Business of the House

The Leader of the House has announced that on Monday week we will debate and vote on motions relating to the police grant and local government finance. There is huge concern in the country about the police needing adequate funding as well as adequate pay. There is also great concern across local government, of all parties, because the settlement means that council tax will have increased by 100 per cent. in 10 years, whereas if education is taken out, the money available for councils for things such as social services will have increased by 14 per cent. in real terms over 10 years. Given those concerns, may we have entirely separate debates and votes on those matters? Can we have a police debate and a local government finance debate? They are separate subjects, separate budgets are involved and the organisations are separate. We always used to take that approach. Will the Leader of the House guarantee that the five motions on the Order Paper in the name of the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government dealing with local government reorganisation in Cornwall, Wiltshire, Shropshire, County Durham and Northumberland will each be the subject of a separate debate, so that they can be properly decided upon, as they deserve to be? The Leader of the House has announced that at the end of the week after next, we will consider motions on the scrutiny of European Union legislation. That is a matter of considerable interest in the House, and her deputy has consulted colleagues about it. May we see the results of that consultation, and a report on it, in good time before we see motions and are asked to debate the proposals for better scrutiny of European Union matters? Today, the written statement by the Secretary of State for Justice on the Government's long-promised review of electoral systems has been published. One of my friends said that it was more like an A-level piece of work or an undergraduate thesis than a great Government study. Irrespective of that, may we have an opportunity to debate across the board the way in which electoral systems have worked well or badly at different levels of government, so that the Government can honour their manifesto commitment in reality, rather than just in word? Today, we learned that eight Russell group universities have underspent significantly—by hundreds of thousands of pounds—the money allocated for bursaries to improve access among the poorest and most disadvantaged families, and that four others have not even disclosed their figures. Can we have either a statement from the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills or a debate to ensure that a policy on which we all agree—ensuring that people get to university irrespective of their background or means—is delivered? We do not want to find, as is happening at the moment, that people are not taking it up because the money is sitting in the bank. Lastly, terrible prevarication has taken place over whether the war veterans entitled to disability pensions who have been paid the wrong amounts will have to repay the sums, which are sometimes in the order of thousands of pounds. The Ministry of Defence said that it would repay them and would write the money off, then it said that it could not do that because the Treasury had to be consulted, and now the people involved are told that they must wait for another couple of months before those two Departments get their act together. Can we please have an announcement on this, either from the Chancellor or from the Secretary of State for Defence? I hope that such an announcement will say that war veterans who have served their country and been disabled in that cause will not have huge debts that have to be repaid because of a Government mess.