Business of the House

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

The business for the week commencing 8 June will include:

Monday 8 June—Second Reading of the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [Lords].

Tuesday 9 June—Second Reading of the Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill.

Wednesday 10 June—Motion to approve a statutory instrument relating to the draft Court of Appeal (Recording and Broadcasting) (Amendment) Order 2020, followed by a motion to approve a statutory instrument relating to the draft Civil Aviation (Insurance) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020, followed by a motion to approve a statutory instrument relating to the draft Water Industry (Specified Infrastructure Projects) (English Undertakers) (Amendment) Regulations 2020, followed by a motion relating to the Adoption and Children (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2020.

Thursday 11 June—Remaining stages of the Birmingham Commonwealth Games Bill [Lords].

Friday 12 June—The House is not expected to be sitting.

I thank the Leader of the House for the business, and for finding time for the debate on the adoption and children regulations.

There were two pictures of long queues: one was of us in Parliament; the other was outside a furniture store, with better social distancing than we had. When someone gets to the top of one queue, they get a cushion and perhaps some meatballs; with us, someone might even get infected. I notice that the Prime Minister and the Minister for the Cabinet Office were not voting with us all, but the Leader of the Opposition was there. That image of our Parliament is going to live with this Government forever—time wasting, shambolic, breaking the rules, putting people’s lives at risk.

I do not know whether the Leader of the House has seen the notice around Parliament saying, “Avoid crowded areas and don’t move around the estate”, both of which the Leader of the House has ignored when he switched off the hybrid Parliament. His response to my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) was to talk about the Chamber, but my hon. Friend was talking about the 400 of us who were waiting in and confined in Westminster Hall. Parliament is a local setting where there is a risk of an outbreak. Those are the Government’s own rules.

The Government are putting the House staff, the Doorkeepers and all of us at risk. They are alarmed that one of the Government’s own Ministers—the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy—has now contracted the disease. I was here yesterday evening when he was taken ill, and we wish the right hon. Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma) well.

This is discriminatory towards hon. Members. The Leader of the House has disenfranchised hon. Members. Quite frankly, it is disgraceful and it has brought Parliament into disrepute. Our position is that a hybrid virtual Parliament and remote voting should continue, at least until the R level has reduced and the alert level has gone down. Meanwhile, the other place is actually moving towards a digital voting system.

May I start by responding to the important question that the right hon. Lady raises every week about Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe? Of course, the Government continue to be in touch, and the consular officials are working. It is good news that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe is still on temporary release, but I have no further news to report. I continue to welcome the right hon. Lady’s regular mention of this distressing case, because it ensures that pressure is kept up. I will continue to pass on what she says to the Foreign Office, so that the governmental systems are ensuring that representation is properly made for a British citizen.

The right hon. Lady asks why we were queuing when our constituents were queuing. I think it is fairly obvious why we were queuing: we were queuing because we have our democratic duty to do. We have a legislative agenda to get through. We made commitments to the British people in December to get Bills through Parliament. The Domestic Abuse Bill is a very important one. The Northern Ireland legacy Bill is another important one. There is also the Fisheries Bill and the Fire Safety Bill—I could go on and on. We have really important legislation to get through that we committed to the British people to get through. How many of those Bills do the Opposition want to abandon? Probably all of them, because they are the Opposition, and of course it is their job to try to stop us getting our legislation through.

We should lead by example. Across the country, people are going back to work. The right hon. Lady mentioned schools. How can we look teachers in our constituencies in the eye when we are asking them to go back to work and saying that we are not willing to? We have to be back here delivering on the legislative programme, but also being held to account. It is fascinating that the Opposition seem so reluctant to hold the Government to account, but it is right that we should be held to account, and that is done effectively by being in this Chamber. It is important that while we are here, we follow the social distancing rules. Look around the Chamber and through the whole Palace: there are marks showing the distance people should keep. In Westminster Hall, it was made remarkably easy, because the size of the flagstones was large enough to meet the requirements. Certainly I was standing at a safe distance from people. Most Members were. Most Members were standing at a safe distance, and it was marked out for them to do so.

The Leader of the House is accusing me of hypocrisy.

No, I certainly have not accused the hon. Gentleman of hypocrisy; I would not dream of doing that.

Let me come to the issue of schools and a statement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. He does not need any encouragement to come to this House. He is hoping to make a statement early next week. It is obviously important that the House is updated, but it is also really important for our children’s futures that they are going back to school and that, as with us, is the process of normalisation that we are getting under way.

With regard to coronavirus and the BAME community, the Minister for Equalities, my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Kemi Badenoch), is leading the work on that with Public Health England.

As regards written parliamentary questions, I am taking that up with Departments. We are looking at which Departments are issuing the most holding replies. I make a general point that I would continue to have sympathy with the Department of Health and Social Care, which has been exceptionally busy in leading the response to this crisis. Other Departments, I think, have more reason to be fully up to date with their written parliamentary questions.

I really do not want to take this past half-past 1, so Members should please make their points as concise as they can, starting with Sir David Amess.

Will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate on the reopening of places of worship? Yesterday we heard the exchanges at Prime Minister’s Question Time, but as we are easing lockdown and will allow social distancing in shops, surely to goodness we can allow social distancing in places of worship, which at this particular time mean even more to so many people.

