Business of the House

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

I would be delighted to. The business for the week commencing 28 February will include:

Monday 28 February—Consideration of Lords amendments to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.

Tuesday 1 March—Remaining stages of the Professional Qualifications Bill [Lords], followed by consideration of Lords amendments to the National Insurance Contributions Bill, followed by a motion to approve the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Self-Isolation etc.) (Revocation) (England) Regulations 2022 (SI, 2022, No. 161).

Wednesday 2 March—Opposition day (14th allotted day). Debate on a motion in the name of the official Opposition. Subject to be announced.

Thursday 3 March—General debate on Welsh affairs. The subject for this debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 4 March—The House will not be sitting.

The provisional business for the week commencing 7 March will include:

Monday 7 March—General debate on the Ukraine, followed by remaining stages of the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [Lords].

It is not “the Ukraine”.

A general debate on Ukraine. I thank the hon. Member for his assistance.

Tuesday 8 March—Opposition day (15th allotted day). Debate on a motion in the name of the official Opposition. Subject to be announced.

Wednesday 9 March—Estimates day (3rd allotted day). At 7 pm, the House will be asked to agree all outstanding estimates.

Thursday 10 March—Proceedings on the Supply and Appropriation (Anticipation and Adjustments) Bill, followed by a general debate on International Women’s Day. The subject for this debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 11 March—The House will not be sitting.

I thank the Leader of the House for the forthcoming business, and I thank you, Mr Speaker, for your reminder about conduct.

The Leader of the House said that there will be a debate on Ukraine on 7 March. Seriously, whatever happens in the next few days, I ask him to consider whether it could be moved up the Order Paper, because it seems an awfully long way away. I appreciate that things might change rapidly over the next few days.

We have woken up to the grim but unfortunately predictable news that Russia has mounted a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Government must urgently reinforce our NATO allies and take the hardest possible sanctions against all those linked to Putin. The influence of Russian money must be extricated from the UK. The House agreed to our Opposition day motion yesterday, so will the Leader of the House confirm when the Foreign Secretary will be implementing, in full, the recommendations of the Intelligence and Security Committee’s Russia report? The report was published nearly two years ago, and it really should not take a war to clean up. The Opposition stand ready to work together on this in a bipartisan way.

Economic crime now runs to an estimated £100 billion a year, a huge cost to taxpayers. Earlier this month, the Treasury Committee concluded that the Government are still not prioritising economic crime. It said that, since the Government launched their economic crime plan two years ago,

“economic crime has not reduced but has instead continued on an upward trend.”

Again, this is relevant to the current situation. Will the Leader of the House press his Treasury colleagues to report on actions to stem the flow of dirty money and corruption?

The Prime Minister commented yesterday that the long-promised economic crime Bill will make an appearance, but not until the next Session. I am afraid that rather proves the Treasury Committee’s point. We all want to tackle economic crime, and we will work with the Government to pass this vital and urgent Bill, so will the Leader of the House find time to introduce it in this Session?

It is a pleasure to present business questions in conjunction with the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). I hear the hon. Lady’s plea about 7 March. Clearly, there will be a debate on Ukraine on 7 March, but that will not be the only opportunity for the House to debate these important issues. Just this week, we have had not only Defence questions, but two statements on Ukraine; three hours of debate on Russia sanctions; Prime Minister’s questions, where the Leader of the Opposition raised the matter; and an Opposition day debate on Russian aggression. We are also going to have a Backbench Business debate this afternoon on the UK’s relationship with Russia and China. The House has debated this matter an awful lot this week and there will be more opportunities coming forward, so I think she will support us in that matter. Clearly, this is a huge problem.

The hon. Lady mentioned economic crime, and it is worth pointing out that already we have published this landmark economic crime plan in 2019, increased the number of investigations into corrupt elites, established a new economic crime centre, passed the Criminal Finances Act 2017, and become the first major economy in the world to implement a public register of beneficial ownership of domestic companies. We are going to go further and continue to push on. We will bring forward the economic crime Bill. I know that she wants that as soon as possible and says she wants it in this Session, not the next. My constituents and hers do not necessarily understand the concept of this Session or the next Session; they just want this very soon, and the next Session is coming very soon, so that Bill will be coming forward very quickly.

