House of Commons Disqualification (Amendment) Bill
(12 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
It is a great pleasure, and somewhat of a surprise, to be able to move on to this uncontroversial and straightforward little Bill. We have the best part of an hour to discuss it, so I think we should make good progress.
I am introducing such an uncontroversial and minor Bill in the true spirit of private Members’ Bills. Its aim is to act on the Prime Minister’s wishes, support coalition party policy, increase parliamentary scrutiny, reduce the size of the Government and save considerable amounts of money for the taxpayer. As I have said, it is uncontroversial, helpful to the Government and supportive of the Prime Minister.
I know that people will be suspicious that this might be a Government hand-out Bill. Let me reassure the House that although I have had some robust exchanges with the Government about the Bill, I can confirm that it is not such a Bill. I also noted, however, that the objections raised by the Government were weak and half-hearted, so reading between the lines I know that they are actually keen for the Bill to become an Act.
In a nutshell, the Bill would stop Members of Parliament becoming Whips. Why am I introducing the Bill now? There is, of course, an argument, which I shall explore later, that Members of Parliament should not be Whips at any time, but there is a more practical reason why the Bill should be passed. The Government have confirmed that they will set up a business of the House committee by 2013 as part of the ongoing radical reform of Parliament that is allowing better scrutiny of Government business. May I praise the Deputy Leader of the House, who is in his place and who I hope will have a chance to reply, for what the Government have done? They have taken the reform of Parliament seriously and there is ongoing progress—this Bill would just add a little to that progress.
The business of the House committee will timetable the business of the House so that the parliamentary week will be controlled by Parliament instead of being controlled by the Executive. That will have the effect of doing away with most of the work that the Whips now do, of which the organisation of the business of the House is a major task. Only yesterday, the Leader of the House reaffirmed at the Dispatch Box the Government’s absolute commitment to setting up the business of the House committee by 2013. He said:
“This Government successfully implemented the recommendation to establish a Backbench Business Committee, which I am sure that the hon. Gentleman welcomed. The majority of the remaining recommendations of the Wright Committee are a matter for the House rather than Government. The Government will be bringing forward a Green Paper on intelligence and security later this year in which we will make initial proposals on how to reform the Intelligence and Security Committee. As set out in the coalition agreement, the Government are committed to establishing a House business committee in 2013.”—[Official Report, 8 September 2011; Vol. 532, c. 546.]
Clause 3(2) of my Bill states:
“This Act comes into force on the day of the appointment of the House of Commons Business Committee.”
My Bill would not abolish overnight the right for Members to be Whips. There would be a period of transition for up to two years.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
Obviously, I have to disagree with the hon. Gentleman about the wonderful job that the Whips Office does, as it says here in my notes, but will he clarify what would happen to the functions that are provided to the royal household by the Whips? Who would take on those roles?
Mr Bone
Time is limited but I will address that later if I get to it.
This is not an attempt to denigrate or try to get rid of individual Members or right hon. Members of Parliament who are Whips at the moment. Almost without exception, they are talented, thoughtful, hard-working Members of Parliament who would be better employed as Executive Ministers in the Government, as shadow Ministers or on the Back Benches scrutinising the Executive. It is a waste of their considerable talent to have them in the Whips Office. I should like to single out and praise two Whips—the Government Chief Whip and the Government Deputy Chief Whip, who have been exceptionally helpful Members of Parliament and who have certainly produced a system of whipping that is fairer, freer and better than in the previous Parliament. In my opinion, they should both be Executive Ministers and should not waste their huge talents in the Whips Office.
The problem is not with the individuals or the tone of the Whips Office but with the institution itself. One could argue that when there was slavery in the southern states of the USA, there were benign slave owners, and the tone of slavery definitely improved over the years, but that does not take away from the fundamental fact that the institution of slavery was wrong because it sought to control other human beings through various methods. Similarly, the Whips Office seeks to control the minds, actions and votes of individual Members of Parliament. That is fundamentally wrong. I would argue strongly that we have a benign set of Whips at the moment, and the tone of whipping has definitely improved considerably over the years, but it is the institution of whipping that is wrong.
Looking elsewhere, let us imagine what would happen if any other organisation, private company or individual told a Member of Parliament when to speak, what to say or how to vote. They would be hauled before the House for contempt, but that is exactly what the Whips try to do every day. They will flatter, cajole, threaten or even use blackmail to achieve this. They are a perfect example of people who believe that the ends justify the means. I have lost count of how many times the Whips have shouted or sworn at me. The institution of the Whips Office is secretive and highly efficient. It is exceptionally talented at getting what it wants.
