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  • James Callaghan – 1977 Speech on Pay of Nationalised Industry Board Members

    James Callaghan – 1977 Speech on Pay of Nationalised Industry Board Members

    The speech made by James Callaghan, the then Prime Minister, in the House of Commons on 15 December 1977.

    The Government have given careful consideration to the difficult question of the pay of nationalised industry board chairmen and members.

    The recommendations of the Review Body on Top Salaries for salary levels at 1st January 1975, on which the Government deferred a decision in the wider national interest, were for increases of the order of 30 per cent. on average, and considerably more for some individuals. Substantial absolute sums were involved. Inevitably, therefore, the salaries of this group are at present significantly out of line with their counterparts elsewhere.

    But, in deciding how far they can go, the Government must have regard to the measures which are still being taken in the national interest to control inflation and which continue to demand very considerable restraint from all sections of the community. The Government therefore have to consider not only what scope there is within the current pay guidelines, but also how the absolute sums involved relate to what the community as a whole is being asked to bear.

    The Government have concluded that at the present time a general increase of 5 per cent. with effect from 1st January 1978 is the most that can be allowed but that up to 10 per cent. should be paid to the less-well-paid members of the group tapered so as to ensure that the lower percentage applies at salaries above £13,000 a year.

    The Government recognise that this will still leave nationalised industry board members significantly out of line with their counterparts elsewhere. They will wish to look again at the way forward when the Review Body on Top Salaries makes its recommendations for April 1978.

  • James Callaghan – 1977 Parliamentary Answer on the House of Lords

    James Callaghan – 1977 Parliamentary Answer on the House of Lords

    The Parliamentary Answer given by James Callaghan, the then Prime Minister, in the House of Commons on 27 January 1977.

    [Mr. Gwilym Roberts asked the Prime Minister what progress he has made in his consideration of the position of the House of Lords.]

    The Prime Minister

    The Government are continuing to keep the position of the House of Lords under review.

    Mr. Roberts

    Does my right hon. Friend agree that the removal of the House of Lords in anything like its existing form is a necessary advance towards democracy? Does he accept that this matter must be tackled by the next Labour Government if not by this one?

    The Prime Minister

    I certainly agree that the House of Lords is not the epitome of the democratic system, but I think that we had better undertake one constitutional change at a time.

    Mr. David Steel

    Does the Prime Minister recall that one of his predecessors said that the reform of the House of Lords would brook no delay? As that was Mr. Asquith in 1910, does he agree that there has been quite a lot of brooking since then? As long as the House of Lords goes unreformed, will the Prime Minister give it some constructive work to do and get it started on the Bill for European elections?

    The Prime Minister

    I am happy to give their Lordships some constructive work to do. It might turn their idle hands from the mischief they have done to the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Bill. The Liberal Party has had many opportunities since the date mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman to tackle this particular problem. If he can promise me the full support of his party on this matter without wavering or quavering, I might be tempted to look in his direction.

    Mr. Michael Stewart

    In the course of the Government’s review of this subject will the Prime Minister study a valuable Fabian pamphlet on it written some years ago by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy?

    The Prime Minister

    I always study the writings of my right hon. Friend with the greatest care.

    Mr. Fletcher-Cooke

    Is it the policy of the Government to go for a one-chamber system of government, or is it merely the policy of the Labour Party?

    The Prime Minister

    Yesterday morning the National Executive decided that it should go on record as being in favour of the abolition of the House of Lords. I cannot see why anybody should defend it in its present form. But, as I have said, a number of issues have to be settled and a number of hurdles have to be jumped before that legislation actually appears.

    Mr. Kinnock

    Does my right hon. Friend agree that we could more profitably advance democracy by spending this year abolishing the House of Lords and reforming the House of Commons than multiplying bureaucracy in the form of devolution?

    The Prime Minister

    My hon. Friend was not a Member of this House when I had some experience of this matter. I should want a full guarantee of his total support and that of a great many others before I embarked on it again.

  • Hayden Phillips – 2004 Review of the Honours System by Sir Hayden Phillips

    Hayden Phillips – 2004 Review of the Honours System by Sir Hayden Phillips

    The text of the Honours System by Sir Hayden Phillips which was published in 1994.

    Text (in .pdf format)

  • Ian Mearns – 2022 Speech at the Sir David Amess Summer Adjournment Debate

    Ian Mearns – 2022 Speech at the Sir David Amess Summer Adjournment Debate

    The speech made by Ian Mearns, the Labour MP for Gateshead, in the House of Commons on 21 July 2022.

