Oral Answers to Questions

Claire Perry Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Claire Perry. [Interruption.] Order. I want to hear Claire Perry.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

On the issue of progress, will the Deputy Prime Minister—

[Mr Straw]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman may bellow as much as he likes. I am happy to account for everything that we are doing in this coalition Government—a coalition Government who have brought together two parties, working in the national interest, to sort out the mess that he left behind. We may have to wait for his memoirs, but perhaps one day he will account for his role in the most disastrous decision of all: the illegal invasion of Iraq.

[Claire Perry]

rose— [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The House really must start to behave itself. We have made slow progress—[Interruption.] Order. That progress must get faster from now on, with short questions and short answers. I call Claire Perry.

[Claire Perry]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Third time lucky.

Can the Deputy Prime Minister tell us what the coalition Government have done in 10 short weeks to preserve the civil liberties of the British people—liberties that have been so cruelly eroded by the Labour party over the past 13 years?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The authoritarian record of the Labour Government is one of the most dismal records in modern British history, featuring the illegal invasion of Iraq, the turning of our prisons into overcrowded colleges of crime, the decimation of our civil liberties, the invasion of our privacy, and the roll-out of a surveillance state without any checks or balances; and look at what we have managed—