Obviously, many Members will want to congratulate the great team last night—England. We look forward to Sunday, and we wish them well. Let us now start business questions. I call Thangam Debbonaire.
The business for the week commencing 12 July will include:
Monday 12 July—Second Reading of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill.
Tuesday 13 July—Remaining stages of the Armed Forces Bill, followed by a motion to approve the draft Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) (Amendment) (Coronavirus) Regulations 2021, followed by a motion to approve a statutory instrument relating to terrorism, followed by a motion relating to English votes for English laws, followed by a motion relating to the appointment of the chairman of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority.
Wednesday 14 July—Second Reading of the Health and Care Bill.
Thursday 15 July—Debate on a motion relating to the Northern Ireland protocol, followed by a debate on a motion relating to the Peking Winter Olympics and Chinese Government sanctions. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
Friday 16 July—The House will not be sitting.
The provisional business for the week commencing 19 July will include:
Monday 19 July—Second Reading of the Nationality and Borders Bill (day 1).
Tuesday 20 July—Conclusion of the Second Reading of the Nationality and Borders Bill (day 2).
Wednesday 21 July—Second Reading of the Building Safety Bill.
Thursday 22 July—Debate on a motion relating to the fifth report of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee entitled “A public inquiry into the Government’s response to the covid-19 pandemic”, followed by matters to be raised before the forthcoming adjournment. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee and the Liaison Committee.
I thank the Leader of the House for giving us the business and look forward to our debate on ending all EVEL next week.
Gareth Southgate inspires his players to be the best they can be and to do it for their country. He backs them in their campaigning for social and racial justice, even under criticism. He instils relentless focus on hard work. He inspires them to be gracious in victory, as well as to learn from experience. He has rightly identified these values as patriotism. I would love us all to learn from the Gareth Southgate model of patriotic leadership. We all congratulate England on their amazing success last night. We cheer them on for Sunday and, yes, it will probably be just my parents listening to me on “Westminster Hour” on Sunday evening. Caring about the world’s poorest is a British value. People’s support for an England team proud of its belief in social justice shows that that is true, so will the Government honour them and grant a proper debate and a vote on international aid-?
Caring about the NHS is a British value, and people showed that as they marked its birthday this week. Yesterday, my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) spoke movingly for so many who have had the pain of not being with a loved at the end of life because of covid rules. Will the Leader of the House ask the Health Secretary to reward the dedicated NHS and care staff, who stepped up for their country to care for people’s loved ones, with a pay rise that we know they deserve?
Building a better world for our children is also a British value. British people care deeply about protecting animals, nature and the planet. Yet despite recent warnings, such as the devastating heatwaves in the Pacific north-west, the Prime Minister’s 10-point plan to deal with climate change, announced seven months ago, appears to be just talk and is nowhere on the Order Paper or in the forthcoming business. He talked of home insulation, so when we will have a replacement for the Government’s failed green homes grant? He talked of his plan creating hundreds of thousands of jobs. How many jobs has it created so far? The Climate Change Committee says:
“This defining year for the UK’s climate credentials has been marred by uncertainty and delay”.
It warns:
“With every month of inaction, it is harder for the UK to get on track.”
The Leader of the House said a few years ago that he would rather his constituents had cheap energy than windmills. Is it possible that his failure to notice the value of wind energy is connected in any way to any investments that his company may or may not have in fossil fuels? Does he understand that an ambitious heat and building strategy, which was due last year, would make his constituents’ homes warmer and cheaper? The committee said:
“Only five of 34 sectors assessed have shown notable progress in the past two years, and no sector is yet scoring highly”,
Everyone, I think, is rejoicing at the football success. I think the line to take is from Mr Barnes:
“You’ve got to hold and give
But do it at the right time
You can be slow or fast
But you must get to the line”.
May I reassure you, Mr Speaker, that
“We ain’t no hooligans
This ain’t a football song
Three lions on my chest
I know we can’t go wrong”?
As another John—John Dryden—put it:
“For they conquer who believe they can.”
I think, for the record, that Dryden was translating Virgil in those comments, but the point is exactly the same: it is indeed the excellent leadership of Mr Southgate that led to such a good triumph yesterday against Denmark. Let us hope for the same on Sunday. I say to right hon. and hon. Members that they can always listen to the “Westminster Hour” on playback, and they can enjoy listening to the hon. Lady’s dulcet tones on that unmissable and particularly well-hosted programme.
