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Business of the House
11.36 am
Mrs. Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con): May I ask the Leader of the House to give us the forthcoming business?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Ms Harriet Harman): The business for next week will be:
Monday 23 July—Motion to approve the Sixth Report of the Committee on Standards and Privileges, followed by remaining stages of the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Bill [ Lords]. It is also expected that there will be a statement on housing.
Tuesday 24 July—Opposition day [18th allotted day]. There will be a debate entitled “Government’s Handling of the Penal System” and a debate entitled “Attack on Global Poverty”. Both debates arise on an Opposition motion, followed by, if necessary, consideration of Lords amendments.
Wednesday 25 July—Consideration of Lords amendments, followed by a motion to approve the appointment of the Chairman to the Statistics Board, followed by motions relating to Select Committee changes, followed by consideration of the draft legislative programme on a motion for the Adjournment of the House, followed by, if necessary, consideration of Lords amendments.
Thursday 26 July—Motion on the summer recess Adjournment.
I should also like to remind Members that they may table named day questions on 3, 5 and 10 September. They will be for answer on 10, 12 and 17 September. The Government may also issue written ministerial statements on those latter dates.
The provisional business for the week commencing 8 October will include:
Monday 8 October—Second Reading of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill.
I should also like to remind the House that the state opening of Parliament will be on Tuesday 6 November.
Mrs. May: I thank the right hon. and learned Lady for giving us the future business.
Yesterday, the BBC suspended all phone-in competitions after it found out that yet more had been rigged. As our national public service broadcaster, the BBC has a duty to restore public trust. May we have a debate in Government time on the BBC?
This week, the Institute for Public Policy Research called for an amnesty for illegal immigrants. Such a policy would be wrong in principle and wrong in practice, and would reflect the Government’s failure to get a grip on illegal immigration, yet, during the deputy leadership campaign, when asked about such an amnesty, the right hon. and learned Lady said:
“People who have worked hard here and paid their taxes should be allowed to stay.”
May we have a debate in Government time on the need to secure Britain’s borders?
The right hon. and learned Lady has just announced that the Government’s Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, which was due to receive its Second Reading next Monday, has now been deferred until October, just a
couple of weeks before the end of the parliamentary Session. We know that that significant piece of legislation will change in the autumn. Its deferral is an abuse of the carry-over procedure and shows disdain for Parliament. Why will the Government not be honest and introduce the Bill in the next parliamentary Session?
Yesterday, in Prime Minister’s questions, the Prime Minister said that
“the Home Secretary will consult on whether... cannabis should be moved from class C to class B.”—[ Official Report, 18 July 2007; Vol. 463, c. 268.]
It was the present Government who reclassified cannabis from B to C in the first place, but we will support their U-turn. For the second week in a row, the Prime Minister has announced a reversal of policy in an answer to a planted question rather than in an oral statement that allows hon. Members to put questions to a Minister. That betrays a disregard for hon. Members. Why was this change not announced properly by the Home Secretary in a statement?
Yesterday, the Prime Minister also confirmed that Parliamentary Private Secretaries can sit on Select Committees. He gave the feeble excuse that they will not sit on Committees that scrutinised their Departments, but he thinks it acceptable for Members who work for Ministers, and therefore for the Executive, to sit on Select Committees whose job it is to scrutinise the Executive. That betrays a disregard for Select Committees, so can we have a debate on the future of such Committees?
Under this Government, 125,000 people have lost their savings because their pension fund went bust. We proposed a lifeboat fund properly to compensate those who lost out through no fault of their own. The Prime Minister had Labour MPs whipped into voting against the lifeboat. Some Labour Members agreed with us and the other place agreed with us. Now, however, Ministers have invoked parliamentary privilege to stop the debate and limit compensation. So much for respecting Parliament and so much for helping those who have lost their pensions. Will the Pensions Secretary make an urgent statement on why he has used parliamentary privilege in this way?
The Prime Minister says that he wants to make Parliament the crucible of our political life, but those examples—from just this last week—show nothing but disrespect for hon. Members, disregard for parliamentary procedure and disdain for parliamentary scrutiny. Is it not clear that putting Parliament first is just a new type of spin?
Ms Harman: The paper on the governance of Britain sets out a number of ways in which we were moving forward and working with both sides of the House on ensuring that we strengthen its important role. If the right hon. Lady wishes us to consider any additional individual points, we are happy to so do. Our determination is to strengthen the House’s role, as we believe that strong Government works best when held to account by a strong Parliament.
On the right hon. Lady’s individual issues, she first raised the question of the BBC. Both I and the Government are strong supporters of the BBC— [Interruption.] Absolutely, we are strong supporters. It is important that the BBC retains the trust of all its viewers, but the
particular issue that the right hon. Lady raised does not apply only to the BBC; as Michael Grade said, it applies across all broadcasting companies. The matter could be discussed further at Department for Culture, Media and Sport questions on Monday or perhaps debated on the Adjournment.
The right hon. Lady raised the position of those whose immigration status may have expired and of people who have come to this country without proper permission. It has been the policy of successive Governments to look at individual cases and judge whether it would be right to exercise discretion to allow people to stay. Indeed, the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) raised such an individual case in Prime Minister’s questions yesterday. As well as having a policy that should be enforced firmly and fairly, we believe it right to look into individual cases. Following the particular case raised yesterday, the Prime Minister has agreed to defer the deportation. As I say, it is right to reflect on individual cases in that way.
On the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, with the interim report of Sir Ronnie Flanagan coming out in the summer, it might be better, as has been suggested, for Second Reading to take place the other side of the recess, if the Government are to be able to bring forward further issues in that Bill.
The right hon. Lady raised the question of the cannabis review. There is new evidence that the cannabis used, particularly by young people, is stronger than it used to be, and therefore more dangerous— [Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order. We must allow the Leader of the House to reply to the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May). [Interruption.] Order.
Ms Harman: As well as the evidence that the cannabis used particularly by young people is stronger than it used to be, there is more evidence of the link between use of that strong cannabis by young people and serious mental health problems. That issue has been raised with me by the Institute of Psychiatry at the Maudsley hospital in my constituency. If new evidence emerges, it is right that the Government listen, look at the evidence and publish a review document.
The right hon. Lady also made a point about Parliamentary Private Secretaries. We need to recognise the important role of Select Committees, and we all support their work. Under the previous Government, PPSs did, from time to time, sit on Select Committees. Nobody in the House would think it right for a PPS to sit on a Select Committee for their own Department. The right hon. Lady will know, however, that PPSs are not members of the Government. She is perhaps asking us to look afresh at a policy introduced by her Government and continued by this Government.
On pensions, we need to remember that those people whose occupational schemes went bust received no help at all under the previous Government. We have gone a long way to set up financial support systems for those who have paid into pension schemes throughout their working life and whose schemes have gone bust. We are putting forward costed proposals, which we know we can afford, to move from a figure of 80 per cent. of the core pension to 90 per cent.
I am not quite sure what point the right hon. Lady is making about parliamentary privilege. If she is talking about the House of Lords overriding the will of the elected House, I do not agree with her. If she is talking about something else, one of my hon. Friends will have to advise me as to what she is getting at. I say to the House, and to the right hon. Lady, that Members of the House should be able to represent the interests of their constituents and to hold the Government to account. As Leader of the House, that is what I am determined to ensure.
Mr. Ken Purchase (Wolverhampton, North-East) (Lab/Co-op): May I draw the attention of the Leader of the House to early-day motion 1856?
[ That this House is concerned at the enormous potential expenditure in taking the academy programme to 400 schools with its heavy subsidies to miscellaneous private sponsors provided on the basis of unproven, possibly unjustified, assumptions about resulting improvements to education in disadvantaged areas; urges the establishment of an independent inquiry to evaluate the performance of academies, compared to modernised state schools to assess whether any improvements are more than a temporary Hawthorne effect, to assess the effects of academies on neighbouring schools, and the overall performance of the education authority, to examine the value for money of academies as opposed to spending the same sums on secondary schools more generally, and to look at ways to merge the two systems, academies and local authority schools in order to ensure the unified development of the system and avoid further divisions in public education.]
May I also draw her attention to early-day motion 605? Those two early-day motions express the growing concern in the House about the apparent headlong rush by the Government into promoting academies, which are now to number 400. The construction of such academies appears to have no ultimate cost, apart from a global figure of £35,000 to £40,000, and there is no real evidence about their efficacy. Will she draw the attention of the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families to those important matters, and arrange a debate as early as possible?
Ms Harman: I will draw my hon. Friend’s comments to the attention of my right hon. Friend. He will also have an opportunity to raise such issues on Thursday. We are all concerned to see that every area has good local schools, which have proper resources and are properly accountable. I pay tribute to the Peckham academy in my constituency, where standards have been improved for the young people in that school.
Simon Hughes (North Southwark and Bermondsey) (LD): The Leader of the House announced that on Monday there would be a debate on what was originally a private Member’s Bill on forced marriages introduced by Lord Lester of Herne Hill. It is a Bill that we welcome in this House. Will the right hon. and learned Lady use that step as a welcome precedent for making sure that there are other opportunities from Monday to Thursday for private Members’ Bills that start either here or in the other place to be debated so that they have the chance of fair consideration, which has not been the case in the past?
The Leader of the House has announced that we will have a debate on housing. Will it also be an opportunity to debate planning, which is often linked with it? Will we be able to debate whether the Prime Minister has pre-empted the consultation on a new super-quango to take major infrastructure planning decisions? It is a controversial issue and there are still meant to be some weeks of discussion and consultation, yet the Prime Minister indicated last week that he might have come to a final view.
As for Select Committees, in addition to the point made by the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) from the Conservative Front Bench, would it not be fair that regional Select Committees reflect the balance of the political representation in each region? That must be the right way of doing it. Will the Leader of the House reflect on whether, if we are to have proper representation, even within the funny system that we have for electing us all to the House, we should have at least that fairness when the new Committees are set up after next week?
Given that the Leader of the House has clearly accepted that it would be inappropriate to consider the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill before the summer recess, may I strongly back the request to accept the fact that it would be illogical to bring it back in October when the Government intend to amend it in November? We ought to consider the Bill in November in its final form so that we can debate what the Government are proposing.
On the matters that are not in the right hon. and learned Lady’s statement, we receive a welcome indication now of what statements are to be made to the House. Today, for example, we have a statement on Lords reform. I gather that there are to be further statements before we break. Could we hear from the Leader of the House what they are to be about so that people can plan and everyone knows what is coming? If we are to have Government statements, may we have maximum notice rather than wake up in the morning and only then know what is coming in the afternoon? May we have statements rather than just veiled hints on changes of policy such as on casinos and drugs? Can they be absolutely backed up by guarantees that the policies will be evidence-based rather than prejudice-based?
I am sad to say that probably many more people take part in interactive programmes and phone-ins on broadcast media shows than watch Question Time in this place on their televisions. I hope that that will change. May we have a debate about all media and all programmes, as the Leader of the House said? It is probably the case that there has been fiddling of the system by all those who broadcast such programmes. We really need to clean it up once and for all.
Ms Harman: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his welcome for the important provisions in the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Bill. He was right to say that the Bill came from a private Member of the House of Lords. There is always the opportunity for the Government to take forward private Member’s business on that basis. We will keep under review the points that he made about finding time to do so.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned planning and housing. I said in my business statement that there would be a
statement on housing on Monday. We all recognise that planning is integral to our ability to provide to rent and to buy at affordable prices the homes that local people need. There will be an opportunity for him to raise that point on Monday.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned Select Committees. Obviously, their membership will be decided in the usual way. I think that it makes sense for the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill to be considered the other side of the recess. It does not make sense to withdraw it from the House and reintroduce it. The Bill contains important measures that we need to get on with. I responded to points made on that last week, and they were part of our consideration about moving the Bill to the other side of the recess.
The hon. Gentleman made an important point about advance information to be given to the House in relation to statements. Obviously, we do not want to announce firmly the day that a statement is to be made and then find that for other reasons it is subject to change, but it would be helpful for hon. Members to have some idea what issues are likely to form the basis of statements, so I will see what we can do on that.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the concern about the BBC and recognised rightly that this is a serious matter for all the broadcast media. Ofcom is also involved and I have no doubt that the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, which has looked at the issue in the past, will reconsider it.
Julie Morgan (Cardiff, North) (Lab): When can we have a debate about arms exports? I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend is aware of the report published by Amnesty and other organisations this week about the possibility of India supplying Burma with advanced light helicopters, which are built containing components made in the EU and the UK, despite the EU arms embargo as a result of the appalling history of human rights in Burma. I have been contacted this week by a number of my constituents about this issue. How can we take it forward?
Ms Harman: First, I pay tribute to Amnesty for the work that it has done on this report and for all the important work that it does. The House may be aware that the Indian Government have denied that they have sold the helicopters to Burma, but it is something that we are concerned about and that we have raised with our partners in the European Union. We are all appalled at the human rights abuses in Burma, and want to work as hard as we can to put pressure on it.
Mr. Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con): Could the Leader of the House please arrange for an early statement by the Secretary of State for Justice, beyond that which he is going to make this afternoon, so that he can give rather wider publicity to the contents of a letter that he seems to have written only to the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) about the Government’s policy on the provision and commissioning of probation services? In his letter of 17 July he said:
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