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Business of the House
11.31 am
Mrs. Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con): Will the Leader of the House give us the business up to and beyond the recess?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Jack Straw): The business for next week will be as follows:
Monday 24 July—Second Reading of the Welfare Reform Bill.
Tuesday 25 July—Motion on the retirement ofthe Clerk of the House, followed by considerationof Lords amendments to the Northern Ireland (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, followed by motion on the summer recess Adjournment.
The House will not adjourn until Royal Assent has been received to any Act.
The business for the week following the summer recess will be as follows:
Monday 9 October—Remaining stages of the Road Safety Bill [Lords].
Tuesday 10 October—Second Reading of the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill.
Wednesday 11 October—Opposition Day [18th Allotted Day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion. Subject to be announced.
Thursday 12 October—Consideration of Lords amendments to the Civil Aviation Bill, followed by a debate on climate change on a motion for the adjournment of the House.
Friday 13 October—The House will not be sitting.
The provisional business for the week commencing 16 October will include:
Monday 16 October—Opposition Day [19th Allotted Day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion in the name of the Liberal Democrats. Subject to be announced.
I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 12 October and19 October will be:
Thursday 12 October—A debate on the report from the International Development Committee on the WTO Hong Kong ministerial conference and the Doha development agenda.
Thursday 19 October—A debate on the 28th annual House of Commons Commission report.
I should like to remind the House that it agreed to sit from 11.30 am on Tuesday 25 July, and there will be no business next Tuesday in Westminster Hall.
I should also like to tell the House that thestate opening of Parliament will be on Wednesday15 November.
The House
will rise at the end of business on 25 July and return on Monday 9
October. I have given serious consideration to the points made by
Members on both sides of the House regarding the accountability of
Government during the summer recess. I am pleased to inform the House
that later today I intend to table a motion and an explanatory
memorandum that will allow for the tabling and answering of named day
questions and, if there is a need, written ministerial statements on
specified days during the first two weeks of September. This
information will thereafter be printed in the Official
Report.
Before closing, Mr. Speaker, I should like to take the opportunity to wish all Members of the House a productive summer recess in which they are able to see their families for a normal holiday period, and then able, as colleagues on both sides of the House always do, to devote time to their constituencies. I also give my thanks to the staff of the House for their continued support and to staff in Government Departments who provide briefings for my weekly business statement—although of course the answers are entirely my responsibility.
Mrs. May: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I shall respond to everything that the Leader of the House set out—the business for next week and after the recess and the statement about recess questions.
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s announcement that hon. Members will be able to table written questions during the recess, albeit for a limited period. My hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) raised the matter in business questions on 21 July 2005 at column 1415 of Hansard, when he asked for immediate action. It was not quite immediate, but at least something has happened and the Leader of the House is to be congratulated on that. However, will he confirm that the extension for written questions includes those to the Home Office and that the Department will respond fully in the time set out? May I urge him to go further? What plans has he to extend the opportunities to ask written questions during the summer recess in future? He also announced provision for written ministerial statements. In the absence of the Order Paper, what plans has he to alert hon. Members to the statements either when they are made or through advance notice?
I thank the Leader of the House for giving us the business for next week and the week after the recess. Yesterday, I welcomed his decision to change today’s business to enable the House to debate the growing crisis in the middle east. As that crisis develops, a further statement might well be needed before the recess. Will the Foreign Secretary come to the House next week to update hon. Members on the situation and the Government’s position?
Sadly, today’s debate has meant postponing the debate on international development. We previously had such a debate in Government time a year ago, on Africa. Will the Leader of the House give us an assurance that there will be a debate on international development as soon as possible after our return from the recess and certainly before the end of the Session?
On Tuesday, many hon. Members were lobbied by constituents about cuts in physiotherapy services. I met Kate from Twyford, who told me that 2,500 physiotherapists will graduate this year and probably only 250 will get jobs because of cuts in the national health service. Last year, the Government encouraged universities to increase training places for physiotherapists. This year, more than 2,000 graduates will fail to get a job. When we return, may we have a debate on physiotherapy services?
May we also have a debate in the autumn on Britain’s influence in the world? Today’s debate will concentrate on the middle east, but, on our role in world affairs, I was struck by the exchange between the Prime Minister and the President of the United States, which was reported earlier this week at the G8 summit. The Prime Minister offered to visit the middle east to
“try and see what the lie of the land is”.
“I think Condi is going to go pretty soon.”
“Well, it’s only if, I mean, you know, if she’s got a, or if she needs the ground prepared, as it were. Because obviously if she goes out, she’s got to succeed, if it were, whereas I can go out and just talk.”
What a revelation. That was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom speaking. First, it tells us what we have always known: the Prime Minister does not do anything, he simply talks. Secondly, what does it say about the UK? My noble Friend Lord Hurd once described Britain as punching above its weight in foreign affairs. Today, the Prime Minister sees himself as the warm-up act for the US Secretary of State. We need a debate on our role in the world.
May we also have a debate on ministerial responsibilities? A review of four Departments has shown significant failure to deliver. On ability to plan resources, prioritise and deliver value for money, setting aside the Home Office’s poor performance, the Department for Constitutional Affairs and the Department for Work and Pensions were
“Not well placed to address weaknesses, urgent action needed.”
The Prime Minister’s response was to say that the Departments’ central headquarters would now focus on
“high-level strategy and priority setting, managing performance and tackling failure and building up skills”.
What on earth have they been doing for the past nine years?
Speaking of reviews, when the Government were first elected in 1997, the Prime Minister made much of his commitment to produce an annual report each year. On 18 July 2001, he said:
“In respect of annual reports, it is important that we set out the Government’s achievements and lack of achievements in whichever year we are in power.”—[ Official Report, 18 July 2001; Vol. 372, c. 280.]
The last annual report was published in 2000. When will the next one be published? May we have a debate before the end of the Session on the Government’s record over the past year and a half?
As we are approaching the
summer recess, I do not want to over-burden civil servants with this
task, so I shall offer some suggestions on what the Government’s
annual report might cover. It could include U-turns on home information
packs, self-assessment tax returns, council tax revaluation, prison
building, sentencing policy and police mergers. It could cover
abandoned projects such as hospital star ratings, regional assemblies
and the abolition of the Lord Chancellor. Further subjects might
include the information technology projects left in chaos at the Child
Support
Agency, the Rural Payments Agency, the Criminal Records Bureau, the
Passport Office and the
NHS—
Mr. Speaker: Order. The right hon. Lady is going rather wide of the business question.
Mrs. May: I am sure that the Leader of the House will ensure that all those issues will be addressed in the debate that, I hope, he will offer us on what the Government have been doing over the past year and a half. However, of all the areas in which we know that the Government have failed, we need to address the problems with the ID card scheme, the fact that fewer pupils from state schools are going to university, hospital closures, the wider gap between rich and poor, and the fact that the Deputy Prime Minister is a laughing stock, the Prime Minister is a lame duck and the Government are in paralysis. I wish the Leader of the House and all right hon. and hon. Members a very happy and productive summer recess, and I join the Leader of the House in thanking the staff for all that they have done to support us over the past year.
Mr. Straw: I thank the shadow Leader of the House very much for her remarks and compliments, which I take in the spirit in which they were intended. I hope that one of the things that she does over the recess will be to sack the person who writes her lines. I say that in a spirit of great affection for the right hon. Lady, but, honestly, after putting her up to do that awfulnumber on pop song titles—which turned out to be inaccurate—and now this stuff, he really ought to be sacked.
I shall now deal with the questions that the right hon. Lady raised. She asked whether notice of written ministerial statements would appear in advance, and the answer is yes. Notice will appear in the normal way in the Questions Book—the blues attached to the Order Paper—alongside the notice of questions. I will also talk to the Clerks Office, to the right hon. Lady and to the Liberal spokesman, the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath), about whether we can arrange for Members to receive electronic notice, particularly of the written ministerial statements, as Members will be at a distance. I want to ensure that this experiment works.
The right hon. Lady asked whether there would be an opportunity for a statement on the crisis in the middle east. The answer is that there are Foreign Office questions next Tuesday, so hon. Members will have every opportunity to question my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and her ministerial colleagues. The right hon. Lady also asked whether there would be a debate on international development before the end of the parliamentary Session. The answer is that we hope so, but, given the other pressures on the parliamentary timetable and the buffers of the Queen’s Speech, I cannot guarantee it. However, we will do our very best to have such a debate either soon or in the run-up to the Queen’s Speech, this side of the year.
The right hon. Lady made some
remarks about the health service. I have been looking at the health
service in her own constituency. There is greater competition for jobs
in health care because we have greatly increased the number of places
available. There used to be complaints that we were recruiting so many
people
from overseas. These days, thanks to the dramatic increase in places for
nurses, for doctors, for paramedics and for physiotherapists, most
recruitment can take place in the UK. Yes, of course there is
competition, but I simply do not believe these statements that
thousands of new staff will be unemployed. That is not the case at all.
Meanwhile, I note that, in the Windsor, Ascot and Maidenhead Primary
Care Trust, there has been a 5.2 per cent. increase above inflation in
real terms in a single year, and that the trust received three stars
for its latest performance. In the same area, waiting lists are down by
10 per cent. since June 2002. It is very odd that that was not
mentioned just now.
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