House of Commons

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

Tuesday 8 October 2013

The House met at half-past Two o’clock

Prayers

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Business Before questions

London Local Authorities and Transport for London (No. 2) Bill [Lords]

Third Reading opposed and deferred until Tuesday 15 October (Standing Order No. 20).

Hertfordshire County Council (Filming on Highways) Bill [Lords]

Second Reading opposed and deferred until Tuesday 15 October (Standing Order No. 20).

Oral Answers to Questions

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

1. What recent progress he has made on his plans for modernisation of the prison estate.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)]

If I might trespass on the House’s time for a moment, I would like to welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara) to his new position and express gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) for her work as a Justice Minister.

We have made significant progress on our plans to modernise the prison estate and reduce operating costs. In September we announced a new 2,000-plus place prison, to be built on the former Firestone site in Wrexham. We have launched a feasibility study on possible changes at the site of the Feltham young offender institution, with a potential enlarged new adult prison and a new youth facility on adjoining sites. We will consult on that as progress develops. We have also announced the closure of 1,400 uneconomic places, which will contribute to our overall plans to reduce prison costs by more than £500 million in this spending review period. However, we remain on track to go into the next election with more adult male prison places than we inherited in 2010.

[Steve Brine]

I thank the Lord Chancellor for that answer, but may I make a plea to him to remember local prisons? He knows that genuine local prisons, such as Her Majesty’s prison—and now the young offender institution—in Winchester, play a central role in the secure estate, but they need investment too, especially in Winchester. The recent closure of prisons in Kingston, Reading and Dorchester is already having an impact on the secure estate in Winchester.

[Chris Grayling]

I pay tribute to the team that works in Winchester. They do a first-rate job for all of us, and Winchester will, of course, continue to play an important part in our work in the Prison Service. We are in the process of finalising plans to change the nature of our prison estate, with the local focus described by my hon. Friend, so that we will have a network of resettlement prisons from where most prisoners will be released into the areas in which they will then live.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

This morning Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons issued a report expressing concern about Oakwood prison in Staffordshire, which is the most recent prison to be built. What assurances can the Secretary of State give that the Wrexham prison to which he has referred will not have similar difficulties when the Government undertake its building?

[Chris Grayling]

Prison professionals all say that the early days of a new prison are difficult. Clearly there is still work to be done at Oakwood and that is a priority for us. The hon. Gentleman will be aware, however, that some of the criticisms of Oakwood refer to the fact that it is a privately run prison. I have taken no decision about the status of the prison in Wrexham, but I remind the hon. Gentleman that it was the Labour party that took the decision to privatise Oakwood.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

15. The prison facility in Northallerton, in the constituency of the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, which also serves Thirsk, Malton and Filey, is closing. Will those who work there be offered places elsewhere in the Prison Service, and has the Secretary of State given any thought to a new, replacement institution coming to Northallerton or York?

[Chris Grayling]

Closure decisions are never easy for the staff and communities involved. I regret the need to take such decisions, but we have to continue the process of new for old in the prison estate. I can give my hon. Friend an assurance that we will ensure that voluntary redundancy or transfers will be available for the staff affected. We aim to transfer as many staff as possible to other prisons and we will, of course, make sure there is appropriate and adequate coverage in my hon. Friend’s part of the country. That is the least we can do to protect her constituents.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State not agree that, in the light of the recent inspection report of Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons, the prison estate is actually getting worse, not better?

[Chris Grayling]

I am afraid that I do not agree. We are moving as fast as we can to modernise the prison estate, to bring in new, quality accommodation. Next year we will open four new house blocks, which will provide modern, updated accommodation. If the hon. Gentleman visits some of the older, Victorian prisons, he will see for himself that they are poor places to deliver proper rehabilitation services: there is not enough space for workshops or training facilities. I think that a modern prison estate is much better for all of us.

[Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)]

21. Recently, a number of individuals who are being detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure at Lincoln have caused excessive damage to the fixtures in their solitary cells. Those incidents highlight the need for custodial sentences to be lengthened as a deterrent and not imposed concurrently. However, I trust that the Secretary of State, like me, is pleased that organisations such as the Gelder Group in Lincoln are willing to help rehabilitate offenders back into our communities by offering construction-related training courses. Does he agree that any modernisation of our prisons must encourage the development of such schemes?

[Chris Grayling]

We are keen to see as many work and training opportunities in our prisons as possible and we continue to look for more such opportunities. I pay tribute to the team in Lincoln for achieving that. Causing damage to a prison is wholly unacceptable. We have taken steps that will lead to inmates being charged for the damage that they cause from their prison pay. That has not happened in the past, but it must happen in the future.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

If I may correct the Secretary of State, it was the Minister without Portfolio, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) who decided that Oakwood should be run by G4S. He may be socially liberal, but he is not Labour. I echo the comments that have been made about the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara) and welcome him to the Front Bench. It really is nice to see him there.

“We have a very good model for prison development in Oakwood… That site has multiple blocks and first-class training facilities. To my mind, it is an excellent model for the future of the Prison Service.”—[Official Report, 5 February 2013; Vol. 558, c. 114.]

That is what the Secretary of State for Justice told us earlier this year. Oakwood was his blueprint for the future. In the light of today’s damning report, which states that the prison has failed at every level, does he stand by those words?

[Chris Grayling]

I invite the right hon. Gentleman to go to Oakwood to see the facilities, which were praised in today’s report. I am afraid that he is just not right. I have checked this information today. The contracting process, including the invitations to tender to the private sector to run Oakwood, started under the last Labour Government.

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

2. What steps he is taking to address literacy and numeracy problems in prisons.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

Improving prisoners’ literacy and numeracy levels is a key focus of the Offenders’ Learning and Skills Service. When a need is identified, prisoners are offered teaching and support as a matter of priority. As my hon. Friend knows, a number of charities provide invaluable support in that area.

[Caroline Dinenage]

In prisons across the country, education can take a long time to access and is often viewed as a reward for good behaviour, rather than as a vital cornerstone of rehabilitation. What plans does my hon. Friend have to help prisoners overcome those barriers and access the skills that will be vital to them on release?

[Jeremy Wright]

My hon. Friend is entirely right that rehabilitation is crucial and that education is a crucial part of rehabilitation. We will ensure that prisoners have every incentive to engage in rehabilitation. That means reforming the incentives and earned privileges scheme so that they have clear incentives, and it means ensuring that prisoners who want to get to the top of that scheme help other prisoners in a range of ways, one of which may be operating as a mentor or learning tutor—roles that, as she knows, are often supported by charities.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I, too, welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara) back to the Front Bench. It is, dare I say it, a practical example of rehabilitation. On education in prisons, is the Minister aware of the innovative scheme in Cardiff prison, where the prisoners have opened a restaurant that is open to the public? That is a great help in providing prisoners with the kind of skills, including literacy and numeracy, that they will need when they re-enter the community.

[Jeremy Wright]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. The Under-Secretary of State for Justice might provide an example of rehabilitation, if not of earned release. The Clink at Cardiff prison is a fine example of rehabilitation. It allows prisoners to gain the skills that we all know they need to go on and live law-abiding lifestyles. I have eaten there, as has the Secretary of State. It is a very good example of rehabilitation and we want to see more of it.

[Miss Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his explanation of the importance of literacy and numeracy. Following the visit of the Secretary of State to Norwich prison in my constituency in the summer, will he provide an update on how he expects more work to be made available to prisoners to ensure that they stand the best chance of rehabilitation on release?

[Jeremy Wright]

My hon. Friend is right that work in prison is crucial. We are having considerable success in that area. Last year, 800,000 more hours were worked in prisons than the year before. That is progress, but there is more to do. Work is important because it gives prisoners not only the hard skills that they need to earn qualifications and to get and keep a job, but softer skills such as working in a team, getting up in the morning and understanding the necessity of working a proper working day. All of that is important and we want to see more of it in our prisons.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

3. How his new model of legal aid tendering will help to ensure a more stable environment for law firms in the future.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)]

Under our proposals to reform legal aid, contracts will be let for at least four years and defendants will be free to choose their lawyer. Current firms can continue, provided they meet minimum quality standards. An updated tendering model for duty work seeks to make the market more sustainable by awarding contracts based on quality and capacity, not on price. All those proposals have been worked through and agreed with the Law Society.

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that answer. A number of firms in my constituency have initial concerns about the proposals, particularly firms such as Harringtons that have been encouraged to specialise in legal aid. Will my right hon. Friend commit to providing interim payments to such firms in long-running and complex cases, as that would be of great benefit to them?

[Chris Grayling]

I can give that assurance to my hon. Friend. We are looking across the legal aid and legal services world at ways to improve cash flows, where appropriate by providing interim payments to barristers and solicitors, and we have invited ideas from all parts of the profession on how best to do that. Even if we have to take tough overall financial decisions, I am keen to ensure that we ease cash flow challenges, which are a regular complaint from lawyers.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

Given the large number of local black, Asian and minority ethnic legal firms, including in Liverpool, why has no equality impact assessment been undertaken on the Government’s plans for legal aid?