Turning to covid procurement matters, it is very easy to look back through the prism of hindsight and criticise decisions made at the beginning of a very intense pandemic. This country was trying to procure as much PPE as possible in a very challenging market. The global market was trying to secure as much PPE as it could and we had to make very rapid decisions. Mistakes will have been made, but the Opposition were screaming like mad at the time for the Government to get on and buy PPE from any source they could procure it from. It is rough to look back through the prism of hindsight and criticise those decisions, which were made in the best interests of the country at that moment. I think history will judge the Government’s performance on covid pretty well; when we consider all the big decisions made at the time by the Prime Minister—on going into lockdown, on delivering the vaccine, and on delivering the booster programme and getting us out of covid faster than any other country in the G7—we see a record to be enormously proud of.

May I start by welcoming the Leader of the House to his place? Will he find time for a debate on the scope of the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991? Currently, it does not recognise dog-on-dog attacks as an offence unless the dog under attack is an assistance dog. Consequently, owners of dangerous dogs are not prosecuted unless another human fears injury or is injured. My constituent’s beloved dog Millie was recently mauled to death and no action has been taken against the owner of the dog involved.

I think the hon. Lady wants a debate.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. First, let me welcome my hon. Friend to her place; it is a pleasure to see her at business questions. She carries on a great tradition from her predecessor, who loved business questions and was a regular at this session. I understand that there are existing powers to allow dog-on-dog attacks to be tackled effectively, including through the issue of a community protection notice and the prosecution of offences under the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 and the Dogs Act 1871. It is for the Crown Prosecution Service to assess on a case-by-case basis whether to proceed with a prosecution under the legislation. However, my hon. Friend asks for a debate, and I hope that she will take her request to the Backbench Business Committee or to Environment, Food and Rural Affairs questions on 10 March, where she may wish to ask Ministers directly.

I think the whole world shook just a little on its axis this morning as all our worst fears were realised with the invasion of Ukraine. Even though it has been fully expected, the full horror of what has happened this morning has been quite difficult to comprehend and process. We are grateful for the Prime Minister’s statement, which I understand will be at 5 o’clock today, but will the Leader of the House assure us that it will be the first of many Prime Minister’s statements and that he will promise to keep the House updated on any progress or development?

I welcome the Leader of the House’s words about being flexible with the business, but we need to hear more about that. I am sure he will agree with me and the shadow Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire), that any legislation required to make the toughest of sanctions must take priority over any other business announced for next week.

We are hoping to hear that the Prime Minister will at last take the firm, decisive action that we have all been calling for and that is now required. Will the Leader of the House tell us what type of legislation might be required for the toughest of sanctions? How long might it take to get through the House? The minimalist measures are proving to be totally inadequate and ineffective; we now need to sanction to the max and end the City of London being Putin’s financial laundromat of choice.

We also need a statement about Russian propaganda. We need to prevent Russian propaganda from being pumped 24/7 into the houses of the UK. The Prime Minister has said it would require an intervention from Ofcom to take RT off air, but does he not now agree that that is a technicality the time of which has passed? I should also say to the Leader of the House that RT contributor Alex Salmond is as much a member of the SNP as the UK Independence party’s Neil Hamilton is a member of his Conservative party. Such petty point scoring should now come to an end, because the Ukrainian people want to see the unity in this House.

I genuinely thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution. The uniting of this House in its objection to Russian aggression is fundamental to our response. A unified House means that we can present ourselves, along with our international colleagues, in a way that sends a strong message to the Russian President.

The hon. Gentleman will recognise that the Government and the Prime Minister have kept the House up to speed, and that will continue to happen, not least at 5 o’clock this afternoon when the Prime Minister will come to the House.

