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Business of the House

May I ask the Leader of the House when she decided to adjust the timing of next Tuesday's sitting? Some prior consultation would have been extremely helpful, not only with other parties, but with Officers of the House and others who have to make the arrangements. It is not easy suddenly—on a whim—to change the timing of events. I hear what the right hon. and learned Lady said about the inaccuracies in the Prime Minister's statements. I agree with her—it was a good thing to have arrangements to help businesses through the recession, but an impressionistic, "This is a good thing" does not excuse the Prime Minister's saying that 300,000 businesses were helped when the actual number was barely half—160,000. It is not good enough for the Prime Minister to give the House inaccurate figures. Clearly, double counting was involved, and the number of events rather than businesses was given, but let us correct the figure—let us have an opportunity to put it right. I obviously listened carefully to the Chancellor of the Exchequer yesterday and I heard him announce the people's bank proposals and say that everyone can have a basic bank account. While we are considering double counting, I wonder whether we can find time to contrast yesterday's announcement with that by the Chancellor's predecessor, the current Prime Minister, in the Budget speech in 2000. Following the Cruickshank review, he said that he would""offer this basic banking service to all".—[Official Report, 21 March 2000; Vol. 346, c. 868.]" The words are almost the same, but there is an interval of 10 years between the two announcements. Can we please not have re-announcements of policies without subsequent activity? Last week, I mentioned two important private Members' Bills, which have a great deal of support from Members of all parties: the Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Bill, which deals with so-called vulture funds, and the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 (Amendment) Bill. I add to that the Grocery Market Ombudsman Bill, which is remarkable because we found an hour and a half to debate the Ways and Means motion and the money resolution on it only this week. If the Government can find time for those resolutions, surely they can make clear their intentions about providing time for those Bills to complete their passage in the House. Why must we be kept in the dark about that? Why cannot the Leader of the House tell us whether, if the Government support the measures, they will complete their progress in this House and go to another place in time for Second Reading and to be included in the wash-up? On the Back-Bench business committee, I am told that I have a suspicious mind—I think that the right hon. and learned Lady said last week that I had problems with trust. For heaven's sake, I trusted the Leader of the House to do what she said: consult the right hon. Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) and me about the content of the motions. No consultation happened. I trusted her to table them in good time to enable debate to happen in good time, yet they have finally been tabled only today. She said that they will be on the Order Paper below the line on Monday. If there is an objection on Monday, will she tell us, without prevarication, when she will allocate one and a half hours to debate them? There is no reference in what she has put on the Order Paper or in her explanatory memorandum to the House's major decision to establish not just a Back-Bench business committee, but a House business committee. There is a motion from the Wright Committee to that effect on the Order Paper. Will the Leader of the House provide time for that? In the past couple of years, business questions have been characterised by complaints from Opposition parties about misinformation, double counting, recycled announcements and business organised for the benefit of the Government, not the House. I hope that we can do better in the next Parliament.