[Chris Grayling]

We have done equality work, and the changes announced in September will mean that there should be no reason for any BAME specialist firm to have to change what it does.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

18. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the revised proposals have been agreed with the Law Society, and that small, local law firms will have continuing access to get that work?

[Chris Grayling]

I can give that confirmation. We have tried to ensure that through a contracting structure for duty work, we can guarantee that anybody who is arrested and taken to a police station will always have access to a lawyer. At the same time, we recognise the point about small firms in my hon. Friend’s constituency, and those in Liverpool mentioned by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger). Such firms can continue to do their own client work, albeit in a tough financial environment, so that the choice that has been enjoyed in the past will continue.

[Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)]

Will the Secretary of State tell the House what recent discussions he has had with the Minister of Justice in the Northern Ireland Assembly on the sensitive issue of legal aid, and say what was the outcome of those discussions?

[Chris Grayling]

I have had a number of discussions with the Justice Minister over the months. We have not specifically discussed our legal aid reforms, but I know he has similar financial challenges to ours. He has mentioned those challenges to me, and I know he is looking at how best to deal with them.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

The Secretary of State knows how welcome his announcement was a few weeks ago, and how he listened to responses. Concerns remain, however, about the shortage of members of the Bar doing legal aid work in welfare law and the like, and about the fees currently proposed for remunerating them. Is he willing to look open-endedly at that fee regime to ensure that we have good lawyers who are able to represent people on legal aid in the future?

[Chris Grayling]

We will continue to try to ensure that we provide the right financial balance. Most senior members of the Bar mention the number of people training as barristers compared with the number of pupillages available, as that represents a huge challenge for the legal profession. The Government will continue to work to achieve the right balance, but under our proposals for criminal legal aid, in normal routine Crown court work the lowest daily amount we will be paying is £225 plus VAT.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State agree with the former chairman of the Criminal Bar Association who commented this weekend that for the Secretary of State to hold a “global law summit” to celebrate Magna Carta, while destroying access to justice through his legal aid policy, and access to human rights by his threats to repeal the Human Rights Act 1997 and withdraw from the European convention on human rights, is “hypocrisy” that “beggars belief”?

[Chris Grayling]

Everyone has a right to their opinion, and I think that that is complete hogwash. It is absolutely right and proper that this country should celebrate a profession that makes a huge contribution to this country and its economy. We should celebrate our long legal traditions and we will do so proudly in 2015. That does not mean that we do not have to take tough financial decisions to clear up the mess that Labour left behind.

[Mr Slaughter]

The right hon. Gentleman has never been a big fan of the Criminal Bar Association—that might be reciprocated—but does he agree with the president of the Supreme Court, who last week said that legal aid:

“ensures that the most underprivileged people in society, the people who need the protection of the law most…get a proper hearing”

and that

“legal aid cuts therefore do cause any person concerned with the rule of law worry”?

[Chris Grayling]

That is precisely why, despite taking the tough financial decisions, we are ensuring that anybody who cannot afford it, if they are arrested and charged with a crime, will always have access to a qualified lawyer, and qualified barrister if they need one, to provide them with a proper defence, according to the traditions of Magna Carta.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

4. What recent progress he has made on improving women’s prisons.

[Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)]

13. What recent progress he has made on improving women’s prisons.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

We are committed to improving standards across women’s prisons to meet the needs of women offenders. We have recently conducted a review of the women’s custodial estate, the results of which will be announced in the near future. The review will inform future policy development and improvements in how the female custodial estate is configured.

[Annette Brooke]

I was recently visited by local soroptimists, who told me about their national campaign to end the unnecessary imprisonment of women in the UK. Will the Minister give his support to this campaign and put more emphasis on community sentencing, rehabilitation and support?

[Jeremy Wright]

I will certainly have a look at the campaign to which my hon. Friend refers, but we believe that there are women who need to be imprisoned, having committed offences that justify imprisonment, and for whom, for reasons of punishment and public protection, imprisonment is appropriate. It is of course important to recognise that they have different requirements from male prisoners and to ensure that the female custodial estate reflects that. She is also right that rehabilitation is crucial. I hope she can be a little more patient and wait to hear what we have to say about the women’s custodial estate. I think she will be pleased to hear what we have to say about the need to put rehabilitation at the heart of everything we do.

[Lorely Burt]

I recently visited Downview prison, and I am surprised now to learn that it is being reroled—as the term goes—into a male prison. Will my hon. Friend assure me that the resulting savings to the women’s estate will be reinvested in prevention and community alternatives for women, as the Justice Secretary promised the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) on 2 July?

[Jeremy Wright]

Again, I hope my hon. Friend can be a little more patient and wait for the results of the review. When she sees those results, she will see that when it comes to resources, we think it is extremely important that we invest in rehabilitation, both for those women in the custodial estate because they need to be and for those women who could be better accommodated in the community. It is important that we recognise, however, that it is for the judiciary and magistrates to decide who needs to go to prison and who does not. It is our job to provide the capacity necessary. On Downview, we calculated that that capacity could be better used for the male estate than the female estate, but as I say, when she sees the results of the review, she will see that we have in mind many of things she has mentioned.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

The hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), previously a Justice Minister, concentrated much of her time on women in prison and women generally in the justice system. Will the Minister tell me whether, as the previous Minister aimed to ensure, the bulk of Baroness Corston’s report will be implemented within this Parliament?

[Jeremy Wright]

As I think the right hon. Gentleman knows, 40 of the 43 recommendations in the Corston report have already been implemented. On the rest, he will know that the last Government decided that it was not the appropriate course of action, as Baroness Corston recommended, to pursue custodial units for women. Again, I am afraid, I must ask him to wait a little longer and see what we have to say on that subject, but he is absolutely right to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), now the sports Minister, and I hope that he will see the fruits of her labour in the work we are about to reveal.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Secretary of State confirm how many women’s centres he expects to close as a result of funding cuts?

[Jeremy Wright]

Again, the hon. Lady will have to be patient and will have to see what we have to say about provision for women across the board. It is right that we do this in a holistic way, as I am sure she would agree, and that we present proposals that have been properly thought through and properly costed, so that we can explain how we think it is best to provide custody and rehabilitation for all female offenders.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

6. What progress he has made on investigating the reported misuse of public money by private contractors who hold contracts with his Department.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)]

We are in the process of auditing every contract that my Department holds with G4S and Serco. We will not be awarding the companies any new contracts unless or until those audits are completed to our satisfaction. We expect the audits to be completed later in the autumn.

[Nick Smith]

Why will the Minister not publish the PricewaterhouseCoopers report on the activities of G4S before any future Ministry of Justice contracts are awarded?

[Chris Grayling]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that these matters are currently being considered by the Serious Fraud Office. He will therefore understand that it would not be legally appropriate to publish items being considered by the SFO until it has completed its consideration.

[Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend will be more than aware of the importance of private sector suppliers to the Ministry of Justice in delivering his strategic objectives of greater efficiency and better use of public money. He will also know that those suppliers are responsible for the more efficient and innovative delivery of the whole justice agenda, so will he be sure not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and remember the terrific role that the private sector has played in achieving enormous savings for the taxpayer, which will dwarf any of the issues that he is dealing with? Will he also ensure that no mistakes are made either by the contracting departments in the Ministry of Justice or by the suppliers?

[Chris Grayling]

I can give my hon. Friend an assurance on both those points. It is important to remember that, notwithstanding the issues that have arisen, a large number of the people working for private contractors on behalf of the Government are doing a very good job for us. It is ironic that, before the Labour party returned to its socialist roots in the past few weeks, it too used to believe in outsourcing to the private sector. It has clearly changed its mind now; that is all part of the trip back to the days of Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

The Lord Chancellor will recall that prison privatisations had to be halted because of the investigations that were taking place into two private sector contractors. Does he recognise that the very small number of private contractors available to take on these major contracts and the limited skills of the civil service to manage those contracts pose a threat to the achievement of his objective of transforming rehabilitation?

[Chris Grayling]

It is certainly unwelcome when we have issues with private contractors. I believe that it is important for the Government to broaden their ambit in terms of the organisations that they do business with. There is a large number of organisations out there in the voluntary and private sectors with skills to bring to the Government, and I hope that we can latch on to those skills and make good use of them. It is important for the future of Government contracting that we do not become too dependent on a very small number of suppliers.

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

7. What progress he has made on the roll-out of changes to the incentives and privileges scheme in prisons.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

Changes to the incentives and earned privileges scheme to ensure that prisoners earn their privileges will take effect on 1 November this year. As my hon. Friend will know, we have already removed 18-rated DVDs and subscription television services. In addition, we are separately considering a revised system of incentives and privileges for young people in under-18 young offenders institutions.

[Mr Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for his reply. Does he believe that prisons are now, or will soon be, the spartan establishments that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said earlier this year that he would like to see?

