Business of the House

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House give us the business for next week?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Andrew Lansley)]

The business for next week is as follows:

Monday 16 December—Second Reading of the Care Bill [Lords].

Tuesday 17 December—Remaining stages of the Local Audit and Accountability Bill [Lords] followed by, if necessary, consideration of Lords Amendments.

Wednesday 18 December—Opposition Day [15th allotted day]. There will be a debate on accident and emergency services, followed by a debate on food banks.

Both debates will arise on an official Opposition motion.

Thursday 19 December—Select Committee statement on the publication of the Ninth Report from the Transport Committee entitled “High Speed Rail: On Track?” followed by matters to be raised before the forthcoming Adjournment as selected by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 20 December—The House will not be sitting.

The provisional business for the week commencing 6 January 2014 will include:

Monday 6 January—Remaining stages of the Water Bill.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 19 December and 9 January 2014 will be:

Thursday 19 December—A debate on immigration from Bulgaria and Romania.

Thursday 9 January—A debate on the Fifth Report of the Transport Select Committee on access to transport for disabled people, followed by a debate on the First Report of the International Development Select Committee on global food security.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for announcing next week’s business. May I take this opportunity to wish him a happy birthday for yesterday?

I also thank the Leader of the House and you, Mr Speaker, for the chance the House had on Monday to pay tribute to Nelson Mandela. Will the Leader of the House confirm when he plans to reschedule the business that we had to move to accommodate what was an entirely appropriate and solemn occasion?

Today the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority released its recommendations on MPs’ pay and pensions. Does the Leader of the House agree with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister that those suffering a cost of living crisis will not understand a pay rise many times the rate of inflation? Does he agree that, notwithstanding IPSA’s independence, a joint meeting should take place today to ask it to reconsider the package?

Given that the autumn statement has, in effect, turned into the winter statement, does the Leader of the House agree that it is crucial for the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to make a statement on the provisional local government finance settlement for England before the House rises next week? Local authorities are already struggling with huge cuts and they need as much time as possible to deal with the unpalatable decisions this Government have left them with.

More than 50 hon. and right hon. Members attended yesterday’s Westminster Hall debate, secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson), on the future of the badger cull. It is becoming increasingly clear that the cull is an expensive disaster for farmers, wildlife and all taxpayers. Since the extensions to the cull were announced, hundreds of thousands of people have signed petitions and many experts have demanded that the Government rethink their approach. Some hon. Members who were in favour of the cull are changing their minds, but all the Environment Secretary does is ignore the facts, hide behind written ministerial statements and assert his personal belief that it is working. Does the Leader of the House agree with the swelling numbers on his own Back Benches who recognise that this cull is a travesty? Will he arrange for the Secretary of State to emerge from his sett and come to the House for an urgent debate in Government time on the future of the 40 further culls that are currently scheduled to take place?

Last week’s autumn statement confirmed one central fact: working people are worse off under this Government. The Chancellor made the desperate claim that

“real household disposable income is rising”.—[Official Report, 5 December 2013; Vol. 571, c. 1101.]

We know, however, that the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies was right when he said that household income is

“almost certainly significantly lower now than it was in 2010.”

Does the Leader of the House think that the Chancellor was right to include the incomes of charities, universities and pension contributions in his calculations as if they were household income? Does he agree with the Office for Budget Responsibility that it is “inconceivable” that household incomes are rising?

The Government began by insisting that they did not enjoy making spending cuts, but the mask slipped a few weeks ago when the Prime Minister donned his white tie and tails and told an audience in the City that public spending cuts are not just for now but for ever. As the Office for Budget Responsibility has said, by 2017-18 Government spending on public services and administration

“will shrink to its smallest share of national income at least since 1948, when comparable National Accounts data are first available”.

This Government’s stated aim is pre-1948 levels of spending, but with double the number of retired people to care for and far more expensive health needs. Despite the hollow protestations of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury today, the fact is that the Liberal Democrats signed up only last week to creating this pre-war vision of an unnaturally shrunken and feeble state.