Before I go into the detail of the Bill, I shall briefly mention a television programme that many of us have probably watched. In 1980, “Yes Minister” aired for the first time. It went on for a further four series. It is of course a satirical sitcom about a hapless Minister and Parliament, but I understand that it is also the training manual for Ministers. However, I mention the programme for one episode and one scene alone. Jim Hacker, the hapless Minister, says to his private secretary when the Division bells sound, “What’s the vote?” The secretary goes on to explain that it is about the education Bill, and continues to explain about the details of the education Bill and what it hopes to achieve. However, before he can finish Jim Hacker cuts him off and says, “No, don’t tell me about the Bill; tell me which Lobby the Whips want me to vote in. I don’t need to know about the Bill. I just need to know which Lobby I have to vote in.” That was 30 years ago, and nothing has changed over that period.
Most Members of the House, on most occasions when Division bells ring, have no idea what they are voting for. Many do not even know the basics of the Bill; they are just voting the way the Whips tell them.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Is not the fact that Members do not know which way to vote exposed whenever there is a free vote in the House and individual Members have to make up their own mind on an issue? They are standing by the doorways, not knowing which Lobby to enter—which way to vote. It shows how mechanical the system has become.
Mr Bone
As usual, my right hon. Friend—he should be right honourable, but he is in fact my hon. Friend—is right. We have just seen an example of that. Allegedly, Labour Members had a free vote in the Division a few minutes ago, and outside in the corridor Members were asking which way to vote. They had no idea what they were voting on. Luckily, there were some Labour Whips there, helpfully indicating which way they should go on the free vote. We have had a problem in Parliament for more than 30 years. Members of Parliament are voting, not according to what a Bill is about, but according to what the Whips say.
May I explain how most Bills go through the House of Commons nowadays? A Bill
“gets sent to the House of Commons where it’s debated without diligence—because automatic guillotines cut time short. It’s passed without proper scrutiny—because standing committees for Public Bills are stuffed with puppets of the Government. And it’s voted through without much of a whisper—because MPs have been whipped to follow the party line.
We’ve got to give Parliament its teeth back so that people can have pride in it again—so they can look at it and say ‘yes: those MPs we elect—they’re holding the government to account on my behalf.’”
[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] No wonder there were cheers for that, because they are not my words, they are the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr Cameron), the Prime Minister.
By stopping Members of Parliament becoming Whips and stopping Whips telling Members of Parliament how to vote, we would help to address many of the Prime Minister’s concerns; and as with so many other things, the Prime Minister is absolutely right: we need to bring power back to Members of Parliament and away from the Executive. The Bill would enact the Prime Minister’s wishes.
I have not had the opportunity to discuss the Bill with the Prime Minister, but I am sure that if he is available and my Bill goes to a Division, he will be in the Aye Lobby. One may even say that his words were uttered in the same spirit as those of Edmund Burke, that great Conservative thinker, who once said about the perfect MP that,
“his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice…to any set of men living.”
That is what we Members of Parliament should do, and it is what Parliament itself was set up for us to do. We should act on behalf of our constituents, and use our unbiased opinion and mature judgment to scrutinise every piece of legislation that comes our way so that we hold the Government to account, regardless of party politics. Burke could surely not have foreseen how hard it is today for a Member of Parliament to live up to his ideal. Sadly, all too many of us succumb to pressure from a particular set of men living: our flatterers, cajolers and bullies who make up our party Whips.
Mr Hollobone
I am enjoying my hon. Friend’s powerful contribution immensely. Does he agree that the better that Back Benchers do their job, the better the Executive will do their job, because we can raise the bar and hold them to account properly?
Mr Bone
My hon. Friend is quite right. I think it was the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), when he was Leader of the House in the previous Parliament, who said that there had never been a piece of legislation that had gone through the House and received proper scrutiny that had not become a better Bill as a result of that scrutiny. The thinking of the Whips—that pushing stuff through without proper scrutiny achieves the best for the Executive—is the wrong way round, because that actually results in completely the opposite.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I strongly support my hon. Friend’s Bill, but does it deal with the problem of the Committee of Selection? That Committee is dominated by the Whips and it effectively prevents honest Back Benchers with an independent mind from serving on many Public Bill Committees.