[Jeremy Wright]

I can tell my hon. Friend that for as long as my right hon. Friend and I are in charge of prisons, they will not be places of luxury. We have made it clear that when prisoners want to wear their own clothes, and to have access to television or to more of their own money, they will have to earn those privileges. As my right hon. Friend said earlier, we are going further than that in saying that prisoners who cause damage to their cells will not only be punished for that within the prison system but will be expected to pay for the damage.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

Has the review that was promised after the Reece Ludlow revelations about prisoners having access to graphic images of their victims been concluded, and has that practice now ceased?

[Jeremy Wright]

I think the hon. Gentleman is referring to prisoners having access to legal papers relating to their cases. This is a difficult problem because, as he will recognise, prisoners have certain rights of access to their legal papers, but it is a cause for concern to us, and to him, that they might have access to materials that they can keep in their cells and show to other people. That is clearly inappropriate, and we are looking into how we can best restrict that access. He can rest assured that we are seeking to do that.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

8. What progress he has made on the digitisation and modernisation of the criminal justice system.

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Damian Green)]

The criminal justice system strategy and action plan that I launched in June sets out a clear path for the modernisation and digitisation of the criminal justice system. To drive this work forward, we have secured investment of £160 million, which supports three tranches of transformation: the second phase of the CJS efficiency programme, which will deliver the “digital courtroom”, a new CJS common platform programme and a programme to digitise policing.

[Rehman Chishti]

I thank the Minister for that answer, but will he clarify what key improvements can be expected for victims and witnesses from this modernisation?

[Damian Green]

There are a number of individual actions within the programme that guarantee that. My hon. Friend is right to identify these groups as key people who need to see improvements. I shall pick three examples. First, it will be easier for witnesses to give evidence by video link, which is particularly important for vulnerable witnesses. Secondly, we will extend the successful TrackMyCrime system, which has been developed in Avon and Somerset to give victims the opportunity to follow the progress of their case online. Thirdly, we will pilot section 28 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999, which provides for pre-recorded cross-examination for vulnerable witnesses—again, particularly welcome in child sexual exploitation cases.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

Of course the best way to modernise the criminal justice system would be to not close Dudley’s magistrates court, currently threatened with closure by the Minister’s Department, which will force victims and witnesses to travel to Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton at great expense in terms of money and time. Would Ministers be prepared to meet magistrates and local people from Dudley so that they can hear directly from them why Dudley’s criminal court should stay open?

[Damian Green]

I am always happy to meet magistrates, which I do on a number of occasions because we are consulting on the future of the magistracy. However, the introduction of video links means that people will not need to travel the distances that the hon. Gentleman talks about. Police officers from police stations and vulnerable witnesses in particular will be able to give evidence from places of safety. That is the way to have an efficient estate in future, while also giving proper protection to vulnerable witnesses.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

9. What assessment he has made of the potential effect on children of recent changes to legal aid.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)]

Impact assessments and equalities analyses were published to accompany the Royal Assent of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012; and there has been the “Transforming Legal Aid” consultation document of April 2013, and the Government response and further consultation published on 5 September 2013. These included the Government’s assessment of the impact on children.

[Bill Esterson]

The Government say that people who no longer receive legal aid will find other means of resolving legal issues. Will the Secretary of State tell me just how he expects most children to navigate their way around the very complex legal system in this country?

[Chris Grayling]

We have taken a number of steps to ensure that children do continue to receive legal aid. As an example, we have allowed children under 12 months to still be entitled to legal aid and to be exempt from our residence test. We have taken a number of similar measures, too, but the hon. Gentleman has to understand that we cannot continue to have a legal aid system that is as expensive as the one we have and that is far more expensive than its counterparts in other parts of the world. We cannot provide access to finance for everyone.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend say what reforms, in addition to the reforms to the legal aid system, are proposed for greater transparency in the family court system for the sake of the children involved?

[Chris Grayling]

I can indeed. I pay tribute to Justice Munby who is working on plans for transparency and how the Court of Protection works. The reforms he will be putting in place will, I think, make a big difference to the way in which the courts work, making them more transparent and more open about the work they do. I look forward to seeing the fruits of his labours.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

19. The Children’s Society said of the Government’s legal aid proposals that“these changes will prevent some of the most vulnerable children, young people and families from seeking and obtaining justice.”What has the right hon. Gentleman changed to allay those fears?

[Chris Grayling]

We have found the right balance between protecting the interests of the justice and sustaining a legal aid system that provides justice—for example, by protecting civil legal aid in some of the most sensitive child custody cases. I say again, however, that in a world of tight finance, we cannot do everything for everyone.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that when children are charged with a crime, it is essential that they appear before magistrates as soon as possible? Will he ensure that the youth magistracy computer system puts a strong emphasis on speed, particularly in Worcester?

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and if particular issues emerge in Worcester, I shall ask the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice to take a look at them with her. We obviously do not want inappropriate and unnecessary delays in bringing young people in particular to justice.

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

10. When he expects to put out to tender contracts for privatising probation.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

On 19 September, the Ministry of Justice launched the transforming rehabilitation competition. It will be open to organisations from the private and voluntary and community sectors, as well as those who are currently working in probation trusts, to bid for contracts for the 21 community rehabilitation companies that will be responsible for supervising and rehabilitating low and medium-risk offenders each year. The competition will continue during 2014, and contracts will be awarded and mobilised by 2015.

[Karl Turner]

Does the Minister accept that the Offender Management Act 2007 was about probation trusts commissioning services locally, rather than about the abolition of local probation trusts and the commissioning of services from Whitehall, which is what he is now proposing?

[Jeremy Wright]

No. I have the Act in front of me, and section 3(2) states:

“The Secretary of State may make contractual or other arrangements with any other person for the making of the probation provision.”

The Act means what it says. If the hon. Gentleman believes that the last Government passed legislation that they did not intend to pass, no doubt he will want to take that up with the former Ministers in his own party who were responsible.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State said in the House, referring to this very issue,

“Sometimes we just have to believe something is right and do it”.—[Official Report, 9 January 2013; Vol. 556, c. 318.]

However, leaping in and hoping for the best is a sure-fire way of getting it wrong.

Let us look at the Secretary of State’s record. Only 2% of offenders on the Work programme have found jobs; dangerous offenders are not being properly risk-assessed before release; in a brand-new prison, obtaining drugs is easier than obtaining soap; and mismanaged contracts with G4S and Serco are under investigation for fraud. I could go on. Does all that not represent the triumph of the Secretary of State’s wishful thinking over public safety?

[Jeremy Wright]

I barely know where to start, but let us start here: it is a good idea to read the facts and not the newspaper headlines. What the hon. Lady has described is a travesty of what we are proposing to do. If she is talking about the involvement of the private sector in the monitoring of contracts, she needs to be extremely careful, because she ought to know that those contracts were negotiated by the last Labour Government. She is sitting in a very large glass house and throwing stones in every direction.

I think it important for us all to understand exactly what we are proposing to do, which is to bring new people with new ideas into the provision of rehabilitation for offenders of all kinds. It is important for us to recognise that the status quo should not be what we seek to defend. Reoffending rates are too high, and we need to bring them down. If the hon. Lady wants to defend the status quo, that is up to her, but we intend to improve the situation.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We must make some progress. I want to allow Back Benchers to speak, and conceivably even a Front Bencher.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

11. What assessment he has made of the scope for further savings in the justice system in England and Wales.

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Damian Green)]

The Ministry of Justice has committed itself to saving a further 10% of its budget, or £695 million, in the year from April 2015. We are reforming rehabilitation and legal aid, making prison more cost-effective, and improving the effectiveness of the courts and criminal justice system. That adds to the savings of well over £2.5 billion that have been made since the 2010 spending review.

[David Mowat]

Many Departments use skilled professionals to deal with routine and complex matters. They include surgeons, scientists and, of course, barristers. However, the Ministry of Justice is unique in paying a sub-set of criminally aided barristers salaries that are two, three or four times higher than those received by, for example, surgeons. Can the Minister confirm that the current reforms will address that issue?

[Damian Green]

My hon. Friend has identified a real problem, which we are indeed addressing. A small number of cases cost a disproportionate amount of the legal aid budget: for instance, a recent criminal case cost about £8 million in legal aid. That clearly cannot continue in the current economic climate, and we are therefore reducing the cost of long-running criminal cases—known as very high cost cases—by 30%. We are also consulting on revised models of payment for advocacy fees.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

On 2 July, the Secretary of State promised me that if he closed a women’s prison, the savings would be invested in reducing offending by women. Will the new all-male team at the Department ensure that ring-fenced action is taken to prevent women’s offending?

[Damian Green]

I am happy to reassure the hon. Lady that the good work that was conducted by my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), who has moved on to pastures new, will be continued. As the Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright), said in answer to a previous question, if hon. Members can be patient for a few weeks, they will learn more about the prison estate.

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)]

12. What progress he has made on rehabilitating young offenders.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)]

Better rehabilitation of young offenders is a priority for the Government, and I will make a further announcement about our plans in the very near future.

[Stephen McPartland]

I am a patron of Trailblazers, a national charity that mentors young offenders. Will the Secretary of State confirm that offenders on the youth estate aged between 18 and 21 will be transferred to resettlement prisons three months before the end of their sentence, as is the current plan for adult offenders, and will he visit Trailblazers with me?