The Chancellor can throw as much mud as he likes at the previous Labour Government, but the British people will see straight through him to the cold, stark reality of this baleful vision of a country with no social justice and no safety net—a country in which people sink or swim. Will the Leader of the House arrange a debate in Government time on this Government’s Hobbesian vision of the future?

The fiasco at the Department for Work and Pensions continued this week, with the Secretary of State being dragged kicking and screaming to the House after trying to sneak out a major delay to his flagship universal credit programme two hours before the autumn statement. Despite wasting many millions of pounds on useless IT and admitting that he will fail to meet his already extended deadline, he farcically claimed in the House that the entire programme was “essentially…on time”. On that definition, living standards are essentially soaring, the badger cull is essentially a success and England is essentially winning the Ashes.

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House, especially for her birthday greetings. I heard the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), tell us about her grandmother’s 100th birthday today, and it is great that I have a way to go. I am encouraged by that thought; I am of course now more than halfway there.

The hon. Lady asked about the business that was on Monday’s Order Paper. I am very glad that we could rearrange the business on Monday to have the tribute debate, which was one of those occasions when the House demonstrated its capacity to capture the nation’s mood and speak on its behalf. Of those items of business, the Secretary of State for Defence made a statement on defence reform on Tuesday that he would have made on Monday, and we dealt with the statutory instrument relating to terrorism on Tuesday that would otherwise have been debated on Monday. I hope to be able to announce a date for the Intellectual Property Bill when I announce future business in the new year.

The shadow Leader of the House asked about the IPSA report that has been published this morning. Like other hon. Members, she will have heard what the Prime Minister and, indeed, the Leader of the Opposition said yesterday, and I hope that IPSA very clearly hears exactly what the party leaders have said. It is incumbent on hon. Members across the House who disagree with its judgment to make that very clear to IPSA. I have done so on behalf of the Government, making it clear that IPSA should take into account the public sector pay environment; our conclusion is that IPSA has not done that and should reconsider. The report is not a final determination, in the sense that IPSA must have a statutory review after the election, and it has made it clear that it will do so. I hope that such points will be made forcefully, so that IPSA arrives at such a reconsideration on that basis.

The hon. Lady asked about the badger cull. There was of course a debate yesterday, and the farming Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), responded to it. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and his colleagues will continue with the pilots—I stress that they are pilots and give us an enormous amount of information about the mechanisms by which a badger cull can be pursued. Colleagues in the House and people outside need to be aware of the enormous cost and the tens of thousands of cattle that have been slaughtered as a consequence of the failure to tackle bovine TB previously. That has to be tackled, and the question is how we can do it most effectively. The pilots will give us the information that we need.

I was pleased that the hon. Lady said that there was a need to follow up on the autumn statement. Although time is tight, any opportunity that we have to follow up on the autumn statement will be welcomed by Government Members. It will give us an opportunity to debate the improvement in the growth forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility; the progress that we are making on cutting the deficit; the freeze on fuel duty all the way through to 2015, which will mean that the price of fuel will be 20p per litre lower by the end of the Parliament than under Labour’s plans; and the reduction in the burden of business rates. Like many colleagues in the House, I spoke to small businesses on Saturday who expressed their support for the reduction in business rates that the Chancellor announced in the autumn statement.

Such a debate would also give us the opportunity to talk about how we can raise living standards. That can be achieved only with a stronger economy. It comes ill from any representative of the Labour party who stands at that Dispatch Box to follow the example of the shadow Chancellor and fail to recognise—indeed, to be in complete denial of—the simple fact that the reason why living standards in this country have suffered is that the economy shrank under Labour, in the worst recession for a century, owing to a 7.2% reduction in national output. The only way in which we will be able to raise people’s living standards is by strengthening the economy, which the coalition Government are doing.

Finally, it was a bit rich of the hon. Lady to speak of a “fiasco” at the Department for Work and Pensions on a day when the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions could not decide whether the state pension would be inside or outside the welfare cap. She replied as she did because Labour has it in mind to curb increases in the state pension in order to raise benefits. That is not a judgment that the Government will make.

Finally, I recall that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions—