Business of the House

Keith Simpson Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I am always grateful to the hon. Lady for her questions. She asked about the Standards Committee report. The decision on it is primarily one for the House itself, but the Government strongly support the need for the highest standards in public life. We welcome the report, which follows the inquiry chaired by one of the independent, lay members of the Standards Committee. There are now two reports from the Standards Committee that we need to consider and debate. We will seek an opportunity in due course to provide time to debate this report, and we will then set out the Government’s view on how the Committee’s conclusions can be taken forward.

The hon. Lady raised a variety of other matters, including that the Chief Whip has the use of a car. She has seen that, as we all have, in the newspapers this morning. I think one newspaper report referred to the Chief Whip as a former Minister or ex-Minister, which shows a certain limited understanding on the part of the journalists about the role of the Chief Whip in the British Government. He is most certainly a Minister, and he remains entitled to the use of a car.

The hon. Lady said that the House rose five hours early the other night, but there was a time when Oppositions used to debate the benefits uprating order, the pneumoconiosis compensation regulations, the mesothelioma payments regulations or the guaranteed minimum pensions increase order. They were all before the House on Monday, and the Opposition chose barely to debate them. That is why the House rose five hours early.

The hon. Lady asked about the cartoon of me as the “bionic babe”. I do not know how much it went for, but since it is 38 years old, I had a lot more hair in the cartoon than I can display in the House today, so it is certainly a collectors’ item.

The hon. Lady said that the Conservative party received £5 million from certain donors, but she neglected to mention that since the Leader of the Opposition was elected, the Labour party has received £35 million from trade unions. Of the Labour candidates selected since then, 60% have union links and half of them are from Unite. There is only one party in this country in which policies are purchased, and that is the Labour party. There is no doubt about that.

On tax avoidance, under the rules left by Labour, thousands of the richest home buyers did not pay stamp duty—they now do; foreigners did not pay any capital gains tax—they now do; and private equity managers paid lower tax rates than their cleaners—we have got rid of that. The previous Government left behind a terrible mess of tax loopholes that this Government have now closed.

With the addition of the £100 billion in extra revenue as a result of action on tax avoidance and evasion, not only are the Government finances stronger, but it has been another good week for the British economy, which Labour Members do not like to raise and about which they do not like to ask for debates. There was strong manufacturing growth in January, there is an increased growth forecast from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has just announced £5 billion of road and rail investment for the midlands. The hon. Lady criticised the Prime Minister for going to the British Chambers of Commerce conference, but it is no wonder that the Leader of the Opposition hid in his office while the conference took place just a few hundred yards away. They would have to hide him from 60 million people to have a real hope of winning the general election in May.

The hon. Lady knows the confidence I have in her. I call for her to have more control over her colleagues. She would not have offended the country’s nuns on television a week ago. If she had been in charge of the biggest campaign on women’s issues ever launched by the Labour party, she would not have led it from a 17-seater minibus. In the week of “Fifty Shades of Grey”, it is 50 shades of pink embarrassment for Labour Members.

[Mr Keith Simpson (Broadland) (Con)]

With other colleagues, my right hon. Friend rightly criticised the delay before the setting up of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war. Is he not perturbed that there is now a similar delay by our own Government in considering the lessons from the war in Afghanistan? I initiated a short debate yesterday, in which the Minister for the Armed Forces lamentably failed to answer any of the questions. We will have a strategic defence and security review this autumn. I urge my right hon. Friend to get a grip of the Government so that the Ministry of Defence and other Departments can begin a study on this important subject now.

[Mr Hague]

My hon. Friend initiated an important debate. He is experienced in military matters, and I assure him that in all the Government’s deliberations, including weekly deliberations in the National Security Council, we are learning the lessons of what has happened in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. It is possible to see the benefits of learning those lessons in the way we have worked in Somalia in recent years, for example, with a different model of intervention. However, it will be vital over the coming months to continue to learn lessons, and I will convey the importance of what my hon. Friend has said to my ministerial colleagues.