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this question. I have heard what His Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster has had to say, and he is a very important figure in this debate. He has called for places of worship to open, and they do indeed offer a great deal of spiritual succour to many people. The Government are working with the Churches to get them reopened as soon as is practicable. Having religious succour is going to be important for those who have faith.

Once again, my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) has been denied the opportunity to do his job because the Government have removed his ability to participate remotely. Much of the drama this week could have been avoided by simply letting this week continue under the hybrid arrangements. The usual channels could have used the recess period to come to an agreement about the way forward. We understand that the Government want to get their business done, but we have a right to hold them to account, and that is being denied to us. I hope that there will be progress on the motions on the Order Paper this evening, because too many of Scotland’s MPs are being actively excluded by the lack of remote participation. Many, including our shadow Leader of the House, are doubly excluded because they speak on behalf of the party as well as of their constituents, and they can currently do neither. None of the events this week that the shadow Leader of the House mentioned has been edifying, and none of them has helped to strengthen the Government’s precious Union. The Leader of the House might want to think about that.

We have still been left with more questions than answers. There needs to be one clear definition of who can participate remotely and apply for a proxy vote, and it has to take into account the circumstances not just of the Member but of the household they live in. There will also need to be answers about how track and trace applies to the House. All of us hope that the Business Secretary recovers quickly from his illness, but do Members who take ill in the Chamber self-isolate in London or return to their constituencies? Do the Government have a continuity plan in place for the operation of the House if—quod avertat Deus—there is another serious outbreak here in Westminster?

Much of the business that has been announced for next week has little relevance to Scotland, but the Leader of the House can be assured that we will use whatever opportunities we can to hold the Government to account. He will need to find time for the Foreign Secretary to make a statement about the Government’s relationship with the United States of America and what steps they are taking to ensure that tear gas, rubber bullets and riot gear produced in or sold from the UK are not being used to oppress peaceful protesters in the States. That is a huge concern to many constituents.

May I begin by thanking the hon. Gentleman for the support that he has given to us in getting our motions through to allow for remote participation for those who, for medical reasons, cannot come and to allow for proxy voting? I would point out that I indicated to the House on 20 May that we would be making facilities available for those who could not come to the House to appear remotely, and I mentioned on Tuesday that I was not ruling out proxy voting, so the Government has always been willing to listen to what hon. and right hon. Members have to say—[Interruption.] If people sometimes listened rather than just heckling, they might actually find out the reality of the situation.

The relationship of this country with the United States is always of great importance, and the Foreign Secretary is a regular attender of the House to be questioned on these matters. Foreign Office questions are later in the month, but this is a matter of continuing interest in the House widely and will always be discussed.

I share the hon. Gentleman’s view that we should pay tribute to chaplains. He mentioned Black Lives Matter, and I would say that the Holy Father reminded us all yesterday that racism is a sin. It is important to bear in mind that it is a sin; it is something that is fundamentally wrong and wicked. The Holy Father also encouraged us to pray for the soul of Mr Floyd, and I would encourage hon. and right hon. Members to do that.

Can the Leader of the House tell us what steps are being taken to ensure that we deliver on our important legislative agenda, as we have been tasked to do by the British people? In particular, will he ensure that everything possible is being done to deliver the Domestic Abuse Bill, the Fisheries Bill, the Trade Bill and the Northern Ireland and counter-terrorism legislation in the coming weeks?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to make the important point that we need to deliver our legislative agenda, and that is why we need to be back physically. We were getting no Bill Committees or statutory instrument Committees, and the routine work of legislation simply was not taking place with a virtual Parliament. The Chamber was taking place in a limited way, but we had not got to the Public Bill Committees and we were running way behind on the business that we needed to attend to. Under the virtual system, we went down to a third of the time debating public Bills that we had had in the week before we had to go away, earlier in March. We therefore needed to get back to make sufficient progress with these important Bills.

I understand that we are due to have some time for estimates day debates in early July, so Members across the House need to be thinking about submitting applications for the subject matter, and the Departments that they want the estimates day debates to be about, to the Backbench Business Committee by no later than a fortnight tomorrow, Friday 19 June.

We are reassembled here in the House of Commons this week so that the Government can carry forward their legislative programme and, as the Leader pointed out, to hold the Government to account. However, I note with regret on behalf of the Committee that the business statement did not include any Backbench Business debates next week.

With no Backbench time, we, as elected Members, are mainly able to hold the Government to account only through debates on subjects of the Government’s own choosing. May we therefore have a debate, in Government time, on the way in which our parliamentary agenda is constructed, and the need to uphold the spirit of Standing Orders with regard to the allocation of time for Back Bencher-generated debates, to be able to hold the Government to account on subject matters of Back-Bench Members’ choosing?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for reminding hon. and right hon. Members about the estimate day debates, and to put in for subjects that they will want to discuss. It is right that Members should be able to hold the Government to account, which is why we are having the considerable additional time that we achieve by being back physically. The virtual Parliament meant that there was significantly less time for debate and scrutiny.

Adjournment debates are now back, so we are beginning to bring things back. Unfortunately, the period when we were not operating at full capacity has meant that the Government’s agenda is behind schedule, but I am well aware of the Standing Orders and I am very keen that Backbench business should be facilitated in due course.

Following the Prime Minister’s positive comments yesterday, will my right hon. Friend find time for a Government debate on how we can use green, low-carbon industries to help to power up our economy in areas such as Bolsover and in towns such as South Normanton to provide new skilled jobs in the future?