Mr Bone
My hon. Friend hits on an important point. One of the problems in this Parliament is that someone who does not agree with the line of the Executive or the shadow Executive cannot get on to such Committees. That happens because Whips nominate the membership of Committees, but a side benefit of my Bill would be that that would end, because there would be no Whips.
Unlike in many other countries, the Executive live within Parliament, rather than outside it. They propose from within Parliament, and sit, live and breathe within it. Over the years, people have therefore sought election to Parliament not to become Members of Parliament, but to become Ministers. They want to be either a Minister in government, or a shadow Minister in opposition. In the vast majority of cases, people who are elected to the House of Commons want to be a Member of Parliament not for its own end, but as a method to become a Minister. That gives enormous control to Government and Opposition Whips. If someone proposes to exercise their judgment against what the Whips want, they will rapidly be given the threat that their career will be over and they will never become a Minister—I think that I have probably qualified for that advice.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that that leads to a form of creeping patronage? Mechanisms such as negative briefings are also used, and I was subject to a hostile Culture, Media and Sport briefing that was sent around. That goes to the heart of a culture in the House that undermines the integrity of individual hon. Members.
Mr Bone
My hon. Friend has been elected to the House to be a Member of Parliament and to use her own judgment. She hits on a good point, and if I get time, I shall deal with the problem of the black art of misinformation that the Whips operate so successfully.
For a new Member of Parliament, the Whips’ threat that their career will be over if they do not vote in a certain way is enormously powerful. However, history suggests that completely the reverse is the case. Many people who have voted against the Whips on the most controversial matters are now Ministers—some are actually in the Cabinet.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I think that new Members are under a misapprehension. They think that if they ever vote against the Government, they will not get into the Government. Actually, people get into the Government if they are good: if they are principled and intelligent, and crack it at the Dispatch Box, they will get in. They should be far more confident about that.
Mr Bone
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. A yes-person who always agrees with the Whips will never be a good Minister. A person has to have independent thought to be a Minister. Some members of the Cabinet voted against the Maastricht treaty—probably the most controversial issue for the Conservative party—and it did not seem to do them any harm.
Parliament was originally intended to act as a check on the Executive, and to hold them properly to account, but with the advent of the party and such concepts as party loyalty and party manifestos, Members of Parliament who put their individual judgment to one side are increasingly frequently—more often than not—treated by the Whips as little more than sheep. They are blindly herded into Division Lobbies and told to vote a particular way on a subject that they know nothing about. Whips even have the nerve to divide the groups that they look after into flocks, because they regard them as sheep. Sadly, Christopher Hollis MP had it precisely right when he said in 1946:
“On most votes it would be simpler and more economic to keep a flock of tame sheep and from time to time to drive them through the division lobbies in the appropriate number.”
Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
I have great sympathy with what my hon. Friend says, and I was standing in about this position in the House when I first advocated abolishing whipping. However, does he not agree that it is necessary to organise for votes, and that without whipping, or at least some system of organisation, it would be very difficult for any Government to get their business through?
Mr Bone
Unusually, I disagree with my hon. Friend. If we go back to the years of Wilberforce, or the time of the American civil war, Members of Parliament quite often campaigned and voted against the Executive’s line. The Government would lose major pieces of legislation, but the Government did not fail; they carried on. That was what Parliament was supposed to do.
Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, particularly as, I must confess, I was not here for the beginning of his comments. Does he not acknowledge that in the time of Wilberforce, to whom he referred, political parties were a little different, and there was not the same volume of legislation? Perhaps I could ask him a key question. Is he not really arguing for a strict separation of powers? Ultimately, is not his point of contention that he objects to the fusion of the Executive and the legislature? That seems to be the real point.
Mr Bone
A shadow Minister—somebody who is obviously going up the greasy pole. The hon. Gentleman asks a very reasonable question about the separation of powers. Some Labour Members, such as the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), argue strongly that there should be a complete separation of powers. I do not, but I argue that the danger of a total separation of powers comes if Parliament is not effective. I understand the point that the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) makes, but although my Bill would increase the separation of powers, it would stop their total separation.
Mr Umunna
Again, I take issue with what the hon. Gentleman says, because it ignores developments in the House of Commons over the past few months. Let us look, for example, at how the Select Committee system has absolutely reasserted the scrutiny power of this place. Many would argue that the drift of the culture in this place is towards much more scrutiny and less takeover by the Whips system.
