I felt for the shadow Minister’s being asked to speak in this debate after many hours of toiling away on a different subject yesterday. He obviously struggled, because he produced his notes for yesterday’s debate and gave us 10 minutes or so as if we were still debating ministerial powers and Parliament’s right to control all secondary regulations. Just to clarify the point that I made to him, and which he tried to muddle: everything is a parliamentary process when it comes to legislating by statutory instrument, because those statutory instruments that are tabled for negative resolution—meaning that they would not normally get a debate or a vote—are an invitation to the Opposition. It is their job to go through them all and decide whether Ministers have made any mistakes, and therefore whether those instruments should be brought before the House for debate and a vote. They are all debateable and voteable if the Opposition do their job, but it is clear that this Opposition do not want to do their job; they want to make synthetic points instead.
Thanks to your excellent guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker, the shadow Minister did come to understand that this is the debate on the Finance Bill. We then moved to the interesting issue of the student debts. A number of my right hon. and hon. Friends quite rightly wanted clarification on whether, were we to accept Labour’s advice, we would need to find provision in the Bill to retire £100 billion of student debt. The poor shadow Minister found that even more difficult than working out which debate he was in. I am sure he knows full well that before the election the Leader of the Opposition made a statement on student debt that was interpreted by two shadow Ministers as categorically offering the end of student debt for all those who have incurred it. Now, after the election, we are told that the Leader of the Opposition did not mean that, although he failed to clarify it at the time.