    I beg to move,

    That this House has considered matters to be raised before the forthcoming adjournment.

    I am delighted to have the opportunity to lead the first Sir David Amess Summer Adjournment debate ahead of the summer recess. It has been and, having been recently re-elected, continues to be a great privilege to chair the Backbench Business Committee since 2015.

    Like many colleagues across the House, I will pay tribute to Sir David Amess, a distinguished and respected Member who served on the Backbench Business Committee between 2012 and 2015. Those of us who worked closely with Sir David will know how passionately he felt about Back-Bench issues, and it is entirely fitting that today’s debate and future debates of this kind will carry his name. While we must not forget the tragic circumstances that led to his death, it is right that we remember his positive impact on this House and how enthusiastically he represented his constituents in both Basildon and Southend West throughout his parliamentary career. Like Sir David, I seek to represent the constituents of my hometown of Gateshead in this House and, frankly, to anyone anywhere who will listen.

    Last week, it was with some dismay, but not with any great surprise, that I read research published by End Child Poverty in conjunction with the North East Child Poverty Commission. It found that 38% of children across the north-east are growing up poor. In my constituency, that rises to 42%—over four in 10 children living in poverty. The north-east is no stranger to child poverty, but we now have another unenviable award in having the highest rate of child poverty in the UK. The reasons are many, not least the stripping back of the social security safety net, which has worsened poverty across my constituency, the effective £20 cut to universal credit, the two-child cap on universal credit, and the failure to increase payments in line with inflation for much of the past decade.

    The apparent attitude across Departments seems to be to spend more effort looking for reasons not to give a positive response than actually tackling vital issues. In addition, we have seen over a decade of cuts to local authority budgets. Perhaps coincidentally, some areas with the greatest deprivation, such as Gateshead, have been subjected to proportionally much greater funding reductions. My own authority in Gateshead has seen its annual budget reduced by £170 million since 2010, even before increased population, greater levels of need and inflation are taken into account. That is £170 million a year extracted from my authority’s budget since 2010.

    This Government’s funding model gives vague initiative funding which councils can bid for, only to find that much of the pot wends its way to favoured areas in, I am afraid to say, a pork barrel process. Even if some of that funding finds its way to us, it does relatively little to combat more than a decade of service cuts. Cuts to adult social care, children’s social care, youth services, early intervention proposals, special educational needs and family support all contribute to the situation we now face. Many families are in crisis.

    The current cost of living crisis for many households in Gateshead is just acidic icing on an already bitter cake. Many families in Gateshead have spent a decade living from one week to the next, shaving ever more from their weekly shop, depriving themselves of food so they can feed their families, and going to bed early on winter evenings to save heating their homes. That is absolutely shameful and unsustainable. The fact that over 40% of children in my constituency live in poverty is unforgivable.

    Gateshead is proud of taking an active role in Government resettlement schemes for families from Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine. These additional people are all being welcomed, but it is already a relatively poor community. While I welcome the wraparound support offered as part of those schemes, I draw the House’s attention to the hundreds of legitimate refugees from around the world outside these schemes who reside in Gateshead, many of whom are stuck in the Home Office processing backlog.

    I want to raise the case of a lad called Victor—I call him a lad, but he is now over 60—who has been living in my constituency since 2006. Originally from Russia, Victor arrived in the UK after fleeing Russia and Putin due to his public criticism of the Russian regime—free speech is something we talk about so much in this House. Victor applied to the Home Office and has spent much of the last 16 years waiting for decisions. He still does not have leave to remain. Having spent much of his recent life in Gateshead, supported briefly by the Home Office and, after that, compassionately by Gateshead Council, sustaining him on just £30 a week, Victor is no further forward after 16 years.

    The Home Office continues to refuse to grant him the right to stay in the UK, but at the same time recognises that Russia is not a safe place to deport him to, especially for those who are critical of the regime. It is not right that people like Victor, who come to the UK with a legitimate right to apply for asylum here, are left in limbo, not to say abject poverty, unable to work, unable to settle here and unable to build a home for fear of removal, yet left for nearly two decades in no man’s land. The recent illegal and brutal invasion of Ukraine by Putin has thrown into stark relief the systematic suppression of human rights, civil liberties and freedom of speech in Russia. The circumstances in Russia were never good, but they have changed for the worse. Let Victor stay in Gateshead.

