- 11:35 am
- Will the Leader of the House update the House on the forthcoming business?
- The business for the week commencing 28 October includes:Monday 28 October—General debate on remembrance and the contribution of veterans.Tuesday 29 October—Remaining stages of the Great British Energy Bill.Wednesday 30 October—My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will deliver her Budget statement.Thursday 31 October—Continuation of the Budget debate.Friday 1 November—The House will not be sitting.The provisional business for the week commencing 4 November will include:Monday 4 November—Continuation of the Budget debate.Tuesday 5 November—Continuation of the Budget debate.Wednesday 6 November—Conclusion of the Budget debate.The House will rise for the November recess at the conclusion of business on Wednesday 6 November and return on Monday 11 November.
- It is rather telling that only one Government Member appears to be excited about the prospect of the Budget next week. They obviously know what is coming.Let me start by congratulating Morgan Edwards on his appointment as director of customer experience and service delivery here in Parliament. He starts his role in December. Apparently he was previously employed at Legoland in Windsor. Quite why the parliamentary authorities thought someone with experience of presiding over squabbling juveniles was well suited to working here, I really do not know.I have to say that the business has been a little thin in recent weeks. We have a general debate today and a general debate on Monday—we have had no fewer than 10 days of general debate so far. Yesterday, we had regulations that would ordinarily be taken in Committee, and business ended early on Tuesday. We expect that at the end of a Government’s time in office, but it is a little early for this Government to be running out of steam.At this point in the 2019 Parliament, we had had 31 new Bills introduced; we currently have only 18, a third of which had been published or consulted upon previously, and those Bills that are coming forward are being rushed. The Employment Rights Bill, which had its Second Reading on Monday, has much of its policy deferred into regulations, to be debated in Committee at some point in the future, denying the full House the opportunity to properly debate those important issues.When it comes to the winter fuel payment regulations, which we discussed previously, we should have had the report of the Social Security Advisory Committee before we debated and voted on that important measure. The committee has now finally written its report, and it says that it is concerned about the take-up of pension credit, that the Government’s forecasts of fiscal savings have question marks hanging over them and that we need a full impact assessment, which the Government did not bother providing. The committee has also called for specific changes to the regulations. Will the Leader of the House bring the regulations back to the House for us to consider again now that we have the committee’s report and it has recommended changes?
- Order. Please, I do not need further comments. I am sure Members are trying to catch my eye, but that is not the best way to do it.
- I join the shadow Leader of the House in welcoming Morgan Edwards to this place. I am sure he brings great experience from Legoland that can be brought to bear in this Chamber.I send my condolences to the family of Geoff Capes. As a child of the ’80s, I remember what a legend he was, and I believe his shot put record is still unbroken.I take this opportunity once again to point the House to the call for views launched by the Modernisation Committee last week. Tomorrow, new limitations on MPs’ second jobs come into force. The House will remember that before recess, we voted to remove the exemptions on paid advocacy roles. I wanted to give Members time to adjust to the new rules, hence why they are coming into force tomorrow. That was a manifesto commitment and we are determined to restore trust in politics, raising standards and delivering on our manifesto commitments.The shadow Leader of the House again mentions winter fuel payments. I gently remind him once again that we published an equality impact assessment, which we were not required to do, but we were forthcoming with it. We brought forward to this House—I do not think this would have happened under the previous Government —a full vote on the measures, and they were clearly passed by this place.The shadow Leader of the House asks about the Prime Minister’s visit to CHOGM. I can confirm that there will be a statement from the Foreign Secretary next week about that and other matters, and I look forward to the right hon. Gentleman asking some questions. The issue of reparations is important, and I am glad that he has raised it. We recognise the horrific impacts and the understandable and ongoing strength of feeling across the Commonwealth and other communities about these matters. He is right, however, that our position on reparations has not changed. At the conference this week, we are committed to working with our Commonwealth partners on the very pressing issues that we face today, and looking forward to the future, not looking to the past.
- Order. Just to say, those others are not MPs, by the way.
- I feel that it is a bit rich. It is for the American people to decide who their next President is and this Government are committed and determined to work with whoever wins that election.The right hon. Gentleman then raised issues of business, which I will happily come on to. Today marks our 30th sitting day since we won that landslide general election victory. In that time, we have introduced 20 Bills—that is 20 Bills in 30 sitting days: over half of our King’s Speech programme has already been introduced. I remind him that that is way more than the coalition Conservative Government managed in the whole of 2010, which was the last time we had a change of Government. We have passed our first Labour Act in 14 years and made 34 statements to Parliament—more than one a day.There is still much more to come, and I am sure the right hon. Gentleman wants to know about it—on planning, border control, education, mental health, crime and policing, Great British Railways, the Hillsborough law, buses and much, much more. He and I both sat through the last Parliament, although others here did not: we both know that at the end it really was a zombie Parliament, clocking off early on seven out of 10 days in its last year. The last Government had run out of ideas and could not agree on what to do and when, so they did nothing. They dithered and delayed on their own flagship legislation, and we are getting on with delivering some of the things that they failed to do.For example, this morning there is the Football Governance Bill, which they long promised. We have reintroduced it, strengthening the position of fans and financial sustainability in the game. We are delivering where the previous Government did not. What about the Renters’ Right Bill, which the previous Government had long planned but never fulfilled? We have taken it forward. Perhaps the most disingenuous example of all is Martyn’s law. The then Prime Minister promised to introduce it by the summer on the day before he called a general election, knowing full well that he was not going to be able to introduce it at all. We have brought it in. Frankly, we have brought more change to this country in our 30 sitting days than the previous Government did in 14 sorry, sorry years.
- On Monday, I visited Keech hospice, which serves many residents in Luton North. As always, it was inspiring to see the care that it offers children and adults at their time of need. But it is not without its challenges. Whether through time for debate or the new Government’s NHS consultation, how can we best ensure that funding for hospice care is given the attention it so richly deserves?
- My hon. Friend raises an important issue that has been raised a number of times during business questions. We want a society where every person receives high-quality, compassionate care at the end of their lives. It is a crying shame that the hospice sector relies so heavily on fundraising and voluntary support. We will continue to work closely with the sector to make sure that it can survive and thrive going forward.
- I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
- I welcomed the emphasis that the Leader of the House placed on the Modernisation Committee’s call for views. I am sure that many Members have been sidling up to her and saying, as they have to me, “Wouldn’t it be good if we could change this particular aspect of the way in which Parliament does things?” I am pleased to be able, now, to direct them to the Modernisation Committee’s website, where they can submit their own views, and I encourage them to do so.I also thank the Leader of the House for presenting the business programme. I note that several days have been provided for the Budget debate, to which I am sure we are all looking forward—although I am not totally convinced that the shadow Leader of the House and the official Opposition are looking forward to it. If reports in the media are to be believed, they had the opportunity to change the timetable for their leadership election so that the new leader might be able to respond to the Budget, but it appears that they were not too keen on that idea. Perhaps they were not entirely confident of their own ability to respond to the Budget, but we shall see what happens.Many of the questions to Ministers from Members on both sides of the House are regularly being answered with a rather frustrating, “Wait until the Budget.” However, while many of us understand that there are good reasons for the fact that detailed responses often cannot be given ahead of the Budget, time is ticking on, and the seasons do not really seem to care about the Government’s timetable. Winter is fast approaching, but our NHS does not have the funding that it needs to fully support local health services. According to figures from the House of Commons Library following work commissioned by the Liberal Democrats, 12-hour wait times at A&E have been going up and up throughout the country. I am extremely worried about what that means for my constituents, and I am sure that other Members will be concerned about theirs.
- Order.
- A ringfenced fund that takes account of the average emergency winter funding for the NHS—
- Order. One of us is going to sit down, and it certainly is not going to be me. The hon. Lady has already taken three minutes. She should not start speaking faster and more loudly just to try and stop me. She must come to an end now, and do so very quickly.
- Thank you, Mr Speaker. Will the Chancellor set aside money to be spent on building up winter resilience and winter-proofing the NHS?
- I thank the hon. Lady, and echo her comments about the Modernisation Committee. It has captured a great deal of interest in this place, and I encourage Members to do as she suggested. She is entirely right about the Conservative party’s leadership race. It is a matter for the Conservatives as to why they are not putting forward a new leader to respond to the Budget, but over the past few weeks we seem to have seen a fair amount of soft-balling from the acting leader and deputy leader during our exchanges. Perhaps if they were not down in their own rabbit hole of oblivion, they would have presented someone better to come to the Dispatch Box next week.The hon. Lady is also right in saying that public services are in deep crisis after 14 years of failure and under-investment. My husband is an A&E doctor, so I know all too well that a crisis faces our NHS this winter, as it has done every winter in recent years. The Health Secretary has taken rapid action to end the doctors’ strike, which was causing so much additional stress to the NHS, he has taken early steps to ensure that there are extra appointments, and he is doing a huge amount of work to bring down waiting lists and to foresee some of the winter crisis. There is no doubt that the choices that will confront us in the Budget will be difficult, given our woeful economic inheritance, but there is hope ahead. We will get the economy growing again, we will get that investment into our public services, and we will fix the economy for the long term.
- Many of my constituents in Battersea have written to me to express concern about Israel’s ongoing siege in northern Gaza. The scale of the suffering and loss of life is enormous, and they are calling on the Government to use all their levers to take action, including suspending any trade negotiations with Israel. We need an arms suspension, as well as a ban on all goods that have been produced in settlements. Can we have a Government statement on the tangible actions that will be taken to bring an end to the awful suffering?