Let me come to the hon. Lady’s points. I think everyone was impressed and moved by what the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) said yesterday. It was a very powerful intervention, and it is what the nation has endured for the past 15 months. It is a reminder of why it has been endured: it was to protect lives. Fortunately, the vaccine is now protecting lives, which allows us to reopen, but that does not begin to lift the sorrow from the families who have been affected, and the hon. Gentleman was right to raise that in the House yesterday.
The NHS is recognised across the country, and the award of the George Cross was a symbolic recognition of that. Of course, pay is a difficult issue because we have spent as a nation £407 billion on protecting the economy, so it is about trying to ensure that the recognition is there within the resources that we have as a country and the amount that taxpayers have.
Is it not wonderful that the entire country is today talking about football, and not about covid or Brexit? My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is a great and distinguished democrat, and a stalwart supporter of the rights of this House and of Parliament, so can he explain why, having announced the business today, he is sending the House off for the summer recess without a vote on the 0.7% commitment? For how much longer will he continue to disrespect this House and run away from a vote on the matter, and to disobey your specific injunction, Mr Speaker, at 3.30 pm on Monday 14 June?
Mr Speaker, it is even better than that. We had an opportunity for a vote, which my right hon. Friend passed up. He is a very experienced parliamentarian. He has been here much longer than I have. He is well aware that estimates are in fact the foundation of the power of the House of Commons to approve the expenditure of the Government. Estimates are votable. The failure to pass an estimate would have been a major problem for the Government, who would have had to bring back a new estimate. The fact that my right hon. Friend has not studied Erskine May carefully enough, and has therefore missed his opportunity, is not my problem but his.
It would be churlish not to recognise the great sporting success of the last 24 hours. I am sure the whole House would like to congratulate Surrey on finishing seven not out to deny Hampshire victory—I am sure that is much more up the Leader of the House’s street.
Football may or may not be coming home in the next few days, but I will certainly be going home when business questions concludes. There is one place where there has been a massive defeat, and that is on the Government’s English votes for English laws procedure. We will finally bury that appalling, time-wasting mess next week. I do not know whether it was dividing the membership of this House into two different and distinct classes of Member or the ridiculous attempts to have some sort of quasi-English Parliament squat here in the national Parliament of Great Britain and Northern Ireland that convinced the Government to back down, but it is a massive victory for the Scottish National party; our campaign of ridicule and disparagement of the whole nonsense has won. We do not often get victories in this place, but we will be celebrating next Tuesday.
I support the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell). The House simply must have the opportunity to vote on this Government’s overseas aid cuts before the recess. All that rubbish about estimates is not good enough. It has to be a dedicated vote. It is not often that Members of Opposition parties say that the Government must uphold their manifesto commitments, but that is what they must do, and we must have that vote before the recess.
We rise in a couple of weeks, and all the provisions for virtual participation and proxy voting will fall. Infections and hospitalisations are rising exponentially with the Johnson variant, and we do not know where we will be in September. What provision will the Leader of the House put in place for if this House needs to review its arrangements and requires some of the facilities that we have come to rely on over the past year?
It is always a pleasure to hear from the hon. Gentleman when he is not feeling churlish. I hate to think what he would sound like when he is feeling churlish.
As regards plans for this House, such plans can always be made swiftly if necessary. On EVEL, I am delighted to suggest it is a victory for the SNP, but is also a victory for people of my way of thinking about our constitution. This is important—within this House, we are the Parliament of the whole of the United Kingdom. That is why on occasions, though not as a general practice of course, laws will be passed without legislative consent motions, as with powers that came back from the European Union—in the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, for example—where the Scottish Parliament was not willing to agree legislative consent motions. That is part of an overall package of the restoration of powers to the United Kingdom Parliament from the European Union, and we are the nation’s Parliament. I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman recognises that.
As regards the 0.7%, I point out that we remain one of the world’s largest donors at 0.5%. That is an impost on British taxpayers, and it is Her Majesty’s Government being charitable on behalf of British taxpayers. I will go back to my constitutional lecture, because I think people are simply failing to understand the importance of estimates, which are fundamental to the powers of this House. The ability to approve expenditure is what historically gave this House its power over the Executive, and the ability to vote down an estimate is one that is rarely used because of its very profound consequence. What I ask the House and those who support the hon. Gentleman is, if they feel as strongly about the issue as they say, why did they not use the tool available to them?
