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Merry Christmas to you, Mr Speaker, and to your tip-top team. Dumfries and Galloway is the land of milk and slurry. We lack not for grass and dairy cattle, but we do lack for people. We are heavily reliant on immigrants to milk the cattle, so the loss of occupation code 5111 from the immigration salary list is causing huge concern. Can my farmers count on the Secretary of State to speak to the Home Office and head off what appears to be a looming crisis?
This is another U-turn from the Government. Two days ago, the Secretary of State said that the votes were going ahead. Now we are told, in a statement slipped out just before we rise for Christmas, that they are not going ahead. The Minister uses as her excuse representations that she tells us she has received from councils. Will she take this opportunity to confirm that the Conservative leader of Norfolk county council has not made representations to her, and reaffirm her public position that she will not ask for a delay in elections in Norfolk?
To the House.
Thank you, Mr Speaker. May I wish you and your brilliant team a very happy Christmas? The 2017 Lammy review looked at prejudice in the criminal justice system. Our now Justice Secretary said: “Juries are a success story of our justice system… juries are representative of local populations—and must deliberate as a group, leaving no hiding place for bias or discrimination”, and “This debate and deliberation acts as a filter for prejudice”. In 2020, he said, “Criminal trials without juries are a bad idea. You don’t fix the backlog with trials that are widely perceived as unfair.” What advice has the Minister given on how to avoid the discriminatory outcomes that the Justice Secretary warned about?
I am not too sure that answered my question; I shall have another go. This month, the Minister’s colleague, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner), wrote: “The erosion of jury trials not only risks undermining a fundamental right, but importantly, will not reduce the backlog by anything like enough”. He went on: “If this ever comes to the House of Commons, I will rebel and vote against it…The House and the public will not stand for the erosion of a fundamental right”. It would seem from X that at least 38 of his colleagues take a similar view. Is the Solicitor General, who is charged with upholding the rule of law, also concerned about the Justice Secretary’s proposals?
Merry Christmas to you and your team, Mr Speaker. The Government must enact policies that benefit farming communities. They have a chance to do that now with another critical issue that impacts our farming, food security, animal welfare and biosecurity. A recommendation was made this month by the council of the School of the Biological Sciences to close the University of Cambridge’s vet school. I declare my strong personal and professional interest as a graduate of that school and as a fellow of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. We do not produce enough vets in the UK. We face threats to our food security and our biosecurity, both of which vets are pivotal to. The health and welfare of animals depends on vets, as indeed does public health. Will the Government act now to press the University of Cambridge to block this closure proposal and save Cambridge’s vet school, for the benefit of animals and people here in the UK and across the world?
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs if she will make a statement on the Government’s animal welfare strategy.
Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker. I know that you are an animal lover, as indeed we are as a nation. As a veterinary surgeon, I have animal health and welfare very close to my heart. We have now reached the end of the year for Parliament, and we still do not have sight of the Government’s animal welfare strategy. The Prime Minister has said on the record that the strategy would be released by the end of the year. That has been repeated by Ministers in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs many times in the Chamber and again today, as well as in answers to repeated written questions from many Members across the House. We need to find out, and be able to scrutinise, the Government’s plans for our animals. We face significant issues: animal digital identification; disease outbreaks such as avian influenza and bluetongue; the threat of foot and mouth disease or African swine fever coming into the UK; a Competition and Markets Authority inquiry into veterinary services; the need for a new Veterinary Surgeons Act; a shortage of vets; and a farming community struggling with anxiety and financial pressures caused by this Labour Government. I put on the record this House’s thanks to all the vets, farmers and frontline officials in the Animal and Plant Health Agency who are on duty over the Christmas period, tending to and protecting our animals. The UK has some of the highest animal welfare standards in the world. We should be very proud of the previous Conservative Government’s achievements in improving animal welfare, such as banning the export of live animals, including cattle, sheep, pigs and horses, for fattening or slaughter in the Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Act 2024; increasing from six months to five years the maximum prison sentence for animal cruelty in the Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Act 2021; and enshrining animal sentience in UK law with the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022, and establishing the Animal Sentience Committee, so that any new legislation must pay due regard to animal welfare. The baton has now been passed from the Conservatives to Labour. Please can we hear what the Government plan to do in this crucial area, so that the House can scrutinise what the future is for our animals and the people who care for them?