Dame Angela Eagle
MP for Wallasey · Labour · United Kingdom
“The Kremlin increasingly relies on proxy organisations to pursue its objectives, seeking to undermine our security while maintaining a degree of plausible deniability. The so-called GRU Volunteer Corps is a clear example of that approach. It is not an independent force or a loose collection of volunteers.”
“This Government have introduced support for the Jewish communities who have been threatened and directly targeted by IRGC proxies. Just a couple of days ago, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced an extra £250 million for policing to ensure that we can support and protect our Jewish communities.”
“I will move on to the Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right. The IMCR has publicly claimed seven attacks at UK locations linked to Jewish and Israeli communities and to Persian-language media, including the antisemitic arson attack on four Hatzola ambulances in Golders Green on 23 March.”
“We expect platforms to act responsibly and not to provide space for state threat-linked activity, propaganda or recruitment. We will be keeping a close eye on that, as well as liaising with social media companies to tell them about how this law impacts them.”
“The IRGC Quds Force and the IRGC Intelligence Organisation, together with the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, form the Iranian intelligence apparatus. As a key component of the Iranian state’s security apparatus, the IRGC is answerable directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader.”
“It provides a targeted and proportionate means of disrupting those involved in foreign power threat activity based on the recommendations of Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of state threat legislation. To answer the hon.”
The complete record
Every one of 5,924 lines we hold for Dame Angela Eagle, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 80 of 119.
“As a self-proclaimed “girly swot”, I remind the Mayor of London that being called a woman and clever is not an insult. Indeed, is not the truth that if the Prime Minister had a few more “girly swots” in the Cabinet, he would not be in the mess that he is in now?”
“Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) added his request for a leadership contest to the growing pile in the 1922 Committee’s files. Likening the Tories to passengers in an aeroplane, he said that they could either “do something about” the Prime Minister or “sit back, watch the in-flight movies and wait for the inevitable.” I have been wondering what movies members of the Cabinet might be watching while waiting for the inevitable to arrive. “Eyes Wide Shut”, perhaps? “Clueless”? “Les Miserables”? Or perhaps they have just been instructed to watch “The Wizard of Oz”. Luckily for the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary took the opportunity to lecture him about his “motives and values” last night, and his fellow Bullingdon boy Boris Johnson rushed to undermine him by calling him a “girly swot”.”
“The shocking variations show that someone living in Manchester is twice as likely to die early as someone living in Wokingham. Moreover, a report published by the TUC this week shows that wages have fallen by nearly 8%. This comes at a time when prices are rising and people are suffering unprecedented cuts in their living standards. The regional differences are shocking, with the north-west and the south-west seeing pay packets shrink by more than 10%. The Chancellor used to say “We’re all in this together”, but those figures, added to his millionaires’ tax cut, make that statement laughable. Will the Leader of the House schedule a debate on divided Britain, to take place in Government time? This week, the hon.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman, but let us see what the Leader of the House says. Will the Leader of the House also assure me that the hon. Member for Stockton South will at least be consulted on the parliamentary strategy that Conservative party managers will be pursuing in his name? Is not the real purpose of the Bill to persuade the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay and 100 of his colleagues to stop writing letters to the Prime Minister? Does this not show that his party is more concerned with pursuing partisan interests than with pursuing the national interest? Over the last week, we have seen a bleak picture emerging of an increasingly divided Britain. New figures from Public Health England reveal that thousands more people are dying prematurely in the north than in the south.”
“Perhaps we should also have a debate about performance-managing the Cabinet. Such a debate could start with a look at the NHS. Since 2010 the number of people waiting in A and E for more than four hours has doubled. The ambulance queues have doubled, but instead of taking responsibility, the Government have tried to blame immigrants, women doctors and a 10-year-old GP contract for a problem that has only just emerged. Of course, they are only following the Chancellor’s lead after he blamed the flatlining economy on the snow, the rain and various bank holidays, including the royal wedding and the jubilee. This Government have been in office for three years. When will they face up to their responsibilities and realise that they have only themselves to blame?”