[Chris Grayling]

I am happy to visit my hon. Friend, his constituency and the charity concerned. I can confirm that it is our intention that almost all prisoners will be released from resettlement prisons, so that we can provide a proper through the gate service.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman join me in praising the work of the excellent team at Parc prison on the edge of my constituency where many of my constituents work? They do tremendous work with young offenders serving a custodial sentence, re-entering normal life and entering work. Can he explain why his Department at one time sought to abolish the Youth Justice Board?

[Chris Grayling]

Let me pay tribute to the team at Parc, who do a first-rate job. I have been there myself. There is no and has never been any intention to abolish the functions of the Youth Justice Board. It has been a question purely of what the best corporate structure is for it.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

14. What steps he is taking to strengthen the prisons and probation ombudsman.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

We are reviewing the prisons and probation ombudsman’s terms of reference to make even clearer his independent status and role in investigating deaths in custody and in responding to complaints from detainees. I fully support the ombudsman’s steps to improve the quality and timeliness of investigations and to ensure that others can learn lessons from his findings.

[Dr Huppert]

I thank the Minister for his comments but the changes proposed to prison legal aid put a great deal of weight on the quality of the prisons and probation ombudsman. What certainty can the Minister give that that will increase the quality and speed of decisions and save money? Can he be sure that that will happen?

[Jeremy Wright]

We believe that this is a better way of resolving matters in the prison system than spending money on legal aid, but I can reassure my hon. Friend that the Secretary of State has met the ombudsman to discuss precisely the issues that he has raised, and we will work with the ombudsman to ensure that his office is capable of dealing with any additional demand that may be generated.

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

May I urge the Minister to extend the ombudsman’s powers to include investigation of the deaths of transferred prisoners who are moved into secure mental health units for mental health treatment? At present, such deaths are subject only to internal NHS review rather than the full scrutiny that would be required if the death occurred in a prison.

[Jeremy Wright]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very interesting point. If he will forgive me, I would like to reflect on it. I will come back to him.

[Mr Speaker]

Tom Harris—not here.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

17. What steps he is taking to protect families and vulnerable people from aggressive bailiffs.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Shailesh Vara)]

May I begin by thanking the Justice Secretary, the shadow Justice Secretary and the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) for their kind words of welcome? I thank them for the warmth that I have received from both sides of the House.

From next April, new protections in law will include restrictions on the circumstances in which bailiffs can enter someone’s home, when they can do so and the items they can take. Moreover, training for bailiffs will include what to do if a debtor is vulnerable.

[John Glen]

I thank the Minister for that answer and welcome him to his new post. My constituent Ian Davies came to see me because his son was hassled by debt collectors for over six months—they were not updated when the amount of legal aid he needed to pay changed. What steps are being taken to ensure better communication between the Legal Services Commission and the enforcement agencies?

[Mr Vara]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for those comments. A considerable amount is being done at the moment. and he will forgive me if I say that I have not reached the relevant page in my briefing pack yet, but I will write to him with the answer, which I hope will satisfy him.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for his answer, but how much harder will all these changes make it for rogue bailiffs to operate?

[Mr Vara]

A huge number of reforms are being put in place. With regard to rogue bailiffs, we have put in place a number of remedies. For example, if there is a debt to a local authority, there is recourse to the local authority’s ombudsman. Bailiffs’ certificates can be taken away and it is a criminal offence for a bailiff to operate without a certificate. Moreover, the goods that have been confiscated can be returned. So a number of measures are in place to ensure rogue bailiffs do not operate.

[Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Lab)]

20. Whether he has any further plans to reduce the number of courts in England and Wales.

[Mr Speaker]

Questions are something like buses; none for a while, then two at once.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Shailesh Vara)]

Very much so, Mr Speaker. I am happy to say that performance is the best it has ever been, against a background of increasing work load. The Office of the Public Guardian is also currently undertaking a review of its supervision function in order to ensure it can continue to safeguard vulnerable adults and deal with work load.

[Simon Danczuk]

I am obviously concerned about the number of magistrates courts that have been closed since this Government came to power. Rochdale magistrates court has remained empty since the Government decided to close it over two years ago. How much is it costing to keep courts empty, and why do the Government not simply donate Rochdale court to the people of Rochdale for community use?

[Mr Vara]

We are moving to the disposal of assets gradually, but it does take time.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)]

I would like briefly to update the House on proposals for tougher sentencing. I am sure the House will agree that it is simply not acceptable that offenders who commit some truly horrific crimes in this country are automatically released from prison without serving the full sentence regardless of their behaviour, attitude and engagement in their own rehabilitation. The last Government enshrined this automatic early release in legislation. I intend to change that. Given the financial mess left behind by the Labour party it is not possible to end automatic early release for all offenders straight away, but it is my intention to take the first step in that direction. I will shortly be introducing legislation to ensure that criminals convicted of rape or attempted rape of a child or of terrorism offences will no longer be automatically released at the halfway point of their prison sentence. Instead they will have to earn their release by the Parole Board. This means that many serious criminals will end up spending significantly longer in prison.

[Kate Green]

According the Prison Advice and Care Trust, 66% of women in prison have dependent children, but although a minority are looked after by their fathers while their mothers are prison, it is very uncertain who is caring for many of those children during their mother’s sentence. What are the Government doing to ensure sentencers properly take account of the best interests of dependent children in making sentencing decisions?

[Chris Grayling]

We are looking very carefully at the whole issue of the women’s estate, and I very much recognise the issue to which the hon. Lady refers. It is obviously difficult not to imprison somebody guilty of a serious crime, but at the same time I believe we need to do everything we can to move women in detention closer to home and closer to family. When we announce our plans for the women’s estate in due course, I hope she will see we have taken that factor heavily into account.

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)]

T3. I am chair of the all-party group on child and youth crime, and although crime is falling, too many of our young people are being sucked into a life of crime, and too many are becoming involved in, or victims of, violence. What does the Secretary of State plan to do to stop this cycle of abuse?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

My hon. Friend is right. He will recognise there are two encouraging statistics and one depressing one in this context. The two encouraging statistics are the number of young people coming into the criminal justice system in the first place and the number of those who are incarcerated, but he is right: the one that is depressing is the rate of reoffending, which is over 70%. We need to take a look not just at rehabilitation more broadly, as he knows we are doing, but specifically at the youth custodial estate. He will hear, in very short order I hope, what we plan to do to reform that.

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

This Justice Secretary and his Government have failed to stand up to G4S or Serco, which, as my hon. Friends have reminded the House, failed with the electronic tagging of prisoners and with the transfer of prisoners, and are failing in Oakwood prison, and he is refusing to rule out both companies from the process in relation to probation. Why should we believe that his plans for privatising probation will fare any better?

[Chris Grayling]

It is important to make two points. First, the investigation into the contracts for electronic monitoring refers to events that took place in 2009 and to contracts that were let in 2005 by the previous Government. It is also important to bear in mind that these very serious issues are currently subject to investigation by the appropriate authorities. The right hon. Gentleman will therefore understand that there are strong legal reasons—this is easy to avoid when in opposition but not when in government—why we have to be measured about what we say, and I intend to continue to do that.

[Sadiq Khan]

He may be six foot four, but he is weak. Experts, the Ministry of Justice’s own risk register and Opposition Members have all warned about the dangers to public safety from putting private companies such as G4S and Serco in charge of people who have committed serious and violent offences in the way the Government plan—and all this is to be done with no piloting. Why is the Justice Secretary playing fast and loose with public safety?

[Chris Grayling]

Let us be clear what our proposed probation reforms do. At the moment, and during all the years the previous Government were in power, anyone who goes to jail in this country for less than 12 months walks on to the street with £46 in their pocket, but no help and no supervision whatsoever, and the majority of them reoffend. It is time that changed, and that is what our reforms will do.

[Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)]

T4. Does my right hon. Friend agree that some offences merit a greater punishment than just a slap on the wrist? What action is he taking to reform the use of cautions?

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Damian Green)]

I completely agree with what my hon. Friend says, and it is why my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor has announced that simple cautions will no longer be available for those cases that must be heard in a Crown Court and for a range of other offences, such as possession of a knife, supplying class A drugs and a range of sexual offences against children. That is exactly the kind of toughening of the system that the public want to see.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

T6. In light of the announcement of a new prison for male prisoners in north Wales, will the Justice Secretary assure me that he will re-examine the provision for female prisoners, given the inordinate distance to travel to HMP Styal?

[Jeremy Wright]

I am going to sound like a stuck record at this rate, but I am afraid that I must tell the hon. Lady what I have told others earlier. She knows that we are looking at the female custodial estate, and one of the reasons why are doing so is, as she mentioned, the distances travelled by visitors, family and friends to visit people in custody. We will announce—in a relatively short time, I hope—what we intend to do, and she will see how we attempt to address the point she raises.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

T8. The wrong decision to close HMP Blundeston in my constituency was taken after a detailed evaluation of every establishment across the prison estate. Please can the Minister publish the evaluation report for Blundeston and confirm that it took full account of both the building improvements that have taken place in the past two years and the work done by staff in that period to make Blundeston a high-performing, well-run and cost-effective prison?

