I have a supply of throat sweets, Mr Speaker, should you need them, although I admire your stoicism.
The business for next week is as follows:
Monday 7 October—Debate on a motion relating to the appointment of a lay member to the Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, followed by a motion to approve a statutory instrument relating to the draft Northern Ireland (Ministerial Appointment Functions) (No. 2) Regulations 2019, followed by proceedings in Committee and remaining stages of the Census (Return Particulars And Removal Of Penalties) Bill [Lords].
Tuesday 8 October—Motion to approve a statutory instrument relating to the draft Plant Health (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019, followed by a motion to approve a statutory instrument relating to the draft Environment and Wildlife (Legislative Functions) (EU Exit) (Amendment) Regulations 2019, followed by a debate in Government time on baby loss awareness. That may then followed by all the necessary arrangements relating to the Prorogation of the House.
May I first acknowledge the fact that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) cannot be with us today? I thank the Leader of the House for the business and for ensuring that the Government comply with the judgment of the Supreme Court, because Prorogation is now just five days. He could have saved all that trouble, but at least we now have a definitive judgment about the “capital A” Advice that the Government give Her Majesty using prerogative powers. That was found to be “capital U” Unlawful.
The Opposition were asking for Parliament to be prorogued on Wednesday so that the Prime Minister could come here and account for himself to the House and to Parliament at Prime Minister’s Question Time. But, no show. He is like Macavity the mystery cat; he is called the hidden paw—it is National Poetry Day—although maybe, in the Prime Minister’s case, it is the not so hidden paws. However, as the Labour Chief Whip has reminded us, the Prime Minister has done only one out of a possible four Prime Minister’s Question Times.
We have had no Trade Bill, no Fisheries Bill, no Agriculture Bill, no immigration and social security Bill and no financial services Bill—all lost. The Government simply do not want to do their job and bring their Bills back. It is no wonder that the Opposition parties have to seize the Order Paper. We need to use Humble Addresses to get the basic documents and impact assessments. As there is such a paucity of business in the House next week, could we have our Opposition day? The last one was on 12 June.
Section 1(4) of the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019 states that the Prime Minister must write and deliver a letter to the President of the European Council requesting an extension. Having read the judgment, the Leader of the House will know that Lord Diplock said that the Government
“are accountable to Parliament for what they do so far as regards efficiency and policy, and of that Parliament is the only judge; they are responsible to a court of justice for the lawfulness of what they do, and of that the court is the only judge.”
I will not take those questions in order, Mr Speaker, because I think it would be sensible for me to clarify what I said about you. I do not think I have said anything publicly that I have not said to you before. I have been one of your great admirers in some of the things you have done to help the House hold the Government to account, as is absolutely right and proper, but I disagree, as you know, with some of the decisions made over the last year. What I actually said in my speech to the Tory party conference was that your speakership should be taken in the round, with the bits I think have been tremendously important and the bits that have not been as I would have wished them. That is my position and I think it is respectful to the office of the Speaker and, if I may say so, not unfriendly to you personally. I hope and trust that you will take it in that spirit.
The hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) had the audacity to say that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was not appearing in front of the House enough—that he was Macavity. Well, it is a rather odd version of Macavity. In the 10 sitting days since he has been Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend has spent 494 minutes in front of this House. He has been running at an equivalent rate of 49 minutes a day. He will be ready to speak to the House after these business questions. He is speaking at an incredibly dutiful and proper rate, and he can be held to account because in statements, Mr Speaker, you allow considerable latitude—rightly, if I may say so—to the questions asked. Instead of doing a brief Prime Minister's Question Time, he has done 494 minutes. I do not think that anyone can complain about that.
As regards the Opposition day and the Order Paper, I think these two come together. If the Opposition want control of the Order Paper, they can have an Opposition day. They can have it on Monday or Tuesday, for a no-confidence vote. If they have any confidence in themselves, they will do that, though I was in a toyshop recently with my children, who thought they deserved some toys, and there was a plastic chicken, plucked, with no hairs or feathers, and if you squeezed it, it made a squawk. I cannot think why, but it reminded me of Her Majesty’s Opposition.
Will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on the rights of British citizens held in prisons overseas? My constituent’s son Mr Lakhbir Sandhu has been held in a Czech prison for nine months without being charged. He is apparently being denied proper legal representation, and, worse still, his family are having great difficulty in obtaining visas to visit him.
This follows on very much from what was said by the shadow Leader of the House. The rights of British nationals in prison abroad were the subject of a Westminster Hall debate in March 2018, and I echo the response of the then Minister for Asia and the Pacific, who said:
“The Government are proud to uphold a long tradition of offering British nationals a comprehensive, responsive consular service.”—[Official Report, 13 March 2018; Vol. 637, c. 306WH.]
Consular officials in Prague have been assisting Mr Sandhu since his arrest in January 2019, and have remained in regular contact with his family in the UK throughout. I am unfortunately not able to go into the details of Mr Sandhu’s case, but I understand that officials are responding to my hon. Friend’s specific questions, which he has also raised with Her Majesty’s ambassador in Prague. Let me point him in the direction of the Foreign Office’s consular hotline to see what more support can be provided—it is worth reminding Members that there is a hotline for their exclusive use if there are consular problems—and if he will write to me, I will pass his concerns to the appropriate Minister.
