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Business of the House

The right hon. Lady raised the question of ID cards. The Prime Minister made the Government's position clear to the House yesterday, particularly in relation to the importance of biometric information on passports and on visas for foreign nationals, and to the fact that if there were any progress towards making that compulsory for British nationals, it would be in the light of experience that we would be bringing it back for a vote of this House. That is, and remains, the position on ID cards. We have had a number of topical debates—in Government time, as the House will remember—on matters that are important regionally, nationally or internationally, topical and of public interest. We have so far debated immigration, climate change, apprenticeships and financial problems for low-income families, and I invite all hon. Members to continue to propose subjects that they think are topical. One of the problems is that in order to give Members enough time to plan to be part of a topical debate, we give out information and make the decision earlier in the week. Because that process happens earlier in the week, the debate is inevitably less topical by the time we debate it later in the week. [Laughter.] The reality is that there is a trade-off between giving people notice and topicality, but we have committed to review the situation, as we undertook to the House and the Modernisation Committee, and we will do so. The right hon. Lady mentioned the recruitment of junior doctors. She will know that we have recently had the publication of important work undertaken as part of the Tooke report... Indeed. I am dealing with it because the right hon. Lady asked about it. On that basis, we will go forward in consultation with the British Medical Association to improve the situation. The right hon. Lady mentioned the amount of time the House had to debate the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill on Report. We sought to make extra time available yesterday, but we acknowledge that it did not turn out to be enough. If we have the opportunity, consistent with ensuring the implementation of the Bill—particularly with regard to the time-critical issue of prison officers' right to strike—we shall see whether we can find some extra time when the Bill returns to this House on consideration of Lords amendments. We all agree that the amount of time spent last night was unsatisfactory. The situation has raised a point that we will face again, and which business managers need to talk about: the amount of time available for this House to debate major Bills on Report. A number of major Bills have received a Second Reading or will receive it soon, and the question is whether enough time for Report is structured in, or whether we should seek to find more. If we do the latter, it will put pressure on the amount of time that the House has to debate non-legislative issues, or we will end up doing so at the expense of the amount of time hon. Members are able to spend in their constituencies. We all want enough time for scrutiny on Report, and we need to address this matter, especially in the light of the House's experience last night. The right hon. Lady talked about the Government's approach to tackling extremism and our action on that, and I shall look into the points that she made. Once again, the right hon. Lady made accusations and asserted that Ministers were making policy statements to the media that were rightly for this House. She gave a number of examples. I look into every single example, and I take the matter very seriously. I agree that it is important that Ministers are answerable to this House rather than the media. One example that she cited was the announcement today by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary about deactivated firearms. I looked into that matter before I came to the House today because there are always judgments to be made in such situations, and I wanted to know what the background to this one was and why the announcement was not the subject of an oral statement to the House. The issue in question is an intention that will be subject to consultation. It is a detailed and complex area, about which there will be consultation, and my right hon. Friend will come to the House with any proposals before we are asked to consider them in legislation. We have a business statement today and an important debate later on Army personnel; we also have a topical debate today, and we have had an important debate on energy. The question is whether it would have been right for her to come to the House to make a statement about the launch of a consultation about deactivated firearms. As far as I am concerned, she made a sensible judgment, which I am quite happy to defend to the House. I do not agree that we are not putting Parliament first. The right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) talked about hospital-acquired infection. We are on target to progress with our deep cleans, and we do not think that they are a waste of time, as she alleged... He did not say that. We think that patients value them, and they are very important. The right hon. Lady also talked about migration. I remind her that we discuss that matter often in the House, and one of the key issues to keep under consideration is the Government's migration impact forum. I wish the right hon. Lady and the whole House a happy new year.