Business of the House

I am grateful to the Leader of the House. On 1 March, can we have a St. David’s day debate on Wales, in Government time, so that hon. Members can examine Labour’s catalogue of failure there? Last year, the Government refused such a debate, saying that there was enough Welsh business in the House, so can we have a debate this year so that the voice of the people of Wales can be heard? It has been shown that under this Government it costs more to send a child to nursery than to many public schools. Access to affordable child care is crucial for women wanting to get back to work, particularly lone parents, so can we have a debate on child care? Can we have a debate on the costs of Government restructuring? Since 1997 there have been nine major reorganisations of the NHS in nine years, two of which alone cost £320 million. We have seen millions wasted on abortive police mergers, on setting up then abolishing the Strategic Rail Authority, and on setting up then abolishing social care inspection bodies. Now the Government want to spend up to £2 billion reorganising local government. That sounds like moving the deckchairs on a sinking ship. We should debate this utter waste of money, and show how the money could have been better spent on patients, passengers and services. Linked to that, can we have a debate on joined-up government? The chief inspector of prisons says that one of the problems for the prison service is that money promised by the NHS for mentally ill convicts has not come through because of the ““upheaval”” caused by, for example, the reorganisation of primary care trusts. It is not just health care that suffers from all that restructuring. Will the Leader of the House ensure that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is available for that debate, so that he can explain how his decisions to freeze the Home Office budget and block new private finance initiative prison projects have contributed to the current crisis in our prisons? The press report that the White Paper on Lords reform is expected next week, but it is suggested that it may not be supported by all members of the Cabinet. Will the Leader of the House encourage the Chancellor of the Exchequer to vote on this issue when the time comes? In the past nine years he has not voted on Lords reform, and if he is to be Prime Minister, we would like to know what he thinks about it. Perhaps his views, like those of the Northern Ireland Secretary and the International Development Secretary, do not accord with those of the Prime Minister. Finally, I have a paper here containing details of a parliamentary campaign among Labour Members. It sets out the strategy outline, and which Members are willing to go public and which are not. However, it does not say what the campaign is. Some of my cynical colleagues have suggested to me that it is a deputy leadership campaign. I was more generous and assumed that it must be a campaign against Government health policy. May we have a statement on what this campaign is, so that other Members can get involved, should they wish to? With the Chancellor blocking prison places, the Foreign Secretary blocking Home Office reform, the Chief Whip campaigning against health policy, Labour Members campaigning against each other, and the Deputy Prime Minister telling us yesterday that he is demob happy, is it not clear that the Government are in paralysis and that the only answer for the country is for the Prime Minister to go, and go now?