Local MP Alex Cunningham has strongly criticised the government for ‘going into hibernation’ after its legislative programme has ground to a halt in recent weeks due to a lack of new ideas.
Rushing through legislation in Parliament has meant Labour MPs have been denied sufficient time to debate Bills on health and justice, and instead have been left discussing business which would normally be dealt with in minutes.
Important changes in legislation which will have a real impact on some of the most vulnerable people in this country, such as cutting legal aid for family law cases, clinical negligence, and welfare benefit cases, were not given a sufficient opportunity to be challenged in House of Commons debates.
The Tory-led Government also denied MPs the time to scrutinize the vast Health and Social Care Bill- David Cameron’s NHS reorganization plan which is three times as long as the Bill that set up the NHS in the first place.
After rushing through these bills, there is now a huge gap in MPs’ schedules, and as a result, a backlog of legislation in the House of Lords has been created where peers are picking holes in the Tory-led governments ill-thought out policies.
Alex said:
“After just 18 months in Government they have run out of ideas while their economic policy is clearly hurting families all over the country. At a time when youth unemployment has hit one million and ordinary people are struggling to pay the bills, the Government is showing how desperately out of touch it is by offering no new legislation and not a single debate of any substance, and instead is sticking to its Plan A for the economy and killing off any hope of growth.”
“If the Tory-led government can’t even manage its own diary, how can it be trusted to run the country?”
