Business of the House

With

permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a short statement to update the House on tomorrow’s business. The business for tomorrow is now:

Wednesday 15 July—A general debate on Iran—[Interruption.]

Shocking!

Order. Mr Stafford, do you want to leave now? I will not have shouting like that again. Are you going to answer me?

I apologise.

Apology accepted.

The general debate on Iran will be followed by a motion to approve a statutory instrument relating to national security. The business for the remainder of the week is unchanged.

Thursday 16 July—The Sir David Amess summer Adjournment debate. The subject of which has been determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

The House will rise for the summer recess at the conclusion of business on Thursday 16 July and return on Tuesday 1 September. I will make a further business statement on Thursday.

I call the shadow Leader of the House.

This is a total humiliation and embarrassment for the Government. Yesterday they published an emergency change to Government business in order to ram the Hillsborough law through this House, with no notice and an absolute minimum of scrutiny. Now they have backtracked again on their own business and cancelled the Opposition day that they themselves had scheduled. Why is that?

Let me read the motion that caused so much consternation in the Whips Office and in No. 10:

“That this House calls on the Government to bring forward a motion to change the date it adjourns to Monday 20 July to enable the new Prime Minister to make a statement about his plans for Government.”

In other words, the Government changed the business and refused to delay the activity of this House by even one day to permit the Prime Minister, as he will be, to make a statement and to answer questions about his intentions and plans.

The Government have a majority of more than 150, but they could not trust their MPs to vote the right way on that motion and they could not bear the idea of a new Prime Minister facing any scrutiny before September. Let me remind us all that that Prime Minister has been chosen by a coronation, not a contest, with no known platform, almost no known policies and no idea of his priorities or his Cabinet team. The Government pushed us to take an Opposition day tomorrow, but they cannot bear the scrutiny, and now they are cancelling it. To do so by hiding—thoroughly distastefully, I am afraid—under the very distressing news of what is happening in Iran, when a Minister could have made a statement today or tomorrow on that issue, is completely disreputable. The Government are not even cancelling the Opposition day for legislation. They could have kept the day for the Representation of the People Bill, but they are cancelling it for a general debate, with no votes.

If I may, I will introduce some facts into the situation. I appreciate the frustration of Members when business is changed at short notice and when debates are postponed, but they will appreciate the importance of the House being able to discuss the escalating and fast-moving situation in the middle east before the recess. The right hon. Gentleman, who knows that I hold him in high regard, may want to take away the word “distastefully” and have another think about that. What is distasteful is the crisis erupting once again in the middle east. This is an opportunity to update the House, and for Members to give their views on this matter at the earliest opportunity.

The right hon. Gentleman reads out a motion that, he tells us, was to be tabled for tomorrow. I have to say that that is the first I have heard of the motion; no such motion was tabled for the Opposition day tomorrow. We did not see the words of the motion. A decision was made on whether the House should debate an unfolding international crisis.

The right hon. Gentleman talks about what might happen on Monday. He had the opportunity yesterday to raise the question of whether the future Prime Minister would come to the House on Monday. Others raised that issue, but he did not.

I raised it in the Daily Mail!

The right hon. Gentleman might have raised it in the Daily Mail, but he did not raise it in the business statement yesterday, unlike others across the House. As for his suggestion that there should be a statement tomorrow, I remind him that if the business tomorrow was as he asks for it to be, there would be no statement. We do not have statements on Opposition days.

The Leader of the House says that there will be a motion on a statutory instrument on national security. I hope that is the SI that will finally allow us to proscribe the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has been sufficiently behind much of the anti-Jewish hatred that we see in this country, and has been one of the most destabilising forces when it comes to our democracy and our safety. Is the Leader of the House able to confirm what that SI is about? Will he give us hope that the IRGC will finally be banned tomorrow?

I hope to be able to confirm that in due course, but my hon. Friend is not far off.

I understand that usually, if the Government want to make a statement relating to foreign affairs, we get a statement from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, so I hope it will not be a habit of the House to change the whole business to Back-Bench debates, rather than giving us a formal statement from Government Ministers. While we are on the subject of Opposition days, it would be remiss of me not to highlight that the Leader of the Opposition recently said:

“The fact is we are the smallest opposition party in history—we don’t have enough MPs.”

I suggest to the Leader of the House that if the Government want to allocate more Opposition day debates to the Liberal Democrats, we will gladly take them. [Interruption.] The Opposition have come out in force today—well done on coming out today.

More broadly, the country will be wondering why, although we have effectively known for weeks who the new Prime Minister will be, it will be months before he faces any parliamentary scrutiny on his plans. Will the Leader of the House explain how this situation has been allowed to happen? Does he agree that our constituents deserve answers about the new Prime Minister’s plans much sooner?

The reality is that if a new Administration is formed on Monday, it will take some time to get that Administration into place. As I said yesterday, there are no plans to change the recess dates; those dates were set for the convenience of Members, to enable them to plan ahead. The work of the Government will continue through the recess, and I am sure that once the next Prime Minister is in place, he will come to the House, following recess, to update it on his plans.

Is the Leader of the House as surprised as I am by the faux outrage from so many Conservative Members? Would it not have been better to see them in the Lobby with us, voting to increase workers’ rights and the minimum wage, and to lift the two-child benefit cap?

I absolutely welcome many of the Conservative hon. and right hon. Gentlemen who are present, because we do not often see them in this place. Mr Speaker, it tells you something about the state of the modern-day Conservative party when its Members can turn out en masse for this statement, but not for debate on some of the big issues of the day.