---

Business of the House

The entire Government are sounding a little provisional at the moment. May I join in the tributes to Michael Foot? He was a member of a west-country radical family of some note, and was of a political age when it was felt important that Members of Parliament might have read a few books, as well as be able to grin inanely at a camera. He will be remembered with great affection. We get used to people being appointed tsar of this and champion of that, but we actually have a rather important post of that kind: the Rural Advocate. The current Rural Advocate is Dr. Stuart Burgess, and his post is important because each year he can send a report about what is happening in our rural areas directly to the Prime Minister. He has done so today, and he has pointed out that, as a consequence of rural areas having no services, phones, internet or transport, they are losing young people, who are finding that they have to move away in order to have any hope of getting jobs. In rural areas, 40 per cent. of those aged between 16 and 24 are unemployed. I want to know what happens to these reports once they have gone to the Prime Minister, because I do not hear the Prime Minister talking about rural issues. I would like this House to do so, however, so may we have a debate on rural issues in the near future? I have just listened to Business, Innovation and Skills questions, and there is clearly great concern about the difficulties facing small businesses and the opportunities open to them, so may we have a debate on small businesses? We might include in it a discussion of the future of the cheque book—a subject raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mark Hunter)—because that issue also means a great deal to small businesses. I note that there will be a debate on alcohol on 10 March, and hon. Members rightly feel very strongly about alcohol abuse. Some would argue that there is a case for hugely increasing the duty payable on alcohol, but may I ask—this is special pleading on behalf of my constituency—that artisan cider-makers are not forgotten in any such discussion, because they will be put out of business if there is a substantial increase in alcohol duty? Perhaps we could address that issue in our debate. Yesterday during Prime Minister's Question Time, the Leader of the House managed to cause a great deal of excitement in the House every time she mentioned a certain Member of another place, which she did with great frequency. May I suggest today—in a rather quieter, more sensible and less hyperbolic way—that the issues to do with that have been conflated? There are, in fact, two issues, one of which is the quite extraordinary sums of money being given to political parties and then being spent in marginal constituencies. We have yet to grapple effectively with that issue, so may we have a debate on it? The second issue is to do with appointments to this Parliament: commitments that are given, the way in which people are appointed to the House of Lords, and the proper principle that people should not make laws for this country if they do not pay taxes in this country. Can we have a separate debate on that? Perhaps we could tighten things up so that we do not have, as The Daily Telegraph put it today, the shadow Foreign Secretary being""kept in the dark…for 10 years"." That is not the right way to manage a commitment given. The shadow Leader of the House said that he had been "rebuffed" on an issue. I was not rebuffed but ignored by the Leader of the House last week when I raised what I thought was a perfectly proper matter. I am referring to one of the Prime Minister's ideas, which he set out in the "Governance of Britain" Green Paper as follows:""The Government believes that the convention should be changed so that the Prime Minister is required to seek the approval of the House of Commons before asking the Monarch for a dissolution."" I am sure the Prime Minister would not say that if he did not mean it, and he would not mean it and then not do anything to bring it into effect, so when are we going to have the debate? When is the Leader of the House going to table the motion? When are we going to have the vote for the dissolution of this pretty awful Parliament?