“The Education Secretary has been so busy positioning himself to be the next Tory leader that he has forgotten to do the day job. According to a damning report from the Procedure Committee, his Department is very late in answering half of all written questions tabled by Members, and answers only one in five written named day questions in time. During the recess the chairman of the Tory party was told off by the UK Statistics Authority for making things up. He joins a long list of his Cabinet colleagues languishing on the statistical naughty step, including the Prime Minister, the Health Secretary and the Work and Pensions Secretary. So may we have a debate about sanctions that could be applied to Ministers who do not answer questions in a timely fashion or get censured for misusing statistics?”
“They have been kidding themselves for a while, but the Queen’s Speech showed us that they did not even have the energy to try any more. Their mouse of a legislative programme has already unravelled, with No. 10 at panic stations over another lobbying scandal, the EU Back-Bench Bill, and the third U-turn of the Session in the abandonment of the appalling plan to increase ratios for child care providers. It is hard to believe that the House has sat for only 11 days since the Queen’s Speech was unveiled. It is the job of the Leader of the House to co-ordinate the Government’s legislative programme. I know he likes expensive top-down reorganisations, but this is ridiculous. To be fair to him, though, it is not as if his Cabinet colleagues are faring any better.”
“The Government have lost Back-Bench votes on circus animals, badgers and the Royal Fusiliers, and since starting to lose votes on Back-Bench motions so frequently, they have simply stopped opposing them. Today, we have a motion on the effects of pesticides on the bee population. Will the Leader of the House let us know whether the Government intend simply to let the motion pass without a vote, and if they do, will the will of the House be ignored again? The Commons is abuzz with speculation about the end of the greatest No. 10 love affair of all time. Their eyes met at a press conference in the garden and they accepted each other with open arms, but the Prime Minister was unfaithful with his Back-Bench EU deal and now the Deputy Prime Minister has gone to the papers over his child care demands.”
“Under this Government, women’s rights are going backwards: as carers, service users and public sector workers, women are bearing the brunt of Government cuts and women’s unemployment is the highest it has been for a generation. No wonder the Government forgot to do a gender impact assessment of their first Budget. I suggest that if Emily Wilding Davison were alive today, she would still find reasons to throw rocks at the Chancellor. I wonder whether the Leader of the House recalls last October’s Back-Bench business debate on the badger cull. The vote at the end of that debate instructed the Government not to proceed with the cull, but the Government just ignored it and started anyway.”
“This week marks the 100th anniversary of the death of suffragette Emily Wilding Davison, who threw herself at the King’s horse demanding votes for women. As the battle for women’s suffrage raged, she was at its forefront, being imprisoned on multiple occasions and force fed 49 times. She has a connection with this place because she hid in St Mary’s Undercroft so that she could register as a resident here for the 1911 census. She is also known for throwing things at Chancellor Lloyd George. Since women won the vote, just 35 have entered the Cabinet and today we make up only 23% of the House of Commons. Does the Leader of the House agree with me that, on this centenary, we should have a debate in Government time on women’s progress in the UK?”
“When the economy is flatlining, living standards are falling, and people up and down Britain are suffering real pain, people will not forgive a Government who are too focused on their own obsessions to address the challenges that the country faces.”
“In light of the Tories’ panicked Back-Bench EU Bill, I also want to draw the attention of the Leader of House to some comments that he might remember making to the Procedure Committee on private Members’ Bills a few weeks ago. He said that “if a Government really wants a Bill and it is contentious, it should find time in the legislative programme for it.” Am I correct, therefore, that the Government do not want this Bill at all? In “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte”, Karl Marx wrote that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. With the antics last night, we are firmly in the farcical stage and we have a Conservative party determined to prove that Karl Marx was right.”
“If that is not an undisciplined team and a Prime Minister who follows his party rather than leads, will the Leader of the House tell me what is? In last night’s rebellion, 13 Parliamentary Private Secretaries voted against the Government. I would like to draw the attention of the Leader of the House to a clause in the ministerial code: “Parliamentary Private Secretaries are expected to support the Government in important divisions in the House. No Parliamentary Private Secretary who votes against the Government can retain his or her position.” That seems to be fairly clear. Will the Leader of the House confirm that those PPSs will be sacked, or is the Prime Minister going to rewrite the ministerial code?”
