Monday 1 July—Estimates day (6th allotted day). There will be a debate on estimates relating to the Department for International Development and the Department for Education.
Tuesday 2 July—Estimates day (7th allotted day). There will be a debate on estimates relating to the Department for Work and Pensions and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. At 7 pm, the House will be asked to agree all outstanding estimates.
Wednesday 3 July—Proceedings on the Supply and Appropriation (Main Estimates) (No.3) Bill, followed by motion to approve a statutory instrument relating to the Draft Capital Allowances (Structures and Buildings Allowances) Regulations 2019, followed by motion to approve a statutory instrument relating to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (Amendment) Order 2019, followed by debate on a motion on whistleblowing. The subjects of these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
Thursday 4 July—Debate on a motion on ending the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans, followed by general debate on the functioning of the existing law relating to assisted dying. The subjects of these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for announcing the business for next week. The Chair of the Backbench Business Committee seems to be the de facto Leader of the House once again, because he is setting the agenda with debates on two days—lucky him.
The motion for the House to rise on 25 July was passed on Monday. I understand that the results of the ballot for the Tory party leadership will be out on Tuesday 23 July. The Prime Minister may have to go to Buckingham palace on Wednesday 24 July, and then the new leader of the Tory party will also have to go to the palace—possibly on the Thursday—to confirm with our gracious sovereign that he has the confidence of the House. Many hon. Members are concerned that there may be no time to question the new Prime Minister before the House rises, so will the Leader of the House assure us that he will make time for the new Prime Minister to make a statement and answer questions from hon. Members?
Last week, the Leader of the House said that the House would return on 3 September. Some press reports suggest that he has been involved in discussions about the House not rising for the conference recess. Will he confirm whether those discussions have taken place, whether and when the conference recess will start, or whether the House will sit during our conferences?
It is no wonder that ambassadors are saying that the UK’s standing around the world is diminished. On the one hand, the Government said that they are setting net zero carbon targets for 2050, but on the other hand the Treasury introduced its Value Added Tax (Reduced Rate) (Energy-Saving Materials) Order 2019, which is in effect a steep VAT increase for the installation of energy-saving materials. More importantly, is the Leader of the House aware of the point raised by my noble friend Baroness Smith of Basildon, the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords? The Prime Minister said that Labour peers were blocking the motion relating to climate change targets, but it is a regret motion, not a blocking motion, and it seeks to improve the proposals. Baroness Smith said that she regrets the lack of detail in the SI, because it leaves shipping and aviation out of the targets. Will the Leader of the House ask the PM to apologise to my noble friends in the other place? The Prime Minister was plain wrong, and I have the relevant exchange here if it would be helpful to the Leader of the House.
I thank the hon. Lady for her remarks, which I will address in detail in a moment.
First, Mr Speaker, I join the Prime Minister who earlier this week rightly congratulated you on having served as Speaker for 10 years. The Prime Minister said it does not seem like 10 years, to which an Opposition Member was heard to mutter that it seems more like 20, which was a foolish and misguided remark, as I am sure you would agree.
I have been feeling somewhat guilty since last week, as I invited several regular attendees of business questions to join me on holiday over the recess but did not extend the invitation to you, Mr Speaker. Do please join us. It is just £500 for the week, which you will be pleased to know includes all flights.
I concur with the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) about the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns), who has indeed shown his worth in allocating time on the Order Paper. I congratulate him on the important debates he has secured for the coming week.
The hon. Lady specifically asked about the recess motion to which the whole House agreed. The Government are clear that there should be an opportunity for the new Prime Minister to appear before this House before the recess and, in the event that there is any doubt in the matter, I have no doubt that Parliament will express itself. Hopefully that is now sufficiently clear.
The hon. Lady also asked whether there will be a recess to accommodate the conferences. All I can say is that that will of course be a matter for the new Prime Minister, but it is usual for time to be set aside for the conference recess. One might reasonably expect time to be made available in the usual way.
The hon. Lady raised the issue of the VAT rise for energy-saving materials, but she did not point out that, in fact, the rise is due to EU regulations and an EU requirement. In the absence of that imperative from the EU, it is not something we would necessarily have brought forward.
Mindful of the upcoming celebrations of Armed Forces Day, and notwithstanding the reports of Army instructors being accused of historical abuse, will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate to mark Victory over Japan Day, so that we can record the terrible atrocities suffered by prisoners in the Japanese war camps?
My hon. Friend is right to raise the issue of VJ Day. We tend to think about the victory in Europe, but of course the war continued beyond that point and, as he has stated, many awful atrocities took place that were particularly associated with the Asian element of the second world war. The Royal British Legion and the Government will be working together to ensure that the 75th anniversary of VJ Day on 15 August 2020 will be commemorated in the appropriate way.
