Business of the House
Kevin Brennan Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Hague
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Councils ought to be able to answer the telephone to the people who live within their district or county. Perhaps her council should have an answerphone message referring to the £5 billion that the Government have supplied for council tax freezes for five successive years in order to keep down council tax, which doubled under the previous Government. That would be a good message to send out to the whole country.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
It is becoming increasingly clear that we need a debate on the role of the Chief Whip, because he is clearly not up to the job. Surely a better job for him would be Lord Privy Seal, not just because his first act as Chief Whip was to be sealed in the privy, but because it is the fifth highest order of job in the state and yet has absolutely no functions whatsoever attached to it.
Mr Hague
I can see that Labour Members have a thing about the Chief Whip—I do not know whether it is an obsession, paranoia, stalking, or what it is. My right hon. Friend will be fascinated to hear these references to him. I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that we already have a very capable Lord Privy Seal in my right hon. and noble Friend—
Business of the House
Kevin Brennan Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Hague
This specific point is under consideration by Defence Ministers. My hon. Friend may know that a large number of wrecks have been designated under the Protection of Military Remains Act. Since 2002, there have been five statutory instruments relating to that. The Ministry of Defence is now considering which ships, from a list of more than 5,000, should be included in the next statutory instrument, but I can confirm that the three he has just referred to are part of that consideration, and I know that the Defence Secretary will note his strong support for their inclusion.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
We should have that debate about the role of the Chief Whip, because he is not here again. I wonder whether he has something personal against the Leader of the House, whom I have found to be a very affable fellow in the 35 years that I have known him, despite our political differences. The Chief Whip’s job is just to sit quietly in the corner of the classroom. Does it not come to something when he cannot do that and is playing truant all the time?
Business of the House
Kevin Brennan Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Hague
This is an important issue and my hon. Friend has been assiduous in pursuing it. I hope it is not necessary to have a debate on it. There have, as my hon. Friend says, been important changes in the Environment Agency, including changes in leadership and personnel. We all hope that that change will be sustained. If it is not, my hon. Friend would be quite justified in calling for a debate.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
May we debate the role of the Chief Whip, whom the Leader of the House said was gainfully employed? Does he include in that the bizarre set of videos that have appeared on the internet showing the Government Chief Whip doing his impersonation of the fictional Tory Chief Whip Francis Urquhart, and appearing in somebody’s back garden declaiming lines from the TV programme “Game of Thrones”? Has the Leader of the House seen these videos and does he think something should be done about the increasingly attention-seeking antics of the Government Chief Whip?
Mr Hague
I am a little busy with the British constitution and many other matters, and I have not been watching these YouTube clips in my spare time—not that I have much spare time—but they sound fascinating. It is of course right that right hon. and hon. Members use all the new forms of social media to communicate with our constituents and the country at large, as I do on Twitter, which I recommend to hon. Members. No I have not seen the clips, but I look forward perhaps to taking a look.
Points of Order
Kevin Brennan Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
I simply say two things to the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). First, the main recourse for a Member disappointed that a matter he or she judges to be urgent is not being aired in the House is of course to apply to me for permission to put an urgent question, 185 of which have, I think, been granted since June 2009. Secondly, although I have made it clear that I think the Leader of the House is absolutely a person of his word and of unimpeachable integrity, I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that if the Speaker were required to apply a sanction every time something said was not subsequently delivered upon, I would be an extraordinarily busy man.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. May I take the opportunity to apologise to the Leader of the House for suggesting during the business statement that he was wrong to say that the Government Chief Whip was gainfully employed? I understand that the Government Chief Whip and his dog Snowy have just become runners-up in the parliamentary dog of the year competition, so I withdraw the implication that he does not have much to do with his time.
Mr Speaker
That is a characteristically resourceful and ingenious use, and abuse, of the point of order procedure by the hon. Gentleman.
Perhaps we can now proceed to the first of the two debates scheduled to take place today under the auspices of the Backbench Business Committee. That first debate is on the repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. To move the motion—wow, does he look excited about it—I call Sir Edward Leigh.