“As the Tory party descended into chaos, the Prime Minister shared with us his unique concept of firm leadership. A leader should proclaim that he is “intensely relaxed”, leave the country, blame the Liberal Democrats, panic, and rush to publish an entirely spurious private Member’s Bill that contains no implementation clause and no money resolution. In 2006, the Prime Minister said that the Conservative party should stop “banging on about Europe”. In 2009, he said that his party’s position on Europe was “settled” and promised that he “will not have an undisciplined team whoever it is. Full stop.” However, last night 116 of his Back Benchers voted against him in the 35th Tory rebellion on Europe in this Parliament.”
“By the weekend, the Tory rebellion had gathered pace and the Cabinet joined in. Both the Education Secretary and the Defence Secretary announced that they wanted out of the European Union, but that, sadly, the Liberal Democrats would not let them have a vote on it. The hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) proclaimed that if the rebellion ended the coalition Government, “so be it”. The hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) pronounced that the Prime Minister’s referendum plan was “not yet believable”. Meanwhile, the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) denounced the rebels as “irresponsible” and “offensive”, and the Minister without Portfolio, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) said that it would be a catastrophe to quit the EU.”
“Back in February, the Prime Minister was triumphant about his EU budget deal. He tweeted: “Today we agreed the first ever cut in the EU budget and the British rebate is safe. This is a great deal for Britain.” Three months on, we have learned that the UK will have to pay £770 million extra. May we have a statement from the Prime Minister on the budget, and may we seek an assurance from him that it will not go up again? Last week, as all the grandeur of the state opening of Parliament unfolded, the Government presented a united front and revealed a mouse of a legislative programme. Before the Cap of Maintenance was even back in the wardrobe, Tory Eurosceptics had tabled a motion regretting their own Government’s Queen’s Speech. No. 10 said that it was “relaxed”.”
“I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business for next week and the business that will follow yet another recess. I also add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) on her unanimous re-election without an election as Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, which is to her enormous credit. Next week the House will return, albeit briefly, to debate the remaining stages of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill. This will ensure that the historic progress on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality accomplished by the previous Government will be consolidated. I thank the Leader of the House for making two days available for Report and Third Reading. Will he consider doing that for other Bills? After all, his legislative programme is hardly packed.”
“Yesterday’s Queen’s Speech will give no one confidence that in the coming year we will not see more of the same. This was the Government’s third Queen’s Speech, and all we have had is three years of failure, with low growth, falling living standards, and rising borrowing. The Government had nothing to say on tackling the crisis in youth unemployment. They had nothing to back small businesses, nothing to boost housing, nothing on rail fares and nothing on growth. This is a tired Government, out of ideas and out of touch. Even Sir Alex Ferguson could not turn this lot into a winning team.”
“After this week’s revelations that the Prime Minister’s election guru, Lynton Crosby, has business links to big tobacco and the drinks industry, can the Leader of the House assure us that no inside lobbying has taken place at No. 10? Or is that why the Government’s proposal to introduce a statutory register of lobbyists has also mysteriously disappeared? Yesterday’s Queen’s Speech showed that the Government may have legislated for fixed five-year Parliaments but that they have run out of ideas after just three. Instead of new ideas to get our economy growing again, all we get is a thin, cobbled-together legislative programme that is completely lacking in ambition. Our last Session saw parliamentary time unfilled, badly drafted, badly managed Bills, and a U-turn, on average, once every seven sitting days.”
“Many of us were shocked by the omission from the Gracious Speech of the promised legislation to ensure plain packaging for cigarettes. The public health Minister, the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), publicly supported the proposal, and when the Leader of the House was Secretary of State for Health he said: “The evidence is clear that packaging helps to recruit smokers, so it makes sense to consider having less attractive packaging. It's wrong that children are being attracted to smoke by glitzy designs on packets.” Does he stand by that view? Why have the measures on minimum alcohol pricing been dropped, too?”
