Business of the House

I welcome the new Leader of the House, Mark Spencer.

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

I would be delighted.

Monday 21 February—Remaining stages of the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [Lords].

Tuesday 22 February—Remaining stages of the Charities Bill [Lords], followed by remaining stages of the Public Service Pensions and Judicial Offices Bill [Lords].

Wednesday 23 February—Opposition day (13th allotted day). Debate on a motion in the name of the official Opposition, subject to be announced.

Thursday 24 February—Debate on a motion on the UK’s relationship with Russia and China, followed by general debate on the matter of the UK Government recognition of the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 25 February—Private Members’ Bills.

The provisional business for the week commencing 28 February will include:

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

If you will indulge me, Mr Speaker, while I am on my feet I will briefly pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), my predecessor as Leader of the House and Lord President of the Council. During his time in post, he was instrumental in guiding parliamentary business through the pandemic. It may come as some surprise to colleagues that he was the leading advocate for the digital revolution in Parliament and a pioneer of the hybrid proceedings, and, to be fair, he ensured that the House and its Committees were able to sit throughout the pandemic.

My right hon. Friend also oversaw the Government’s delivery of the legislative programme over the past two and a half years, including ensuring that all necessary legislation was in place ahead of our departure from the European Union. He took his role extremely seriously; he was an ardent champion of Back Benchers, not least ensuring that all hon. Members who brought up issues at business questions had those raised with the relevant Secretaries of State. Those are huge strides that I will have to step into. I have huge respect for my predecessor and I hope I can fill his shoes. I have an enormous amount of respect for him and I think of him as a true friend.

I warmly welcome the new Leader of the House to his post. I thank him for the forthcoming business and look forward to working with him. Also in my line of sight is the new Government Chief Whip, the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), and I welcome him to his place as well.

I thank the previous Leader of the House for our time working together. I note that he is taking up his new role as the Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency. I was interested to find out more about that role, so I had a look on the ministerial webpage, only to find—certainly when I last looked, and I had been refreshing the screen all morning—that there seemed to be no responsibilities listed. I know from experience that that might suit him, so I wish him well.

This is Race Equality Week. Hate crime is rising in Britain. Race is now a factor in more than seven out of 10 hate crimes recorded in England. Can the Leader of the House explain what the Government are doing to tackle this? Religious hate crime is also rising, particularly against British Muslims, so can the right hon. Gentleman also demonstrate his personal commitment to tackling that by scheduling in Government time a debate on Islamophobia?

There are 14,000 cases of fraud every day and millions of cases of fraud every year. Each day, thousands of people are scammed out of hard-earned savings. Yet we have a Business Secretary who thinks fraud is not a real crime. Perhaps that is why the Chancellor is happy to write off £4.3 billion of fraudulent loans.

Meanwhile, we have a Prime Minister who does not seem to understand his own Government’s record on tackling crime, claiming last week that they have been “cutting crime by 14%,” when that does not seem to be quite the case. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that there is actually

“a 14% increase in total crime, driven by a 47% increase in fraud and computer misuse.”

I thank the hon. Lady for her kind words about my predecessor. He has gone off to give us those Brexit dividends and find the benefits of Brexit. They are easy to find, to be honest, and I think he will be quite successful. Instead of criticising and being negative about Brexit, it is time the Labour party embraced Brexit, understood that the British people voted for Brexit and got on the bandwagon with us. Come and give us the Brexit dream, and let us go together, support the previous Leader of the House and move forward.

The hon. Lady mentioned race crime. I think everybody in the House will recognise that race crime is a terrible offence, and we should all do our part in condemning anyone who is involved in racial crimes. I wholly accept the point that she makes. I would be delighted to work together, in any way we can—we have a responsibility not only as Members of Parliament, but as citizens, to call out racial hatred whenever we see it in all its forms.

Turning to fraud, everybody will recognise what a terrible crime fraud is. As Members of Parliament, we can help. There are very evil people out there who are trying to steal people’s savings and attack our constituents, but we can help by highlighting some of those scams and by working to bring down not only fraud, but all crime. The Government’s record on crime is actually pretty good. If we look particularly at the statistics on violent crime and burglary, we see that the number of those crimes in our constituencies is coming down.

The hon. Lady mentioned the Prime Minister coming to make a statement. I say gently to her that if we look at knife crime in the city of London, we see that when the Prime Minister was the Mayor of London, he tackled knife crime and it came down. Under the current Labour Mayor, those statistics have gone in the wrong direction. She should support the Government and support our ambitions to recruit more police officers, on which we are delivering, and together we can tackle crime.

We are expecting a written ministerial statement today on the one piece of covid legislation that we do not yet know a date for revocation—namely, the provision of early abortion pills through the post without face-to-face consultation. Depending on what that statement says, will the Leader of the House consider making time available in the forthcoming business for an oral statement, so that those of us who are appalled by the practice can make the case for a swift return to the status quo ante?

I thank my right hon. Friend for that question. Of course, the Government take that very seriously, and I understand the strength of feeling on these issues—[Interruption.] I accept that—I understand the strength of feeling on both sides of the argument and both sides of the House. The Department for Health and Social Care will look at that and I am sure that it will update the House on any decisions before they are made.

Well, look who we have now—I warmly congratulate the right hon. Member on his new role and note that he is now my sixth Leader of the House in my short tenure here as shadow Leader of the House on the Scottish National party Benches. I have learned a few things about being Leader of the House over the course of the years. Usually, the position is reserved for one of two categories: those on the way down or those who are difficult to place. I will leave him to decide which of these categories he falls into.