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers, and I wish you and your team a merry Christmas. I thank the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) for inadvertently creating what seems like a medical symposium; I feel as if I am back at one of my Christmas grand rounds—they often used to pick something a little bit strange and wacky to debate. I did not quite expect to be talking about spaniels’ ear canals, but I enjoyed the flashback none the less. The hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley) rightly talked about couples. When I was a GP, I saw couples become yin and yang, supporting each other on the basis of who had the hearing loss, who had the brains and who had the dexterity. If one of those problems is not sorted, there can be real impacts for the others. We should consider that when we deal with patients. The hon. Gentleman’s point about drawers of waste was a personal hobby horse of mine too—though it was not hearing aids, but often medication brought back to me, or seeing thousands of bandages or eye drops left over when I went on home visits, for example. That is a really important point and the NHS is not very good at picking up on it. I thank the Father of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), for raising the issue of stigma. My grandfather was particularly bad and stubbornly did not want to get a hearing aid, and even when he did get it, he would not wear it. My right hon. Friend also joked about his wife not hearing him, which reminded me of “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin”; at the start of the film, the pea is taken out of the ear, but at the end, because of all the nagging, he is desperate to get the pea reinserted. My right hon. Friend also raised the issue of workforce, which is incredibly important when it comes to trying to solve some of these problems. The hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip set out clearly and coherently both the landscape and where we find ourselves. That is really important because, when people think about care delivered close to home, hearing loss services are among some of the most visible examples on the high street and in our community settings across the country. I visited the Specsavers on Hinckley’s high street, as well as the pharmacy in Newbold Verdon, only a couple of months ago to see what they provide. There is a real opportunity to bring care towards people, which makes high streets a good bellwether for this Government’s ambition on prevention and community care and how that is being translated into practice. There are three issues I would like to press the Minister on. The first is the funding pressures on the ICBs, the second is access and self-referral, and the third is national oversight and data. On access and self-referral, under previous NHS operational planning guidance, ICBs were asked to increase direct access and self-referrals into audiology services. That was a good move; it meant that people concerned about their hearing could go straight to specialist care without needing to see a GP first. In many areas, that has been a success. However, as we heard during the debate, 12 ICBs that commission hearing loss services still require a GP referral. That adds delays for patients and places unnecessary pressure on general practice, not necessarily for any clinical benefit. Against that backdrop, it is a little disappointing to see that self-referral was not included in the most recent operational planning guidance for 2025-26, nor in the medium-term planning framework. The question is why. Would the Minister explain why self-referrals seem to have been deprioritised, and what concrete steps the Government are taking to ensure that access to audiology does not depend simply on where someone lives? On funding pressures and core services, Members have rightly highlighted the significant variation in access to routine audiology services, particularly earwax removal. In too many parts of the country, people are either being pushed back to the ENT departments or told to pay privately. I am glad that we have an eminent surgeon in the Chamber, the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket; from a GP’s perspective, I understand why some were reluctant to go back to having their ears syringed and I often dealt with complaints about why it was not suitable, as suction is the gold standard. The question is how we provide that in a way that is deliverable to the community and provides to the patients, but is also at least cost-neutral for primary or secondary care. There is a conundrum there. That situation will be made worse, as the Father of the House pointed out, by our ageing population. When ICBs are under pressure and their budgets are changing—they are being cut by 50%—how do we ensure that that it is deliverable? That poses the question of how sustainable it is to place the responsibility of the full range of audiology services on ICBs, considering they are under constraints, and how will the Government square that circle. There is also the opportunity of public-private partnerships and neighbourhood centres to help to deliver audiology services. That could come as sites or services. I would be grateful if the Minister could set out what his vision is in this space, considering we are trying to take a leftwards shift. There are also opportunities for new thinking. As I mentioned, I went to see a pharmacist. What supports have been put in place for new providers to come in? Pharmacists seem keen to be able to take on more services, and they often have sites directly in the heart of our communities—the closest place to our residents. Is there some consideration of what can be done to innovate in that space? On data, oversight and accountability, one of the most striking features of audiology is how difficult it is to assess the performance