Business of the House

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Thursday 3rd July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

Will the Leader of the House give the House the forthcoming business?

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Lucy Powell)]

The business for the week commencing 7 July is as follows:

Monday 7 July—Second Reading of the Pension Schemes Bill.

Tuesday 8 July—Remaining stages of the Football Governance Bill [Lords].

Wednesday 9 July—Committee of the whole House and remaining stages of the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill.

Thursday 10 July—General debate on the attainment and engagement of boys in education, followed by general debate on children’s health. The subjects for these debates was determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 11 July—Private Members’ Bills.

The provisional business for the week commencing 14 July will include:

Monday 14 July—Committee of the whole House and remaining stages of the Deprivation of Citizenship Orders (Effect during Appeal) Bill, following which the Chairman of Ways and Means is expected to name opposed private business for consideration.

Tuesday 15 July—Opposition day (9th allotted day). Debate on a motion in the name of the official Opposition. Subject to be announced.

[Jesse Norman]

I am sure the Leader of the House and all Members will want to join me in recognising this year as the 81st anniversary of the announcement by the Government of a national health service, by Sir Henry Willink in 1944.

Most of us wishing to celebrate an anniversary would probably have a bit of a party—maybe get a few friends round, order in some pizza and put up decorations. Only the Labour party would seek to celebrate its first year in office with the kind of Charlie Foxtrot multidimensional legislative omnishambles that we have seen in the past few days.

Given their three massive reverse ferrets of recent weeks, I must say I had thought that the Government had perfected the art of the U-turn. After all, they had had U-turns on winter fuel payments and the two-child benefit cap—each, in its own way, a little masterpiece of slow-motion dithering and indecision. But then, the other day, the Government upped their game significantly by executing a comprehensive 180° U-turn on their decision to hold a statutory inquiry into grooming gangs, having repeatedly said that it was not necessary. Brilliantly, the Prime Minister managed to U-turn at the same time on his own speech about the UK being an island of strangers.

I naively believed that that was the state of the art—the Government had maxed out on U-turns and nobody could be more bewilderingly incompetent than that. How wrong I was. On Tuesday, we saw something that was almost unheard of in the 750 years of our Parliament—a Minister pulling out his chainsaw and disembowelling his own Government’s flagship welfare Bill in mid-air on live television from the Dispatch Box. Really, Mr Speaker, that outstrips my poor powers of description. We need the pen of a Shakespeare or a Thackeray to do it justice; it is the quintessence of cock-up.

But, actually, Mr Speaker, this past week has been much worse even than that. Just as Nick Clegg was defined by his U-turn on student fees, so the Prime Minister will be defined by this moment: a new and supposedly reforming Government with an enormous majority have been unable not to cut, but to reduce the rate of increase in public spending on benefits, let alone make any serious actual reforms to protect people.

There has been a remarkable complacency about this Government and this past week has shown it up. They regard disagreement as something to be ignored or crushed: they do not answer questions at the Dispatch Box; they obfuscate on written questions; they try to ignore the Opposition; they dismiss the House of Lords; and they spurn their own Back Benchers.

Loyal Labour MPs, concerned about disabled people, have been trying to get a hearing on this issue for months, only to be repeatedly rejected, and this has been the result. Three things follow from it. First, there are the immediate consequences. It will be next to impossible now for the Government to achieve meaningful reform of the welfare system. They have shown that they have no ability to make savings. Taxes will go up while the economy continues to stall. Little wonder the gilt market exploded during Prime Minister’s questions yesterday.

Secondly, the Prime Minister has opened the door to future rebellions. Indeed, he has gone further than that; he has written the playbook for them. Doubtless, he will have a reshuffle sometime soon. Loyal dissenters will be punished, the talented cast out, and Select Committee Chairs bought off, but that will make no difference. There will be others—the Select Committee Chairs have shown that they are a powerful new force in Labour politics.