[Jeremy Wright]

As my hon. Friend would expect, I cannot agree that the wrong decision was taken, but I can reassure him that we carried out a full and proper assessment of what was going on not only at Blundeston, but across the estate. The reason I cannot publish that is, as he will immediately understand, that it is a comparative analysis and so would cause considerable consternation among prisons that did not quite make the cut. However, we will do everything we can to ensure that those currently employed at Blundeston are properly looked after, and we will work with him in any way we can to address the future use of the site. He and I have spoken about this matter many times, and I am sure that those who work at the site and have him as their representative will be very grateful for his interest.

[Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)]

T7. Will the Minister publish the risk register for his probation privatisation plans, so that the public can see at first hand the dangers they are being exposed to as a result of this reckless rush to dismantle and fragment our probation service?

[Chris Grayling]

Let me tell the hon. Gentleman what I think would be a danger to the public—to continue to release people on to our streets after short sentences and with a high risk of reoffending with no supervision whatsoever. It should never have happened, it is unacceptable and the sooner it stops the better.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

The most difficult questions for a judge to consider must include those cases whose chances of success may be deemed borderline. Where does that leave important questions such as those posed by my late constituent Tony Nicklinson, who had locked-in syndrome and sought the right to die? Would the Minister deny legal aid to him and others who survive him?

[Chris Grayling]

Every case must be judged on its own merits. We cannot provide legal aid for every possible case that can be pursued, but we will retain a system that provides legal aid in cases in which the courts and the Legal Aid Agency, which judge the entitlement to legal aid, think it is appropriate to do so.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

T9. The Secretary of State has the legal and constitutional responsibility to determine where the mortal remains of King Richard III are reburied. He would be unwise, in my view, to support the claims for reburial in Leicester, in my constituency of York or anywhere else without consulting widely and setting up an advisory panel of experts, as I proposed in an Adjournment debate before the summer break, and as Mr Justice Haddon-Cave proposed in his recent judgment on the matter. Is that something that the Secretary of State will now do?

[Chris Grayling]

I am well aware of the strong feelings about that case, but we reached an agreement with Leicester university, which funded and carried out the dig, and I think we should stick to the agreements we reached.

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend update the House about when he intends to publish the victims code?

[Damian Green]

I am aware of my hon. Friend’s long-standing interest in that important document. I urge patience, but reassure him that his patience will be rewarded very shortly.

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

As a former Legal Aid Minister, I recognise the hard decisions that have to be made on legal aid. Civil legal aid and judicial review are fundamental to our system. It has been fundamental since Magna Carta; if the state decides to take away someone’s home or children, or refuses to give them appropriate education, they ought to be able to challenge that. Will the Secretary of State look again at the issue, given the small amounts of savings he has suggested that there will be?

[Chris Grayling]

I hate to correct the right hon. Gentleman, but he talks about people’s entitlement to judicial review since Magna Carta. That took place in 1215—we will be celebrating its 800th anniversary shortly—whereas judicial review was introduced in 1974.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

What is the latest total for the number of foreign national prisoners in our jails and what steps have been taken in recent months to send them back to secure detention in their own countries?

[Jeremy Wright]

The last time my hon. Friend asked me that question, I did not have the number to hand. I still do not, but I can tell him that it is in the order of 10,800. He and I are in full agreement that that number is too high. As for the second part of his question, as he knows we are attempting to negotiate compulsory prisoner transfer agreements with a number of countries. We already have one with the European Union. I know how enthusiastic he is about EU measures, so he will be pleased to know that we are making real progress in sending people back under the EU PTA. We will continue to work hard to do so.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

Local multi-agency public protection arrangements, introduced under the previous Labour Government, have been highly successful in protecting the public from high-level violent and sexual offenders. Concerns have been expressed to me that those arrangements might be centralised, making management of such offenders difficult and putting the public at risk. Will the Minister assure me that the Government do not intend to make that worrying scenario a reality?

[Chris Grayling]

Under our proposed reforms, multi-agency supervision arrangements will remain in the public sector and will continue to be subject to local decision making, which will take between local branches of the national probation service and local agencies such as the policy and local authorities.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I hope that the Secretary of State has read the front page of the Daily Mail today, highlighting the 202 cases that the UK has lost at the European Court of Human Rights. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the European convention on human rights and the European Court of Human Rights, with its pretend judges, have become a charter for murderers, rapists, terrorists and illegal immigrants and that the sooner we scrap the Human Rights Act and get out of the European convention on human rights the better?

[Chris Grayling]

I share my hon. Friend’s belief in the need for change. It is my intention that the Conservative party should go into the next election with a clear plan for change, and it will. This is now a clear dividing line between us, because the shadow Secretary of State has only today reasserted his belief that the current human rights framework is right for this country. We disagree, and I look forward to fighting that battle over the next 18 months.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

When the Minister quotes the Offender Management Act 2007, will he do me the courtesy of looking at the Hansard for that period, when the Minister in question—that is, me—said that the vast majority of probation boards would stay in public ownership?

[Jeremy Wright]

I quoted directly from the Act, and the right hon. Gentleman knows that I quoted correctly. I was asked a question about what the Act says. I quoted what it says. How he might have meant it to be interpreted is something else. I am afraid he and his hon. Friends must recognise that if they passed a law they did not mean to pass, that is not our problem but theirs.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

The British people are sick and tired of those given long custodial sentences being released early as a matter of right. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Justice recently made an announcement on those given the longest custodial sentences, but can he confirm to the House that it is his intention in due course to remove the automatic right of those who serve custodial sentences to an automatic discount?

[Chris Grayling]

I do not like the concept of automatic early release at all. My hon. and learned Friend will be aware of the financial limitations that we face at the moment, which is why I made a start with the most serious and unpleasant offenders, but it is certainly my desire, when resources permit, to go further on this.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

A few months ago, in response to a question from me, the Secretary of State or one of his Ministers suggested that he would be setting up a new system for ensuring that tribunal judges dealing with work capability assessment appeals would give good reasons. Has that new programme been instituted, and when can we expect a statement on how it is working?

[Chris Grayling]

This is specifically the responsibility of the Department for Work and Pensions, but I can tell the hon. Lady that extensive work has been done. Much more detail is now being provided to the Department for Work and Pensions by the Courts and Tribunals Service, and we will continue to explore ways in which we can ensure that decision makers in Jobcentre Plus understand fully the reason for a decision in a tribunal.

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

Capita submitted the lowest tender and was awarded the contract for court interpreters, but since then has faced more than 2,000 complaints, comprising 30% of its assignments. What is the Department going to do about that, and has it any plans for re-tendering that service?

[Chris Grayling]

If I can correct my hon. Friend, the original contract was given to a small company, which was subsequently taken over by Capita, and it was actually Capita that did the work to improve performance, which was clearly unacceptable at the start. The contract is now performing at a pretty high level. We will continue to look for ways to improve it, but it is a whole lot better than in the early days, when quite clearly performance was not at all acceptable.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Last but not least, because I fear otherwise his bubble will burst, I call Mr Andrew Bridgen.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Does my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State agree that transparency must be at the heart of any procurement reform in his Department— transparency for the taxpayer, and transparency for companies competing for Government contracts?

[Chris Grayling]

I absolutely do, and given the problems that we clearly have with procurement, and our inheritance from the previous Government of mismanaged contracts, we are now putting in place comprehensive work to ensure that we have a contract management system that is absolutely fit for the 21st century, which is fair and transparent, and deals with suppliers properly and appropriately, but also looks after the interests of the taxpayer.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

I am sorry to disappoint remaining colleagues, to whom, as they know, I could happily listen indefinitely, but we must now move on to the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, who has a statement for us.

Middle East Peace Process/Syria and Iran

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

15:34

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)]

Mr Speaker, with permission I will make a statement on the middle east peace process, Syria and Iran. On all these matters there have been important diplomatic developments over the past few weeks, and I wanted to inform the House of them at the earliest opportunity.

It is impossible to overstate the challenges and the gravity of the threats in the region if current openings and opportunities are not brought to fruition. But on each of these subjects there has been some progress, and it is important that we build on that as rapidly and decisively as possible. As he is in his place, I want to pay tribute to the work on these issues of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) over the past three and a half years, and to welcome as Minister with responsibility for the middle east my right hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Hugh Robertson), who is also in his place.

Whatever the pressure of other issues, we must never lose sight of the importance and centrality of the middle east peace process to the lives of millions of Israelis and Palestinians and to international peace and security. I pay tribute to the leadership of Secretary John Kerry, Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas for the progress that has been made, including the resumption of negotiations in July. The United States has confirmed that there have been seven rounds of direct bilateral negotiations since then. Both sides have now agreed to intensify the pace of the discussions and increase American participation in them, with the goal of reaching a permanent status agreement within nine months.