nationally. The Government were right to set out their ambition to meet the NHS standard that 92% of people should wait no longer than 18 weeks from referral to treatment, and in most specialties we can clearly see how the system is performing against that ambition. However, in audiology it is harder, especially as the referral-to-treatment waiting time data, which was paused during the pandemic for understandable reasons, has since been retired by NHS England. Looking ahead, given that the Government have confirmed their intention to bring forward legislation to abolish NHS England, with the statutory functions being taken into the system, will the Minister consider looking again at reinstating the referral-to-treatment waiting time data for direct audiology as a way to monitor the leftward shift that the Government are pushing for? If so, will that be done at ICB level or under the Department of Health and Social Care? I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify two points. First, when does the Government expect to introduce the legislation in 2026? Secondly, it would be helpful to understand when we can expect the workforce plan: we were told that it was coming in the summer, then the autumn and, now that we are on the last day of business before Christmas, I expect it is coming in the new year. Knowing when that plan is coming, and how audiology will play a part in that, is really important. Given the Kingdon review only came forward in November, it is unfair of me to ask whether the Government have fully assessed it yet. The review had 12 recommendations and also pointed out the oversight, and there is a question about how that will be resolved. With all the changes to ICBs, NHS England and the Kingdon review, I would be grateful to know when we will likely hear whether all recommendations have been accepted and will be resolved. Audiology may not always attract attention in this House, but it is a vital part of our community healthcare and a real test of the Government’s commitment to prevention and access. I hope the Minister can provide clarity on the questions I have asked today. I wish you, Mr Vickers, your team, your colleagues, everyone in this House and my constituents a very merry Christmas.
I am grateful that a comprehensive plan is coming forward. One problem we have is joining the leadership up. The Kingdon review, which was launched in May and finished in November, made 12 recommendations that will help align with all the missions the Minister is bringing forward. Can he tell us when the Kingdon review will be accepted and analysed by the Government, and their position on the recommendations, because it is a key thread to delivering all the ambition that he has rightly put forward?
I have two questions—one practical and one policy. Let us make no mistake: the Government have been dragged here today to answer an urgent question about their welfare strategy, which they are bringing forward next week but which we cannot scrutinise because Parliament goes into recess today. Why is that the case? On policy, I have written a number of times about animal welfare in the rescue and rehoming sector. I hope that that is included in the strategy. Will the Secretary of State confirm that it is being looked at and whether further regulations are needed?
This Saturday is the Hopkins Brothers Tractor Run. Dozens of tractors covered in lights will start in Barwell and go through Earl Shilton, Hinckley, Higham, Stoke Golding, Dadlington, Market Bosworth and Desford and past my house in Newbold Verdon. The run was set up by Liam after the tragic loss of his brother Kieran, who committed suicide in September 2022. Since then, it has raised more than £30,000 for Mind, and Liam won the Voluntary Action LeicesterShire fundraiser of the year award in October. Will the Leader of the House thank Liam for what he does, thank the farmers for putting on such a show for our community and encourage all my constituents to come out and see the lights this Saturday when they pass by?
I have long argued in this House that when it comes to mental or physical health, it is about women and men, not women or men, and that is important. I welcome the strategy coming forward, but can I also bring a sense of caution, because terms like “toxic masculinity” and labelling young men and boys are potentially a real problem, because they see themselves as destined to cause some problem? Already some of the reporting today enhances that. What are the Government doing to ensure that we are not already socially criminalising young men and boys for having feelings about good masculinity? That is an important definition that the Government need to get right, and I would appreciate her answer on that topic.
Madam Deputy Speaker, I wish you, all Members and House staff a very merry Christmas and a guid new year, when it comes. I have the honour to represent one of the largest rural constituencies in the United Kingdom, where the ability to drive is essential for many, particularly at Christmas, when we want to get out and see family and friends. May we therefore have a debate in Government time on the operation of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and its associated agencies? Not only are there long delays for driving tests, and not only are rural test centres being overwhelmed by people from outside the area, but we now have significant delays for people with medical conditions who are applying to renew their driving licence.
Can the Minister update us on de-mining in Ukraine? Ukrainian civilians are still regularly being killed by mines or improvised explosive devices. The last time that I had the opportunity to visit Ukraine, it was with the HALO Trust, which is based in my constituency and carries out the meticulous work of removing mines. The scale of the mines is such that there remains a serious threat to the civilian population.
