Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Business, Innovation and Skills – in the House of Commons at 9:30 am on 26 March 2015.
Iain Wright
Shadow Minister (Business, Innovation and Skills)
9:30,
26 March 2015
The Minister mentioned the CBI, and Katja Hall of the CBI has said:
“The vast Majority of businesses back the creation of an independent body to assess the UK’s long-term infrastructure needs” as a means of finding
“a new way to agree upon and then consistently deliver the improvements we’ll need over the next fifty years—not just the next five.”
EEF has said that
“good infrastructure is an essential building block for the UK’s long-term competitiveness and growth”,
and has called for a permanent infrastructure body to act as a “game changer”. This is not, as the Minister said in an earlier reply, “bureaucracy”, so will he respond to the question of my hon. Friend Diana Johnson? In the light of overwhelming business support and to stop decisions on our country’s long-term future prosperity being kicked into the long grass, will the Minister back British companies and support Labour’s plan to set up an independent national infrastructure commission?
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
The term "majority" is used in two ways in Parliament. Firstly a Government cannot operate effectively unless it can command a majority in the House of Commons - a majority means winning more than 50% of the votes in a division. Should a Government fail to hold the confidence of the House, it has to hold a General Election. Secondly the term can also be used in an election, where it refers to the margin which the candidate with the most votes has over the candidate coming second. To win a seat a candidate need only have a majority of 1.