May I, too, congratulate you on your 10 years in the Chair, Mr Speaker? You will recall that I was one of your sponsors, and a very good decision I made at that time.
May I also thank the Leader of the House for announcing what there is of the business for next week? As well as the purgatory of this business, we now have the purgatory of the never-ending Conservative leadership contest. May we therefore have a debate not on bendy buses but on the construction of model buses, historic photography and uncut fields? It has to be said that that would be a lot more interesting than all the unicorn chasing that seems to be going on over Brexit. When it comes to Scotland, it seems for both candidates to be a matter of their telling Scotland, “You cannae dae that”, “We’re no going to let you do this” and “Don’t even think about that.” I am not sure how telling Scotland what it cannot do is somehow going to endear them to the people of Scotland. We know that with just the prospect of Prime Minister Boris support for independence rises to 53%, so we on these Benches are having a particularly good Tory leadership contest.
May we have a debate about Select Committees, given that we are celebrating 40 years since they were established? As you said yesterday, Mr Speaker, they are the key to holding Ministers to account for the Government’s conduct—except that they do not, because Ministers regularly refuse to attend Select Committee hearings, thereby evading scrutiny. The Scottish Affairs Committee has asked for a Home Office Minister to give evidence to our drugs inquiry, to explain the Government’s criminal justice approach to drugs. The Home Office has contemptuously refused to supply a Minister to appear before the Committee. In the next couple of weeks, we are likely to receive the news that there will have been 1,000 drug deaths in Scotland last year, so this refusal is a gross insult to the families of those affected. What sort of message does it send to reluctant Select Committee witnesses when Ministers themselves defiantly refuse to appear before Select Committees? It is a disgrace and it undermines our Select Committees.
As usual, it is the same old tunes. As we know, the hon. Gentleman is a gifted musician—I will keep coming back to this—and the House may or may not know that he played in Runrig, which was an excellent band, and Big Country, in which he was not the best-looking member in the line-up, I have to say, but he was none the less—[Hon. Members: “Withdraw!”] All right, it might just have been the way they were photographed. Anyway, he was indeed very talented. I have been thinking about the other bands that perhaps he should have played in at some point in his career. Given his grip on the great issues of the day, perhaps it should have been Wet Wet Wet; given his party’s manifesto, perhaps it should have been Madness; or, given the heartbreak and blubbering anguish that the hon. Gentleman would cause if his scaremongering policies ever led to Scottish independence, perhaps he would have been best placed in Tears for Fears. [Hon. Members: “Oh.”] Well, it was better than last week, Mr Speaker, if nothing else. You will have to agree that I am improving. [Interruption.] Perhaps it was worse than last week.
As for the specific points that the hon. Gentleman raised, he asked for a debate on model buses; I think he was referring to my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) and the cheery faces that he paints on these model buses, apparently. All I can say is that that is one of the most sensible suggestions I have ever heard the hon Gentleman make in the Chamber. We will certainly take that forward as a serious proposal.
More seriously, the hon. Gentleman rightly salutes 40 years since the formation of Select Committees. We should remember Norman St John-Stevas, who was instrumental in ensuring that Select Committees were brought to bear. The hon. Gentleman raised the specific issue of the appearance of Ministers before Select Committees, particularly in the context of the effect of drugs in Scotland. I am sure his comments will have been heard both in the Chamber and beyond the House.
Notwithstanding the Leader of the House’s gentle teasing, which has been taken in very good part by Members across the House, I think it only right to record that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) is a distinguished member of the parliamentary rock band, MP4—I say this really by way of a public information notice—and he performs with great skill and dexterity on keyboards. MP4 raise money for Help for Heroes and have performed with considerable distinction in my own constituency. Their performance is still talked about widely in the highways and byways of my beautiful constituency. The hon. Gentleman is greatly appreciated and I would not want him to feel unloved in this place.
Can we have a debate on the issue of transparency and the Heathrow third runway decision? Yesterday, like many Members, I met climate and environmental campaigners. People in my community are simply baffled as to how such an irrational decision to expand Heathrow could have been taken by a Government who, I know, care about the environment. When I put in freedom of information requests, what came back was so heavily redacted that there was little information to tell me how the decision was reached. Will the Leader of the House approach the Department for Transport to encourage it to be more transparent and to remind Ministers that they should bring people with them on a decision by explaining it fully, not by hiding it away in secret?
First, let me congratulate my right hon. Friend on the strength and veracity of her campaigning on this matter, albeit that the direction of travel is not exactly as she would wish. She raises the specific issue of transparency. I would be very happy to facilitate a meeting with any Minister whom she may wish to approach in order to discuss that matter.