My constituency is larger than any in England and has over 100 distinct communities, which I could not even list in three minutes, so I intend just to focus on the highlights. I am delighted that the Backbench Business Committee has granted a debate on modernising marriage laws, because Europe’s self-proclaimed marriage capital, Gretna Green, is in my constituency. In Annan, the main issue for the community remains the replacement of two footbridges swept away during flooding in 2021. There is still no plan to replace them, despite the community’s own efforts to bring forward plans. That is why I hope that project can come under the important Borderlands growth deal, which covers the south of Scotland. It has been a positive force, but, as I said in a recent debate about Scotland, it needs the Government to put a bit more oomph into it. Two very positive projects are unfolding. One is at Eastriggs, with the potential for a UK munitions factory on the site of HM Gretna, which was a munitions factory during the first world war. That would give a huge boost to not only my constituency but that of the hon. Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns). There is also a plan for a green energy hub on the Chapelcross site. Although I would have preferred to have seen a new nuclear plant on that site, I am happy to support the project. I can demonstrate that coming to business questions with the Leader of the House has an impact. On one Thursday in October, I called on the Bank of Scotland to sell its branch in Peebles to the Peebles Community Trust, and the very next day it announced that it was doing so. I take that intervention as having been helpful. The constituency covers not only a large rural area but former mining communities. I was pleased, along with many Government Members, to support constituents in their call to have the British Coal staff superannuation scheme extended to include them—that was one announcement in the Budget that I was able to welcome. As we approach the Scottish Parliament elections, two Members who overlap with my constituency are standing down. They are Christine Grahame, who has served for 27 years and my son Oliver Mundell, who has served for 10.
It is very good to see you, Mr Efford, presiding over this timely debate. Not only is this the 250th-anniversary year, but I think this is the first Backbench Business slot available after Jane’s actual birthday, which was on Tuesday. I congratulate the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy) not only on securing the debate—I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting it—but on his excellent speech. The last time I saw a production of a Jane Austen novel was “Pride and Prejudice” at the Vyne in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, as part of the 250th celebrations. It was the second-wettest outdoor event I have ever been at. By coincidence, the very wettest was “Sense and Sensibility” earlier that same summer, at Uppark just outside Petersfield. A number of places have a link to Jane Austen, including Southampton, Winchester, Bath and, of course, the rectory at Steventon. But it was at Chawton that Jane Austen’s genius truly flourished, and where she either wrote entirely or revised and completed all six of her globally beloved novels. The house in Chawton is now, of course, the Jane Austen’s House museum, which is in my East Hampshire constituency. The significance of Austen as a novelist can hardly be overstated. Things changed after her work. It was not that she wrote about ordinary people—they were not quite ordinary—but they were a lot more ordinary than the grand, historical figures or the Gothic characters who would typically have featured in novels up to that point. The novels were about ordinary events for those people: the subtle putdowns and the slightly tedious visits they had to withstand. She demonstrated that the domestic world holds just as much drama and just as many moral dilemmas and lessons as any royal court or battlefield. They were not quite what you would call kitchen sink dramas, but they were a social observation and social commentary, so in turn became a sort of social campaigning, because to change the world we first have to observe and explain it. There was then Austen’s own ordinariness, coming not quite from the masses, but still, relatively speaking, ordinary. She was the daughter of a clergyman with a fairly limited formal education, which makes hers also a story of social mobility. That social mobility grew posthumously. We talk about the enduring significance and legacy of authors, but for Jane Austen that grew dramatically with the increasing interest in the 1870s and 1880s. The huge increase then came in the mid-1990s, with the BBC adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice”. Notably, the most famous scene in that adaptation was not in the book. There is an interesting question about how new media adds to what we already have. As the hon. Member for Basingstoke said, we see the storylines in “Bridget Jones”, “Clueless” and “Bridgerton”—there may be no actual Austen link, but quite a few people probably think there is. In any event, we see a kind of genre-spawning going on. I am not a literary critic. Were Jane Austen to describe me, she might say something like, “He was a moderately read man who happily knew the limits of his own scholarship.” I will not go further than that—the hon. Member for Basingstoke did a very good job—but I can and will pay tribute to all those who do so much to keep Jane Austen’s legacy