Business of the House

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Thursday 19th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

I am grateful, Mr Speaker. May I ask you and the Leader of the House to help us by helping to facilitate the re-establishment of the Backbench Business Committee as soon as possible after the King’s Speech in the new parliamentary Session? I will be writing to the Leader of the House with a list of as yet unaired debates from this Session which might be held prior to the re-establishment of the Committee in the new Session. We have applications for debates in this Chamber and in Westminster Hall on subjects such as protection for children with allergies, heritage pubs, floating offshore wind generation, knife crime, and several others.

I declare an interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on rail in the north. Yesterday I had a meeting with the Rail Industry Association’s northern section, and we were reflecting on what the chair of the National Infrastructure Commission said yesterday in urging the Government not to sell off too quickly land acquisitions for High-Speed 2 on cancelled northern routes. Those land acquisitions may well facilitate other schemes in the northern regions, and we hope that the Government would not sell those assets off too quickly.

Finally, as part of the crisis in Israel, Palestine and Gaza, a number of families in my constituency have been affected. Prior to the horrific Hamas attacks was the Jewish festival of Sukkot. A number of families from my Orthodox Haredi Jewish community were in Israel celebrating Sukkot and then became stranded and could not get home. Some have had to pay eye-watering sums to travel home by alternative means, because lots of flights were cancelled. Will the Leader of the House help me and those who have had to pay out sometimes whole-life savings to get their families of six or seven back home from Israel?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for a helpful advert for future potential business for his Committee. We have had conversations about this matter before, and I am keen to ensure that the Committee is re-established quickly so that it can get on with its important work. He raises an important point, with which I agree, that it is important that things have a proper masterplan, so I will write to make sure that the Secretaries of State for Transport and for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities have heard what he has said today. The hon. Gentleman will know that in cases where people are unable to return because they cannot afford to get out of a situation, there are schemes in place, run by the Foreign Office, under which people may be loaned finance. Many insurance products will not cover terrorist events, so I will make sure that the relevant Department has heard his concerns on that front.