Let me go into this in a little more detail. Had the estimate been voted down, the Foreign Office and overseas aid would have run out of money after the initial estimate, which was done earlier in the year, had expired. A proportionate amount of money is agreed before the beginning of the financial year and would then run out if the final estimate were not to be approved. In that event, the Government have to come forward with a new estimate and it would have to be an estimate that they thought they could get through the House. As a matter of simple constitutional fact, had the House chosen to vote on the estimates, it would have left the Government in a position where they would have had bring forward a new motion for overseas aid expenditure in the Foreign Office. Otherwise, all our embassies would have run out of money. They would not have been able to pay their water bills. It is a failure of those who stand up and chunter about this not to use the tools to hand. It is really not my fault if they have not studied “Erskine May” carefully enough.
My right hon. Friend recommended reading “Erskine May”. I happen to have the 25th edition of “Erskine May” with me. Of course, what it makes clear is quite how difficult it is to amend an estimate, so much so that the last time that one was successfully amended was one century ago; he may remember—it was 1921. It makes it very clear that the Crown’s prerogative on the monopoly of financial initiative means that the only thing we can do in this House, unless the Crown acts differently, is to cut the bill, not increase it.
My right hon. Friend’s argument to the House is that we should do away with all the aid in order to get more aid. I am not quite sure that the public—or, indeed, the ambassadors, with their redundancy notices—would have quite understood that. It is rather sad that the Government are playing such games with this very, very important issue.
My right hon. Friend is a kindly man and he will know that, unlike most of the debates he is asked for, every day that goes by without this debate means that more people go without aid, particularly in places such as Yemen, where there is a famine right now. In the words of the United Nations Secretary-General, the ex-Prime Minister of Portugal, António Guterres, under famine conditions
“cutting aid is a death sentence.”
Can we please have this debate as soon as possible, so that we can change the Government’s policy for the better?
The problem with pre-prepared questions is that they miss out what has been said before, so I will reiterate it: had the estimate been voted down, not amended—I did not mention amending—the Government would have had to come forward with a new estimate by early August, otherwise the money would run out. It is a very straightforward mechanism that my right hon. Friend failed to use. That is rather surprising, when he is such an experienced parliamentarian. He has been in the House much longer than I have, as has my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell).
Our overseas aid budget must be what we as a nation can afford. We had our largest peacetime deficit in the last financial year because of the covid crisis. We cannot afford to be as generous as we once were, but we must ensure that the money we spend is spent as wisely as possible and on the alleviation of disasters, which is a fundamentally important part of our overseas aid budget.
As always, I am grateful to be called, Mr Speaker. I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business up to the recess and for protecting the time for the Backbench Business Committee debate this afternoon. I hope that he can ensure that we have some time for Backbench Business debates in the first week back following the summer recess; we would be very grateful if he could facilitate that.
Can we have a statement from the Secretary of State for Transport prior to the summer recess about what his Department will be doing to address the huge shortage in heavy goods vehicle drivers in the road haulage industry? I have been contacted by representatives of the road haulage industry in my constituency of Gateshead who have really pressing concerns about the current situation and the implications for the industry and, more importantly, for the reopening of the economy over the next few months.
Mr Speaker, you might know that I chair the all-party parliamentary group for football supporters. Being a Newcastle United fan, I have come to expect nothing, so anything we get is a bonus, but congratulations to England; getting to the final is a great achievement. They are in the final—go on and win it.
I seem to remember that the late Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Hume, was a supporter of Newcastle as well, so I imagine there is some heavenly support for the hon. Gentleman’s team currently.
I hear the hon. Gentleman’s appeal for Backbench Business time. We always do our best, on behalf of the Government, to facilitate that. As regards the HGV driver shortage, the Government are aware of it and steps have been taken to implement several long-term solutions across Government, including the development of a large goods vehicle driver apprenticeship programme by the Department for Transport and the Department for Education aimed at addressing long-term driver skills shortages and improved labour supply. There is consideration of extending delivery hours, but the food industry is very well versed in dealing with delivery requirements and necessities. There is a statement from the Secretary of State for Transport coming up, but I think, Mr Speaker, you may get a bit worried if it goes from overseas travel on to—
At the conclusion of business on Thursday 22 July, the House will rise for the summer recess and return on Monday 6 September.
and that we should be
“learning from the COVID-19 response.”
That Government said to the Environmental Audit Committee that they want to do that, but how can they do it if they refuse even to examine the covid-19 response? When will the British public get our public inquiry?
Shining leadership is another proud British value exemplified by Gareth Southgate. The UK will be in a unique position this year when world leaders come to Glasgow to discuss climate change. We have the chance to shine. If the UK showcases strong policies to cut emissions and improve lives, it could set the standard globally, but if the Government are unable to follow through on their own commitments, they are letting us down and other countries may falter.