During the UN General Assembly ministerial week in New York, my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister met President Abbas, while I held talks with Israeli Minister of International Relations, Yuval Steinitz. We reiterated the United Kingdom’s unequivocal support for a two-state solution based on 1967 borders with agreed land swaps, Jerusalem as the shared capital, and a just and agreed settlement for refugees. With our European Union partners we are ready to provide major practical support to both sides in taking the bold steps that are needed. This includes our bilateral assistance to the Palestinian economy and the institutions of the future state. The UK is one of the largest donors to the Palestinians, providing £349 million for Palestinian development over four years.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development attended the ad hoc liaison committee in New York established to oversee Palestinian state-building and development. She recommitted the UK to providing predictable, long-term assistance aligned with the priorities of the Palestinian National Authority: building strong institutions, promoting private sector growth and humanitarian aid. We are also supporting the Palestinian economic initiative that the United States and the Quartet are developing. DFID will shortly be launching a new £15 million Palestinian market development programme to help Palestinian small and medium-sized enterprises enter new markets and to help mobilise investment. Economic progress can never be a substitute for a political settlement, but it is vital that the Palestinian people see tangible improvements in their daily lives.

The situation in Syria remains catastrophic. More than 100,000 people have been killed, and the number of Syrian refugees has grown by more than 1.8 million in just 12 months, to over 2 million. We must always be clear that we will not have succeeded in our work until this violence has been brought to a stop, but nevertheless we were able to make some diplomatic progress in New York on our objectives—to prevent the further use of chemical weapons, to alleviate humanitarian suffering, and to promote a political settlement to the conflict.

On the first of those, I attended the meeting of the United Nations Security Council on 27 September, which adopted the first resolution on Syria in 17 months. Security Council resolution 2118 requires the full implementation of the near-simultaneous decision of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which sets out how Syria’s chemical weapons must be verifiably eliminated within the first half of 2014. For the first time, the Security Council resolution imposes binding and enforceable obligations on the Syrian regime to comply, with the threat of action under chapter VII of the UN charter if it does not. It also stipulates that those responsible for any use of chemical weapons must be held accountable.

I announced in New York £2 million in funding to enable the OPCW to deploy to Syria last week. It has reported early progress in identifying and destroying chemical weapons. Under its supervision Syrian personnel have commenced the destruction or disabling of missile warheads, aerial bombs and mixing and filling equipment, and the OPCW is carrying out work to assess the accuracy and completeness of the information provided by the regime. British nationals who work for the OPCW are already deployed in Syria as part of the new destruction mission, and we stand ready to provide further support as necessary, such as personnel, technical expertise and information. The House should be in no doubt that the voluntary destruction of a deadly arsenal of weapons that until recently the Assad regime denied it possessed is an important step forward, and a vindication of the threat of military action by the United States of America.

Secondly, hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians continue to suffer atrociously from the regime’s use of conventional weapons. The UK is leading the way in alleviating desperate humanitarian suffering. In the UK’s annual address to the General Assembly, the Deputy Prime Minister confirmed an additional £100 million in UK assistance, bringing our total humanitarian contribution to date to £500 million, the largest ever British response to a single crisis.

The Prime Minister’s campaign, begun at the G20 and followed up by our embassies worldwide, has helped to secure more than $1 billion in new international pledges of humanitarian assistance since the start of September, and we look to other countries to do more to meet the level of suffering and instability caused by such an unprecedented number of people being in need.

Throughout the General Assembly, and particularly in the two meetings I had with the other permanent members of the Security Council, I pressed the case for a Security Council presidential statement urging the Syrian Government to allow unhindered access to people in need, including across borders, and calling on all parties to agree on humanitarian pauses in the fighting to allow the delivery of aid. That statement was subsequently agreed on 2 October. With our encouragement, the UN Secretary-General has announced his intention to convene a new pledging conference in January 2014.

The House will know that the stability of Jordan and Lebanon is high among our priorities, and in that regard I attended, with the P5 Foreign Ministers, the creation of a new international support group for Lebanon during the General Assembly. The UK is now providing £69 million to help Lebanon cope with the refugee crisis. In addition, we are providing £11 million of non-lethal assistance to Lebanese armed forces, and we are helping Jordan with £87 million of UK aid for Syrian refugees and host communities.

Thirdly, on the political process, UN Security Council resolution 2118 also formally endorsed the Geneva communiqué of June last year for the first time, calling for the establishment of a transitional governing body exercising full executive powers, which could include members of the present Government and the opposition and other groups, formed on the basis of mutual consent. The resolution calls for the convening of an international conference on Syria to implement the Geneva communiqué. As P5 Foreign Ministers, we agreed with the UN Secretary-General that we should aim to convene the conference in Geneva by mid-November this year. An intensive period of preparation will be required, led by the UN and Arab League special representative, Lakhdar Brahimi.

I met the Syrian National Coalition President, Ahmed al-Jarba, in New York. He assured me that the coalition remains committed to an inclusive and democratic Syria, that it rejects extremism and that it is committed to the Geneva communiqué. There can be no peaceful and political settlement in Syria without the participation of the moderate opposition. That is why we are providing more than £20 million in non-lethal support to the moderate opposition and will do more in the coming months.

I discussed the conflict in Syria with Iran’s new Foreign Minister, whom I met twice in New York, including with the E3 plus 3 Foreign Ministers, and with whom I had further discussions by telephone yesterday. It is clear that the new President and Ministers in Iran are presenting themselves and their country in a much more positive way than in the recent past. There is no doubt that the tone of meetings with them is different.

We have agreed to resume negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme in Geneva next week, on 15 and 16 October. We are looking forward to seeing serious proposals from Iran to follow up on its stated desire to make rapid progress with negotiations. It will be very important for Iran’s relations with the international community for the marked change of presentation and statements to be accompanied by concrete actions and a viable approach to negotiations.

We must not forget for one moment that, as things stand today, Iran remains in defiance of six UN Security Council resolutions and multiple resolutions of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s board of governors and that it is installing more centrifuges in its nuclear facilities. In the absence of change in those policies, we will continue to maintain strong sanctions. A substantial change in British or western policies will require a substantive change in Iran’s nuclear programme.

However, we must test the Iranian Government's sincerity to the full, and it is important that our channels of communication are open for that. Mr Zarif, the Foreign Minister, and I discussed how to improve the functioning of the UK-Iran bilateral relationship. Our diplomatic relations suffered a severe setback when our embassy compounds in Tehran were overrun in 2011 and the Vienna conventions flouted, and when the Iranian Majlis voted to downgrade relations with the UK.

It is understood on both sides that, given this history, progress in our bilateral relationship needs to proceed on a step-by-step and reciprocal basis. The Foreign Minister and I agreed that our officials would meet to discuss this. The first such meeting has already taken place and will be followed up by a further meeting in Geneva next week. This includes discussion of numbers of and conditions for locally engaged staff in the embassy premises of each country and visits to inspect these premises. I have made very clear to Mr Zarif that we are open to more direct contact and further improvements in our bilateral relationship.

We have therefore agreed that both our countries will now appoint a non-resident chargé d'affaires tasked with implementing the building of relations, including interim steps on the way towards eventual re-opening of both our embassies, as well as dialogue on other issues of mutual concern.

We must not underestimate the difficulties ahead. Iran has a complex power structure; there are voices in Iran who do not agree with their Government's stated desire to see progress on nuclear negotiations and a rapprochement with the west, and improvements in our bilateral relations will require confidence on both sides that those improvements can be sustained. But to be open to such improvements is consistent with our desire to find a peaceful resolution to the nuclear dispute and the fact that we have no quarrel with the people of Iran. The House will be conscious of the fact that on all these issues the coming months may be unusually significant and replete with dangers but also with opportunities. Her Majesty's Government will spare no effort to promote a peaceful resolution to each of these conflicts and crises, working closely with our allies at all times and taking full advantage of every diplomatic opening; never starry-eyed but always pursuing progress through resolute diplomacy.

15:47

[Mr Douglas Alexander (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)]

May I thank the Foreign Secretary for his statement and for advance sight of it? I would like to start by welcoming the newly appointed Minister for the middle east, the right hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Hugh Robertson). I know that Members on both sides will wish to join me in recognising his significant achievement in helping deliver the London Olympics and I am sure that he will continue to bring the same level of commitment and, indeed, skill to his new role in the Foreign Office.

May I also take a moment to pay tribute to his predecessor, the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt)? He is a man whose obvious talent, commitment and decency—qualities that are recognised and appreciated by many in this House—have not gone unnoticed by Members over recent years. He is a very significant loss to the Government and in all my dealings with him on the middle east I admired his skill, intellect and consistently courteous approach.

This month’s United Nations General Assembly was a moment where real progress needed to be made most urgently on the issue of Syria. Of course I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s call for further action on securing free and unfettered humanitarian access in the country and I welcome the Government’s announcement of an additional £100 million in humanitarian aid for Syria. But sadly, despite this significant additional UK contribution, the UN appeal after the UN General Assembly is still only 44 per cent. funded. Can the Foreign Secretary set out what steps the Government will take now to try to help to ensure that other donors turn unfulfilled pledges into cash commitments?

