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Business of the House

The right hon. Lady referred to the season of good will to all men and, indeed, to all women. I am delighted to welcome her to her new responsibilities as shadow Leader of the House. I always enjoyed my exchanges with her predecessor and I welcome her unreservedly to her new role. No doubt our friends the sketch writers will already be working hard on their Punch and Judy comparisons. The Government will be delighted to engage in debate and discussion on the outstandingly successful Montreal talks on climate change. I am sure there will be many opportunities for the House to debate that remarkable success, and I am sure all Members of the House will want to pay tribute to the extremely effective negotiating position adopted successfully by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who has gone straight from Montreal to Hong Kong, where no doubt she will continue the Government’s record of success in international negotiations. I am delighted that in the spirit of good will and co-operation, the right hon. Lady wants to congratulate members of the Government on achieving such remarkable successes in international negotiations. I am sorry the right hon. Lady spoiled the sense of good will by making allegations about problems in public services. Possibly the way in which we might have a more rounded debate on the subject is to have a debate comparing the state of Britain’s public services today with those in 1997, when we inherited a sorry picture. Let me go through the same list as she gave us—the appalling problems of waiting lists in the national health service, which were resolved by the present Government, and the appalling number of operations cancelled. If she checks the report, she will see that those figures are much reduced. What is remarkable about that reduction is that we are conducting many more operations and cancelling many fewer, a fact which, in the spirit of fairness at this time of year, I hope she will take into account when she next comes to the Dispatch Box. On cleanliness, the same report refers to the remarkable improvement in cleanliness. I pick out 1997 as a convenient date but these things have improved significantly since that time. The same is true of primary education, the quality of education and the amount of investment provided. The Government have no worries at all about the possibility of debates on public services. Every time we debate health, education, transport, policing—the whole range of public expenditure—the Government have a record of which we can be proud. I only wish that Conservative Members could come to the Dispatch Box and say the same. In relation to local authorities, the right hon. Lady relied on a rather narrow sample. If she looks a little more widely, she will see that there are more Labour councils improving than Conservative ones. We would all want to ensure that the information set out to the House was accurate. I mentioned to the House last week that I intended to visit the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Given the decision of the new Leader of the Opposition to pull his Members of the European Parliament out of the European People’s party group, I am sure that Conservative Members will be delighted to hear that Alessandra Mussolini’s group send their seasonal greetings to them. I hope the right hon. Lady will be receiving a Christmas card from her new potential sister party, described affectionately by a Conservative MEP, Struan Stevenson, as"““a ragbag of fascists and outcasts.””"