Mr Bone
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. This is a totally different Parliament. There has been huge progress by Parliament and the coalition. Now is the time to press for even more reform. The one group of people who are absolutely opposed to any lessening of the Executive’s power are the Whips, because they see their whole job as getting the Executive’s business through. This is an opportunity that we should not miss and may I say, as heartily as the hon. Member for Streatham does, that I acknowledge the huge improvements that the Government have made to parliamentary scrutiny?
Mr Hollobone
As the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) rightly states, Select Committees in this Parliament have more power and authority than they did in the previous one, largely because of direct elections by all Members for their membership. However, there have been retrograde steps such as the huge increase in the number of PPSs, which increases the Government’s payroll vote and reduces the opportunity for Members to scrutinise the Executive.
Mr Bone
My hon. Friend is correct. Although we may take two steps forward, we sometimes take one step back. The Whips Office have found it difficult to deal with the fact that their patronage has been taken away. They cannot appoint Select Committee Chairmen any more, so they have gone to a different camp and we have many more PPSs. We have probably got PPSs to PPSs—it is getting to that stage. At any time, the Government can probably rely on 150 votes in the House. I regret that control by the Executive over Parliament, and it would help enormously if it were not possible for MPs to be Whips.
Moving on to a more controversial part of an uncontroversial Bill, I shall describe the problems with the Whips Office. There is a story about a new Member who went into the Labour Whips Office and said, “Does it mean that we can’t beat people up any more?” That is probably an urban myth that has been widely cited, but there are other stories that are clearly true and are much more worrying. In fact, not a single hon. Member would deny that the Whips Office uses a whole arsenal of weapons including patronage, flattery, misinformation, which is highly effective, and the direct threatening of parliamentary careers should the unfortunate victim of their attention not comply with their wishes.
Occasionally, the operation of the Whips Office becomes public knowledge. Let us go back just a few weeks to June, when a Backbench Business Committee debate on wild animals in circuses dominated the news outlets. First, I must say that this reforming Government have set up the Backbench Business Committee which, for the first time, has allowed Back Benchers to table business in the House. We have 35 days per Session to allocate debates, which is a huge step forward in parliamentary reform. It allows better scrutiny of the Executive and allows issues that would not otherwise be heard to be debated on the Floor of the House.
My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard) secured a debate on wild animals in circuses. Unfortunately, the Whips had not embraced the idea of non- Executive business or the notion that Parliament should take a view on the matter different from that of the Executive. They still tried to influence my hon. Friend with their normal bag of tricks: flattery, inducements and threats. However, my courageous and independent hon. Friend stuck to his guns and forced a change to Government policy. He said in the Chamber:
“I am not going to kowtow to the Whips or even the Prime Minister of my country on an issue that I feel passionately about and on which I have conviction.” —[Official Report, 23 June 2011; Vol. 530, c. 548.]
He also said that MPs should show “a bit of spine” and that he would not be bullied.
The result of my hon. Friend’s bold stand was that the Government caved in and allowed a free vote on his motion, which was overwhelmingly endorsed by the House of Commons. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) said, it produced better legislation as a result.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
If I remember correctly, there was no vote that day. Am I right in my recollection?
Mr Bone
My hon. Friend is not quite correct. The Question on the motion was put, but because nobody expressed dissent, it was carried by the collection of voices. Many of us who returned especially to vote on that were delighted that there was no opposition.
My argument about that day is that the Whips should not have attempted to influence support for the actions of my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin, as the debate was Back-Bench business. The Whips should simply have butted out. The Bill would make it impossible for such pressure to be applied in the future because Members of Parliament could not be Whips. Instances of such behaviour abound and we all know several Members whose careers have been significantly affected by the actions of the Whips Office. It is, sadly, a simple fact of parliamentary life that even the size of the room a Member gets depends on how much they have pleased the Whips. My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering is still in a shoebox.
As for disinformation, let me give the House an example, particularly in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston). I know that Whips deliberately misinformed hon. Members about the facts relating to the new Backbench Business Committee by sending out an e-mail out that claimed the Committee always held its business on a Thursday and decided the topic under discussion only a few days before. That was sent out by the Whips as authoritative fact, although it was completely and utterly untrue. It was intended to rubbish the new Committee because that Committee put business before the House that the Whips did not want to see debated.
