Business of the House

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 11:31 am on 17 May 2012.

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Photo of George Young George Young The Leader of the House of Commons 11:31, 17 May 2012

May I begin in a conciliatory way by congratulating the hon. Lady on her promotion to the chair of her party’s national policy forum? We hope that she can do that without becoming a part-time shadow Leader of the House. I know that she will bear in mind what her leader said on 10 January:

“in these times, with less money, spending more on one thing means finding the money from somewhere else.”

That is something her colleagues seem to have forgotten. Her previous job was shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, so she will want to bring some financial discipline to her party’s policies if they are to have any credibility with the electorate.

The hon. Lady asserted that there were not enough Bills in the Queen’s Speech. If she looks at earlier Queen’s Speeches, she will find that the number of Bills introduced in this Session is not dissimilar to the number introduced in the 2005, 2006 and 2007 Sessions. She will also find that three Bills are being carried over from the previous Session. We are not going to do what the previous Government did, which was to bring so much legislation to the House that they were unable to process it properly. As I have said before, the House is not simply a legislation factory. We are not going to make their mistake of imposing too many ill-considered and ill-drafted Bills on the House.

The hon. Lady mentioned that today is a day to celebrate equality. Had Mr Speaker been in the Chair, I would have commended the article he wrote for today’s copy of The Independent. Today is international day against homophobia and transphobia. The Government are strongly committed to advancing equality and want to ensure that public services are accessible to all and free from discrimination. She will know that we have lifted the ban on civil partnerships taking place on religious premises and are currently consulting on how to implement equal civil marriage. We are continuing to remove barriers and tackle prejudice.

On the economy, the hon. Lady will know that we are about to debate economic matters on an amendment tabled by the Opposition, but I have to say that her policies would increase this country’s debt and provide no solution to its problems whatsoever.

On policing, I remind the hon. Lady that before the election the then Home Secretary was asked whether he could guarantee police numbers, and he said “No.” I remind her also that the Labour party has now endorsed cuts of £2.1 billion to the police budget, and the official Association of Chief Police Officers response, from Chief Constable Peter Fahy, stated that

“the effectiveness of policing cannot be measured by the number of officers alone but by reductions in crime and increases in public confidence.”

It is an inconvenient truth for the hon. Lady that, although she might suggest that crime is going up, official figures show that police-recorded crime has fallen by 3%.

Turning to immigration, I note that we inherited a shambles at the UK Border Agency, which we are putting right. The hon. Lady will welcome the Immigration Minister’s announcement before the Home Affairs Committee of an additional mobile unit at Heathrow to cope with the delays to which she refers.

I am astonished that the hon. Lady mentions the absence of the Lord Chancellor from oral questions. She was a Minister herself, and she will know that occasionally Ministers have responsibilities other than in the House. The Lord Chancellor, in line with precedent, wrote to Mr Speaker and to the shadow Lord Chancellor to explain that he would not be at oral questions but at an international legal forum in Russia. I am sure that he would have preferred to have been here, because he enjoys his time at the Dispatch Box, but I commend the performance of my hon. Friend Mr Vara, who was an understudy for the Lord Chancellor and not only kept the balls away from the wicket but swept many of them to the boundary.

Finally, I say to the hon. Lady that it is a fortnight since the Labour party candidate was defeated in the election for Mayor of London, and less than two months since the hon. Lady’s party lost Bradford West, so any triumphalism on her part is very premature.