As the Leader of the House has announced, the Backbench Business Committee has debates on both Wednesday and Thursday of next week, but, of course, it also determines which Department’s estimates will be debated on Monday and Tuesday, so it is a clean sweep for the week: four days of business determined by the Backbench Business Committee. Under those circumstances, it would be churlish of me to ask the Leader of the House for more time on this particular occasion.
I have a bit of sadness from my locality. I and my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist), who is in her place, discovered this week that, as we anticipated, 170 members of the workforce at De La Rue are being made redundant as a result of the Government awarding the contract to manufacture the British passport to a French-Dutch company. In future, the passports will be manufactured in Poland. One hundred and seventy workers lose their jobs in Gateshead, and our post-Brexit blue British passport is to be manufactured in Poland—you just could not make this stuff up.
Finally, let me make a very impassioned plea. A Nigerian mother and her three children live in my constituency. I will not give their names out at the moment, but I am very, very concerned that, if they are deported as they are threatened to be, the smallest child, a two-year-old girl who was born in this country, will be sent back to Nigeria where the family will subject her to female genital mutilation. It must not happen. Please, can we get it stopped?
The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to his prowess in bringing forward the various motions and debates to the House. I just have this feeling that all this will end up, on around 23 July, with him standing at this Dispatch Box. It cannot be inconceivable in the impenetrable combinations of what might happen between now and, for example, the end of October.
The hon. Gentleman raised the issue of De La Rue and the passports, which I know will have been noted and is on the record. As to the very serious matter that he raised at the end of his remarks around the Nigerian family facing deportation, I say not only that my door is open, but that I would be personally very keen to sit down with him and look at that in some detail so that we can determine between us the best way forward.
I congratulate you, Mr Speaker, on reaching the halfway mark in your career as our Speaker.
That we plant trees for those born later seems lost on the denizens of Network Rail who continue, despite a very good independent report, to destroy trees and shrubs trackside on an industrial scale, including in places such as Grantham in Lincolnshire. This is certainly unethical and much of it, given the effect on protected wildlife, illegal. Will the Leader of the House arrange for an urgent statement by Ministers to say how this decimation and destruction can be brought to an end before all that is bright and beautiful is made dark and ugly by the brutal bureaucrats of Network Rail?
I thank my right hon. Friend very much indeed for his eloquently placed question regarding trees and Network Rail. As we know, he is a lover of poetry, particularly the poetry of John Clare, who wrote a poem called “The Wind and Trees”. I know my right hon. Friend has a long-term love of trees and a long-term problem with wind, by which I mean, of course, his verbosity in this Chamber on occasion. May I share one small section of that poem with the House?
“I love the song of tree and wind
How beautiful they sing
The licken on the beach tree rind
E’en beats the flowers of spring.
From the southwest sugh sugh it comes
Then whizes round in pleasant hums”.
On that rather beautiful note, I think I should concede entirely to my right hon. Friend’s request and ensure that I secure a meeting with him and the Environment Secretary as soon as possible.
That exchange should be framed and displayed in a prominent place in the Lincolnshire abode of the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) .
As I am sure the Leader of the House is aware, Hull is a beautiful city and definitely a place that every Member should take time to visit. One way to make it even more beautiful than it already is—if that is possible—would be to introduce butterflies throughout the city. Hull wants to become the first city in the UK to be a butterfly city and adopt the brimstone butterfly, so please could the Leader of the House make time for a debate on the importance of biodiversity, butterflies and the beautiful city of Hull?
How nice to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I thank the hon. Lady for her question and for raising the matter of the brimstone butterfly, about which I currently know absolutely nothing, but will shortly know a great deal. I would perhaps point her to an Adjournment debate, where an appropriate Minister could be brought to the House to listen to her proposals.
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The right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) withdrew the dangerous bendy buses from London, and they have since been removed in Swansea, York, Bradford and Leeds. Despite that, the Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street, has proposed bendy buses for a route between Walsall and Birmingham. It is a wholly inappropriate use of public funds, because a perfectly good service already exists and local people are opposed to the decision. Will the Leader of the House use his good offices to ensure that the Mayor understands that bendy buses are dangerous and unwanted? The Mayor said that the buses were being introduced for the Commonwealth games. The Government have announced a funding package for the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth games, with 75% coming from central Government and 25% being raised locally. However, there was no news of consequential funding for Wales, and the Secretary of State for Wales did not mention that yesterday. I am pretty sure that the Government have to provide such funding, so will the Leader of the House ensure that the Secretary of State writes to the First Minister of Wales to explain whether Wales will receive it?
