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Business of the House

I thank the right hon. and learned Lady for giving us the future business. This morning, the Secretary of State for Transport made a written statement about the expansion of Heathrow. She was happy to make a statement to business leaders yesterday and to spin it to the ““Today”” programme this morning, so why has not she been to the House to make an oral statement? That would enable hon. Members, who, like me, have constituency interests, to question her. Every week, the Leader of the House tells us that she puts Parliament first; every week, her colleagues treat Parliament with disdain. On Monday, we discovered that the Government have no idea how much taxpayers’ money might be paid out after the £24 billion bail-out of Northern Rock. The Chancellor told the Select Committee on Treasury:"““we fully expect to be able to get that money back.””" Now he refuses to say for certain that the money will ever be paid back. There are many questions still to be answered. What is the total Government liability? What arrangements are in place if the Government need a supplementary estimate to cover their liabilities? How are they accounting for the liabilities, and are those liabilities on or off balance sheet? What estimate has been made of the effect on the public sector borrowing requirement? Will the Chancellor make another Northern Rock statement, so that he can answer those questions? On Tuesday we discovered that the Government had lost the personal details of 25 million men, women and children. The Prime Minister says that he ““profoundly”” regrets what has happened, but that is not much consolation to the millions of families who have been left to follow the Chancellor’s advice to check their bank statements. According to a written answer given just three weeks ago, there were 2,111 security breaches by HMRC last year alone. Reports today suggest that at least two further CDs are missing. How can the Prime Minister deny that the fiasco is anything but the result of systemic failure? Can we therefore have a debate in Government time on the systemic failure in HMRC—a department set up by the Prime Minister? In his statement on Tuesday, the Chancellor said that the reason he had not told the House immediately was that he needed to put appropriate safeguards in place. He said that"““the banks were adamant that they wanted as much time as possible to prepare for this announcement.””—[Official Report, 20 November 2007; Vol. 467, c. 1102.]" However, the British Bankers Association has said:"““The BBA did not ask for any more time…None of our members asked for any extra time.””" That directly contradicts what the Chancellor told hon. Members. He must come to the House and set the record straight. The Chancellor also said repeatedly that the decisions were taken by junior officials. However, we know that it was a senior business manager who took the decision to put the information on to the discs and that that was done with the knowledge of the director of HMRC, process owner for tax credits and child benefits. Yet another thing that the Chancellor told the House has been contradicted, so will he come to the House to make an urgent statement and tell us the true version of events? The Northern Rock fiasco and the HMRC scandal tell us everything that we need to know about the Government: they are incompetent, insincere and in deep trouble. Is it not time that somebody just got a grip?