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s commitment to assisting with legislation; the speed of the progress of legislation is assisted by cross-party and cross-House unity. I am sure that, together, we can send strong messages and try to assist the people of Ukraine at this very dark hour.

The Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), who is the Minister responsible for water, visited Montgomeryshire and stood with me at Clywedog reservoir, noticing that it was quite full, with three storms heading our way. I am unhappy to report to the House that the River Vyrnwy and then the River Severn hit record, historic peaks. Will the Leader of the House facilitate a debate on cross-border water policy? Most water does not respect the border between England and Wales, and the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales must work together on flood prevention as well as drought prevention.

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the necessity of cross-border co-operation: it is vital that colleagues in the Welsh Assembly co-operate with the Environment Agency and our friends in DEFRA. My hon. Friend is an assiduous campaigner on this matter and I am sure he will find a way to raise it in the House regularly.

I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business, particularly the Welsh affairs debate on 3 March and the International Women’s Day debate on 10 March. May I give him advance notice that we have an application for a debate on the Irish in Britain on St Patrick’s Day, 17 March? That is already on the stocks.

Members will have noticed in the statement that the Leader of the House referred to estimates day, the third allotted day. The House will be asked to agree all the outstanding estimates at 7 pm that day, but applications for the subjects of those debates need to be sent to the Backbench Business Committee by no later than 2.30 pm tomorrow. In particular, if Select Committee Chairs want the spending of the Department that they oversee to be the subject of those debates, they should please submit their applications by tomorrow.

The Backbench Business Committee has only eight members—eight hard-working members who are very diligent in their activities. Unusually, though, the Committee has a quorum of four. At the moment, we are two members down because they have been promoted by Her Majesty’s Government to be Parliamentary Private Secretaries and we have one Member on outstanding long leave, so we currently have five active members and a quorum of four, which makes life a little difficult. Will the Leader of the House look again at the following options: increasing the size of the Committee; reducing the quorum of the Committee; or getting his party to appoint some members to the Committee?

I hear the hon. Gentleman’s plea for St Patrick’s Day, which I am sure will be considered in due course. It is worth recognising that a number of my Conservative colleagues will have seen that two members of his Committee have been promoted—that is the route to promotion, clearly—and I am sure there will be a clamour to join his Committee to get on the promotion ladder in due course.

Yesterday, the Government announced that both Hyndburn and Rossendale have been identified as two of the 109 places for levelling up for culture, meaning that they are a priority for additional investment for our fantastic arts, culture and heritage across Hyndburn and Haslingden. Does the Leader of the House agree that this is exactly what we mean by levelling up and putting Hyndburn and Haslingden back on the map? Will he allow a debate in Government time on how we make sure that places such as Hyndburn and east Lancashire are at the heart of the Government’s levelling-up agenda?

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. It is vital that we recognise the enormous amount of culture that exists not just in London, which is a great city recognised internationally, but across the country, and she is right to highlight that. She should pursue either an Adjournment debate or a Westminster Hall debate to make sure that she can spread that message to as many people as possible.

Can we have a debate on the operation of tier 1 visas, following on from some of the reports in The Sun and other newspapers today? I have hold of a leaked document from 2019 from the Home Office, which says in relation to Mr Abramovich:

“As part of HMG’s Russia strategy aimed at targeting illicit finance and malign activity, Abramovich remains of interest to HMG due to his links to the Russian state and his public association with corrupt activity and practices. An example of this is Abramovich admitting in court proceedings that he paid for political influence. Therefore, HMG is focused on ensuring individuals linked to illicit finance and malign activity are unable to base themselves in the UK and will use the relevant tools at its disposal (including immigration powers) to prevent this.”

That was nearly three years ago, and yet remarkably little has been done. Surely Mr Abramovich should no longer be able to own a football club in this country. Surely we should be looking at seizing some of his assets, including his £152 million home, and making sure that other people who have had tier 1 visas like this are not engaged in malign activity in the UK.