It is disappointing that Prorogation is going ahead before Prime Minister’s Question Time can take place next week. My hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) and I have been reflecting on the fact that the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), has probably spent more time on the Back Benches during Prime Minister’s questions since July than her successor has spent at the Dispatch Box, given his absence last week. I do not think that that is anything for the Government to be proud of.
The biggest loser from Prorogation will be my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who will not be able to present his Prime Minister (Nomination) and Cabinet (Appointment) Bill under the ten-minute rule next Wednesday. That will be a source of great disappointment to the House as a whole and, I am sure, the Government in particular, and to my hon. Friend. The only possible compensation will be the elevation to the Privy Council that he so richly deserves.
We are also very disappointed by the lack of Opposition days next week. We have made our requests through the usual channels; and, as we have pointed out before, Standing Orders allocate days to the leader of the third party, which will not now be granted. That must be getting very close to a contempt of the House, and it is at the very least a gross discourtesy to the third party. I urge the Leader of the House to reconsider his allocation of time for next week, important though the statutory instruments that he has scheduled are.
Perhaps we can end on a slight note of consensus. Last week, the Leader of the House spoke about Padre Pio. On 13 October, the Christian community in this country will celebrate the canonisation of John Henry Newman. The all-party parliamentary group on the Holy See will have a delegation representing the House in Rome, and the Prince of Wales will represent the Queen. I wonder whether anyone will represent Her Majesty’s Government. Next year will be the 10th anniversary of Pope Benedict’s visit to the UK and his important speech in Westminster Hall. Would the Leader of the House be willing to meet those of us with an interest in such things to discuss how that could be appropriately commemorated in the Houses of Parliament?
If I may, I will answer the hon. Gentleman’s questions in reverse order. The canonisation of Cardinal Newman is a matter of great joy to Catholics in this country and to other Christians. It is a matter of huge celebration. It is very rare that a Briton is elevated and becomes, by God’s divine mercy, a saint, and we should all rejoice at that. I do not know whether a member of Her Majesty’s Government is going to be at the ceremony. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was suggesting that I should go, but if he was, that suggestion is very welcome. However, that is not for me to decide. I agree that it would be suitable to have a meeting to discuss the 10th anniversary of the Holy Father Emeritus’s visit, which was a wonderful occasion on which he gave a very moving speech.
As regards Opposition days, I am going to say what I said to the shadow Leader of the House. Should the hon. Gentleman want to have a vote of no confidence, time will be made available and we will give him a day in which to speak. That would give us the opportunity to speak in the other direction on the many virtues of this fantastic Government.
Contrary to the claim by the Hollies, who were a well-known musical ensemble, the air that we breathe is not all that we need. But we cannot live without it, as more than 10,000 sufferers of cystic fibrosis know as they gasp for breath each day. Yesterday in this House, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) drew our attention to the drug Orkambi, which can be a life-saving treatment. It is certainly a life-changing one for more than half those who suffer. Will the Leader of the House arrange for a statement to be made on how that drug can be made available in the United Kingdom as it has been in Scotland? I know that you admire Edmund Burke as much as I do, Mr Speaker. He said:
“There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity”.
In the name of those virtues, please make this drug available for those who suffer in silence.
I have raised questions in the House about other drugs, and I would encourage my right hon. Friend to use the facilities of the House to press his point. Mr Speaker, you kindly allowed me an Adjournment debate on the issue of Batten disease, and the drug used to treat that disease has now been made available. Orkambi is being discussed in the usual way between the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and NHS England to decide a fair price for the medicine. Vertex is the drug company concerned, and I think it would be right to urge it to accept the price that is being offered, but I can reassure my right hon. Friend that the Health Secretary is meeting Vertex again. This is really serious, and it is being looked at, but I would also encourage him to keep pushing.
I hope that the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) will take the hint. Adjournment debates, urgent questions, emergency debates—Burke would expect nothing less.
I wonder whether the Leader of the House would agree that one of the most innovative and successful innovations in recent times was the creation of a Children’s Commissioner, particularly with Anne Longfield as a very brave champion for children. Does he agree that we should have an early debate on what she revealed only last week—that 20% of the children coming out of our schools have no qualifications at all? That was not mentioned very much at the Conservative party conference. Is it not about time that we looked at it in a debate in this House, and did something about it?
Indeed, yes—I welcome the fact that we have a Children’s Commissioner, and share the hon. Gentleman’s concern that 20% of children leave school with no qualification. That is the reason for so many of the education reforms that have been going through, and the extra expenditure that will be going to the Department of Health and Social Care should bring about an improvement. That is, of course, a subject that will be easy to raise during the Queen’s speech debates; one of the advantages of having a Queen’s speech is that many issues of importance like that can be raised, and Members can expect a ministerial response in the debate.
The Government led by my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) were very supportive of a Shipley eastern bypass, and paid for a feasibility study with a specific intention to complete the bypass when the study had ended. So will my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House arrange for the Secretary of State for Transport to come and make a statement to the House on that subject, so that he can, hopefully, restate this Government’s commitment to building a Shipley eastern bypass?