Since that General Assembly meeting last month, the destruction and disabling of missile warheads, aerial bombs and mixing and filling units within Syria has thankfully now begun. In particular, I want to commend the work of the British personnel working as part of the team carrying out this difficult and dangerous work on the ground in Syria.

Given that this is the first time that the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has been tasked with overseeing the destruction of chemical weapons armoury during a live conflict, can the Foreign Secretary provide any further details about how the mission is likely to proceed in the coming months? In particular can he offer the House any guidance with respect to negotiating access to sites currently within rebel-held areas of Syria?

On the middle east peace process, Secretary Kerry’s efforts to restart the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians deserve both our praise and our support. Delivering the necessary compromises from all sides will surely be a task aided by the active involvement of the United States. Can the Foreign Secretary clarify what role US special envoy Martin Indyk is playing in the substantive negotiations? When I recently met President Abbas, he emphasised the nine-month timeframe for these talks. Will the Foreign Secretary set out what progress would have to be made before March 2014 in order to justify a decision to continue negotiations beyond that allotted timetable?

Let me now turn to the issue of Iran. Back in August, I described the Government’s decision not to send ministerial representation to the inauguration of the new Iranian President as a misjudgment and a missed opportunity. At the start of September, I pressed the Foreign Secretary on the possibility of establishing a Syrian contact group, with Iran as a key member. Later last month, I pressed the Government on whether the Foreign Secretary would look to reopen the British embassy in Tehran as soon as it was practical and safe to do so. The Government appeared to give little consideration to these proposals when I first suggested them.

Today the Foreign Secretary cited his meeting with Foreign Minister Zarif and the letter dispatched by the Prime Minister to President Rouhani. While I welcome these recent decisions, I regret that it took so long for these important steps eventually to be taken. In recent months the Government appear to have misjudged their response to the signals emerging from Tehran, and as a result the UK risks being left behind by the absence of a clear strategy towards Iran. Disagreements not just over Iran’s nuclear ambitions but over domestic and international actions by the Iranian regime are profound, and cannot and should not be overlooked. However, it is vital that Iran continues to be encouraged to play a more constructive role, and the UK Government should be doing more to help to facilitate this change. In the light of this, I welcome today’s announcement of a chargé d’affaires having been appointed, but can the Foreign Secretary assure the House that this is an interim step on the way to establishing full diplomatic relations?

Labour remains of the view that the UK Government should maintain pressure on the Iranian regime to change its approach to nuclear enrichment. However, notwithstanding the decades-long difficulties in the bilateral relationship between Iran and the United States, it has, alas, been the American Administration, and not the British Government, who have better understood the signals and made the decisive advances towards improved relations with Iran. On Iran, it is time for the Government to catch up with our American allies.

[Mr Hague]

On the right hon. Gentleman’s initial questions relating to Syria, I think it will be the view across the House that free and unfettered access is of huge importance. He is right to say that the UN appeal for funds is currently 44% funded. As the House heard from my statement, we have done a great deal to make sure that some of that 44% is in place, and we are making a huge contribution ourselves. Our embassies and the Department for International Development’s ministerial team are engaged in a non-stop effort to build up the contributions from other countries. There is now the commitment to a pledging conference, which we hope will take place in Kuwait in January and which is the major international event to work towards in gathering greater contributions for the future.

On the right hon. Gentleman’s questions about the OPCW and how it will proceed, all the known sites for the holding of chemical weapons in Syria are within regime-held territory. We are not aware of the opposition being in possession of chemical weapons, so of course this work is focused, revealingly, entirely on the regime-held areas. What is meant to happen now, according to the timetable that has been established, is that all sites should have been inspected by the 27th of this month; that the regime’s production and mixing and filling equipment in relation to chemical weapons should be destroyed in the next few weeks, by 1 November; and that the details of how to proceed with eliminating all the material and other equipment will be decided by 15 November, with a view to the whole programme being completed in the first half of next year. It is an immense task, but it is good that the OPCW has arrived in Syria and that at the weekend the destruction began of some of the munitions involved. Of course, we will continue to watch this closely, and that includes, as I say, standing ready to provide further expertise as necessary.

On the right hon. Gentleman’s questions about the peace process, obviously the United States has a central role in this, including the United States special envoy. Many of the meetings—the seven rounds of negotiations so far—have been taking place on a bilateral basis, but it is envisaged that there will be closer American participation in those meetings over the coming weeks.

The ambition is to resolve the issues, including the final status issues, within six to nine months. That is the timetable to which the parties are working. It is too early to respond to the right hon. Gentleman’s question about what happens after March 2014.

On Iran, I hope there are no differences across the House about the direction of policy. The right hon. Gentleman asked us to catch up with other countries, but perhaps it is time for him to catch up with what the Government have actually been doing. I assure him and the House that there is no difference of view or approach between the United States, the United Kingdom and, indeed, other western allies. We are in different positions on diplomatic relations because some European countries still have embassies in Tehran. Their embassies were not overrun as ours was in 2011. By contrast, as is well known, the United States has not been in that situation for a very long time—since 1979. Of course there are differences between different countries, but all of us are trying to encourage the opening up by Iran, which the Iranian Ministers are presenting. There is no lack of attention to that.

It has been a long time since any British Foreign Secretary—we would have to go back to the days of the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), as we frequently do on these subjects—had as many discussions in the space of a few days with the Foreign Minister of Iran. It is vital that our work to improve the functioning of our bilateral relations takes place on a step-by-step and reciprocal basis. Recently, even getting unhindered access for locally engaged staff to inspect and check up on our embassy premises has remained a very difficult matter, so the House will understand that building up trust and co-operation will be necessary before it will be possible to open an embassy again. We are, therefore, doing that on a step-by-step, reciprocal basis. I do not believe it would be responsible to approach it in a different way. It has been welcomed so far by the Iranian Foreign Ministry, as evidenced by today’s agreement on appointing a non-resident chargé for both countries. That opens the way to further improvements, as I said in my statement, including a view in the future to the full reopening of both embassies, but that will depend on the mutual building of confidence, good co-operation and trust, which has, of course, been missing in the past.

[Sir Menzies Campbell (North East Fife) (LD)]

I commend my right hon. Friend on his clever attempt to balance both optimism and realism in reviewing the remarkable events of the past few weeks, but may I press him on the issue of chemical weapons? The use of these weapons is a crime against humanity, as the Secretary-General of the United Nations has confirmed. What is my right hon. Friend’s assessment of the possibility of those responsible for their use in Syria—whether on the Government side or the opposition side—ever being brought to justice?

[Mr Hague]

Accountability is very important. I make no secret of the fact that we would have preferred—as, I think, would most of this House—a UN resolution with more specific provisions for accountability, including reference to the International Criminal Court. It was very clear throughout all our talks in New York that no such resolution could be agreed with our Russian colleagues. Of course, it was important to pass a resolution on, and implement the destruction of, the chemical weapons, but we have had to do that without reference to the ICC. Future accountability will, therefore, depend on what happens more broadly with regard to the future of Syria and the determination of Syrians to hold those responsible to account in the future. I hope that they and all of us in the international community will be very clear that we wish to do that.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

First, while congratulating the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the right hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Hugh Robertson) on his appointment, may I underline the respect for and tribute made to the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) for the brilliant way in which he conducted himself as a Minister? I hope the fact that he was held in as high regard by the Opposition as he was by those on the Government Benches did not contribute to the Prime Minister’s decision yesterday.

The Foreign Secretary is right to say that Iran has a complex power structure and that we must proceed step-by-step with reciprocity. Does he accept that another country that has a complex power structure is the United States? President Obama is almost as boxed in as President Rouhani on this issue, while the Foreign Secretary has much greater room for manoeuvre. Will he therefore bear it in mind that the British Government are in a position to take calculated risks and to seize the opportunity with respect to Iran, while the other two may not be? He may be able to take the initiative on Iran, while others may not be able to do so.

[Mr Hague]

I will give a broad “yes” to the right hon. Gentleman’s question, but I ask him not to underestimate the focus on this issue in the United States or its readiness to deal directly with the new ministerial leaders in Iran. As he knows, President Obama had a telephone conversation with President Rouhani. Secretary Kerry attended the meeting of the E3 plus 3 Ministers with Mr Zarif, which was the first meeting between a US Secretary of State and an Iranian Foreign Minister for a very long time. The United States does have a complex power structure, but its National Security Council is very focused on this issue. It is important that the E3 plus 3 countries work cohesively on the nuclear issue, rather than emphasising different approaches. We must all in our different ways and using our different national strengths and perspectives on Iran encourage the progress in the nuclear negotiations that is so urgently needed.

[Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)]

Although I welcome the appointment of the chargé d’affaires, which is to the credit of the new Iranian regime as much as to that of the regime here in London, would it not be wise to judge President Rouhani on his actions, rather than on his words, and to ignore the calls to go faster than the situation merits?

