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Business of the House

I thank the Leader of the House for giving us the business for the week after the recess. I am grateful that the Children and Adoption Bill has found a place in the business of the House for that week. The right hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members will have noticed that we will use our Opposition day on 1 March to discuss dentistry and the treatment of cancer patients in the NHS. I asked last week for a debate on dentistry, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Ann Winterton), and the Leader of the House suggested that Members should raise the issue in today’s debate on NHS inequalities. He was being somewhat disingenuous in saying that because the debate today not only covers the whole of the NHS, but will probably last for only two and a half hours. There will not be much time to talk about dentistry. In 1999, the Prime Minister gave a commitment that by the end of 2001 everyone would have access to an NHS dentist—a commitment on which he has failed to deliver. However, hon. Members may care to know that the Government have a radical and innovative answer to ending the queues of people waiting to sign up to a new NHS dentist. They are going to ban people from queuing and force them apply by phone or post. We need a debate about the real answers to the problems, and we will give hon. Members that debate. On the issue of cancer patients and the use of Herceptin, and following yesterday’s court decision—which revealed that, despite the comments by the Secretary of State for Health last autumn, the Government had not changed their policy—will the Leader of the House ensure that the right hon. Lady makes a statement to the House on Herceptin before the debate on 1 March? We waited a long time for it, but I was pleased to hear the Leader of the House announce the date of the Budget today. It is a pity that it was announced on Sky News before he could announce the date in this House. Talking of long waits, when will the education reform Bill be published? I realise that referring to the economy usually brings a torrent of statistics from the Leader of the House about inflation, interest rates and employment, but yesterday we saw the biggest rise in unemployment for 13 years, and there are serious underlying problems that need to be addressed, particularly the position of young people. Does he share my concern that over the past year there was a 28 per cent. increase in youth long-term unemployment; the number of economically inactive 18 to 24-year-olds has risen by nearly a quarter since Labour came to power; and that the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training has risen to 1.2 million? The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that he would not be satisfied until the Government had removed the scar of long-term unemployment from the face of Britain. Yesterday’s figures show that he is failing to achieve that goal, so will the Leader of the House make time for a debate on youth long-term unemployment? Finally, on a day when a review of the work of the Electoral Commission has been announced, I note that the Leader of the House has previously said that in order to engage people in the electoral process we should force them to vote by making it compulsory and by fining people who do not vote. Is that still his view, or has he now realised that the more people who vote at the next general election, the bigger the Conservative majority?