It is astonishing to think that in an age where employees have more rights than ever before and workplace bullying has, thankfully, become increasingly unacceptable, Members are still treated in such a manner. If I were to treat my staff in this way for even an instant I would, quite rightly, be taken to an employment tribunal, yet it is through these often underhand methods that Whips ensure that the Executive line is strictly obeyed, and that the public are therefore denied the independent-minded Members of Parliament and, indeed, the Parliament that they deserve.
The situation is worse in coalition Governments, as Whips often force Members to vote in totally the opposite way to what their party manifesto stated on issues that they stood on at the last election. Although Liberal Members signed a pledge before the last election not to increase tuition fees, they were forced by their Whips to do completely the opposite when they were in government. Equally, Conservative Members who stood on a platform opposing the alternative vote were forced by the Whips to vote for a Bill on a referendum for the alternative vote system.
Let me give a personal example of Whips’ tactics. In the last parliamentary term, on 30 March 2011, a Whip sent out an e-mail, which I will read out:
“I regret to have to inform colleagues that we are all required tonight after 7pm on a strict 3-line whip with respect to a Motion by the Leader of the House to which an amendment has been tabled by Mr Peter Bone and others so it is now votable. Unless you have previously been slipped by me, your presence is required.”
The e-mail was sent out to every Conservative Member of Parliament. Not only did it cause great embarrassment, but it was factually incorrect and misleading—another example of misinformation. The e-mail received an understandably negative response from my colleagues, including a Minister who had to return from an important meeting because of the Whip’s action. After I contacted many of my colleagues and explained the true situation, they were appalled that the Whips had ever sent out such an e-mail. What was so outrageous was that the Whip was trying to influence Members of Parliament about a matter relating to House of Commons business which was of no concern to the Executive and entirely the responsibility of Parliament. Of course, though, that is insignificant compared with some of the other episodes in which the Whips have involved themselves.
That is not to say that all Whips behave in such a manner, and nor is it to say—this is a response to an earlier intervention—that the Whips do not perform useful functions, but it is the Whips Office that performs those useful functions. We do not need Members of Parliament to be Whips. We can get civil servants, who are currently employed in the Whips Office anyway, to carry out the administrative necessities. There is nothing that the Whips do that could not be done by civil servants, if there was a business of the House committee. The only thing left for them to do would be the strong-arming tactics of trying to tell people how to vote.
Dr Wollaston
I thank my hon. Friend. In these challenging financial times, has he estimated how much this would cost the taxpayer, and does he think that it would deliver value for money?
Mr Nuttall
The Whips Office would submit that it performs another function—a pastoral role for Members of Parliament. Does my hon. Friend agree that that role could be undertaken by the parties—for example, by the parliamentary Labour party or the 1922 committee? Does he think that they could perform that pastoral role?
Mr Bone
My hon. Friend raises an important point that has been used as the sole argument for keeping the Whips Office. If a Member of Parliament is suffering from a problem with which they need serious help, the last person they will want to go to is their Whip. Their party might even be the last people they would want to go to. Instead, they would want to see an independent professional, and such a person should be available in the House of Commons. It would be a huge improvement, not a setback.
Mr Bone
Now Madam Deputy Speaker—no, I am not going down that route. I am saying that professional help should be made available, as it is in any other organisation, through human resources, for people having serious problems. We all know that if we were in a big company, there would be somebody in that company who would either provide professional advice or get us to the right person, but we do not seem to have that in the House of Commons. Given the enormous pressure we are all under, that is rather surprising.
Another argument for the Whips Office is that it channels the views of Members of Parliament back to the leadership. Well, it certainly does that! But, of course, all the parties have vocal and successful Back-Bench committees. In my party, it is the 1922 committee. The Labour party has the PLP. It channels views back to the leadership, and I do not see why that function needs to be duplicated by the Whips. The role of the Whips could be made redundant quite easily. The public are crying out for a change in how Parliament operates: they want less power given to the Executive and they want Members who represent their views and use their own judgment, rather than acting as Lobby fodder to rubber-stamp the decisions of the Executive and blindly following the leadership’s view without even knowing what a Bill is about.
The Government’s recent initiative on debating and voting on e-petitions demonstrates their wish for a stronger Parliament and more scrutiny. Well done, again, to the Government! However, if these petitions are to be successful, there must be no whipping. What is the point of introducing an e-petition to Parliament that hundreds of thousands of people have signed, if the decision is to be made not by individual Members of Parliament using their own judgment, but by Members following the party Whip? I hope that e-petitions, at least for Government Members, will be subject to free votes.
