04/12/2015 The Week in Parliament

Hello and welcome to The Week In Parliament.

MPs back air strikes against the militant terror group

The ayes to the right, 397, the noes to the left 223, so

The debate exposes the rifts within the Labour party.

It is now time for us to do our bit in Syria.

And that is why I ask my colleagues to vote for this motion tonight.

Also in the programme - we look back at David Cameron's

And join me later in the programme from the

Political Studies Association annual awards in Westminster.

And a decision to allow British air strikes against the terror

The week in Parliament was dominated by Wednesday's events.

Ordinary business - including Prime Minister's Questions

- was swept aside for a marathon, 10 hour discussion in which more

But it wasn't just the decision on air strikes that emerged.

Divisions within the Labour party bubbled to the surface.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's views were at odds with many in

his top team, including the shadow foreign secretary, Hilary Benn.

The debate began, naturally enough, with the government case.

The question before the house today is how we keep the British people

And Mr Speaker let me be clear from the outset.

This is not about whether we want to fight terrorism,

The prime minister said air strikes would be effective and he defended

his claim there were 70,000 moderate opposition fighters in Syria,

saying it was the estimate of the Joint Intelligence Committee -

And I hope that at the end of it all, the House will come

together in large numbers for Britain to play its part

in defeating these evil extremists and taking the action that is needed

The Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the prime minister had not made

To oppose another war and intervention, in my view,

is actually not pacifism, it is hard-headed common-sense,

which I think we should be thinking about today in this House.

To resist Isil's determination to draw the western powers back

into the heart of the Middle East is not to turn our back on our allies,

it is refusing to play into the hands of ISIL which is what I

Backbench contributions continued for the rest of the day.

To my mind, Isil is such a clear and present danger to the civilised

world that if all necessary means are endorsed by the Security

Our French allies have explicitly asked us for such support and I

invite the house to consider how we would feel and what we would say

if what took place in Paris had happened in London, if we had

explicitly asked France for support and France had refused.

We should be tackling the ideology and the sectarianism

that feeds the extremism that these groups including Daesh feed off.

That is a long-term strategy, you cannot do it overnight, but again I

I am not going to be a party to killing innocent civilians

The SNP were uniformly against the motion and leader

Angus Robertson also raised the point of Scotland's views.

The UK Government, Mr Speaker, is going to have a huge problem

with legitimacy and mandate for this operation in Scotland.

It may well win the vote tonight, but it will do so with the support

The Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron and DUP Westminster

leader Nigel Dodds both expressed support for the government.

Over in the House of Lords, the day was devoted to talking

about the government's proposal - although peers did not vote.

While military force alone cannot defeat Daesh, they cannot be

defeated without military force, I think that is a very obvious point.

When they enslave women, when they murder hostages,

when they persecute minorities, they are not seeking a negotiation.

The just war criteria have to my mind been met, but while there

is, while they are necessary, they are not by themselves

Where we can end up doing the right thing in such a wrong way

Back to the Commons - and Labour's shadow foreign

secretary summed up - in a speech that shone a spotlight on the splits

Not just their brutality but their belief that they are superior to

every single one of us tonight and all of the people that we represent.

They hold us in contempt and my view, Mr Speaker, is that we

It is now time for us to do our bit in Syria.

And that is why I ask my colleagues to vote for this motion tonight.

What sort of the country would be, if we ignored,

if we ignored the calls for help from our nearest neighbours,

The final vote - 397 for to 223 against -

saw a thumping majority in favour of extending airstrikes into Syria.

A total of 66 Labour MPs sided with the government.

The Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was forced to grant colleagues

a free vote and many Labour Mps openly expressed dissent.

What does that mean for his leadership of the party?

Earlier I spoke to Professor Rodney Barker

You can be quite sure that if it turns out that Jeremy Corbyn

actually, by providing an alternative

narrative, a different story, provides an alternative to the SNP.

One of the reasons why the SNP was able to wipe the floor

with Labour at the last General Election was precisely because they

rejected the idea, both as a policy and as a principle, of austerity.

Well, if that works for Jeremy Corbyn

and if that engages the electorate, then we will see a change of heart,

of purely pragmatic reasons in the Parliamentary Labour Party.

I mean, talking about the difficulty of managing

those MPs and Hilary Benn's speech at the end of the Syria debate.

That has made a huge impact, will that make life more difficult

Because although it was arguing for a different policy for Jeremy

Corbyn, there was very little in the grounds of the speech, with which

Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters or anybody else could disagree.

Because basically the speech was about a horrible

Nobody is going to, because they wouldn't, believe that there was

Of course nobody wants to be influenced, threatened, governed,

Well, it was an enormously dramatic speech

Not just their calculated brutality, but their belief that they are

superior to every single one of us in this chamber tonight.

And all of the people that we represent.

They hold our belief in tolerance and decency in contempt

and they hold our democracy, the means by which we will make

It was a brilliant piece of Parliamentary rhetoric.

Because on the one hand, for the public at large,

he spoke of a deeply unpleasant, contemporary enemy.

But remembering that he is also talking to Labour backbenchers

and to traditional socialists, he remembered to call them fascists.

He remembered to talk about the International Brigade and

the Spanish Civil War so that there is an ideological continuity there.

He was not attempting substantially to justify bombing as a tactic.

He was simply concerned to say, these are extraordinarily unpleasant

Does this mean that there could be some shift in the continental plates

of politics and are we seeing the Labour Party with its leader

going one way and Labour MPs going the other, could there be a split?

I do not think they're going to see anything like the Social Democratic

Party, which at least for some Labour MPs would be a rather horrid

It is very difficult to set up a new political party, the electorate is

They like the labels or dislike the labels they know

and new parties flourish briefly, but then tend to wither.

Thank you very much indeed for joining us.

The planned strike by junior doctors in England was suspended this week.

But before the news came through - and faced with three days

of industrial action - the Health Secretary gave a

Following last week's spending review, no one can be in any doubt

about this government's commitment to the NHS. Additional resources

have to be matched with even safer surfaces for patients. -- services.

That is why on the back of mounting academic evidence that mortality

rates are higher as weak against them during the week we have made a

manifesto commitment to deliver truly seven-day hospital services

for urgent and emergency care. Our plans are deliberate and --

deliberately intended to be better for doctors, more generous rates for

we can work than those offered to police officers, fire officers and

pilots. They protect pay for all junior doctors working within their

legal contracted hours, compensating for a reduction in anti-social hours

with the basic pay rise averaging 11% and average pay maintained. They

reduced the maximum hours a doctor can work on anyone week from 91 to

72 hours and stop altogether the practice of acts being doctors to

work five nights in a row. Many studies have concluded that the

needs to be much more research into why there is a weekend of acts being

doctors to work five nights in a row. Many studies have concluded

that the needs to be much more research into why there is a weekend

Many studies have concluded there needs to be much more research

into why there is a weekend effect so that we can make sure we focus

So will the Health Secretary today commit to commissioning new

independent research into how reforming staffing arrangements

at the weekend might help improve the quality of weekend services?

And does he understand that part of the problem has been that he has

implied that junior doctors are to blame

for differential mortality amongst patients admitted at the weekend?

Well, Mr Speaker, what an interesting response from somebody

who has never championed seven-day services

and has never been prepared to stand up for patients.

We keep talking about extra people dying at weekends.

If I could just again stress, it is not excess deaths at weekends,

implying that hospitals are like the Mary Celeste.

It is excess deaths of people admitted at weekends

Junior doctors are already covering the weekends.

It is the additional services to diagnose

Unfortunately, the Secretary of State in some previous statements

has moved from talking about excess deaths to talking about the

consultant opt-out clause which only applies to routine work and I'm

sorry, a toenail clinic on a Sunday will not save lives.

from the worlds of politics, the press and academia gathered in

London this week for the Political Studies Association annual awards.