Devolution (Scotland Referendum)
Kevin Brennan Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
It is true that on devolved matters, English MPs do not have a vote, but neither do Welsh MPs, Scottish MPs or MPs from Northern Ireland. However, SNP MPs have traditionally resiled from voting on some such matters because they believe that that will help to lead to the break-up of the United Kingdom. Would not any such proposal be part of a slippery slope towards the break-up of the United Kingdom?
Mr Hague
Let me come to that matter. I propose to work briefly and logically through the nations of the United Kingdom in my remarks and I will come to the question that has become known as English votes on English laws. However, I reject from the outset the idea that fairness for England is disruptive or dangerous for the United Kingdom. It is part of the effort to keep the United Kingdom together, just as fairness for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has always been.
Business of the House
Kevin Brennan Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Hague
Yorkshire and Scotland do have much in common, including a lot of sound common sense, and we hope that it will be displayed next week.
Superfast rural broadband is very important to my hon. Friend’s constituents and to mine. Public expenditure is higher in Scotland than in North Yorkshire in particular, and indeed than in much of the rest of the UK. In fact, Scots benefit from spending that is about £1,200 per head higher than we have in England, which affects such things. However, we are investing £790 million in superfast broadband access—North Yorkshire is at the forefront of the rural counties that will benefit from that—and 1 million UK premises are already connected, so this work is well under way, including in England.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
Further to our exchange last week about having a debate on the Welsh language, the Leader of the House will know that the “Gododdin”, the early mediaeval Welsh epic poem, features a battle at Catterick in his constituency—soldiers from the Welsh settlement of Edinburgh fought in his constituency—while the very name of Glasgow comes from the Welsh for a “green place”. Does that not show that, from Aberdeen to Aberystwyth, the historical ties that bind the people of this island are deep and enduring, and that they should not be idly cast aside?
Mr Hague
The hon. Gentleman makes a very strong point. I have a copy of the “Gododdin” at home, and I am well aware that a battle was fought in about the year 600 in Catraeth, as Catterick, where I live, was then called. I sometimes visit the mound by the church where the warriors killed in that battle are supposed to have been buried. The fact that there was a Welsh-speaking tribe and that a battle in England included people who had come down from Scotland is, as he says, a reminder of our intrinsic ties and of the dark times when this kingdom was not so united. I hope that people will also bear that sort of history in mind when they vote next week.
Business of the House
Kevin Brennan Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Hague
As I have announced, there will be a debate, requested by the Backbench Business Committee, on governance of the House next Wednesday. In addition, questions can be put to my right hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), who answers for the House of Commons Commission. The Commission will meet next Monday; I will attend that meeting—the first such meeting that I will have attended as Leader of the House—and of course I will draw the Commission’s attention to points raised on the Floor of the House.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
May we debate the Welsh language? The Leader of the House will have seen the American ambassador’s effort to speak Welsh on YouTube ahead of the NATO summit in Wales, and President Obama spoke Welsh this morning when he spoke to schoolchildren in Wales—I may say his effort was better than that of the right hon. Gentleman’s predecessor as Secretary of State for Wales. Given the right hon. Gentleman’s close connections to Wales, would he care to welcome the summit to Wales in the language of heaven?
Mr Hague
I strongly welcome the summit to Wales. Before I stepped down as Foreign Secretary, I regularly explained to NATO Foreign Ministers the wonders and attractions of Wales, including a fair bit about the language. I shall be going there myself in a couple of hours, to host the meeting on preventing sexual violence in conflict—a side meeting during the NATO summit—so I will add to that warm welcome. I do not think we need to debate the Welsh language next week. Indeed, in my household, debating the Welsh language is not a very good idea; adopting the Welsh language is a good idea, and I strongly welcome the efforts of President Obama and many others to do so.
