Business of the House

Neil Coyle Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie]

I think my hon. Friend is fundamentally right. Having the time to table amendments early is welcome, of course, and the Government will rightly argue that this is Parliament deciding. Nevertheless, the consequences are absolutely as my hon. Friend has described, and as was described previously.

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman gave the example of the potential £1,000 levy for incoming non-UK EU citizens. Equally, in the absence of information from the Government, we may face amendments on employers who already have employees from other EU countries. I met employers from the London hotel sector yesterday, who are very worried because about 80% of employees in some of their hotels are non-UK EU citizens. We may seek to have amendments on that issue, but in the absence of Government information, that is unclear at this stage.

[Stewart Hosie]

Indeed. This point is oft repeated, but one could—again, without stretching your patience too much, Madam Deputy Speaker—add the Scottish fish processing sector to the hospitality sector, for precisely the same reason. Given that the Clerks will not, I assume, have had access to the White Paper to identify what may or may not have been accepted by way of clarity or change, that makes these things extremely difficult.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hannah Bardell]

I absolutely take on board what you say, Madam Deputy Speaker, but you know that—

[Neil Coyle]

The hon. Lady will be very much aware that 16 and 17-year-olds did have a vote in the Scottish referendum. Would she welcome amendments to this Bill to ensure that in future, across the UK, 16 and 17-year-olds are guaranteed a right to vote on any change to constitutional arrangements?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. This is not about any amendments, but a very specific motion. We are not amending the Bill now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Grant]

I was referring not so much to the content of the Bill, but to its extent and limited impact and wondering why we needed so much additional time to table amendments.

I concur with a lot of what has been said. Generally, the public are not interested in procedure, the timing of amendments, what days of the week Bills are debated and so on. This time, it is important because the procedures of the House are clearly being used to get the result that the Government want.

[Neil Coyle]

Let us not forget that the Government are here today only because the Supreme Court made them follow this procedure. Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that the two other legal cases that are already under way—one on European economic area membership and one on whether article 50 is retractable—could result in the Government’s requiring new clauses and new schedules?

[Peter Grant]

I am grateful for that point. It is never a good idea to speculate about court cases here, especially if people have as little legal training as me, but those factors may well come back to haunt the Government in a big way.

The Prime Minister has given herself a political imperative to implement article 50 by 31 March.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Kerevan]

I take that point. I am not saying this to chide the Government, but I am trying to bring out into the open in this Chamber what we all know: the Government have been introducing a new parliamentary convention that flows on from the fact that we had a referendum that went against the Government. In panic and shock, the Government, whose Back Benchers are divided, decided on a new convention, which was to use the Crown prerogative to ram through whatever they wanted, based on the decision for Brexit in the referendum. That is in stark contrast to the whole history of this Chamber.

[Neil Coyle]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[George Kerevan]

I want to make a few points; we are running out of time and we want to hear the Minister.

I want to say clearly that in a panic the Government chose to attempt to use the royal prerogative, but that has been struck down this week by the Supreme Court in a momentous and historic decision. One would have thought that in the light of that, the Government would have more regard to the procedures of the House and how its business is formulated, to give the House a proper say in the historic decision on Brexit. Did the Government learn that lesson? No, they came back with a one-line Bill to be fast-tracked. That is why, in the Government’s attempt to make some amends, we are discussing a way of getting some extra time, over the weekend, to draft amendments and new clauses to go with that fast-track procedure.

Hon. Members have every right to worry that the Government still have not got the point that we are now to have proper parliamentary scrutiny, including control over how the debate is conducted in the House. To underline that, let us look at what the explanatory notes say about the need for fast-tracking. First, we are told that there was an “unexpected” step in the process required by the Supreme Court. It is no fault of this House that the Government do not understand what is happening in the real world. It is no fault of Members on either side of the House if the Government were caught by surprise—the rest of us were not—and it is not an excuse for fast-tracking.

The second explanation for the fast-tracking is that this step

“would cause considerable delay to commencing the formal exit process”,

but the triggering of article 50 by the end of March is a random, arbitrary decision by the Government. That is not this House’s decision. The Executive are saying we have to fast-track the Bill because they have decided when they want to do it by. If that becomes a principle of how we do business—if the Government can say, “We want to do something next week, so we are going to fast-track everything”—it will be an abrogation of democracy, and we cannot have that.