  • Nigel Evans – 2022 Statement on the Sir David Amess Summer Adjournment Debate

    Nigel Evans – 2022 Statement on the Sir David Amess Summer Adjournment Debate

    The statement made by Nigel Evans, the Deputy Speaker, in the House of Commons on 21 July 2022.

    As I will not be in the Chair at the end of this debate, which is a great shame, I wish a very good recess to everybody here and to all the staff—from the cleaners to the Clerks and all our own staff—who do amazing work to keep parliamentary democracy going in this country. Have a great recess.

    It is an honour for me to introduce the first ever Sir David Amess summer Adjournment. If David were still alive today, he would be here, and in the six-minute time limit he would have raised 35 issues, at least. We remember Sir David and his family with fondness today.

  • Dominic Raab – 2022 Speech in the No Confidence in the Government Motion

    Dominic Raab – 2022 Speech in the No Confidence in the Government Motion

    The speech made by Dominic Raab, the Deputy Prime Minister, in the House of Commons on 18 July 2022.

    I rise to proudly defend the record of this Government under this Prime Minister, and to speak in favour of the motion before the House. The Government under this Prime Minister have steered the country through some of the most difficult challenges in living memory.

    This Government under this Prime Minister got the big calls right on the vaccine roll-out—the fastest and most effective in Europe. We would not have been able to do that if we had listened to the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), the Leader of the Opposition, because we would have been tied to the EU’s approach, with all of its limitations. [Interruption.] Labour Members chunter from a sedentary position, but it is worth reflecting on how many lives and livelihoods it would have cost us if we had listened to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. Labour Members really ought to have a bit more contrition.

    Next, the Prime Minister and this Government took the tough call to come out of lockdown. It was around this time last year and in the teeth of opposition from the right hon. and learned Gentleman, backed up by his colleagues. As a result, we emerged with the fastest growing economy in the G7 last year, with 12 million jobs saved by furlough and in a strong position to face down the economic headwinds that have followed. Again, Labour Members might show at least a bit of remorse for their spineless, vacuous fence-sitting. The right hon. and learned Gentleman shakes his head, but I thought that the leader of the Labour party would appreciate the opportunity to look back with the benefit of hindsight at some of the mistakes that he has made. That is what he does; that is what they do.

    I listened very carefully to the right hon. and learned Gentleman and the list of criticisms that he levelled at the Government. At the end—he bored on for quite some time—he said:

    “I know that there has been fearmongering that this motion might lead straight to a general election…that is complete nonsense”.

    It must be the first time in history that the Leader of an Opposition has pushed for a vote of no confidence but has not come out and called for a general election. That is the Labour party under the right hon. and learned Gentleman: all critique, no cojones.

    Now, as we face a global fight against inflation, caused by the aftershocks of covid and the war in Ukraine, we again face a series of tough calls. We have put in place, under this Government and under this Prime Minister, an unprecedented package of targeted support to help those struggling the most to make ends meet. But we have to control inflation, we have to rein it, and that includes the way we address public sector wage demands. The consequence of failing to curb inflation—the direct result of giving in to excessive public sector wage demands—would be to keep inflation higher for longer and to have a further increase in interest rates. That reckless abdication would hit the poorest the hardest, and it would strike not just the lowest incomes in our society but the mortgages of working and middle-class families across the country. Conservative Members are committed to that wage restraint, coupled with an extensive package of support for the poorest and most vulnerable to get inflation down as soon as possible, which is the only credible approach.

    What has Labour been doing about it? Members on the Labour Front Bench ignored the leader of their party and defied the memorandum that he sent in June ordering them not to back the RMT union. They actively backed the most militant demands led by that union, whose irresponsible strike action caused widespread disruption to people’s lives and livelihoods. It was not just the usual virtue-signalling tweets; many of those Members joined the RMT picket lines, backing the unions over the public. The right hon. and learned Gentleman showed that he cannot control or lead his party, and he cannot stand up to the public in the face of strikes coming down the line.

    Michael Fabricant

    I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. He may not agree with me, but I think that he is being a little unfair to the Leader of the Opposition. The pointless motion today, which he knows—[Interruption.] Oh, yes! The Leader of the Opposition demanded it, and the Leader of the Opposition is now getting it. The motion that he asked for and is getting today will unite the Conservative party more than anything else that he could possibly have done.

    Dominic Raab

    My hon. Friend is absolutely right. What is more, the behaviour of those on the Labour Benches will unite the country. We know why they have not stood up to the unions, including the RMT, since 2015. The Labour party HQ and the local Labour party branches have guzzled up some £68 million in donations from the unions. It is the same old story. The Labour party cannot stand up for the people of this country because it is so deeply buried in the pockets of the unions.