“Members: “Hear, hear.”] He has some support on the Government Back Benches, I hear. Lord Tebbit is reported as saying that UKIP’s policies are now closer to the traditional Conservative agenda, and the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) is calling for a big, open and comprehensive coalition with Farage. This is a failing Conservative party that cannot even hold on to the Tory shires and whose Members are starting to behave like headless chickens. They are so bad at listening to their own members that this week one of them resorted to taking out a full page advertisement in The Times to tell them how out of touch they are. The irony is that he probably paid for it with his millionaire’s tax cut.”
“I followed with interest the Conservative implosion in the Leader of the House’s own backyard of Cambridgeshire, where the Conservatives lost control of the council for the first time in more than 15 years. The Conservative leader of the council even managed to lose his seat—and to a Liberal Democrat. I hope that the Leader of the House has congratulated his deputy, the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), on that success for the Liberal Democrats on his home turf. It is hard to imagine, but the Leader of the House did better in the elections than the Prime Minister, who managed to lose Witney to Labour and see the Conservative candidate beaten into third place by UKIP. The signs are that the panic is setting in. Lord Lawson is calling for an exit from Europe—[Hon.”
“I welcome to the House the new Labour Member, my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Emma Lewell-Buck), the first woman to represent Shields in Parliament. She will be a fighter for her constituents. I also welcome back into the Conservative fold the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Nadine Dorries). I wonder whether the Leader of the House is taking bets on how long it will take the Chief Whip to wish she was back in the jungle. I suspect that last week’s local elections had a more profound impact on the Queen’s Speech than the Leader of the House can let on. They were a disaster across the English shires for the Conservatives, as Labour won in many southern marginals and hordes of true blue voters flocked to the UK Independence party.”
“I thank the Leader of the House for his statement. The next time the Government cannot find their Education Minister and have to bring business questions forward, I wonder whether they might like to give us a little more notice—I am still catching my breath. I also thank him for advance sight of the written ministerial statement he tabled today confirming the Bills announced yesterday. I am sure that you, Mr Speaker, will be as concerned as I am that while he provided Members with one page of information, the Downing street spin machine provided the press with 93 pages of detail on the same Bills. Will he confirm that he will arrange for a copy of that briefing to be placed in the House of Commons Library immediately and that in future he will ensure that Members of this House are accorded the same courtesies as are accorded to the press?”
“Today’s anaemic GDP figures show that we are back to where we were six months ago. This week the Chancellor told John Humphrys that he had shed a tear while listening to the headlines on the “Today” programme. Can the Leader of the House tell us which headlines he meant? Was it the IMF describing his economic plan as “playing with fire”? Was it the Archbishop of Canterbury saying that we were in a depression? Was it yet another ratings agency stripping us of our triple A status? Or was it the Chancellor’s poll ratings, which are plummeting among his own Back Benchers?”
“They were a quarter of 1% lower than last year’s—and that is only after the most blatant piece of creative accounting at the Treasury that we have seen for a very long time. We now know that the Government are set to borrow £245 billion more than they planned to borrow in 2010. That is the cost of their economic failure. The Chancellor’s deficit reduction plan has been so successful that, at the rate he is going, it will take 400 years to balance the books. If we look back 400 years, we see that the gunpowder plot had just failed, the King James Bible was newly published, and the pilgrim fathers were preparing to set sail for north America. Can the Leader of the House promise a debate in the new Session on the abject failure of the Chancellor’s economic plan?”
“Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond), to come and make a statement about the Government’s policy on emergency support for sinking ships? In a desperate attempt to reverse his fortunes, the Prime Minister has just announced that the hon. Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson) is to be given a job at No. 10. The problem is that the Prime Minister’s Back Benchers think that he has got the wrong brother, and that it is the top job at No.10 that the Johnson dynasty really want. Meanwhile, sources tell us that the latest round of proposed spending cuts has caused such a backlash that Cabinet Ministers are turning on each other in a circular firing squad. They cannot even organise a firing squad properly. On Tuesday, the Office for National Statistics released the latest public sector net borrowing figures.”