Fairness is also a defining British value. There is a motion from Labour on the Order Paper to sort out the unfair loophole that allows the MP found to have sexually harassed staff to avoid recall from his constituents. Everyone knows this needs sorting. I know the news is reporting that he has been warned to stay away, but there is nothing to stop him returning and staff have concerns. Things can be done retrospectively and quickly when the Government want, as they showed this week with the Building Safety Bill and the regulations for late pub licensing, so why should the people of Delyn be denied their right to the value of democracy because of a technicality that we know we will fix?
As I said last week, the Prime Minister consistently does not do his homework. Yesterday, he could not answer vital questions from the Leader of the Opposition and later at the Liaison Committee about critical covid data. Will the Leader of the House ask the Prime Minister to be frank with the British public and show his working for such life-changing decisions?
In contrast to the Prime Minister, Gareth Southgate and the England team value hard work, discipline and preparation, and the British people seem to appreciate those qualities. For the sake of our country and the wonderful people who live and work here, I hope the Prime Minister spends some time over the next few days studying at the Gareth Southgate school of leadership. The British people will be asking themselves who they want to lead them. Do they want someone who works hard and has a relentless focus on embodying British values, or do they want the current Prime Minister? I know what I think, and I am pretty sure the British people will be telling us that soon.
The hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) mentioned the Government’s efforts on the environment. The Environment Bill is still in the House of Lords. The Bill was passed in the Commons and carried over into this Session in the Lords, where every line and detail are now being debated—their lordships were debating it last night, I think, while others were watching the football; carrying on diligently, doing their bit for the nation. The Bill, which will come back to us, is a really important piece of legislation that will have a fundamental effect in helping us to meet our commitment to net zero.
The Government can be very proud of what we have done so far. The hon. Lady quoted me as saying a few years ago that I wanted cheap energy rather than windmills, but now we are getting both, which is much better. That is a huge success for the British people. Since 1990, we have driven down emissions by 44%—the fastest reduction of any G7 country—and grown our economy by 78%. What we want is economic growth and cleaner growth. What we do not want is to trash the economy and live in a cave. We want prosperity for the British people, and that is what we are getting. The hon. Lady says she wants environmentally friendly jobs, and so do I, and we are getting them, from Nissan and Vauxhall, because we are doing it successfully and in an economically intelligent way.
The Prime Minister has set out a 10-point plan on how we achieve net zero, how we ensure that the economy grows and how we become more environmentally friendly. Point 2 of the plan is on the opportunities of hydrogen, to allow clean energy with water the only emission. That is fantastic, because then we can all get back into our motorcars, as what comes out the end will be clean. It will be good for the motorist and good for the environment, and I think that is very exciting.
As regards the inquiry into covid, that has been promised by the end of the Session, as the Prime Minister has made clear. We are actually having a debate on a report produced by one of our most distinguished Select Committees, announced in Backbench Business time, before the summer recess.
As regards fairness and the Member for Delyn (Rob Roberts), I am grateful to the hon. Lady for the motion that she has tabled. The first two thirds of it, of course, are the motion that I asked to be shared with her for discussion at the House of Commons Commission, and of course for discussion with the employees of the House and Sir Stephen Irwin. It is very important that this is done on a consensual basis, and I think that the motion is a helpful contribution to the debate.
Of course, it is open to the Opposition to bring forward their motion on an Opposition day. [Interruption.] The hon. Lady says that they have not had one, but they have actually had three or four Opposition days since this issue arose. They decide to bring forward the motion at the point at which they are waiting for one, but they will get more, as there is a commitment to Opposition days in the Standing Orders. I think it is a helpful contribution to the debate. It is very important to maintain the independence of the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme, but the motion put forward originated with the Clerks of this House and is a useful contribution to the debate.
As regards the PM and statistics, some of us will recall a former Prime Minister who used to reel off statistics from this great Dispatch Box—it was not then covered with Perspex—so let me model myself on that great lady and remind the hon. Lady of some of the statistics on what has happened over the past year: £407 billion of taxpayers’ money supporting the economy, families and businesses; 14.5 million jobs and people helped through the furlough and self-employment schemes, at a cost of £91.1 billion to the taxpayer; protecting the most vulnerable with £8 billion for the welfare system; protecting thousands of businesses with over £100 billion of support; extending the furlough and self-employment schemes until the end of September; restart grants of up to £18,000 for retain, hospitality, leisure and personal care businesses. [Interruption.] The hon. Lady just sits there chuntering, because she does not want to hear the facts, and the facts are that the figures stack up and the Government have done an amazing amount to keep the economy going.