The public want Members of Parliament who take their time to understand the issues being debated, who vote according to their conscience and who have at least some independence of spirit. Therefore, despite the recent scandals—or perhaps because of them—Parliament needs to be strengthened. I argue strongly that my Bill would benefit our democracy hugely, by ensuring a proper separation of the Executive and Parliament while still keeping part of the Executive in Parliament. The danger of not doing so is that we would end up with a US-style settlement, as some hon. Members want, where the Executive are outside Parliament.
However—to address the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes made—that would not be the only benefit; there would also be a huge benefit to the British economy. The public, having followed recent events, have become increasingly irritated by the scale of expenditure in Parliament. By abolishing the Whips’ positions, we would be saving approximately £6.5 million per Parliament in ministerial salaries—a quite astonishing amount. One of the reasons, the Executive say, why the number of MPs is being cut is to save money. Alongside the well-thought-out plans to reduce the number of Members, surely we should at least make some effort to reduce the size of government as well. It should be remembered that Whips are in fact Ministers. By getting rid of Whips, we would be reducing the number of Ministers; we would, in fact, be supporting smaller and better government.
Although I like to think that my argument about preserving the democratic heritage of Parliament is enough to win the day, I understand that there are those who feel that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) said, nothing would get done if parties did not organise their Members sufficiently strongly. In other words, business would not go through the House and everything would grind to a halt. I say that we should look to the other place. Of course the other place has parties too—it also has Cross Benchers—but its Members are far more independent-minded and far more likely to vote against the party Whip, and yet nobody would seriously suggest that this Chamber does a better job of scrutinising legislation than the other Chamber.
Mr Chope
Before my hon. Friend finishes, let me say that I am absolutely delighted with his speech. I am sure that my decision not to go any further with the National Health Service Redress (Amendment) Bill was a wise one, because otherwise we would have been deprived of his contribution. Does he think that his Bill could be summed up as a deregulatory Bill, replacing regulation with self-regulation?
Mr Bone
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and as usual he is at one with the Prime Minister in wanting deregulation.
Let me finish by quoting the words of a man who has the best interests of our democracy and our country at heart. This man said:
“We will give the House of Commons more control over its own timetable so there is proper time for scrutiny and debate. We will make MPs more independent, with more free votes so that they can vote as they wish and not as they’re told to.”
Those are words of our new Prime Minister, uttered in 2009 in his powerful speech about rebuilding the connection between Parliament and the people. He has already done much by giving us the Backbench Business Committee, ensuring the election of Select Committee Chairmen and promising to set up a business of the House committee by 2013. I am moving the Second Reading of this Bill today to help the Prime Minister achieve his aims.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) on getting his Bill debated and on the characteristically entertaining way in which he has discussed it. I think the only person that we did not hear mentioned was Mrs Bone, so, as we have not heard about her for a long time, I want to send her our best wishes before moving on to the substance of the Bill. I shall also try to be brief because I know that the Deputy Leader of the House wants to speak as well, although there is much to be said.
It was entertaining to hear of the cowing effect that the Whips seem to have on those on the Tory Benches. When I was a Labour Whip, it did not seem to work like that at all; the situation was quite the reverse, in fact. I am peculiarly qualified to discuss the hon. Gentleman’s Bill, in that I was Parliamentary Private Secretary to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Dawn Primarolo) in her previous incarnation as a Minister, a rebel on the Government Back Benches and then a poacher turned gamekeeper as a Whip. I was therefore interested to hear what the hon. Gentleman said today.
The Bill would have the effect of disqualifying all Government Whips, the Opposition Chief Whip and the assistant Opposition Whips from membership of the House. Interestingly, it does not seek to disqualify the Opposition deputy Chief Whip or the third person in the Opposition Whips Office who receives a salary and who is usually, but not always, the pairing Whip. I assume that those people would be left here to run amok and do as they wished. Meanwhile, the Opposition assistant Whips, who are not paid, would be subject to disqualification.
The problem with the Bill is not simply that it is defective, but that it is wrong in its intent. It is bizarre, at a time of growing pressure on Ministers to become more accountable to Parliament, that the hon. Gentleman should seek to ensure that one group of Ministers should no longer be accountable to Parliament at all. That is what his Bill states, although of course that is not his real intention. His real aim, as he stated very clearly, is to get rid of Whips altogether. Most of his argument seems to be based on fictional characters from “Yes, Prime Minister” and on a strange belief that people who have fought to become Members of Parliament by scrambling over everyone else to get selected and elected are so wet that one word from their Whip will turn them into quivering wrecks who will do exactly as they are told. That is just wrong.