Our man at the ceremony was Alex Partridge.

a stone's throw from the Palace of Westminster.

The tables are set, the glasses are gleaming.

all ready for the Political Studies Association annual awards.

The night when the academics have their say on our politicians.

The Tory MP Sarah Wollaston, who has raised concerns

about health reforms, won the Parliamentarian Of The Year award.

There is a lot of similarity between being a GP and being a politician.

Except nobody takes their clothes off in my room anymore.

To have an opportunity within politics to talk about something you

really love and which you are passionate about... For me, that is

and social care and public health, and to have an opportunity to be

able to talk about that within Parliament,

And then to have some recognition from an organisation

like the Political Studies Association,

that means a huge amount, so I am immensely grateful.

The Political Studies Association Communicator award went to

Professor John Curtice who heads the team producing

He recalled the drama of this year's survey.

Finally, but by no means least, a big thank you to Paddy Ashdown

for once again disbelieving what the exit polls said

Our honest, scientific, academic and journalistic job was to tell

So at the end of the day, that was what we had to do, whether

The BBC's deputy political editor James Landau won Broadcaster

His general election reports included interviews with party

Most prime ministers would speculate about their future,

but in a striking admission that will shake the election campaign,

he told me and the country that he had a sell-by date.

Would you go for a third term? No.

I think... I'm standing for a full second term.

I'm not saying that all prime ministers definitely go mad,

or even go mad at the same rate, but I think...

You know, I think I have more to bring to this job.

The economy turned round, the deficit is half down,

What a ghastly trip down memory lane!

I now know that no-one is ever going to let me back into their kitchen.

Which, given my culinary skills, is not a bad thing.

When I went outside, the press officer said,

I said, "Some of it was quite interesting."

And the press officer said, "I think the third term stuff was

I said, "Mmm, not too bad, I suppose."

Because I didn't want to give them too much of a heads up.

And there was a Lifetime Achievement award for Labour's Harriet Harman

who has twice served as interim party leader.

She shared her theory about the three ages of the woman politician.

For the woman politician, in her youth -

distractingly pretty, a bit flaky, obviously not reliable.

she is a write-off, much too much on her hands.

And then, just when her children have grown up and

So, my question is, when is a woman politician in her prime?

And I think that now that you have given me this,

I have decided that my prime is now.

And you can watch the full awards programme, the

Oscars of the political world, on BBC Parliament at 9pm on Saturday

Now, a look at some of the other stories of the week.

Seb Coe, one-time Olympic gold medallist, now president

of the world athletics body, the IAAF, faced a committee of MPs.

The long-standing problem of drugs in sport erupted into a huge

scandal earlier this year when a German TV documentary claimed that

blood doping had been carried out on a massive scale by athletes in

Russia with Russian officials and the IAAF involved

After that came a report by the World Anti-Doping Agency

which found corruption and bribery practices at the highest levels

Straight question, do you really think you can do this?

That you can break this culture, if it does exist? Yes. I have to.

Because if I don't, there are no tomorrows for the sport.

Is the IAAF a corrupt organisation? No, it's not a corrupt organisation.

Some very, very serious allegations have been made about former members

But I don't believe that the IAAF, across all its organisation

and across the vast majority of people that are involved in

by the Commons Treasury committee this week.

A Labour MP wanted to know how much preparation had been going on

at the top of government for a UK exit from the European Union.

So, are you seriously saying that we are already committed to a

referendum, the renegotiation is under way and that neither you,

nor the Prime Minister, nor the civil

morning after a referendum for the Prime Minister to come

forward to the country and say, you voted out, this is the course of

Because that would be a recipe for market chaos, wouldn't it?

It is perfectly reasonable, and Mark is absolutely right to say this,

that the British civil service supports the objectives of

the government, and the objectives of the government are to find

an improvement in our relationship with the European Union

And there have been fresh calls for a tax on sugary soft drinks.

But ministers have so far rejected the idea,

despite a Health Committee report published this week which called for

In a debate in Westminster Hall, the rise in obesity,

in particular among children, was described as a "health emergency".

