This Saturday is International Women’s Day so I began Business of the House questions by reflecting that the fight for women’s equality is ongoing, both at home and around the world. A shocking report published this week shows that one-third of women in the European Union have suffered physical or sexual violence and under this government the number of domestic violence cases passed to the Crown Prosecution Service for prosecution has fallen by 13 per cent. I called for a debate in government time on how we can end the scourge of violence against women and ensure that perpetrators know that they will be brought to justice.
We saw yet again this week that if David Cameron is good at one thing it is completely failing to provide answers during prime minister’s questions. Yesterday he failed to answer a serious question about the government’s desire to drive a coach and horses through the Hunting Act. I urged Andrew Lansley to ensure that any procedural instrument to weaken the bill will be subject to a vote on the floor of the House of Commons.
Next week the Commons will debate the care bill. While there is a lot in the bill which all parties can agree on, the government is using it as a backdoor route to give itself the power to close any hospital it wants. I pushed the leader of the House to admit that any reconfiguration of hospital services should be clinically led and not done for purely financial reasons.
The government has finally announced the date of the Queen’s speech, with a very late state opening in June and an extended recess. This just shows that we have a zombie government which has long since run out of steam. On Tuesday the government tried to claim that an agreement had been reached on their future programme but less than a day later it had all fallen apart as two government ministers, Vince Cable and James Brokenshire, are both making totally contradictory speeches on immigration. George Osborne has ambushed the Liberal Democrats in the cabinet over vetoing an EU referendum and with the budget only two weeks away he is too busy fighting with the mayor of London over who will be the next Tory leader to think about the day job. I suggested to the government that as yesterday was Ash Wednesday that they might want to give up squabbling, conniving and plotting for Lent.
I finished with Clegg’s attempts to avoid a total Liberal Democrat whitewash at the European elections by agreeing to a featherweight boxing match with Nigel Farage on television. He is currently so desperate for attention that I’m surprised he has not photo shopped himself into that selfie at the Oscars.
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Angela Eagle is member of parliament for Wallasey, shadow leader of the House of Commons and writes the weekly Business of Parliament column for Progress. She tweets @AngelaEagle