know that the hon. Member has raised the issue of flooding in her constituency before. I was really pleased that the Environment Secretary came to the House on Monday to give a flooding update to the whole House. If she was in attendance at that statement, she would have heard about the very challenging circumstances of our flood defences that we inherited from the previous Government. We are taking quick action to establish the flood resilience taskforce and to put in extra resources for additional flooding support, but I will ensure that he has heard what she has asked.