Joy Morrissey

It is a pleasure to be doing business questions and responding to the right hon. Gentleman. He was a Chief Whip—a Whip, like me, but more grand—and he was much respected, revered and sometimes feared by Members of this House. I will be honest and say that even I was terrified of him, and we are not even in the same party. It is a pleasure to be here today. As we reach the fourth anniversary of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, it is important that we restate our unwavering support for the people of Ukraine. We must never abandon them. I know that it has been a challenging few weeks for Labour Members—we have all been there—who have come to realise what the British people have long understood, which is that we have a Prime Minister who has U-turned on every principle he held and every promise he made. He is a Prime Minister elected on a promise not to raise taxes on working people, and then he raised them. He is a Prime Minister who promised to be pro-business, and he has become the most anti-business Prime Minister of modern times. He is a Prime Minister who promised to raise standards in public life, but he is presiding over an ever-growing mountain of Government scandals. “The grown-ups are back in charge, no more sleaze”—how is that going for them? While the Prime Minister stumbles on, his Ministers are out of control and out of their depth, and the British people are paying the price. Let me start with the Justice Secretary. This week we saw that he intends to pursue his reckless plan to cut jury trials: a principle that has existed for over 800 years; a principle that he wants to wreck without proper debate in the House. Will the Leader of the House give me a categoric assurance that we will have time in the House to debate the changes that the Justice Secretary wants to make before we get to May? Let me turn to the Education Secretary, who is also the Equalities Minister. There can be no justification for the delay in providing guidance on single-sex spaces. The Supreme Court ruled a year ago that biological sex defines a woman—a fact that most people knew without needing a judge to tell them. I do not know whether the Education Secretary deep down still does not agree, but the inaction must end. Will the Leader of the House confirm when the guidance will be laid before the House, and grant a debate in Government time on the unacceptable delays and risk it has proved to women and girls? Let me turn to the Chancellor. This week the Chancellor’s entrepreneurship adviser shamefully said that Britain does “not need more restaurants”, laying bare what we already knew: that this Government are determined to tax our hospitality businesses into extinction. Will the Chancellor apologise for her adviser and sack her, or back her and agree with her anti-hospitality stance? Will the Leader of the House grant a debate in Government time on our pubs and hospitality, so that Members—at least, those on the Conservative Benches—can show their support for the hospitality sector? We want to ensure that the crippling tax burden is removed from the hospitality sector. It is now clear that we have a Prime Minister with an out-of-control Government buried deep in scandal after scandal, failure after failure and broken promise after broken promise; a Prime Minister without principle; a Prime Minister without purpose; and a Prime Minister without a future. The British people deserve better.