Finally, the Prime Minister has massively damaged his own reputation. He has endlessly harped on about the need for professional competence and moral seriousness, but this has been a year in government that started with a host of undisclosed personal gifts received and has ended with utter political humiliation. He has shown that he is in office, but not in power. What is the point of this Government? No one knows, not even the Prime Minister.

[Lucy Powell]

I start by sending all our condolences to the friends and family of Liverpool football club star, Diogo Jota, following the shocking news of his and his brother’s death in a tragic car accident. It came only two weeks after his wedding and after winning last season’s premier league. I am sure the thoughts of the whole House are with his family, friends, Liverpool teammates and former Wolves teammates. I also send my best wishes to the Lionesses at the start of the Euros.

Tomorrow is Action Mesothelioma Day. I commend all the campaigners who continue to fight for justice for those who have died or are ill as a result of asbestos cancer. My dear friends and former colleagues, Tony Lloyd and Paul Goggins, sadly no longer with us, were real champions of this cause and I pay tribute to them.

May I take this opportunity, Mr Speaker—I would rarely do this—to put on record how proud I am of my friend, the first female Chancellor, who has been doing a very difficult and formidable job. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] Quite honestly, she has more class than most Opposition Members—including, I am sure, some on the Front Bench. As the shadow Leader of the House has asked me to do so, may I update the House on the universal credit Bill, as it will soon be renamed? I completely acknowledge that how this business was managed was not the way that it should have been. The process did not live up to the standards to which I and the Government hold ourselves. However, as I said last week, we value the contributions of Members, especially those with particular experience of and interest in these issues. Critical to any good legislation is that it reflects parliamentary opinion, and I believe the Bill now does that. I think it is actually a good thing that we are prepared to listen and change, but Members should rest assured that we will take stock and reflect on how we can do things better going forward.

The Bill as amended, and the Timms review alongside it, now reflect the reform and safeguards that the House wants to see, and we will consider its remaining stages next week. The Bill’s title will become the Universal Credit Bill, as it will be narrower in scope. It will focus on ending the perverse incentives in universal credit, protecting the incomes of those currently in receipt of the universal credit health element and ending the reassessment of those with the most severe conditions, and clause 5 relating to personal independence payments will be deleted. Any future changes to PIP will come only following the Timms review, co-produced with disabled people and the bodies that represent them.

We can all agree that the welfare system needs reform and needs to be sustainable. The Conservatives should quite frankly be ashamed of their legacy, which needs addressing. It is a legacy of one in 10 working-age people on sickness or disability benefits; a legacy of a generation of young people with no mental health support and too few opportunities; a legacy of over 7 million people on NHS waiting lists, many unable to work; a legacy of stagnant growth and no plan for job creation. It is this Government who are tackling those long-term challenges.

The shadow Leader of the House wants to talk about the Government’s anniversary. I am really happy to talk about our anniversary, because I am proud of our first year in office: our 10-year NHS plan coming out today, and waiting lists coming down month on month; a new, ambitious industrial strategy, creating job opportunities around the country; mental health support and the skills revolution; British jobs for British workers, with decent pay and conditions; the biggest investment in affordable and social housing in 50 years; finally clearing up our rivers and seas; bringing the railways into public ownership; creating GB Energy and getting bills down; half a million more children getting free school meals every day, and new free breakfast clubs; wages going up, and the biggest ever wage rise for the lowest-paid workers. That is the change that people voted for, and that is the change that we are bringing in.

Tomorrow is another anniversary—one that the Tories do not want to talk about: their worst ever election defeat. They were utterly rejected, and one year on, it has got no better for them—it is just getting worse and worse. They have not learned, they have not reflected, they have not apologised. The shadow Leader of the House talks about U-turns, but no one knows more about changing position and changing direction than the Conservatives. They changed Prime Ministers three times in three months! They went from austerity one month to spaffing money up the wall the next. One moment it was levelling-up, and the next it was funnelling money into the shires—from Brexit opportunities to Brexit disaster. One day they had an industrial strategy, the next they ripped it up. They were for net zero, then against it. They could not even cancel HS2 properly. In 14 years they have had more positions than the Kama Sutra. It is no wonder they are completely knackered.