Business of the House
Kevin Brennan Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Lansley
I am happy to say that my right hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House would respond on behalf of the Government if the new clauses were to be debated. I can reassure my right hon. Friend that the Government believe that the current position constitutes a reasonable balance between some people’s wish for more opportunities to shop in large stores on Sundays and the desire of others for further restrictions, and that we are therefore not minded to legislate for further liberalisation.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
The issue of passports was aired in the House yesterday, but we did not receive an answer from the Prime Minister to my question about the Passport Office. It would be helpful to hear some sort of statement about the matter. I should like to know why the Passport Office, which is providing such a terrible service, is being run not as a service to the public, but as a cash cow for the Chancellor. Last year, it made a £73 million profit.
Mr Lansley
Actually, I think that I did hear an answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question. The purpose of any agency of that kind is to cover its costs. Its charges should be set, and prudential levels of surplus will enable it to cover those costs. There would be no merit in running it in any other way.
The hon. Gentleman asked whether the Passport Office was being run as a service to the public. It is, absolutely. As is clear from the answers given by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary during yesterday’s debate, substantial steps are being taken—through the helpline, the provision of additional front-line staff, and the waiving of charges for urgent applications when people have to travel—to ensure that the service to the public is achieved as we wish it to be.
Business of the House
Kevin Brennan Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Lansley
The hon. Lady might like to note that full-time employment was up on the last quarter by 176,000 and that 573,000 more people are in full-time work than a year ago. This is not just about an increase in part-time employment because there has been a substantial increase in full-time employment. The truth of the matter is that we are seeing not only big increases in employment, but increases in wages, too. As can be seen from the March data, the increase in wages was slightly higher than the increase in inflation.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
May we have a debate on the conduct of SpAds—special advisers—because the Prime Minister is clearly not going to sack Cabinet Ministers over the unseemly rows we have seen between the Home Secretary and the Education Secretary? The conduits for some of the most poisonous briefings are SpAds, and that is in breach of the code of conduct. According to press reports, Fiona Cunningham, the Home Secretary’s special adviser, had her card marked in March for this kind of behaviour. Will the Prime Minister now sack her, or is he too weak to act?
Mr Lansley
Let me reiterate what I said earlier: my colleagues and their teams are working together well for this purpose. We have robust discussions inside government. Can the hon. Gentleman honestly look me in the eye and tell me that the robust discussions we have inside this Government are worse than the kind of discussions that took place under the previous Government? They are not worse, and the hon. Gentleman knows it. The last Government were riven; this Government are working together as a coalition and between parties in this Government.
Business of the House
Kevin Brennan Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Mr Lansley
Yes, and my hon. Friend has a considerable interest in heraldry as well.
Currently the flags of the Commonwealth are flown in Parliament square for Commonwealth day. Flags also fly on the square for Europe day and UN day, and the flags of the overseas territories and the Commonwealth dependencies fly for Trooping the Colour and London state visits. Any unscheduled flag-flying outside of designated days and ceremonial occasions in Parliament square would require the approval of both Buckingham palace and the Earl Marshal. Parliament square is also managed by the Greater London authority, which schedules events throughout the year, so there might be a loss of revenue if flags are flown throughout the year and access to the square is restricted. To that extent, I am afraid there is not a simple yes-no answer, but my hon. Friend asked an interesting question to which there is, I hope, an interesting answer.
Kevin Brennan
It is clear from the Leader of the House’s statement that there are really only two reasons why the Government are staggering on. One is that they passed the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 and the other is that not every Liberal Democrat has yet been given a knighthood, a damehood or a turn as a Government Minister. As it is so hard to kill zombies off, why does the Leader of the House not announce the repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act so that we can put an end to this long night of the living dead?
Mr Lansley
On the contrary, the hon. Gentleman may have read the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee report of this week which, among other things, said the planning and certainty given by the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 has been very useful. When he hears the Queen’s Speech and sees the future legislative programme, he will see that this Government are using that certainty of being able to deliver a fourth Session programme very effectively.