Business of the House

Neil Coyle Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

First, let me congratulate the hon. Lady—or, more particularly, her daughter or daughter-in-law; I do not know which it is. A new child is a source of joy for any family. I suspect that we will have a number of opportunities to debate the various questions that arise out of yesterday’s autumn statement, as well as to put questions to Ministers in the Departments affected by the Chancellor’s announcements. As I said earlier, if she looks at the distributional analysis of the autumn statement, she will find that it works—modestly, yes—to the benefit of all income groups in society, save for the very richest; it is they who suffer a loss. I hope that she would agree that all families benefit more than anything else from having parents who are in work and able to work. The record number of people in employment is helping to drive the reduction that we have seen in the number of children who are living in workless households, and the introduction of universal credit means that people, including many mothers of young children, who may take on part-time work, will still always find that work makes them better off than staying on benefits.

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

I thank all Members for their kind words about Jo Cox; her legacy of love lives on. Yesterday, the Chancellor announced additional broadband infrastructure funding. The Government’s current subsidy goes only to rural areas, but this is equally a problem for my constituents in Rotherhithe, and for people who live in former dockyards across the country. Will the Government provide time to debate in detail how they plan to improve broadband access speeds for all areas?

[Mr Lidington]

The additional money that the Chancellor announced yesterday as part of the £23 billion that he is borrowing to provide for strategic infrastructure investment is additional to the current programme of connecting up people to high-speed broadband. That current work will continue, and what was announced yesterday is additional to it.

Business of the House

Neil Coyle Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I welcome the opening of the new hospice in the hon. Lady’s constituency. We all owe a huge amount to those who work in palliative care. It is an enormously challenging but enormously compassionate, kind and caring area of our society. I am sure we all pay tribute to all those who work to make the last days of those suffering from serious illness happy rather than difficult.

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

Owing to the Government’s misunderstanding of supported accommodation, they have had to launch a review of their own policy on it. The review is being led by a Minister in the other House. While it is underway, councils, housing associations and thousands of my constituents are left in limbo, unable to plan for the future. When will Members of this House get the chance to debate that review in Government time, and when does the Leader of the House expect it to report?

[Chris Grayling]

I do not know when the review will report. It is right and proper—all Members would expect it—that the Government listen if the House believes that we have got something wrong. The case the hon. Gentleman raises is clearly one where we have listened, and have looked in more detail at what is being done. We will bring the report back to this House in due course and there will be an opportunity to question Ministers about it.

Business of the House

Neil Coyle Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

The shadow Leader of the House can never resist talking in this place. More than anyone else, he likes the sound of his own voice. He cannot stop talking. If he will just be patient, I was about to say that I am also delighted by the honour that has been awarded to my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Sir Henry Bellingham). That, too, is well deserved. He is a long-standing and distinguished Member of the House. Both he and the right hon. Member for Doncaster Central very much deserve their recognition in the new year’s honours list, and I apologise for not saying so earlier.

The spokesman for the Scottish nationalists and I clearly agree that there has been an utter shambles in the Labour party. We are now on day four, and it still has not finished making appointments. I notice that the shadow Leader of the House’s Parliamentary Private Secretary seems to have disappeared, so perhaps he is in the process of being moved around—

[Neil Coyle (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (Lab)]

I am here!

[Chris Grayling]

Ah, I beg his pardon. He is not sitting in his usual place. But you couldn’t make up the idea of a reshuffle that lasts for four days. It is a sign of how utterly incompetent the Opposition are. That said, the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) is back on some of his usual themes this week. I just remind him that the United Kingdom will vote on our future in the European Union, and Scotland voted to be a part of the United Kingdom. I know he has never quite adjusted to or accepted that reality, but none the less the reality is that Scotland chose to be part of the United Kingdom and we will vote as one United Kingdom.

On the economy, the Chancellor is prudently talking about some of the challenges we face internationally. I remind the hon. Gentleman that unemployment—the number of people claiming jobseeker’s allowance in this country—has almost halved since 2010; the number of children growing up in workless households has fallen by more than half a million; and the level of employment in this country has mushroomed under this Government. He should look across the House and at what the Government have done over the past five years and say, “These are people who have delivered for this country and will carry on delivering for this country.”

The hon. Gentleman also talked about the floods, and I pay tribute to everyone in Scotland, too. I know that south-west Scotland, in particular, was badly affected. The emergency services, the local authorities and all those involved in south-west Scotland did an excellent job. I commend the Members of Parliament in the areas affected for the work they have done. It was a distressing period for this country and I hope that those communities can get themselves back together shortly. I shall look forward across the course of this year, as ever, to our usual amicable debate. We will not agree on most things, but I always enjoy seeing him in this place and I look forward to a year of repartee.