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Will the Leader of the House therefore confirm that the Prime Minister will comply with the law and that the Law Officers have warned him of the consequences if he fails to do so?
Let me turn to other breaches. The Leader of the House will know how important it is that Ministers stick to the ministerial code and avoid real or apparent conflicts of interest. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) has asked me to remind the Leader of the House that it is possible that the Minister for Defence People and Veterans, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Johnny Mercer) broke the ministerial code when he did not resign from his paid job with a veterans company when he became Veterans Minister. My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) raised a point of order on Monday on a possible conflict of interest.
The Leader of House will be aware that Crispin Odey, a donor to various parties and people, made £220 million overnight as sterling slumped after the 2016 referendum result. Given that the Government have taken the Labour party policy of having 20,000 more police officers and raising the real living wage to £10, will they now support the shadow Chancellor when he calls for an inquiry into the finance sector, including the regulation of hedge funds?
I hope the Leader of the House will now apologise to you, Mr Speaker, for what he said in his speech at conference, when he accused you of damaging the standing of the House in the eyes of the British public, bringing it to its lowest point in modern history. The Leader of the House should get out more, because if he spoke to people outside, he would realise that there are people cheering out there because of how you have made Parliament more relevant. And this from the person who slandered a good doctor and then had to apologise, and who slouched on these Benches because he felt entitled to and then had to apologise. Funnily enough, we thought he was one of your favourites, because you always called him before all of us when he sat on the Back Benches.
The Leader of the House has not updated the House on the British hostages held in Iran. These are British citizens used as bargaining chips. Nazanin’s health and mental health are deteriorating, because she must consider being separated from Gabriella, as Gabriella may return to school in England. This is cruelty. Could we have a statement next week on the Government’s policy towards protecting state-held hostages? Warm words are not enough. It is time to act.
It is Black History Month and I want to pay tribute to Dina Asher-Smith, and also to the shadow Home Secretary for her excellent outing yesterday, when she made history as the first black woman to speak at the Dispatch Box in Prime Minister’s Question Time. She put women at the heart of her questions, and I, too, pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff) and for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), and also to my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield), for their bravery. Black History Month reminds us of the contribution our parents made. They had to face terrible racism when they first came here. Racism is pernicious, whether blatant or unconscious.
Finally, Mr Speaker, I want to thank you and your office and all the House staff for ensuring that we returned after the unlawful Prorogation so that right hon. and hon. Members could rightfully take their places here in the House.
The hon. Lady also said that the Government were accountable to Parliament and that Parliament was allowed to pass its laws, and of course the Government are accountable to the courts, but we all serve one higher authority. The courts, Parliament and Her Majesty’s Government are all accountable to the British people, and 17.4 million people voted to leave. Whatever laws we pass and whatever court judgments come through, we must remember that it is the people who have the ultimate say. That is the foundation of our democracy.
The hon. Lady made some points about conflicts of interest. Of course it is appropriate that the ministerial code is followed, and it will be, but moving from the private sector into the public sector fully is not always simple. One sometimes has so many commitments that it is hard to remember all of them. She then criticised Crispin Odey for making money out of sterling falling. I remind her that one of the major funders—allegedly—of the remain campaign, the remoaner funder-in-chief, was one George Soros, who made £1 billion when sterling crashed out of the exchange rate mechanism, which is five times as much as Mr Odey made. I fear that all she is saying is that Mr Soros is a better hedge fund manager than Crispin Odey, who is a great friend and supporter of mine.
The hon. Lady then made a point about the shadow Chancellor, and asked whether I would listen to him. I might listen to him when he apologises to my friend—my right hon. Friend—the Member for Tatton (Ms McVey) for things that he has said about people being lynched. I think that, until he does that, he should sit in shame, not on that Bench but on the steps of your Chair, Mr Speaker, because it really is so shocking—so shocking —that Members of this House should call for other Members to be lynched. It is something that I think we should all criticise, and I am sure that Opposition Members feel that as well.
As always and quite rightly, the hon. Lady mentioned Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe. As she knows, and as I said last week, both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have been in touch with the President and the Foreign Secretary of Iran respectively, and that is quite right. This issue must be pushed continually. I wish it were in the gift of Her Majesty’s Government to achieve the liberty of all the people who are held illegally, unjustly and improperly by foreign states, but we must push wherever we can.
May I add to the congratulations to the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott)? It is a sign of what a good society we are becoming that we are now completely relaxed about what race people belong to when they appear at the Dispatch Box. I hope that that will continue, and I absolutely endorse what the hon. Lady said about racism being wrong. It is not only wrong, it is evil, and it something that we should all wish to oppose and root out. It should be a sadness to all of us that the Labour party is the second party—after the British National party—to be investigated by the Equality and Human Rights Commission for its anti-Semitism. That should be not something that we use as a party political point, but something that is bad news in terms of the body politic generally.
As we come to Prorogation, I should very much like to thank all the House staff for the terrific work they do. It is very impressive. We rely on all of them, and their commitment and their love of Parliament, which I think many of us share.