23/03/2016 Tuesday in Parliament

Now on BBC News, it's time for Tuesday in Parliament.

Hello and welcome to Tuesday in Parliament,

our look at the best of the day in the Commons and the Lords.

On this programme: Reaction at Westminster to

We're doing everything that we can to help the Belgian authorities to

work with our international partners, and of course to keep

The Chancellor says he's sorry that Iain Duncan Smith resigned

The Shadow Chancellor derides his opposite number.

The behaviour of the Chancellor over the last 11

days calls into question his fitness for the office he now holds.

And an MP protests about the refusal of the owner of Sports Direct to

Yesterday Mr Ashley indicated to the press, although not to the

committee, that he has no current intention to attend the committee.

But first, it was shortly after 7 o'clock

in the morning when the terrorists struck in the Belgian capital.

Two explosions at Brussels International Airport were

followed one hour later by a blast at a metro station close

Emergency services were soon at the scene.

So-called Islamic State said it was behind the attacks.

Later in the day, the death toll was put at more than 30.

Belgium raised its terrorism alert to its highest level.

The Belgian Prime Minister called the attacks "blind,

At Westminster, at the Home Affairs Committee, the Home Secretary called

We don't yet know the full details of these attacks, and the situation

in Belgium as I'm sure members will recognise is fast moving.

The Prime Minister earlier spoke to Prime Minister Michel of Belgium,

and I've offered support to my counterpart, Jan Jambon.

And we stand together against the terrorists, and they will not win.

We already work closely with the Belgian authorities on security

matters, we share intelligence routinely, and after the November

attacks in Paris we deployed police and intelligence service resources

to Belgium in support of the investigations into the

attackers, which last week resulted in the arrest of Salah Abdeslam.

In the UK, the threat level remains under constant review by the

Independent Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, but has not changed.

It is currently set at severe, which means that an attack is highly

likely, and I would urge everyone to remain alert, but not alarmed.

And so I'd like to reassure this committee and the public that while

we will know more in the coming days and hours, we're doing everything we

can to help the Belgian authorities to work with our international

partners, and of course to keep people

And there was also reaction in the Commons.

Reaction to the terror attacks in Brussels.

The Chancellor George Osborne has told the Commons he's sorry that

Iain Duncan Smith quit the Cabinet at the end of last week.

The resignation of Mr Duncan Smith from his job as Work and Pensions

Secretary, over the original Budget plans for cuts in disability

benefits, has created a classic Westminster political storm.

There'd been much speculation about differences of opinion between

George Osborne, noticeably absent from the Commons on Monday, was back

in his place for the conclusion of the four-day debate on the Budget.

He started by putting his speech into historical context.

This is the first time in 20 years that a Chancellor has

spoken on the last day of the Budget debate, and I think it is fair to

say that we have had a livelier debate about this Budget than many.

But let us be clear: the key principles behind this Budget are

that if we are going to deliver a strong and compassionate society for

the next generation, we have to live within our means, we have to back

business to create jobs, and we have to make sure work pays

by putting more money into the pockets of working people.

On the resignation of my right honourable friend the Member

I am sorry that my right honourable friend chose to

Let me here, in this House, recognise his achievements

in helping to make work pay, protecting the vulnerable

and breaking the decades-old cycle of welfare dependency.

Together, we had to confront a huge deficit

And of course, there is always robust discussion between the

Treasury and the spending departments

The decisions we made to keep our economy secure are always

difficult, and where we do not get them right, I have always been

But I am very proud that my right honourable friend and I

worked together longer than any two people doing our jobs before us

It's less than a week since he stood up to deliver

the Budget and made that decision affecting disability independence

payments - something that upset many hundreds of thousands

He has made a welcome U-turn, but shouldn't he now acknowledge

that that decision was a mistake that he should say sorry for?

I am going to come on to speak about the disability benefits

and our way forward, but I have made it very clear-I have

just said it-that where we have made a mistake, where we have got things

But where is the apology from the Labour Party

Would he agree with me that the one thing that is more dangerous

for our economy than him remaining Chancellor is that we might leave

the European Union; and that him being called out by his former

colleague as acting not in the economic interests of the country,

but in a short-term political way, brings a risk that the referendum

will be a referendum on him, and not on the future of our role in Europe?

Will he act in the national interest and resign?

The new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said yesterday, in his

first statement, that the Government would not be making any further cuts

to welfare during this Parliament, but later on he said that there were

"no plans" to make further cuts to welfare during this Parliament.

Can the Chancellor now confirm, for the sake of disabled people

and others, that there will be no further cuts to the welfare budget

Well, my right honourable friend said yesterday what

It was very clear that while the reforms proposed to

personal independence payments two weeks ago drew on the work

of an independent review, they did not command support.

We have listened, and they will not go ahead.

And even if they had, this Government is spending more

on disabled people than the last Labour Government ever did.