alive, celebrate her work and its wider impact and make sure it gets to a wider and wider audience. It just so happens that many of those people are resident in my constituency and connected with Jane Austen’s house, Chawton House or the Regency day and festival. I already spoke briefly about the significance of the house in Chawton. It was Jane’s place of stability after what had been a period of insecurity, and it was there that she received her own copy of “Pride and Prejudice”—I think she called it her darling child when it arrived from London—and read it out loud to a neighbour with her mother. Not only was the house the place where those novels were fashioned; it was also the place where that “truth universally acknowledged” was heard out loud for the first time. The house became a museum in 1949. Today, it holds an unparalleled collection of first editions, personal letters and artefacts, and receives tens of thousands of visitors from around the world. This year, for the anniversary year, there were 55,000 visitors, a third of whom were from overseas. Under the leadership of Lizzie Dunford, it has done amazing things with the team of 18 staff and 80 fantastic volunteers. However, Chawton is not about only Jane’s own house. There is also what she called the “Great House”: her brother Edward’s house, which is correctly called Chawton House and was the reason that Jane was in Chawton. She was a frequent visitor, even when it was let out to another family. Today, it is a public historic house in the estate run by the Chawton House library trust and is dedicated to telling the stories of women’s history and women’s writing. It has the UK’s leading collection of pre-20th century women’s writing, with around 16,000 items, including the so-called Grandison manuscript in Jane’s own hand. Chawton House is a centre of scholarship and long has been, but these days it is also a fantastic day out. It has had a great upgrade under the chief executive, Katie Childs. There are brilliant volunteers there who help to bring the place to life. Visitors will discover many influences on Jane’s novels around the house. It runs a great programme of outdoor theatre, classical music and walks—countryside walks such as the walk from Chawton to Farringdon were, of course, a great influence on Jane—as well as being a Royal Horticultural Society partner garden. Finally, there is the town of Alton, just outside which the small village of Chawton lies. The whole of Alton is really involved with Jane Austen’s legacy. On 21 June this year, we had a fantastic unveiling of the new bust of Jane Austen, which is now in the Alton Regency garden just outside the assembly rooms and very close to the branch of her brother Henry’s bank on the high street. It was great to have there the sculptor Mark Coreth and descendants of the Austen and Knight families. The bust was made at Morris Singer foundry in Lasham, which—a little fun fact for colleagues—was the same foundry that fashioned the two unique bronze sculptures outside the door of Westminster Hall that mark the late Queen’s platinum jubilee. Every year, the Regency day and festival bring into Alton hundreds of people, particularly those with a fondness for period costume. It is a great spectacle. The Regency ball always sells out. There is great work between Chawton and Basingstoke on some of these commemorative events. That festival is now into its 17th year and attracts people from around the world, with some 50 events. It has a brilliant organising committee, which includes the secretary, Julie McLatch. It was all the brainchild of local hero Pat Lerew. In conclusion, and given the season, I will quote Mr Elton in “Emma”: “At Christmas every body invites their friends about them, and people think little of even the worst weather”— which will be a good thing if it stays as filthy as it is outside right now. Mr Efford, if I might paraphrase Caroline Bingley in “Pride and Prejudice”: “I sincerely hope your Christmas”— in Eltham and Chislehurst— “may abound in the gaieties which that season generally brings”.
1. What advice she has given the Government on the potential impact of removing jury trials on the rule of law.
The Government have cancelled elections and are scrapping jury trials, and now we hear that they are limiting the right to appeal to a Crown court, despite the fact that such appeals have a 40% success rate. The Solicitor General talks about justice denied; surely, that is a case in point? Given that her job is to uphold the rule of law, would she push back against some of her colleagues’ more authoritarian tendencies?
Today, Gosport borough council has been given the lowest possible rating by a Government regulator for the management of its social housing. The Minister will understand that this is a deeply worrying time for the 3,000 Gosport tenants and for local council tax payers. What is not helping is the constant ambiguity, uncertainty and speculation from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government about the borough’s future, compounding the chaos and confusion from the council’s already quite hapless leadership. The Minister has already heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes) that Hampshire county council does not favour a delay, but does she agree that today’s announcement just adds to the uncertainty that thousands of residents face across Hampshire?
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
I call the Father of the House.
I will take it provided that it pertains to the statement we have just had.