    While Labour Members play their games and stand on the side of the unions rather than the public, we will get on with delivering for the British people: unemployment close to a 50-year low, a rise in the national insurance threshold—

    Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)

    Order. I cannot hear what Mr Raab is saying.

    Dominic Raab

    The Opposition do not want to hear it. They never want to talk about the fact that unemployment is close to a 50-year-low, or about the rise in the national insurance threshold, which is the biggest personal tax cut in a decade to support hard-working people across the country; the record levels of doctors and nurses in our precious NHS, only because we have the economic strength to fund them; the fact that violent crime and theft are down since Labour was in office, and reoffending is down because of the action that we have taken; the extra money that we provided for more police officers, which Labour opposed—that is true—and the tougher sentencing powers for dangerous and violent sexual offenders that we passed only recently in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which Labour opposed.

    Jess Phillips

    While the right hon. Gentleman is jogging through his ideas—let us call them that—will he comment on what I spoke about and say whether he thinks that the Conservative party, under this Prime Minister, has successfully handled cases of sexual harassment and violence within its own ranks?

    Dominic Raab

    We have zero tolerance, and the systems are in place. Let me tell the hon. Lady—she talks a lot about this—that the number of convictions for rape has risen by two thirds in the past year. When it comes to supporting the victims of crime—[Interruption.] I have listened to her, but she never talks about this: we have quadrupled the investment in support services for victims since the last year of the last Labour Government. If she really felt so strongly about these issues, why did she not vote for the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act? The truth is that only the Conservatives are willing to take the concerted action to stand up for victims, to stand up for the public and to keep our streets safe.

    When it comes to our international security, which the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) raised, it is this Prime Minister and this Government who showed the international leadership to fund, to supply, to train and to support the military capabilities of the Ukrainian forces, to sanction the Russian oligarchs and the businesses that finance President Putin’s war machine, to provide the humanitarian aid that the Ukrainian people need and to welcome those fleeing from Russian forces. What about the Labour party?

    The right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras and the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne wanted the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) to lead us. [Interruption.] Well, he spoke earlier, but he is not in his place now. The whole House knows what that would have meant: out of NATO, with Trident dismantled. They would have left our No. 1 alliance and given up our ultimate national security insurance policy at precisely the wrong time.

    Sally-Ann Hart

    Will my right hon. Friend just clarify whether it is £68 million that the Labour party has guzzled since 2015, and whether that includes the £500,000 that a Chinese spy gave to a member of the Labour party to pay for their son to be an employee?

    Dominic Raab

    My hon. Friend raises an interesting point, which I believe is now a matter of public record. The right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne backed a leader who the former head of MI6 said—I will quote, so we have this accurately for the record—denigrated his own country and

    “embraced the interests of its enemies and opponents”.

    That is who Labour supported. The Opposition have no business talking about national security.

    I am proud of the record of this Government under this Prime Minister. Labour Members want to talk about trust, but they cannot be trusted on jobs, they cannot be trusted to keep our streets safe and they cannot be trusted with our national security. I commend this motion to the House.

  • Angela Rayner – 2022 Speech in the No Confidence in the Government Motion

    Angela Rayner – 2022 Speech in the No Confidence in the Government Motion

    The speech made by Angela Rayner, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, in the House of Commons on 18 July 2022.

    Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Today’s debate has been very revealing. We heard a speech from the Prime Minister as delusional as the Transport Secretary’s leadership bid, but sadly not as brief. He claimed that the deep state was plotting against him. Even now, he cannot either take responsibility or face reality—inspired not by Churchill or even Thatcher, but, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) said, by Trump. The truth is that this Prime Minister is the danger to our democracy and to our national security every day he clings on. I note that he cannot even be bothered to meet the conventions of this House and be here for the wind-ups like other hon. Members. The only deep state relevant tonight is the one he has left the country in. He claimed the two pillars of government were a dynamic economy and strong public services. I don’t think he has been watching the other debates—[Interruption.] Ah, hi! Better late than never, Mr Prime Minister.

    The Prime Minister has finally arrived, but I do not think he has been watching the other debates. His Foreign Secretary said that the

    “economic strategy that we have at the moment, simply isn’t working”

    and that ambulance waiting times were “appalling”. The Trade Policy Minister said that

    “we are going to be one of the most uncompetitive nations”

    and that

    “public services are in a desperate state”.

