Business of the House

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

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

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Chris Grayling)]

The business for next week is as follows:

Monday 23 November—Consideration of an allocation of time motion, followed by all stages of the Northern Ireland (Welfare Reform) Bill.

I also expect there to be a statement on the national security strategy and the strategic defence and security review.

Tuesday 24 November—Opposition day (11th allotted day). There will be a debate on Trident, followed by a debate on HMRC office closures. Both debates will arise on a motion in the name of the Scottish National party, followed by a motion to approve a European document relating to restrictive measures against Iran.

Wednesday 25 November—Second Reading of the Childcare Bill [Lords], and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will deliver his joint autumn statement and spending review.

Thursday 26 November—General debate on the final report of the Airports Commission. The subject for this debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 27 November—The House will not be sitting.

The provisional business for the week commencing 30 November will include:

Monday 30 November—Business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Tuesday 1 December—Remaining stages of the Immigration Bill, followed by a debate on a motion relating to the High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill.

Wednesday 2 December—Opposition day (12th allotted day). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.

Thursday 3 December—Second Reading of the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill [Lords].

Friday 4 December—Private Members’ Bills.

I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 26 November and 30 November will be:

Thursday 26 November—General debate on the north-east devolution deal.

Monday 30 November—Debate on an e-petition relating to a tax on sugary drinks.

[Chris Bryant]

Last night I was in Colchester, where Nick Alexander, the 36-year-old man who was killed while he was at work selling rock merchandise in the Bataclan concert hall, went to school and where he ran a popular club night. I know that all our hearts go out to his family and friends, as they do to so many in Paris, in Baghdad and in Beirut. Of course we remember the valour of the emergency services and of the members of the public who have become unintended heroes at these moments, but should we not also pay tribute to the journalists, who have often had to stare the brutal truth of murderous radicalism in the eye and bring it to our attention? As Emile Zola said:

“It is not I who am strong; it is reason, it is truth.”

I am sure that the whole House will also want to send its heartfelt sympathy to the families of the two people killed in the explosion at the Celsa Steel factory in Cardiff yesterday.

May I ask the Leader of the House why he has still not given us any dates for next year’s recesses? It would be particularly useful for all hon. Members to be able to start making plans for next year, and I can see no reason why we should be halfway through November before the Leader of the House provides us with that information.

The Leader of the House has provided us with a single day for all the remaining stages of the Immigration Bill, on 1 December, but the Government promised that they would publish the review by Stephen Shaw of the welfare of detainees in immigration removal centres before the Bill completed its passage. It must surely be right that we in this House consider Mr Shaw’s findings before signing the Bill off. Will the Leader of the House guarantee that the report will be published in plenty of time before 1 December?

Will the Leader of the House also allow time for a three-day debate on the autumn statement? I have asked this question before, and he will probably say no, but I am going to try again. Parliamentary scrutiny of Government spending is particularly shoddy. It is extremely cursory at the best of times. Billions of pounds are pushed through on the nod and amendments are allowed only if they are tabled by a Minister. The Government are now preparing the most aggressive assault on public services in this country since the second world war, yet the Leader of the House seems to think that a mere two-hour question-and-answer session will provide plenty of scrutiny for some of the most far-reaching measures our constituents will face during this Parliament.

The Government have already tried to be too clever by half, by pushing the tax credits cuts through in secondary legislation, so we will be going over the Chancellor’s plans with a fine-toothed comb, not least because we have listened to the Prime Minister very closely this week and he keeps saying that the counter-terrorism budget will be protected. We are delighted by that, but even the Prime Minister has been lobbying the Thames Valley police force against local cuts to front-line services, and Robert Quick, the former head of counter-terrorism at the Metropolitan police, has said that planned cuts to the wider police budget

“will make Britain more vulnerable to terrorism.”

It is the first duty of Government to protect the people, so surely that single sentence should make the Government think twice.

In South Wales alone, we have lost 284 full-time police officers, and further cuts will lead to another 300 being lost. I am sure that every Member in the House could produce similar figures for their own local police force. At a time when the Secretary of State for Wales has pointed to the dangers of radicalisation there, and when Cardiff and Swansea regularly host major sporting events, would it not be a real dereliction of duty yet again to cut police budgets by more than the 5% that police forces have already agreed?

We also want to look at the Government’s travel costs when we are looking at expenditure, in the light of the news today that they are planning to go ahead with “call me Dave airways”. I mention that because when the Leader of the House was shadow Transport Secretary, he told the BBC, responding to the idea that a special jet should be set aside for the Prime Minister, then Mr Blair, that this was

“the wrong moment to be splashing out taxpayers’ money on funding the government to travel in style”.

What on earth has changed? Is it just that the Leader of the House has changed his job, and now that he has a ministerial car he has got used to it and wants everybody else to travel in style? Is it that, suddenly, there is lots more cash to be splashed around in government? Or is it that he has become something of a Liberal Democrat? We all know what the Lib Dems did in the last Government: they voted things through in Parliament and then went back to their constituencies and campaigned against them. That is exactly what he seems to do now. We never thought that he was a Liberal Democrat, but perhaps there always was one inside him.

May we also have a debate on Foreign Office funding for bilateral groups? The Franco-British Council was formed 43 years ago, but this August the Minister for Europe wrote to its secretary-general, Ann Kenrick, telling her that its grant will be cut from £100,000 a year by more than 80%. The council’s most recent seminar was organised by a Muslim school teacher, Samia Essabaa, who was in the Stade de France with pupils last Friday. It hopes that its next seminar will be on “Tackling Islamic radicalisation”. Surely this kind of work is worth the £100,000 a year that the council has been receiving and is not due for a cut—it is certainly worth more than a special jet for the Prime Minister.

On Syria, we in the Labour party stand ready to listen, because everyone wants an end to the civil war, the defeat of ISIL, the end of the Assad regime and the safe return of the refugees. The Prime Minister said that he will respond to the Foreign Affairs Committee in the next few days. When does the Leader of the House expect this to be? Will he ensure that the House has time to digest that reply before any motion is put to it? May I also urge him to make provision for a two-day debate when it comes to any formal Government proposal? When the House was summoned back on the 28 August 2013, we had a seven-and-a-half-hour debate. That was exceptional because the day did not start with questions, yet even so there was a five-minute limit on speeches, which was reduced to three minutes after 8 pm. Surely, when we are debating such matters it is vital that hon. Members can make proper contributions, and we should have a two-day debate.

On Friday, Mr Speaker, as you know, the UK national Youth Parliament sat in this Chamber under your chairmanship. Last year’s Youth Parliament chose mental health as its campaign for the year, on the back of which the Youth Select Committee, helped by the House of Commons staff, published its report this week entitled “Young People’s Mental Health”. It is an excellent report, which argues that mental health is as important as physical health and says that more than half of all mental ill health starts before the age of 14. It also refers to the stigma of mental ill health as the greatest battle of all. Today is international men’s day, and it is a sad fact that suicide is still the biggest killer of men between the ages of 20 and 49 in England and Wales. Young gay men are six times more likely than their straight counterparts to take their own lives. Is it not incumbent on all of us to tackle the root causes of mental ill health, to protect the vulnerable and to end the stigma which is all too often attached to it?