“That may be a promise that the Government considered for the Queen’s Speech: it is probably the only target that they could actually meet. I hope that the Leader of the House will not mind my borrowing a well-worn phrase as a piece of advice for the Government: “You turn again if you want to”—and the sooner the better. We now know that of the 10 original members of the Downing street policy unit only three remain, and apparently two of those are actively seeking other work. So great is the exodus that Conservative Back Benchers are complaining that No. 10 resembles the Mary Celeste, and that the Deputy Prime Minister has more advisers than the boss. Can the Leader of the House arrange for the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon.”
“Is it now £2,000?” —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 20 March 2013; Vol. 744, c. 617.] The Office for Budget Responsibility thinks that the cost of the Chancellor’s folly will be nearly £1 billion, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that it could “foster tax avoidance”. The Chancellor’s pet scheme was saved by an eleventh-hour compromise last night, but when will he realise that it is simply wrong to put a price on people’s right to be treated fairly at work? Reflecting on the current Session, I calculated that up to this morning the Government had U-turned 21 times, an average of once every seven sitting days. The Leader of the House has just announced another U-turn, on the House business committee. I wonder whether we shall see even more in the next Session.”
“They have caved in on trying to abolish the general equality duty, on caste discrimination, on the pension age of Ministry of Defence police and fire officers, on licensing letting agents and the free market free-for-all on conservatories. In the battle over the Chancellor’s “shares for rights scheme”, they managed to spark two revolts in the Lords by two previous Lib Dem leaders and four former Tory Cabinet Ministers, including a previous Tory Chancellor. Lord Forsyth, the Thatcherite former Scottish Secretary said the scheme was “ill thought through, confused and muddled” —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 20 March 2013; Vol. 744, c. 597.] , while the former Cabinet Secretary, Lord O’Donnell asked: “in the old days the price of slavery was 20 or 30 pieces of silver.”
“I thank the Leader of the House for announcing that there will be a Queen’s Speech on 8 May. I would like to take the opportunity to thank you, Mr Speaker, and all staff of the House for their support during this Session. We prorogue today, giving Members the opportunity to get some much-needed exercise campaigning in the local elections next week. I just hope that the Leader of the House will not be in a Conservative battle bus driven by the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith), because she told the House this week that Sunderland was near Bolton. In the last few days of this Session, the Government have had to throw a series of cherished policies overboard to save their Bills from falling in the Lords.”
“196.] Will the Leader of the House clarify what this mysterious concession might be, or cannot this incompetent Government even organise a concession in a conservatory?”
“What will he do to ensure that this House stops conveniently going into recess on Tuesdays, thereby letting the Prime Minister off the PMQ hook? On Tuesday the Communities and Local Government Secretary got himself into a right old pickle with his chaotic plans for a free market free-for-all in conservatory construction. With Labour, Liberal Democrats and Tories uniting against him, he was forced to hint at an unspecified concession, but in the damning words of the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), his colleague around the Cabinet table for two years, “we will not believe what” the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government says “until we see the proposals in black and white.” —[ Official Report , 16 April 2013; Vol. 561, c.”
“I thank the Leader of the House for announcing next week’s possibly full business timetable. Yesterday we marked the end of an era with the funeral of Margaret Thatcher and our thoughts are with those who knew and loved her. I rarely agreed with her, but she did break the existing political and economic consensus and I think it is time that we did so again. We are now entering the final hectic days of this parliamentary Session—if necessary. Next Wednesday it will be five weeks since the Prime Minister was last held to account in this House. Given the likely timing of Prorogation and the state opening on 8 May, it is possible that he will have to be answerable here again only twice before June. Does the Leader of the House agree that this is a completely unacceptable state of affairs?”
“With a failing economic strategy, a faltering legislative programme and a Government adrift, will the Leader of the House tell the Chancellor that we need a change of course, not a change of accent?”