    And they are the ones who are still members of this Government.

    The hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Kemi Badenoch) asked: “Why should the public trust us? We haven’t exactly covered ourselves in glory”. I agree. His former Chancellor said that the next Prime Minister would have to

    “restore trust, rebuild our economy and reunite our country”.

    For all the bluster we heard from Conservative Members today, I think those damning words say it all. And how many of them said the Prime Minister was honest? How many would put him in their own shadow Cabinet? [Interruption.] You will be, don’t worry; that was not a misspeak. How many would put him in their shadow Cabinet, as it is soon to be? It was one less than the number of fingers the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Andrea Jenkyns) raised to the public when she was appointed.

    That is the standard of the Government he now leads—not exactly a ministry of all the talents. Will the last person in Downing Street please turn out the lightweights? As my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) said, while our country is in crisis, our Government are in chaos. As a national emergency was declared, where was the Prime Minister when Cobra was called? He was preparing for another party—I hope it went well. You couldn’t make it up! He was missing in action while Britain boils. My hon. Friends the Members for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle) and for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), among others, noted the tidal wave of sleaze and scandal that swamped the Prime Minister and the human impact of ministerial misconduct on its victims. But, as my hon. Friends the Members for West Ham (Ms Brown) and for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) said, this Conservative Government have also been a catastrophe for our whole country. We have had 12 years of Tory failure: 12 years of low growth; 12 years of a stagnating economy; and 12 years of broken promises. And that is just another verdict from his own Foreign Secretary.

    What of the crises facing us now? On the cost of living crisis, the Government have no answers. On climate change, they have no answers. On backlog Britain, they have no answers. They are not just asleep at the wheel; they are steering us straight into the eye of the storm. It is no wonder that so many hon. Members have drawn the conclusion that Britain needs a fresh start. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) summed up this Government’s record on tackling Islamophobia.

    I agree with one comment that was made from the Government Benches, and that is that the office of Prime Minister is greater than the person who holds it. As so many of my hon. Friends have noted, this Prime Minister is simply not fit to fill that office, but the Conservative party plans to indulge him for the next seven weeks. A caretaker known for no care, every day he is in Downing Street he does more damage. He should be long gone. I say to Members on both sides of the House: let us tell this Prime Minister to go, and to go now. Enough is enough.

  • Marion Fellows – 2022 Speech in the No Confidence in the Government Motion

    Marion Fellows – 2022 Speech in the No Confidence in the Government Motion

    The speech made by Marion Fellows, the SNP MP for Motherwell and Wishaw, in the House of Commons on 18 July 2022.

    Mr Deputy Speaker, I hope you caught the Prime Minister’s surreal bravura performance, which was rather clouded by the fact he did not realise that his own Government tabled the motion. There was not a cheep about being booted out by his own party, finally, after breaching his own rules on partying while my constituents could not hold their loved one’s hand as they were dying. There was not a cheep about Marcus Rashford shaming this Government into feeding hungry, poor children during the school holidays.

    As Conservative Members brag about this Government getting Brexit done, they forget that they were continually warned about what Brexit would mean for families in Scotland and the rest of the UK—£1,400 a year and a fall in GDP. Well, it has happened, folks. And the latest polling shows that more people think Britain was wrong to vote to leave the EU.

    There was not a cheep about being prepared to flout international law after he changed his mind on signing the Northern Ireland protocol. There was not a cheep about illegally proroguing Parliament.

    Scotland has a different Government and deals with people in an entirely different way. We respect people and we treat them with dignity and respect when they need help. Here, this Westminster Parliament is believed to be sovereign, whereas in Scotland we know that that is not true; in Scotland, the people are sovereign. They elected a Parliament last year with a majority for independence, but this Tory Government are absolutely determined to keep Scotland in the Union. Self-determination apparently does not apply in Scotland. Even the—

    Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)

    Order. I want both Front Benchers to be heard with civility, please. I call Angela Rayner.

  • Stephen Kinnock – 2022 Speech in the No Confidence in the Government Motion

    Stephen Kinnock – 2022 Speech in the No Confidence in the Government Motion

    The speech made by Stephen Kinnock, the Labour MP for Aberavon, in the House of Commons on 18 July 2022.

    The winner of the current leadership contest will be the fourth Conservative Prime Minister since 2016. The Conservatives really have turned government into a game of musical chairs, to the point where the world’s oldest political party is not a credible or coherent organisation at all. It is a coalition of chaos led by a Prime Minister who embodies the vacuum of moral purpose at its heart.

