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Business of the House

I return to the Prime Minister's welcome statement in July that his new intention would be always to make statements on important issues to the House whenever appropriate, yet within three months we saw him go back to the bad old habit of making a statement that could absolutely have waited until Parliament came back this week. Will the Leader of the House go back to the Prime Minister and Ministers and make it clear that it is not acceptable that statements are made in the recess, willy-nilly, whatever the subject, when they could wait to be made in Parliament. That completely undermines what the Prime Minister said to the House after his election in the summer. On a similar issue, the Prime Minister indicated the intention to be open-minded—as the Leader of the House has always been—about constitutional reform, which is very welcome. Given the little local difficulty that the Prime Minister got into last weekend, will the right hon. and learned Lady encourage him to let the House discuss the merits of fixed-term Parliaments, with a guarantee that people are on electoral registers and not off them, and possibly the idea that we hold elections on both days of the weekend to maximise turnout? I am sure that people throughout the country would welcome an unwhipped debate on that subject to test the view of the House. We heard a welcome statement from the Chancellor earlier this week on public sector borrowing and the comprehensive spending review, but there is to be no extended debate about that, as there usually is after the Budget. Will the Leader of the House suggest that in future we have a full, proper economic debate twice yearly, because then we could ask whether Labour was about to adopt our policy on long-term care funding for the elderly and test whether the flood defence moneys would be adequate or, as all the independent experts suggest, inadequate to meet the damage of recent months. Finally, rather than having to respond on Opposition days when subjects affecting agriculture and rural communities are put on the agenda or as a matter of urgency when there is a crisis, will the right hon. Lady provide regular opportunities to debate agriculture and the rural economy, not just after the latest outbreak of BSE or bluetongue disease? We must understand that unless we have a healthy agricultural industry which feels supported, the UK will face severe economic and financial difficulties?