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Draft Legislative Programme

The Leader of the House referred to the fact that all Members had been sent a copy of the booklet. It is important to put it on the record that I received a letter from her this morning, dated 20 July, enclosing the booklet. The same is true of a number of colleagues to whom I have spoken. The letter says:"““I am keen that Members have the fullest possible chance to consider the Government’s proposals in advance of the debate on Wednesday 25 July. I therefore enclose the Command Paper, ‘The Governance of Britain—The Government’s Draft Legislative Programme’.””" All present will agree that in order to have had a proper debate today, it would have been much more helpful to have received the letter and enclosed booklet several days earlier. This is not the first time that the office of the Leader of the House has given information for debate at the very last minute. Last week, there was a discussion in Committee of the remit of the Leader of the House, and Committee members did not receive the information that was to be discussed until the morning of that Committee’s sitting. I respectfully suggest that the Leader of the House take note and, in the interests of protecting the welfare and concerns of all hon. Members, rectify the situation in future. The distinguishing feature of the debate is the sheer audacity of the Government in pretending that they are presenting new policies in their draft legislative programme, when they clearly are not. I suggest that the Government take note of the words of the Minister for the Cabinet Office, the right hon. Member for Doncaster, North (Edward Miliband), who will write Labour’s next election manifesto. Earlier this week, in an interview with The Guardian, he said with reference to the new Prime Minister taking over:"““It requires being very candid about what has gone wrong””." As the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House have shown a reluctance towards such candour, let me assist them. The brutal truth is that the Government have had a decade to deal with the issues that they speak of in the draft legislative programme, and they have failed to do so. The programme gives new meaning to the word recycling. It is a programme of recycled material. My right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) eloquently made that point when she listed all 23 Bills that have been previously mentioned in the public domain. When the Prime Minister spoke of his new measures for building more houses, he should have qualified his words by saying, ““As I have previously mentioned, in 1994, 1998, 2005 and 2006.”” On education, with reference to young people staying on in education and training, the Prime Minister should have started by saying, ““As I said more than a decade ago, in 1996.”” The hon. Member for Houghton and Washington, East (Mr. Kemp) emphasised the importance of education, especially in a global market, but in the past 10 years we have seen a rise of 1 million in the number of young people who are not in education, training or work. On fixed rate interest mortgages for 20 or 25 years, the Prime Minister should have started by saying, ““As I said four years ago, in 2003.”” The Bills on those issues, and others in the programme, are nothing more than repetition from the past, with a huge dose of spin added to them. This programme is the result of failure, not success, in the past decade. Let us consider some of the specific issues.