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Business of the House

I thank the Leader of the House for giving us the forthcoming business, and welcome her back from her appearance at Prime Minister's Question Time yesterday. I hope that she has fully recovered. I also thank her—this is important—for correcting the record so swiftly on Sir Fred Goodwin's pension, and urge other Ministers to learn from her example. May we have a further statement on the position of Lord Myners, the City Minister, another banker who has received an honour for his services? Can the Leader of the House confirm that, contrary to previous assertions by the Government, Lord Myners was aware of Sir Fred Goodwin's obscene pension package and, indeed, acceded to it? Might the City Minister's willingness to rubber-stamp Sir Fred's pay-off have had something to do with the fact that he himself has a £100,000 pension entitlement from the Royal Bank of Scotland Group? May we also have a wide-ranging debate on honesty in Government? Yesterday morning the Minister for Borders and Immigration launched a very aggressive attack on the independent Office for National Statistics, criticising it for, as he put it, "playing politics", questioning its motives for releasing certain data, and describing its decision as""naive or, at worst, sinister"." Is that not an astonishing charge from a Government who have consistently manipulated statistics for their own political advantage? How on earth can the Minister justify his statements when just two months ago his own boss, the Home Secretary, was forced to apologise to the House for partial and untimely publication of knife crime figures? Is it not increasingly the case that the Government quite simply do not like the statistics because the truth about them hurts? People up and down the country are finding that the social institutions that once bound us together as a country are fast disappearing. Local surgeries, small shops, police stations and post offices have all been victims of this Government, but now, it seems, it is the turn of the great British pub. Can the House, inspired by the all-party parliamentary beer group, be given an opportunity to debate the question of how pubs can survive when Government policy has already led to the closure of 2,000 of them? What is the point of making it seven times more expensive to drink in the controlled environment of a pub than to buy alcohol in a supermarket, following which so many people end up throwing up on the pavement? May we also have a debate on the question of how the traditional media will survive the recession? Yesterday's job cuts at ITV are a raw indication of the huge problems that the drop in advertising revenue will cause for both broadcasters and the press, and particularly for local newspapers, which are of great value to all of us in the House. I acknowledge that the right hon. and learned Lady may be tiring a little of the affectionate attentions of her friends in the media, but given that a healthy democracy is only sustainable with a healthy media, may we be told what Government policy is on saving our local radio stations and our local newspapers? Why are we not being given a statement, even today, on the economy? Can we not have a statement from the Government and a full debate on quantitative easing, so that Members can question the Government on how they intend to steer a course through inflation and deflation? The decisions being taken today are of the utmost gravity and will have profound effects on the economy for many years to come. They are desperate measures designed to address economic failure and collapse. When can we be told in clear terms exactly what the Government are doing and why? Finally, may we have a debate on the way MPs are treated by the press? In the past few weeks we have seen some very cruel references to the right hon. and learned Lady. We have had "Hapless Harriet", "The Mad Hattie" and "Hattie the Harridan"—and that is only from her own side. So may I invite her to my office for a comforting hug, a heart-shaped chocolate and an openly declared hefty cheque from me for her leadership campaign?