This week we had the first cabinet reshuffle since the election and I started this morning’s business questions by paying tribute to the outgoing leader of the House Sir George Young and welcoming his successor Andrew Lansley to the role.
I also took the opportunity to welcome the new chief whip, Andrew ‘Thrasher’ Mitchell who will now have to console his colleagues who have been sacked in the reshuffle – and not given knighthoods. I reminded the Tory benches that I had been sacked from government and that it doesn’t mean the end of your ministerial career. I returned to government in a subsequent reshuffle … Under a new prime minister!
After the reshuffle we now have:
• A new rightwing justice secretary
• An environment secretary who is a climate change sceptic
• And an equality minister who has voted against almost every piece of equality legislation.
I asked the leader of the House to bring the new equality minister to the House of Commons to explain her plans for the role considering her alarming voting record!
Jeremy Hunt, the newly appointed secretary of state for health, wrote before the election that a Conservative government would ‘crowd-source’ ideas because they ‘believed in collective wisdom’. Today I asked the leader of the House to commend the chancellor for going to the Olympic stadium the other night to do his own experiment with crowd-sourcing. We all enjoyed watching the chancellor squirm as he was booed by 80,000 people in the Olympic stadium, we are still waiting to see what conclusions he draws.
This morning the prime minister began yet another government relaunch from the Daybreak sofa. But with an economy in the longest double-dip recession since the second world war, growth forecasts cut and borrowing up by a quarter people want a real plan for jobs and growth not cosy chats in a TV studio.
I was shocked to read Nick Clegg’s interview in the Guardian over recess calling for increased taxes on the wealthy, only to be immediately slapped down by the chancellor. We should never forget that the Liberal Democrats voted for the millionaires tax cut, another example of the Liberal Democrats saying one thing in public, and voting the opposite way in the House of Commons.
Finally, this morning I asked the new leader of the House Andrew Lansley to reassure us that he won’t be attempting a top-down reorganisation of the House of Commons!
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Angela Eagle is MP for Wallasey, shadow leader of the Commons and writes the weekly Business of Parliament column for Progress. She tweets @AngelaEagle