“The Lords will debate them next Wednesday, so will the Leader of the House tell us when we will debate them in the Commons? Following the Budget, the International Monetary Fund this week again slashed the UK growth forecast and agreed with us that the Chancellor needs to change course. A year ago, it predicted growth of 2%, but that has now dropped to just 0.7%. Unemployment is rising, real wages are falling and borrowing is shooting through the roof, but the Chancellor’s only growth strategy seems to be to destroy rights at work. When will he get real and admit that his plan is just not working? Our downgraded Chancellor has been busy trying to be a man of the people, attempting to distract attention from his huge tax cut for millionaires by dropping his aitches in a speech at Morrisons—and he was not even very good at that.”
“It is clear from the parliamentary timetable that the Government could have made time for the issue to be debated properly. Anyone would think that the Prime Minister was trying to avoid business running on until Wednesdays. In 28 of the 31 weeks that the Health Secretary has been in the job, England’s major accident and emergency units have missed the target for treating patients within four hours, but at the same time he has handed £2.2 billion of NHS funds back to the Treasury. Will the Leader of the House arrange for an urgent statement on how Ministers will bring all accident and emergency departments in England back up to the national standards they set? Despite being forced to backtrack once already, the Health Secretary persists with his damaging section 75 regulations, which will effectively privatise the NHS by the back door.”
“I suspect that the Patronage Secretary has got a few conservatories of his own. For 60 years, the Agricultural Wages Board has protected vulnerable rural workers from exploitation at the hands of rich landowners, but on Tuesday, without so much as a hint of debate or a vote on the Floor of the House, the Government abolished it. This transfers £240 million from workers in some of the toughest and lowest-paid jobs in rural England directly into the back pockets of their employers. It is a disgrace that such a crucial protection can be removed without so much as a vote or even debate in the democratically elected House. It will take our Opposition day debate for the arguments to be heard, but rural workers protections have already been destroyed.”
“In the circumstances, I am content for the members of the proposed Joint Committee to be selected by the Committee of Selection. I think that it would be odd for us to change the procedure on a one-off basis for the purpose of this particular Joint Committee, and I agree with the Leader of the House that the Wright Committee did not suggest such a reform in its report. I understand that the Procedure Committee and its Chairman, the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), recently announced that they planned to conduct an inquiry into the operation of the Committee of Selection in the coming year. I suspect that the Leader of the House and I may be approached to give evidence to that Committee.”
“I do not think that the usual channels are inherently tainted; in fact, they often work extremely well. I make that observation as someone who in my years in this House has both served in the Whips Office and voted against the Whip—not at the same time, I hasten to add. I have also been elected as vice-chair of the parliamentary committee for the Labour party and on the Labour party’s national executive committee against the wishes of this supposedly “all-powerful” Whips Office—so they do not always get their way. It follows that I do not believe that it is necessarily always virtuous if the House bypasses the Whips Office. Deciding to bypass the Whips Office simply because one wishes to bypass the Whips Office is not an argument for changing the way we do things in this instance.”
“Labour Members welcome the establishment of a Joint Committee to scrutinise this particular draft Bill, which I suspect falls into all of those categories at once and has probably managed to create some entirely new ones of its own. I believe that it is also right in this instance that the membership of this Joint Committee should be decided in the usual way via the Committee of Selection. It is important that the Joint Committee be filled by Members of both Houses and of both parties who possess the necessary skills and expertise to scrutinise the Bill fully. While I acknowledge that some in this House believe that everything that emanates from the Whips Office of any party is somehow hopelessly tainted, I have to say that I do not share this analysis.”
“I believe that the decision to pursue the scrutiny of the draft legislation by the means of a Joint Committee of both Houses is perfectly reasonable given the nature of the Bill under consideration, and given the fact that it contains different options on prisoner voting for Parliament to consider. Since 2010, 10 Joint Committees of both Houses have been set up to scrutinise draft Bills. These Committees have tended to be used to scrutinise the most complex pieces of legislation, including on the detention of terror suspects and the reform of the House of Lords. They have also been deployed where Government policy is still to be formed in detail or where cross-party agreement is felt to be crucial to the success of the proposals.”
