The blame game Angela Eagle MP I started off Business of the House Questions by reminding the house of the sacrifice made by our armed forces as we approach Remembrance Sunday. We all wear our poppies with pride. I then raised this week’s devastating public accounts committee report on the government’s flagship benefit reform which cites a ‘shocking’ failure to manage the programme and predicts that the Department of Work and Pensions will have to write off a substantial part of the £425m they have already spent. The blame game for this costly fiasco has already started. We have learned of wholly improper alleged attempts to lean on members of an independent select committee to try to put the blame on the permanent secretary. I asked Andrew Lansley to arrange for an urgent statement by Iain Duncan Smith about these very serious allegations. I moved on to the reports in the Daily Mirror that the prime minister has cut his own household costs by nearly £400 a year while refusing to support our motion yesterday for an energy price freeze for everyone else. I think that says everything about who he stands up for. I asked for clarification on the government how much less the prime minister is paying on his home as a result of his top rate tax cut. I then moved on the comments made earlier this week by the chief executive of NHS England, who told the health select committee that the NHS is becoming: ‘Bogged down in a morass of competition law’ following the government’s botched £3bn top-down reorganisation. I asked the leader of the House, given that he had his fingerprints all over that, whether he agreed with that analysis. I suggested he might be feeling a sense of déjà-vu as he was forced in to a humiliating climbdown on the lobbying bill in the Lords this week. Just like with the health bill, everyone affected by the lobbying bill opposes it. Just like the health bill, he can’t make the case for his proposals because there is no case for them. And just like the health bill, he’s disguising his true intentions because he knows he has no public support. I asked him to use the next six weeks to ‘listen, pause and reflect’ on the Lobbying Bill and to commit to making the substantial changes that this sinister gagging bill needs. I finished by raising special advisers. Last week we discovered that there has been a 50 per cent rise in the number of special advisers, despite the coalition agreement promising to cut them. We also discovered that Nick Clegg has 19 special advisers costing over one million pounds a year. This week, despite the uproar, the deputy prime minister decided the best thing to do was … to hire another to do his PR. We’ve had the famous five, we’ve had the magnificent seven, even the Messiah only had 12. What on earth does he need 20 for! I asked Andrew Lansley if he agreed with me that the deputy prime minister is not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy. ——————————————————— Angela Eagle is MP for Wallasey, shadow leader of the House of Commons and writes the weekly Business of Parliament column for Progress progressonline.org.uk/2013/11/08/the-blame-game/
Posted on: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 09:53:46 +0000