If it has been relatively simple to absorb this change,

why on earth did the Chancellor introduce it in the first place, and

frighten the life out of seriously disabled people in this country?

People are terrified about what was being proposed, and

you've just said that we can absorb this change easily - why didn't you

If we take no decisions to control welfare spending

and public expenditure, you destroy the nation's finances and

the people who suffer are precisely the most vulnerable in society.

So yes, we have taken difficult decisions, but where we have not got

them right we have listened and we have learned.

Let me make it clear from the outset that, in my view, and I believe the

view of many others, the behaviour of the Chancellor over the last 11

days calls into question his fitness for the office he now holds.

I also believe it certainly calls into question his fitness for any

What we have seen What we have seen is not the actions of a Chancellor,

a senior Government Minister, but the grubby,

incompetent manipulations of a political chancer.

A Tory MP recalled a past remark of Mr McDonnell's that IRA members

The honourable member has called into question the morality

of the leadership of my right honourable friend the Chancellor.

Would he please discuss with this House the morality that allows HIM

to stand with bombers who murdered my friends in Northern Ireland -

After it became clear that the cuts to personal independence

payments were planned as a way to fund tax cuts for the wealthy, it

was my honourable friend the leader of the Labour Party who made it a

key part of his excellent response to the Budget last week.

The Chancellor sent out his large team of spin doctors to try to lay

the blame on the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions,

the right honourable member for Chingford and Woodford Green.

We should not be running a deficit of this percentage of GDP,

and piling up more debt for our successors.

So my only doubts are, whether this pause is totally justified - I

accept it probably was - certainly we've got to resume things, and I

listened to a Shadow Chancellor who plainly hasn't got an idea in his

head about how he would save any money, how he would do anything

other than continue spending and borrowing...

Totally profligate stuff.

The Budget figures that we have been presented with in the Red Book, and

with the OBR's independent analysis, suggest that business investment

will have to be double the level of its historical average, now at the

moment, when the global economy's slowing, in order for the Budget

A lesser man would have gone off into a cave and stayed there. Not

this man. He went out there and did all he could and has done for the

poorest in our society, and I commend him for it.

And at the end of the debate, a series of Budget resolutions won

You're watching our round-up of the day in the Commons and the Lords.

Still to come: Peers voice some strong opinions about the proposals

Claims that the chief executive of the NHS was persuaded to ask for

less money than the service needed have been dismissed in the Commons.

At the weekend, the former coalition minister, the Lib Dem David Laws,

claimed that Simon Stevens asked for ?30 billion for the service

Half of that would come from efficiency savings,

But Mr Laws said Mr Stevens was persuaded to ask

The matter was raised at Health Question time in the Commons.

What you are describing is ?10 billion a year, more than used it on

at the last election. The Health Secretary may talk a good game when

it comes to funding, but the funding to GP surgeries tells a very

different story. The entire system is on its knees, and the revelation

of the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury this week and confirmed

what everybody in the NHS already knew. ?22 billion worth of

efficiency savings over the next four years is pure fantasy. In the

interests of transparency, will the Health Secretary published a full

analysis explaining how NHS England arrived at the figure of 22 billion?

Let's look at what the Chief Executive actually said, not what he

is alleged to have done. He said that when it came to the spending

review, the government actively supported the NHS case for spending

and that he could kickstart his plan for the NHS. It is rather academic,

because Labour refused to fund his plan at all. It goes to show that

when it comes to the NHS, Labour Right the speeches, conservatives

write the cheques. But Mr Laws said Mr Stevens was

persuaded to ask That means we need to find ?22

million of efficiency savings. I want to reassure him that I meet the

chief executive to review the plan every week and we are determined to

make sure we roll it out as quickly as possible. Do I take it that the

word inadvertently has been inserted? Yes. She may have

inadvertently not been listening previous answers that I gave, and

let's look at what Simon Stevens, the CEO of the NHS, said about the

spending settlement. He said that the government listened to and

actively supported the case for public spending.