“I rise to support the motion on the draft Voting Eligibility (Prisoners) Bill and the Joint Committee therein, and to oppose the amendment. The first thing to say is that the draft Voting Eligibility (Prisoners) Bill is a highly contentious piece of legislation. The Bill will offer the choice of three options for Parliament to consider on prisoner voting: a blanket ban on all prisoners having the vote; entitling prisoners serving four years or less to the vote; or entitling prisoners serving six months or less to the vote. It is crucial that legislation as contentious as this be given extensive pre-legislative scrutiny. We on the Opposition side thus support the establishment of a Joint Committee of both Houses of Parliament to scrutinise for a period of six months the proposals in this Bill.”
“I am somewhat surprised. Although I would never criticise an hon. Member, I should have thought that if the Chairman of the Procedure Committee wished to look into the way in which the Committee of Selection works, he might want to hear the evidence before putting his own views on record. However, he is his own very competent man, and he has his own views on these matters. I hope that he will also have an open mind when the Procedure Committee looks into how we might sensibly change the way in which the Committee of Selection works. I look forward to the work that it will devote to the subject.”
“I think that it may be one of the anarchist Committees that we have in the House. Given its membership, I know that it will not be led by anyone, notwithstanding the hon. Gentleman’s undoubted prowess.”
“I had never quite imagined that the hon. Gentleman would fall into the anarchist persuasion, but I am glad he has reassured the House that that is not the case. It may be advisable for me to return to the subject of the amendment. I believe that it would be wrong for us to adopt a different method for selecting members of the Joint Committee on an ad hoc basis before we have had an opportunity to see what the Procedure Committee might wish the House to consider, and, once its work has been done, to see more details of that work and of the evidence that it wishes to gather. I think that the amendment is premature, and I ask the House to vote against it.”
“That does not mean that I agree with a single policy that that distinguished Prime Minister brought to this House or the country, and it would be wrong of me to say that I did, but that does not preclude me from having the appropriate amount of respect for her memory, funeral and loved ones. The official Opposition absolutely understand why tomorrow must be different in these very special circumstances. That will not preclude me from checking how many Wednesdays are included in the parliamentary calendar in future, but we absolutely understand why this particular Wednesday cannot be a normal one.”
“I do not believe, however, that the reasons for changing tomorrow’s sitting hours mean that we can accuse the Prime Minister of dodging Prime Minister’s questions. A former Prime Minister who led this country for 11 years has, sadly, passed away and I think it is right that the business of this House should pause and the din of the Chamber should quieten, so that hon. and right hon. Members, many of whom were personal friends of hers, are able to attend her funeral and reflect upon it subsequently without having to come back to what is often the bear pit of adversarial politics in this country.”
“It is a pleasure to follow the Leader of the House, who knows that, many times over the past year, we have expressed the view that the Prime Minister seeks to dodge Prime Minister’s questions. We do not yet know when Prorogation will take place, but that may be another occasion when we will not sit on a Wednesday. Could the Leader of the House tell us when Prorogation will be? I pointed out recently that, following the Budget and given when we adjourned for the recess, four weeks will have passed between the Budget being delivered and the Prime Minister dealing with its aftermath in this House. I have argued consistently that the way this House’s business is arranged rather excludes Wednesdays and the accountability that Prime Minister’s questions brings to bear.”
“Close inspection will show him that the Office for Budget Responsibility has halved growth forecasts for this year and downgraded them for next; revealed that borrowing will be £245 billion higher than was thought in the spending review to pay for the costs of his Government’s failing economic plan; and shown that real wages will fall by 2.7% over the course of this Parliament. We have had three years of pain and not an inch of gain. The Chancellor claimed he was trying to “light the fires of ambition” —[ Official Report , 20 March 2013; Vol. 560, c. 941.] , but it is his own reputation and the dreams of millions that are going up in smoke, and next week 3,000 millionaires will get a tax cut while the rest of us pay the price of this Government’s failure. This was a downgraded budget from a downgraded Chancellor.”