MPs may choose to break the Whip. That is a choice that many in this House have had to make on occasions, and sensible people know that, if they do that, consequences will follow. We cannot have everything in this life. I remember being threatened with the loss of my career, which was not much of a threat as I did not have a career to threaten at the time—it took me 11 years in this House to become a promising newcomer—but that is the price we pay if we break the Whip. We are all grown-ups, and we know the price.
More importantly, we are also products of a party political system. When the hon. Gentleman goes back to his constituency, the people there know that he represents the Conservative party—at least for some of the time. Similarly, the people in my constituency know that I am a Labour Member of Parliament. I assume that, like me, he stood for election on his party’s manifesto. The party political system in this country is frequently denigrated, but I want to make an argument for it, because it gives people at least a general idea of what they are voting for—unless they support the Liberal Democrats, in which case they usually get the opposite of what they vote for. This is not to say that politicians do not have to react to events or that the manifesto covers every eventuality, but, in broad terms, party politics defines common approaches to problems. There is a good argument for greater scrutiny in the House, particularly on the Report stages of Bills, but if that is what the hon. Gentleman wants, he should concentrate not on the whipping system but on the timetable.
I repeat that Members of Parliament are not sheep. It was certainly not a word that we used when I was in the Whips Office. My right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown), the Chief Whip under whom I served, referred to the parliamentary Labour party as “the body of the kirk”. He used to tell us to get out among the body of the kirk, not the flock.
The hon. Member for Wellingborough should not pretend that we do not have party politics in this country. The alternative to party politics is a system based on personalities. I do not mean that Members of Parliament do not have personalities—I have been a Member of Parliament long enough to know that they do, and the hon. Gentleman is a fine example of that. However, systems that are based on personalities, not parties, tend to lead inexorably to campaigns that are based on personal wealth. The reason for that is simple. People seldom get elected to the House as independents without personal wealth, although there have been one or two notable exceptions.
The long-term effect of the Bill would be to move us in precisely the opposite direction to the one that most of us wish to take—it would lead to the politics of personality rather than politics based on issues. We have already gone too far in that direction, and we should move away from it, not towards it.
I listened to the hon. Gentleman’s comments with great amusement, and I feel terribly sorry for Tory Back Benchers if they are so frightened by their Whips, but I cannot support the Bill.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)
I am delighted at least to start to respond to the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and his Bill. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) for her comments. She said that she was a rebel against her Whips before being dragooned into their service. I suppose that I have a similar background in that I fear that I did not endear myself to my then Whips over the Lisbon treaty, but I seem to have recovered at least some favour with the party since then.
I am grateful for the way in which the hon. Gentleman introduced the Bill, because he went out of his way to express his admiration and gratitude to our colleagues who form the current Whips team. He also justifiably made a great deal of the Government’s progress in re-enfranchising Parliament and making it more effective and more able to look after its interests rather than simply being the instrument of the Executive. One of the abiding features of recent Parliaments was restrictions, not only on the House’s structures, but through timetabling. Having lived through 13 years of a Labour Government, knowing exactly what happened then, and given the comparative freedom we now have to consider legislation, I was amazed to hear the hon. Member for Warrington North talk about the time available for Bills.
There have been genuine improvements. As the hon. Member for Wellingborough has said, one such improvement goes beyond anything else—the creation of the Backbench Business Committee, on which he serves with such distinction. There is also the promise of more to come, such as our commitment as a Government to introduce a full business of the House Committee.
I have just enough time to say how much I respect the right hon. Member for Derbyshire Dales (Mr McLoughlin), my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) and the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Mr Randall) and their team. Working with them in the past 18 months has been an absolute pleasure—an unexpected pleasure, because I did not know the extent of the co-operation and sensitivity that I could expect from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury, the Comptroller of Her Majesty’s Household and the Treasurer of Her Majesty’s Household.
The understanding of and fellow feeling for Back Benchers that they have shown have been a revelation to me, and they were clearly recognised by the hon. Member for Wellingborough, who has not been cajoled, threatened or bullied but has, by a simple process of persuasion, found himself able to accept the advice of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury—