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Business of the House

Further to the assurance that I gave to the shadow Leader of the House that the House will be given an opportunity to make a decision on the Standing Orders giving effect to the resolutions following the House's decisions on the Wright Committee recommendations, because we will simply be giving effect to decisions that the House has made already, it should be possible to deal with those Standing Orders as part of the remaining orders of the day. Pursuant to what was raised earlier, however, I will obviously have to make sure that everybody agrees that the Standing Orders give effect as the House intended; I shall send drafts to everybody who has shown interest in the issue so that people can look at the Standing Orders, which will run to a number of pages. We simply want to get the science right. The House's position is clear. I am committed to getting the Standing Orders that give effect to the House's decision, and it ought to be possible for that to be done as part of remaining orders of the day. As far as the days for Budget debate are concerned, I have announced the business for next week and the provisional business for the week after. Of course, there is no attempt to curtail any debate on the economic situation, on our determination to secure the recovery rather than putting it at risk, on making sure that we protect front-line services rather than cut them, as the Conservatives would, and on making sure that we have a fair tax system rather than an unfair one that would help a few people at the top, which is the Tories' proposal. We look forward to having good debates that focus on all those issues, as well as the important issue of manufacturing in this country. Obviously, it is important that we support that, including through tax relief for business investment, which we want to keep going. We want to work to support not only manufacturing in this country but the expansion of the global economy. We are a trading nation and need to make sure that we work internationally, particularly with our partners in Europe, with whom most of our trade is, to ensure that there is growth across Europe. That will help our trade position. As far as veterans are concerned, I completely agree with what the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) said about combat stress. We have already given priority in primary care to veterans, but there is a whole range of other things that need to be addressed. We shall have an opportunity to revisit those important issues in the defence debate next Monday. As far as nuclear power is concerned, the hon. Gentleman will have been involved in and seen the statements about our wanting energy independence and a balanced energy policy. He will be familiar with the proceedings on the Energy Bill, which has been through the House recently. He will also know about the framework laid out by the Planning Act 2008. It allows for national policy statements and then for the issues to be looked at locally. We now have a much better framework for making sure that we have energy independence while reducing our carbon emissions. As far as jargon is concerned, the hon. Gentleman brings me extremely bad news: the word "wellderly" had hardly got off the ground before being banned. I thought I was supposed to be the person who bans things all the time, but now I discover that I am the victim of an unfair banning order. The point about the wellderly is that we rightly spend a lot of time in the House talking about frail elderly people and our national care service that is needed to support people in their own homes and to ensure that people can have residential care if they need it. However, we need to recognise that most elderly people are fit, well and active. They contribute to their families, often go out to work and play a big part in the community. They are the well elderly—the wellderly. That is one banning order that I am not submitting to.