Order. This is not a point of order.
The right hon. Gentleman is seeking to extend the debate we have just had on a separate matter. He will know that that is not a point of order, and it is not a matter for the Chair whether the MOD is going to bring forward—
It is simply not a matter for the Chair. It does not pertain to the statement.
I call the shadow Minister.
I call the Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee.
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
The hon. Gentleman will know that that is not a matter for the Chair. I am reluctant to allow continuation of debate via the mechanism of points of order, unless the Minister wishes to respond.
We now come to the Select Committee statement on behalf of the Backbench Business Committee. Bob Blackman will speak for up to 10 minutes, during which no interventions may be taken. At the conclusion of his statement, I will call Members to ask questions on the subject of the statement; they must be brief questions, not speeches. I emphasise that questions should be directed to the Committee Chair, not to the relevant Government Minister. Front Benchers may take part in questioning.
I call Charlie Maynard on a point of order in connection with the code of conduct, to rectify a failure to declare.
I thank the hon. Member for his point of order and for giving notice of it. I remind the House that Members may seek advice on the code of conduct at any time from the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and from the Registrar of Members’ Financial Interests. There will be no further points of order on this issue.
There will have to be an immediate three-minute time limit.
Order. I call Mark Francois.
Leo, a 16-year-old boy in my constituency, has just received the best news that he could receive before Christmas. He is a leukaemia patient who has been searching for a donor to alleviate his cancer, and after a search in which 700 people came forward, he has finally found an anonymous donor. This is fantastic news. Will the Leader of the House join me in wishing Leo a very merry Christmas and a prosperous and healthy new year? Will he also arrange for a statement in early 2026 on funding for leukaemia research and development?
Since we cannot scrutinise the strategy today, may I ask what action is included in it to phase out animal testing in scientific laboratories?
I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the Backbench Business for the Chamber when we come back. I congratulate him on being briefed immediately, given that the offers were accepted only this morning. In addition, the business in Westminster Hall on Tuesday 6 January will be a debate on less survivable cancers. On Thursday 8 January, the Liaison Committee has taken up the option for a debate on the Scottish Affairs Committee’s report; the second debate will be on Myanmar and religious minority persecution. On Tuesday 13 January there will be a debate on the potential merits of a statutory duty of care for universities. Offers are outstanding for the Thursday, so we are waiting to hear back on those. I join others in condemning the terrible atrocities at Bondi Beach and in expressing sympathy for the victims and their families. It has always been the case that chants such as, “Globalise the intifada”, “Death to the IDF”, and, “From the river to the sea” are deeply antisemitic. They should be arrestable offences, and there should be prosecutions as a result. Yesterday, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and his counterpart in Manchester released a statement saying that, in future, those chants will be arrestable offences, but that begs a number of questions. Does that apply only to London and Manchester? What about the rest of England? What about Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales? What guidance is the Home Secretary issuing to the police on the actions that should be taken against those who chant those sorts of antisemitic tropes? Will the Leader of the House encourage the Home Secretary or one of the Home Office Ministers to come before the House immediately when we return—or this afternoon, if necessary—to make clear what the position is, so that people understand what they can say and what will happen to them as a result of chanting those antisemitic tropes?
I welcome the strategy. The Minister will well know that children from homes in which domestic violence is prevalent are all too often conditioned to believe that that is the normal way for relationships to operate. Through changes to the national curriculum in particular, will she ensure that teachers encourage children to come forward with examples of what has happened at home and elsewhere in their families? In that way, we can deal with these matters where they start: in the home.
