Business of the House
Sarah Russell Excerpts(2 days, 8 hours ago)
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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.
Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)
My constituency has a fantastic group of volunteers and sponsors for Congleton Pride, but they have had to show extraordinary resilience after multiple attacks on their banners for Pride month and our major Pride event. I know that the Leader of the House will want to thank all the volunteers and sponsors who have provided new banners and put more banners in more locations. I thank very much the volunteers for persevering and the police for their involvement in this matter, and I thank the members of the community who support Pride. I encourage as many people as possible to come to the Pride event in Congleton town centre on Saturday 19 July from 10 am. Please can we have a debate in Government time about how we can support the LGBTQ+ community?
Lucy Powell
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that important matter. I am really sorry to hear that banners relating to the Congleton Pride have been vandalised in such a way; that is completely unacceptable. I am sure that on 19 July the whole community will want to come out and support the LGBT community in Congleton, because that is exactly what they should be doing. As she knows, the Government are committed to supporting the community and to taking steps to tackle homophobic hate crime.
Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme
Sarah Russell Excerpts(2 weeks, 5 days ago)
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Jesse Norman
I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for the question. Of course, it is a Conservative body in the first instance, developed on a cross-party basis. As far as I am aware, there is no desire in my party to make it anything other than a continuously independent body to suppress and prevent the abuses that occurred before it was brought into being—abuses with which we are all familiar.
In many ways, the ICGS has not been without its problems—it is in the nature of the House’s deliberations and the secrecy and privacy associated with these things that we do not always hear about those problems—but broadly speaking, it has been successful. That means, however, that in the context of the point of conflict between my side of the House and those on the Leader of the House’s side, there is no problem that the motion as drafted seeks to address and cure. Let me explain in more detail.
The motion frames the issue as supposedly not one of policy, but of procedure. As it sets out, the assurance board has many members. It is not simply composed of parliamentarians; it includes the Clerk Assistants of both Houses, Members of both Houses—but on a nominated basis, rather than elected—the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, a lay member of the House of Lords Conduct Committee, and members of the human resources teams of both Houses. The proposal before us is that this body should be able to set rules for Members of this House without the House itself having any say in the matter, so this is not about the nature of the board; it is about the question of what say the House has over rules that are being set for everyone affected by the ICGS, but for Members of this House in particular.
It is nonsense to suggest that laying a motion before the House, as we have suggested, would be difficult or need to involve any delay. Our position is extremely simple: there should be a motion before the House to approve or disapprove any decision taken by the assurance board. Such motions can be laid before the House in a very short period of time—literally in a day or two, and perhaps even overnight in some circumstances. There can be no proper suggestion of a delay in the implementation of decisions made by the assurance board, and therefore no reason—at least in my judgment and that of my colleagues—why this should not be a matter for the House to decide.
Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)
It is extremely surprising that the right hon. Gentleman is taking this position, given that his party is generally associated with deregulation and removing bureaucracy. Does he not agree that the proposal he is describing would create additional bureaucracy around an independent organisation?
Jesse Norman
No, that is not true. The motions of this House are not traditionally regarded as a form of bureaucracy; in fact, in many ways they cut through bureaucracy, because they allow us to get to a democratically ratified decision very quickly and transparently. The trouble comes when decisions are made without that transparency, simplicity and speed of action, which is what we are opposed to.
As I have said, the present proposals draw a distinction between policy and procedure, and would mandate the assurance board to act on its own behalf in matters of procedure. Of course, the board contains only one Member of the House of Commons, and as I have said, that person is nominated rather than elected by the House. In other words, the assurance board potentially has wide-ranging and coercive powers, which are to be exercised almost entirely by people who are outside any direct framework of democratic accountability. It potentially has the power to overturn decisions that are ultimately made by an MP’s constituents at the ballot box. The House has rightly been concerned about the exercise of such powers for at least 400 years.
The motion, too, draws a distinction between policy and procedure. Of course, contrary to the suggestion that has been made, procedure includes important substantive matters. Indeed, Paul Kernaghan’s review set out an illustrative table of potential changes, which included changing whether somebody may be accompanied to an ICGS interview. As I have pointed out, this is an issue of powers as well as procedure; the assurance board has the ability to empower people who are under review by the ICGS to bring another person along to an interview, or to prevent them from doing so. In turn, this reflects a tacit or explicit policy decision about what may be fair or just under the circumstances. It is not simply a matter of procedure.
Mr Kernaghan’s review also included, as an illustration of what he called procedure, changing the timing of when the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards is notified of a misconduct complaint—whether that is before or after an initial assessment. Of course, that too reflects a tacit policy judgment about what a just process would be. Such tacit policy judgments show that there is no hard and fast distinction to be drawn between policy and procedure, and underline that these are not matters for officials—for unelected people—but for Members of this House acting through this House.
I remind the House that the ICGS sets rules not merely for members of Parliament, but for more than 15,000 passholders, and even—although this is slightly unclear, and in my judgment has not properly been resolved—for tourists and visitors to the Palace of Westminster. It is not accountable to any other body. Today’s decision to reject amendment (e)—of course, we are not moving that amendment, so that will be the decision—will be a one-off decision to give up powers of scrutiny, and it will be hard, if not impossible, to reverse that, once those powers are yielded. This is happening at a time when more and more decisions are being taken by people who are not accountable in any direct, genuinely democratic way, through the emergence of what people have often thought of as a kind of bureaucratic or legal sludge. That is absolutely deplorable. All that we in the Conservative party have said is that any decision of this type that is taken by people who are not Members of Parliament should be placed before this House, in line with its constitutional status and the Bill of Rights 1689. It has always been our procedure in this House not to recognise a superior, let alone a bureaucratic or non-democratically elected superior, and we should not do so on this occasion.
Business of the House
Sarah Russell Excerpts(4 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Lucy Powell
I know that this issue is close to my hon. Friend’s heart and that it is something he strongly supports, as I do. Votes at 16 was an important measure in our manifesto, but he will know that it has not been identified in a Bill to be introduced in this Session. I hope that an elections Bill, including votes at 16, will be forthcoming in the next Session and that we will all get a chance to vote for that measure, as I know he and I both will.
Mrs Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)
My constituent Alison Parr has had the most appalling time trying to obtain free prescriptions on the NHS, to which her profoundly disabled daughter, Ruby, is perfectly entitled. Please may we have a debate in Government time on how the NHS and all public services can be made fully responsive to the needs to disabled people?
Lucy Powell
I congratulate my hon. Friend on holding more Change NHS consultations in her constituency than any other Member has held in theirs. As a result of those meetings, she has raised the important issue of free prescriptions. I will raise her concerns with the relevant Minister and ensure that she gets a full response.
Business of the House
Sarah Russell Excerpts(10 months ago)
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Lucy Powell
As ever, the hon. Gentleman raises in this House the important issues of the freedom of religion or belief. I share his concern about the arbitrary detention of members of the Church in Nicaragua. We welcome the release of seven priests in August, but we are alarmed by their expulsion from Nicaragua. What is happening there is unacceptable; I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising it on the Floor of the House.
Mrs Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)
May I associate myself with the comments that have been made about freedom of religion? I am here today to raise the matter of accessibility at Sandbach station. Unfortunately, the Manchester platform cannot be accessed by those with luggage, those with disabilities, those with buggies or those with bikes. I join the calls made earlier for a debate about station accessibility.
Lucy Powell
So many people are raising the issue of station accessibility. My hon. Friend raises important points about Sandbach station. If she joins forces with the right hon. Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson) and applies to the Backbench Business Committee once its Chair is in place, I am sure that there will be a lot of support for a debate.