    They say that a fish rots from its head, but let us not forget that every single Conservative Member is complicit. They propped him up and defended the indefensible, so the entire fish is rotten. That is why it makes no difference who wins this leadership contest, and it is why a general election, and a fresh start with a Labour Government is the only viable option for our country.

    We cannot in all good conscience allow this man, a man who put our national security at risk by holding clandestine meetings with a former KGB officer, to carry on squatting in Downing Street over the summer. This zombie Government are set to limp on in parallel with the frankly embarrassing leadership contest, which not even the candidates want to see played out in public. They are dodging scrutiny, and no wonder. They are offering hundreds of billions of pounds in unfunded tax cuts, but nothing for the millions of families who will face a choice between eating and heating this autumn. There is not a word on boosting productivity or driving the modern manufacturing renaissance that our country so desperately needs, and no mention whatsoever of the Conservative party’s backlog Britain, with the Passport Office in meltdown, A&E queues off the scale, courts mired in delays and a broken asylum system costing the taxpayer £4.7 million a day.

    Backlog Britain is not simply the result of the Government’s failure to plan for the end of lockdown. The multiple system failures we now see are the result of 12 years of Tory incompetence and indifference. Growth, investment and productivity have stagnated since 2010, and our public services have been hollowed out, leaving our country profoundly lacking in the resilience we needed to weather the covid storm. The Government’s failure to invest has impacted on our national finances, on workers’ pay packets and on our public services, and it has left our private sector vulnerable to major shocks such as the pandemic, the war and the Prime Minister’s botched Brexit deal.

    We should be in no doubt that authoritarian states such as China and Russia have been waiting in the wings, ready to pounce and to exploit our overexposed and vulnerable assets and supply chains. Labour has a plan to make, buy and sell more in Britain. After 12 years of a stagnating Tory economy, low growth and broken promises, we need a fresh start, not just a change at the top.

  • Barry Gardiner – 2022 Speech in the No Confidence in the Government Motion

    Barry Gardiner – 2022 Speech in the No Confidence in the Government Motion

    The speech made by Barry Gardiner, the Labour MP for Brent North, in the House of Commons on 18 July 2022.

    Former Conservative Cabinet colleagues are publicly accusing each other of economic incompetence, of negligence in preventing fraud and even of being a Liberal Democrat, yet after defenestrating their party leader because they had no confidence in him, Conservative Members have decided to leave the man in place as Prime Minister of this Government. As a result, the public have no confidence in them. That is clear because the Government refuse to call a general election, as they have no confidence that they would win it.

    The 6.6 million people waiting for treatment in the NHS have no confidence in this Government. The parents of the 350,000 children on that waiting list have no confidence in them. The 50,000 imaginary nurses currently housed in the 40 presumably non-existent hospitals have no confidence in them either. The taxpayers paying the highest level of tax for 70 years and facing the highest inflation in 40 years have no confidence that this Government have the ability to tackle the record £2 trillion of debt, the highest peacetime debt the UK has ever seen.

    The victims of crime who have watched crime rise by 18% while prosecutions fall have no confidence in this Government. The people awaiting their passports because of the chaos in the Home Office have no confidence that they will be able to travel abroad for either business or a family holiday. The refugees who have a well-founded fear of persecution in Syria or Afghanistan have no confidence that they will not be deported to a country where they have no family and no connection. Women and girls have no confidence that this Government, with their inability to properly tackle sexual predation in their own ranks, will deal with the violence against them. Minority communities who experience racial profiling and have been outraged as police shared racist photos among themselves have no confidence that this Government will press for real reform.

    The families and friends of the 72 who died in Grenfell Tower have no confidence that, five years on, this Government have acted to make others safe. The 2 million families depending on food banks to feed their children have no confidence that this Government understand what it means to see their children go to bed hungry. The 5.5 million public sector workers whose real-terms wages have stagnated and declined in the past 12 years have no confidence that they can continue to pay their rent, with 9% inflation eroding their pay still further. A blind eye has been turned to jobs for sexual favours, to ministerial bullying, to crony contracts and to wine time Fridays—although people did ask “WTF?”—yet this Prime Minister wants to stay on as caretaker. Ponder that word. Is there any word in the entire English language that describes this Prime Minister less than “caretaker”? He is a reckless narcissist, and nobody inside or outside this Chamber should have confidence in his Government.