Donald Macintyre's Sketch: Commons breeding in the summer sunshine
Business Questions failed to really elaborate on anything
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Kit Malthouse announced that “North-west Hampshire is literally pullulating with people such as Joanne Bishop of Atalanta Jewellery who pluck up their courage and their savings to start their own business.”
This arcane verb caused consternation. After taking advice, the Speaker ruled that it meant “to breed rapidly or abundantly”. Presumably Malthouse was not describing his constituent. At least not “literally.”
Sadly, that was all we learnt from Business Questions.
Labour’s Steve Doughty said that Sajid Javid had reportedly told his officials not to talk of “industrial policy”. “Can he tell industries… whether he still has [a policy] and, if so, what on Earth it is?”
The new Business Secretary replied that he hoped vaguely for an “active dialogue” with industry.
Having highlighted the striking fact that both he and his Labour counterpart Chuka Umunna are bullet-headed, Javid paid tribute to his “equally hirsute” predecessor Vince Cable.
That’s about all they have in common, though. Thatcher fan Javid is less enamoured of state intervention. And he is cutting.
When Umunna asked about threatened cuts at the Gloucestershire college Javid himself had attended, the Business Secretary said: “It was an excellent college.” A slip of the tense noticed by gleeful Labour backbenchers before he insisted “it still is”.
Meanwhile, his never less than robust sidekick, Anna Soubry, announced a new Twitter account – @CutRedTapeUK – adding defiantly, “It is all right. I am familiar with Twitter.”
But even she could only promise a “review” of secondary ticketing scams. “I’ve heard of Taylor Swift too,” she confirmed, as if it wouldn’t be odd if she hadn’t.
And universities minister Jo Johnson – the unflashy one – was unable to say whether tuition fees would go up, or if present students would be exempt if they did. Well, there is a budget on the way, to be fair.
Instead he coined a new term for austerity: the “national savings effort”. This had a comfortingly 1940s ring about it.
Will we be soon tearing down the iron railings to help equip our cash-strapped armed forces?
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