More than 40 Members have signed early-day motion 2368, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) and calls on the Government to automatically fund the legal representation of all victims of terrorist atrocities and their families.
[That this House expresses concern that victims of terrorist atrocities are not automatically eligible for legal aid; regrets that a recently published government review rejected introducing automatic non-means-tested legal aid funding to bereaved families after a state-related death; notes that state organisations involved in deaths from terrorist attacks have access to legal teams and experts at public expense; recognises that in France victims of terrorism, and their families, are automatically eligible for state-funded legal representation; and calls on the Government to automatically fund the legal representation of all victims of terrorist atrocities and their families, inclusive of all coroner hearings and inquests.]
Lawyers acting pro bono on behalf of families of the victims of the London Bridge terror attack have had their legal aid applications denied. At the same time, Government agencies have used public funds to hire some of the best legal teams to represent their interests in court. Families of victims of the March 2017 Westminster attack have also been told that they are unlikely to receive funding for the inquest, which ended last year. This is an insult to victims of terror, and the Government need to reverse it as soon as possible.
It is Armed Forces Day on Saturday to honour the men and women who make up our armed forces, and we had a good debate on that this week. At this very moment, the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Defence Secretary are announcing our five pledges to support the forces and their families—fair pay, decent housing, a voice for servicemen and women, an end to privatisation, and support for forces children—but there has been a real-terms pay cut for our servicemen and women over the past seven years. The starting salary of an Army private is now £1,150 lower in real terms than in 2010.
Sunday 30 June is the United Nations International Day of Parliamentarism. In total, there are 272 Chambers of Parliament, with more than 46,000 Members, and there has been no shortage of demand for you, Mr Speaker, to visit other countries. It has been helpfully pointed out by certain people that your ambassadorship and valuable insight into the workings of this Parliament are so important. On Sunday we can celebrate how the parliamentary system improves the day-to-day life of people across the world. That allows us to raise the plight of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, which I will do every week from this Dispatch Box until she is free. Turning to the hypocrisy of President Trump, he brought his family on a state visit while presiding over a policy that separates families. With Oscar and his daughter Valeria lying dead, I am sure every single parliamentarian around the world, and the whole House, joins me in saying, “May they rest in peace.”
The hon. Lady also mentioned the House of Lords regret motion relating to the climate change targets. I understand her point about the meaning of that motion, which will have been noted by this House. The main point remains that, as a Government, we have taken a leading step on tackling emissions and climate change, and that step should not be downgraded or overlooked in any way
The hon. Lady also raised the issue of bendy buses in and around Walsall, and I believe she was seeking my assistance in reaching out to the Mayor of the West Midlands. If she needs any assistance, I am happy to do that, but I am sure that if she were to approach the Mayor directly, he would, in his usual manner, be very accommodating and wish to engage with her.
The hon. Lady also asked whether I could prevail upon the Secretary of State for Wales to ensure that he writes to his counterpart on the matter of consequential costs arising from the Commonwealth games, and I will be happy to do that. As this has been raised at the Dispatch Box this morning, I know that that message will have been heard. She also raised the issue of legal representation for the victims of terrorism. I believe that the Justice Committee will shortly be considering these matters in some detail, which may be of interest to her, and of course a lengthy debate on just this subject took place in Westminster Hall a short time ago. I wish to echo the hon. Lady’s words on Armed Forces Day, which is on Saturday. We owe all our brave men and women a huge debt of gratitude for all that they do to keep us safe in these islands.
The hon. Lady also mentioned the UN International Day of Parliamentarism and rightly registered the fact that you, Mr Speaker, have played such an active role, over time, in making sure that the ideals of our mother of Parliaments and all the good things that flow from that are promoted across the world.
Finally, the hon. Lady rightly raised the issue of Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who went to Iran on holiday to see relatives and has been incarcerated for far too long. Our thoughts are with her, with her family and with her husband, and I assure the hon. Lady that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office continues to work hard to try to secure her release. Indeed, the Prime Minister has raised this specific matter with the Iranian authorities and leadership on more than one occasion.
Lastly, we have estimates next week. Thanks to the SNP—and perhaps in part because of my intervention—we can now actually discuss estimates on estimates day. A couple of amendments have been tabled that would link the estimates to a no-deal Brexit. Given that we will not have another opportunity properly to discuss Brexit, take a view on it and vote on it, I hope that the Government will engage with the process constructively, so that before we break for recess we can have another say on their Brexit plans.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the amendments to the estimates that we will consider next week, and suggested that there should be some discourse on matters relating to Brexit. I assure him that my door is always open to him so that we can discuss whichever matters he would like to raise with me.