Although the right hon. Member could not possibly remain as Chief Whip after blackmailgate and after being the initiator of all the current difficulties by trying to lead recalcitrant and reluctant Back Benchers over the top to defend the indefensible by trying to save his pal, Owen Paterson, the fact that he has been made Leader of the House is almost unbelievable. It is like moving Dracula from Minister for blood supply to Minister for blood transfusions. But we wish him well. He must not just know where the bodies are buried; he is also brushing off the dirt on his grubby overalls.

It is also right that we pay tribute to the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg). How we will all miss his affectatious patronisation. At least one good thing has come out of the oxymoron of his new job: one person has been gainfully employed by the Government’s disastrous Brexit.

Order. Hopefully we might get on to the business. This is very funny, but come on.

Can we have a debate about the lorry park that is now the county of Kent? I believe that the right hon. Gentleman is walking up and down the queue saying, “Hark! The sunlit uplands are just around the corner.”

There is one thing that the new Leader of the House could do to show that he is different in this job, and that is to resolve the case of my hon. Friend the Member for East Dunbartonshire (Amy Callaghan). She has had to come down here just to vote, against her doctors’ advice, travelling 800 miles to put a pass against a card reader. It is madness. Not only is that bad for her, but it is bad for this House. It makes us look callous, it makes us look indifferent and it makes us look heartless. Can the Leader of the House show that he is not just the Mogg without the expensive classical education, and get this resolved for Members who are sick or recovering from illness?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his warm words about my predecessor, who did warn me that the hon. Gentleman was quite an angry man. Every week he turns up here in a very angry state, and I am concerned about that. When I meet him outside he seems to be very calm, but as he crosses the line he seems to have this huge anger. It is my personal mission to try to soothe him. I am the Sudocrem to his nappy rash. We will work together and I will calm him as we move forward.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned transport, and there will be an opportunity for him to question the Secretary of State for Transport in early March. He also mentioned the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Amy Callaghan). I met her yesterday—she came to my office—and I fully understand the concerns that the hon. Gentleman raises, and her predicament. We await the Procedure Committee report on how we can assist and support colleagues who find themselves in those circumstances, but these are very delicate matters that do need consideration. My door is genuinely open to a conversation about how we can try to solve that for the benefit of the whole House. That is a conversation that I am happy to take forward with him in the future.

May I start by congratulating my right hon. Friend on his appointment as Leader of the House? The Secretary of State for Transport recently announced that there would be a competition to find a new headquarters for Great British Railways. My constituency of North West Cambridgeshire comprises the southern half of the city of Peterborough, and I am in no doubt that it would be the ideal location for a new headquarters. Will my right hon. Friend kindly provide time in the House for a debate in which I and my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) could put forward the case as to why the city of Peterborough should be the location of the new headquarters for Great British Railways?

My hon. Friend is a great champion for his constituents, for Cambridgeshire and for Peterborough. I understand that the Great British Railways transition team is running the competition, and I wish him every success in his bid. I also note that the Government are embarking on the biggest investment in our railway infrastructure, with £96 billion through the integrated rail plan.

I call the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, Ian Mearns.

I welcome the Leader of the House to his place and to his role as Secretary of State for the application of Sudocrem.

He will have picked this up from his predecessor, but I remind him that the Backbench Business Committee already has a number of date-sensitive applications on the stocks, particularly for the first two weeks in March, with Welsh affairs and St David’s Day in the first week of March and International Women’s Day in the second week. We are anticipating a couple of days to debate departmental spending through estimates day debates, and applications for those debate slots must be made to the Backbench Business Committee by the deadline of 2.30 pm on Friday 25 February. We understand that supplementary estimates will be published in the last week of February.

I met the new president and the new general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers yesterday, and they wanted me to raise an issue in National Apprenticeship Week. I am sure the Leader of the House is aware that this is National Apprenticeship Week, which is a cause for celebration, but seafarer training policies in the maritime 2050 strategy and in mechanisms such as the tonnage tax are just not working to recruit and train UK ratings. Far too many shipowners bring in crew from overseas on low pay, sometimes with dreadful conditions of service, rather than training young people in our port towns and cities. Can we have a statement on what urgent action will be taken, including through the tonnage tax, to boost rating apprenticeships across the UK?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for all his work as Chairman of the Backbench Business Committee. I encourage all colleagues to engage with the Committee, which is a great opportunity for them to raise any topic they like on the Floor of the House. His chairing of the Committee is exemplary. Of course, I will work with him to try to ensure those time-sensitive debates happen at a time of his choosing.

The Government have a very proud record on getting young people into apprenticeships, on which we can still do more. We need to reflect on how our young people get from school into careers. University is not the route for every young person, and an apprenticeship programme is a great opportunity for young people to get into the jobs market and to get a great career for themselves. I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s support.

Yesterday, in Oxfordshire, there was exciting news of a major breakthrough in our quest to develop nuclear fusion. The scientists at Culham have more than doubled the amount of fusion energy generated compared with previous tests, and Stroud and the south-west’s Severn Edge bid has been shortlisted for Berkeley and Oldbury to be the home of the first fusion energy prototype. I am biased, but we definitely have the best bid to deliver this source of low-carbon energy for the country. Will my right hon. Friend, with his brand new powers, grant a debate in Government time to discuss the UK’s scientific developments, particularly in fusion energy?