Members of the House of Lords have raised concerns over

Last week, the Chancellor announced plans

for all schools to become academies, no longer needing to include

Contribution be made by parents whether they want them or not, and

getting rid of parent governments. The contribution will be a massive

efficiency saving as schools working together in groups collaborating in

groups will have a much higher calibre of financial people, and we

are not getting rid of parent governors, we are saying that you

don't have to have parents, you can have as many parent governors as you

need, and we will also be ensuring that schools engage with their

parents on a much more consistent and effective basis than having the

odd parent if they want it. Surely all schools can benefit from having

parent governors, and would he be a little more encouraging than he has

been on that subject? I entirely agree that all schools can benefit

from that, but we are trying very hard to focus governments on skills

so people must have the relevant skills, but they may represent all

sorts of different parents. A Labour peer probed the plan to

create a national funding formula. Currently local authorities

decide how the money is spent. The national funding formula is

another example of the government's centralist mindset. It is not the

latest, because since this was announced we have always done that

also had the white paper. The ability to have any say over the

distribution of funding in their local area. Can the honourable

member say why he believes that that is the case? The simple fact is that

we inherited a funding formula from the Labour government that was

incomprehensible and confusing, and it got progressively more compared,

so we have to simplify it. Following the Chancellor's announcement of an

additional 500 million to support the introduction of a national

funding formula, can he give any indication of how quickly therefore

the transition from the present situation to meeting the target

allocations in each part of the country may be achieved? We do want

areas that appear to be underfunded, and I'm aware that is

the case in Cambridge, to improve their funding as quickly as

possible, and we want to move at a pace that is manageable for all

schools. Can the noble lord the minister say how in five years when

we look back and see how this has been applied, that it won't just

benefit Conservative controlled areas. I can give that assurance, it

is clear it will benefit many areas that are Labour-controlled, and it

is driven entirely on the basis that there is a level playing field for

all pupils, so we can deliver excellent everywhere.

A Lib Dem peer was concerned salaries for headteachers at

Can the minister say that the very high levels of salary paid to some

of the heads of Academy chains, some reported as three times that of the

PM, does he think that is a good use of public funds? As they think we

set out in the white paper, I think we are behind Academy trusts, and

where schools are delivering excellent people deserve to be

awarded accordingly. A Labour MP has claimed that

the internet is responsible for an increase in the number

of potentially dangerous electrical In a Westminster Hall debate,

Carolyn Harris queried whether current laws were sufficient

to stop tragedies happening. The Charity Electrical Safety First

estimates that some 70 deaths every year are caused by electrical

accidents - more than one a week. This debate is about how we can make

electricity and its application through products safer in this

country. It has been undermined by cheap, poorly constructed,

substandard or counterfeit electrical goods. All our

constituents are at risk. Risk from electric shock, from fire in their

home, caused by one of these product, or even death. What are the

law working? Had they kept up-to-date with the development of

the internet? Are they stopping items from being imported through

the major internet shopping sites? I don't believe this is the case. It

is easy to say that customers should be more careful to check what they

are buying, but it often doesn't occur to them that what they are

buying could actually kill them. People tend to trust goods bought on

trusted sites on the internet implicitly, assuming they must be

legitimate to be acceptable for the site or onto eBay. I do believe we

need to have more legislation to make those websites responsible for

the products that they sell. When we were employing people locally in the

UK to manufacture these products, we had an interest in that. We could

chase the supply chain back and everyone had an interest in making

sure the products were safe and legitimate, because we knew who

would buy it at the end. Producing locally have an impact, where we

know who will buy the product. We can feel more secure when we have a

stake in the production of the product. For all that the internet

has created opportunities for criminals and those who would abuse

freedom, and nevertheless it is also even greater opportunities for

legitimate traders and for consumers, and I do believe that

there are opportunities through the internet, as the honourable member

rightly says, to share with people information about suppliers who have

failed to live up to their obligations, product that have

failed to do what they say they should do, or that are themselves

either counterfeit or faulty. These are turbulent days for

the sportswear firm Sports Direct, and its founder, the billionaire

Mike Ashley - the man who also owns In January,

nearly half a billion pounds was wiped from Sports Direct's stock

market value, and the company has Mike Ashley has blamed "

negative publicity" about the firm. Meanwhile, a committee of MPs has

summoned Mr Ashley to face questions about pay and working conditions

at Sports Direct, following claims The chair of the committee told

the Commons he'd been attempting to This was in response to claims that

his workers were not being paid the minimum wage. I myself has received

correspondence from staff saying that they were kept for an hour

after their scheduled finish time without pay to tidy shops, and

workers finishing at 5pm and required back at work two hours

later. The committee wanted to ask him

about these practices. Last week, the committee formally

ordered him to attend. Yesterday, Mr Ashley indicated to the press,

although not the committee, that he has no current intention to the

committee. The house expects witnesses to a baby order to

attend. He operates zero hours contracts for

thousands of people, there are very few full-time people. He believes as

a billionaire he can do what he likes. I will just put it on the

record for you Mr Speaker, you had better act very firmly with the

person concerned. Would it not be appropriate for him to appear at the

bar of the house? There have been occasions in the past where this has

occurred and the House of Commons has shown that it will not tolerate

such contempt, and I will put it to you perhaps this could be considered

as well. I am grateful to the honourable gentleman for his point

of order. I recognise that there are historical precedents, but it is

only right for me to say that it is not for me to make any such

decision. Do join me

for our next daily round-up. Until then, from me,

Keith Macdougall, goodbye. For many of us,

this has been the driest spell It is because the jet stream, the

thing that drives weather systems across the Atlantic, has been

staying well to the north of the UK. It has allowed high

pressure to build.