And I think we face a real health emergency in this country,

equivalent to an epidemic and sugar is one of the worst culprits.

There is sugar added to processed food and it actually changes

Should the government step back, should any

of us feel it is acceptable that we are condemning the one in four,

a quarter of the most disadvantaged children in Britain,

And if there is something we can do about it that simply nudges

a different way, I think we could look at the possibilities

in this and say, how different would those children's life chances be?

The size of both Houses of Parliament came under scrutiny

A Lib Dem peer asked whether plans to cut the number of MPs

through boundary changesmight lead to a reduction in the number

Does the Minister agree that there is no other first chamber

of a democratic parliament in the Western world which has

as high a proportion of people who are caught up in government

Would you also agree that that is partly the cause of tensions

and the Commons as a result does not do its work in scrutiny

and holding the government to account

as a democratic Parliament ought to do?

And as we reduce the number of MPs, it is vital to reduce the number of

There are a number of comparisons to be made between the other place

14.6% of the other place can be appointed for ministers

and that compares with Australia where ministers account

for 23% of their Parliament and New Zealand,

where also 23% of their Parliament comprises ministers.

I, for one, think that the other place does a very good job although

I would like to pay tribute to this place as well in its role performing

an excellent role of legislative acupuncture, which can be quite

painful for those standing in this place,

but can be quite good for the nation as a whole.

A Labour peer asked if he had read reports of plans to cut the

How does he reconcile this with the introduction of peers two by two,

It's always good to see the noble Lord on such fighting form.

All I would like to say is that I did read that,

I always read the newspapers on a Sunday morning, obviously.

It is always interesting to read about what might or might

I will say, though, what might happen to the noble Lord,

The Tory peer Lord Strathclyde was asked to review the workings of the

House of Lords after it inflicted a number of defeats on the government.

And six new peers were admitted to the House this week.

That brings the total on our ermine-o-meter to 840.

The Prime Minister, David Cameron, has had a busy week.

But on Sunday, he passes a significant milestone.

It's ten years on the 6th of December since David Cameron

beat David Davis to be elected leader of the Conservative Party.

Here is a countdown of ten memorable moments of Mr Cameron's decade

Ten. Where better to start than at the beginning?

David Cameron elected by a margin of more than two to one over

If we have the courage to grab it, to seize it, the bravery to fight

for it with every ounce of vigour and passion in our bodies,

Nine. Cameron's first appearance at Prime Minister's Question Time

contained a stark message for his opposite number, Tony Blair.

was the future, once. Eight. Taking the Tories in a new direction,

from "vote blue go green" to "hug a hoodie."

The hoodie is a response to a problem.

Seven. Mr Cameron took part in the first televised debates

between the main party leaders in the 2010 election campaign.

He didn't quite manage to lead his party to victory that year,

but he did lead them into the history books and into coalition

Six. The Bloody Sunday killings were unjustified and unjustifiable,

David Cameron told the House of Commons in 2010.

Speaking after the Saville report into the 1970s

which heavily criticised the British Army's conduct,

Mr Cameron said, he was deeply sorry.

On behalf of the government, indeed, on behalf of our country,

Five. Mr Cameron's leadership style didn't always go down well.

Calm down, dear. Calm down. Listen...

UPROAR. Listen, listen to the doctor.

Four. In 2011, he led the coalition to win a decisive vote

in the Commons to support UN-backed action in Libya.

Three. David Cameron held a referendum in 2014 on the question

And won. Voters decisively rejected independence.

This is our home and I could not bear to see it torn apart.

Two. And he was back in Number Ten after winning

This time, with a Conservative majority in the House of Commons.

One. Ten years on from winning over the Conservative Party,

Mr Cameron is travelling around Europe

as he attempts to reform Britain's relationship with the EU

ahead of a referendum on the UK's membership.

Don't forget our daily round-up of what is going on in Westminster.

You can watch it every night on BBC Parliament at 11 o'clock.