With permission, I will make a statement about the report on the first 15 years of the Backbench Business Committee. As Members will be aware, the Backbench Business Committee came out of the Wright reforms presented to this House, all bar one of which have been implemented. The only one that has not been implemented is the requirement for a House Business Committee, but I will leave that to the Leader of the House to consider in the future. I pay tribute to my two predecessors as Chair of the Committee: Natascha Engel and Ian Mearns. They led the Committee with appropriate dignity and initiated many different reforms in this place. I have had the pleasure of serving on the Committee for 14 of its 15 years, so I have witnessed at first hand the excellent work they did. Our role is very simple: to encourage debates on a wide range of subjects that the Government do not necessarily wish to be debated in the House. We also have a duty to ensure that requests for debates have cross-party support, to use the time as effectively as possible. We also allow for Select Committee statements to take place, and I remind Select Committee Chairs that they can apply to the Backbench Business Committee for a debate on reports they produce, which may lead to a motion on the Order Paper if they so wish. There is a slight problem with this, which I recommend the Leader of the House looks at seriously. At the moment, the Standing Order requires such statements to be within five working days of the publication of a Select Committee report. We would like to see that extended to 10 working days, to allow more flexibility for Select Committee Chairs to make appropriate statements to the House on the work they have done. I turn to the issue of substantive motions, which are divisible motions that the House can consider. Between 2010 and 2012—the first two years of the Committee—63% of the debates in this Chamber were on divisible motions. In the last two years, that figure has reduced to 25%. In our Committee’s report, we have summarised how that has changed over the years. I think there is a reason for that: divisible motions are not binding on the Government, and there is hardly ever a vote on them—they are normally nodded through. I urge the Leader of the House to look at this. Could we have a framework for action on the motions passed by this House? What action are the Government prepared to take on those, and will they report back to the House? At the moment, generally speaking, we are confined to Thursdays for Backbench Business debates in the Chamber. One of the suggestions we have made in our report is that we should be given more time between Mondays and Wednesdays, possibly with 90-minute debates either before or after appropriate Government time, to allow Back Benchers to have debates on issues that they wish to discuss. I have to say—and today is another day when it has happened—that our debates are often curtailed by urgent questions and statements from the Government. That is unfair on Back Benchers who are here to take part in important debates that they have sponsored. Indeed, there are often visitors in the Public Gallery who have come to witness those debates. We need to do something about that, to prevent Backbench Business debates from being curtailed and colleagues having to give short speeches. On Westminster Hall, we have the opportunity to allocate the 90-minute debate on Tuesday morning and debates on Thursday afternoon. We have suggested once again—I hope the Leader of the House will look at this sympathetically—that we bring forward the debates on a Thursday afternoon from 1.30 pm to 12.30 pm and from 3 pm to 2 pm. That would allow Members to get away and close Westminster Hall at an earlier time, which would be much more convenient for staff; we often have rejections of offers—unfairly, in my view—for the second slot on Thursday afternoons. Given that we look rigorously at the applications submitted, I also suggest that it would be helpful if we looked at more allocation on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in Westminster Hall so that we can ensure that there is sufficient support across parties to make sure those debates are balanced. That is obviously in the hands of the Speaker and Deputy Speakers, and I respect that. The Procedure Committee has made certain recommendations. It does not have to wait for a Government motion to be put, but can apply for time under the Backbench Business Committee for a business of the House motion. I am not accusing the current Government of this, but it has often been the case that a Government have frustrated the Procedure Committee when it wants to make changes by not making time available. I alert the Procedure Committee to that opportunity. Equally, one of the things that we are looking at—I would want to work with the Leader of the House on this—is the allocation of more topical debates. At the moment, we have a six-month waiting list for debates. That means that by the time those debates come up, the topicality has often gone. If we could get to a point whereby we could announce a topical debate on a Tuesday, have bids before our meeting and then announce the result of that for a Thursday, that would really give the debate a topical timing. However, I believe that would require a change in Standing Orders. One of the issues that we have often had complaints about is the fact that our Backbench Business Committee is the only Select Committee in the House that has to have elections after every King’s Speech and state opening. That means that there is a delay after the King’s Speech until a Chair and Committee members are elected, at just the time when there is often an opportunity for general debates, either in the Chamber or in Westminster Hall. May we change that so that the chairmanship is continuous throughout the life of the Parliament? There is a further issue: the reform of private Members’ Bills. I have piloted three such Bills through this place to successful conclusion. However, they are dependent, frankly, on a raffle—if a Member is successful in the raffle, they will do well. One of the things that the Procedure Committee recommended when I was on it, and that I am glad to see it is still recommending, is for the Backbench Business Committee to be able to consider prioritising for the first four sitting Fridays the bids for private Members’ Bills that are well-founded, have cross-party support and for which detailed work has been done, rather than someone getting drawn in the lottery of the ballot and then deciding what they are going to do. I think that would be better way of making law. I will not continue any longer, Madam Deputy Speaker. I look forward to any questions that colleagues may have.