[Mr Hague]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are putting in place a step-by-step reciprocal approach to bilateral relations. It is important to proceed in that way for the reasons that I gave the House a few moments ago. I think that that approach will be the most comfortable one for the Iranian Ministers who are in favour of this process and the one that will be able to command the most support in Iran. For both countries, I think that this is the best way to proceed. It is important that the welcome tone and positive remarks of Iranian Ministers over recent months are matched by serious proposals in the nuclear negotiations and by concrete actions.

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

I support the Foreign Secretary in his efforts to build on the success on chemical weapons that has been achieved through negotiations by securing an early Geneva II conference. It is crucial to get the Russians, the Iranians and the Syrian Government there, along with our international allies and the moderate opposition. He may have to refuse to accept that recalcitrant, let alone jihadist, opposition groups can exercise a veto.

May I also ask the Foreign Secretary to schedule a full day’s debate on Syria on a substantive motion, because we have not had a chance to discuss Syria policy in detail, despite his admirably regular updates? A pre-agreed motion might afford the House an opportunity to unite around Syria policy, when in August we were divided on military action.

[Mr Hague]

Personally, I am entirely open to such a debate. The Leader of the House is here. I do not know whether he is open to it, given all the pressures on him, but he will have heard the legitimate point that the right hon. Gentleman has made.

The progress that we have made in setting an ambition to convene the Geneva II peace conference has involved working closely with Russia. It is the product of the five permanent members of the Security Council working together during the General Assembly. That is an important and welcome step on Syria, given the history of the past two and a half years.

I discussed the participation of Iran in future talks with the Iranian Foreign Minister. I have asked the Iranians to accept the outcome of Geneva I as the basis for future discussions. After all, that is accepted by almost all other countries in the world. If that were the common baseline, it would make it easier to include the Iranians in future discussions. I look forward to their further consideration of that.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Would the Foreign Secretary like to praise Parliament for recommending diplomacy rather than war as the best means of tackling the difficult matter of chemical weapons in Syria? That policy seems to be working rather well. Does he agree that Parliament’s influence extended to the United States of America, where the President called our debate in aid as the reason for his change of approach towards consulting Congress and going for peace?

[Mr Hague]

It has always been my habit to praise Parliament, even when I disagree with it, and I will continue to do so. I praise our Parliament and democracy all over the world, and I even hold up such instances as examples of our vibrant democracy. I hope, however, that my right hon. Friend will bear in mind that such progress on chemical weapons—we hope it is progress, provided it is maintained—could not have been made without the credible possibility and threat of military action. We particularly have to thank the United States for that in this connection.

[Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

While congratulating the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the right hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Hugh Robertson), I add my voice to the tributes that have justifiably been paid to the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt). He brought the same commitment to an individual constituency case as he did to matters of great international moment, and for that I and my constituents are grateful. I am equally grateful for the advances that have been made with regard to Syria, not least the west biting the bullet and including Iran. The Foreign Secretary referred to an increase in humanitarian aid, but he failed to detail whether any of that aid will actually be delivered to innocent civilians still trapped within the borders of Syria. Surely that is one area where even closer co-operation with Iran could bring real results.

[Mr Hague]

On the specific question about whether the aid goes to those in Syria, British aid reaches into all 14 governorates of Syria. The international effort, which we support and help to finance, is of course hindered by the fighting, and has sometimes been hindered deliberately by the regime preventing supplies—including much-needed medical supplies—from reaching opposition-held areas. That is the importance of the presidential statement by the Security Council, backed by Russia and China, on improving humanitarian access, including cross-border supplies of aid, and meeting the request of Baroness Amos who leads for these matters at the United Nations. We will follow that up very much indeed, and I hope our ability to hold discussions with Iran will lead to improvements in the situation in Syria. That is another area where Iran will need to change its policies on the ground, which currently include supporting a regime that is murdering and oppressing its own people in huge numbers.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I welcome the good news that the Foreign Secretary has brought to the House, and strongly echo tributes to the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), which are richly deserved. The Foreign Secretary said that the matters of mutual concern he is discussing with Iran include Syria, which is welcome. Does he agree, however, that talks are sometimes better without preconditions, and that it would be positive for all concerned if Iran could be drawn into the Geneva II peace process and talks on Syria?

[Mr Hague]

Of course it is best to have the broadest base possible internationally for the Geneva II process, but, as I said to the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain), it is important that that starts from a common assumption and that we are at least able to start from the same starting line. We agreed in Geneva I last year that there should be a transitional Government in Syria with full executive power, formed by mutual consent. That is the position of Russia, China, and all five permanent members of the Security Council. The regime is ready—it says it is ready—to appoint representatives for talks on that basis, and the opposition National Coalition is ready to take part in talks on that basis. It should be possible for Iran—and any other country that has doubts about this—to say that it supports talks on that basis, and that if it participates it would be on that basis. That is what we are looking to Iran to say.

[Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)]

I welcome the new Minister with responsibility for the middle east to his place, and like many others I pay tribute to his predecessor.

During the debate on Syria on 29 August I asked the Prime Minister whether he agreed that anybody using chemical weapons should face the law in either the International Criminal Court or a specially constituted tribunal. The Foreign Secretary said that Russia has blocked progress on that specific issue at this stage, but will he outline to the House how he will pursue the matter in the future? Surely nobody on any side should be able to use chemical weapons in any part of the world.

[Mr Hague]

That is a very important issue, and it is important that it is pursued by this country and many others over the coming months and years. There is a reference to accountability in the resolution, but as I said to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), we would have preferred much more detail on reference to the International Criminal Court. It is something to which we will have to return, therefore, in the context of a settlement, if one can be arrived at, in the Geneva II process, and something to which the Syrian people will want to return.

In my view, there must be, in the future, either national or international accountability and justice in respect of crimes committed. Some of those relate to chemical weapons, of course, but terrible crimes have been committed with a whole range of weapons, including in the prisons and torture chambers of the Assad regime. Furthermore, of course, there are records of atrocities committed by opponents of the regime as well. Justice should be done for all these crimes, but it will have to be addressed in a peace settlement, given that we cannot agree on it at the Security Council.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend recall that in August many people, not least the Government of Syria, refused to admit that the Syrian regime possessed chemical weapons, and does he agree that had it not been for the actions of the United States, the United Kingdom and others in making it clear that the use of chemical weapons was wholly unacceptable in international law and in putting forward a credible threat of military action, we would never have had UN resolution 2118, we would not now be seeing the inspection of chemical weapons in Syria and we would not be about to see the destruction of those chemical weapons—weapons that, amazingly, people did not think existed as recently as August?

[Mr Hague]

My hon. Friend is quite right to say that we are now seeing the commencement of the destruction of weapons that we were told not long ago did not exist at all. That is certainly progress and reflects a major change in policy by Russia and the Syrian regime in Damascus, and there can be little doubt that those changes would not have come about had there not been a rigorous debate about military action in many other countries.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Foreign Secretary rightly praised the US Secretary of State for his efforts to get the Palestinians and Israelis talking to each other again, but he did not refer to the continuing crisis in Gaza or the threats there of terrorist actions into Sinai, which have knock-on consequences in Egypt. Will he update the House on the implications of the problems that still exist in Gaza and the fact that we will not get a viable Palestinian state without unity of both parts of the Palestinian territory?

[Mr Hague]

The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the situation in Gaza. It is very important that greater access into Gaza be allowed by Israel and Egypt—in the current situation—so we call on both countries to do that. We are giving a lot of assistance: of the £122 million that the Department for International Development is providing over four years to help the Palestinian Authority, about 40% is spent in Gaza, I believe, so there is a lot of direct UK assistance there, but improved access from both directions is needed if the situation is to improve.

[Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I join the generous and wholly proper tributes to the former Minister for the middle east, but from long association, I know that he could hardly have been replaced by a better successor than the new Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Hugh Robertson).

With the extremely welcome progress and opportunity for further progress on weapons of mass destruction in Syria and Iran, will my right hon. Friend assure me that we will not lose focus on Egypt? Having been there three times since the beginning of July, I can assure him that the medium-term prognosis is utterly grim. It is an area to which we will have to give serious attention.

[Mr Hague]

I can absolutely assure my hon. Friend that we will not lose focus. I thought it was important to report to the House on these three areas—the middle east peace progress, Syria and Iran—but I do think we need the full day’s debate that others have been asking for to cover all the issues. The future of Egypt is a vital foreign policy issue. I held discussions in New York with the new Foreign Minister of Egypt, and of course we continue to press the Egyptian authorities to implement a successful and inclusive transition that can bring together, in a future democracy, people of a very wide range of views. We are in close touch with the Egyptian authorities and will continue to push them very hard on that.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I should like to add my thanks to the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) for all his work as a Minister and for his extraordinary courtesy towards the all-party parliamentary groups. I also welcome the new Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Hugh Robertson).

I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s statement on the change of direction in relations with Iran, which represents a huge improvement. Does he recognise that Iran remains a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and that the last review conference envisaged a nuclear weapons-free zone across the whole middle east? A conference was due to be held in Finland but it did not take place. Obviously, such a conference would have to include Iran and all the other nations, including the only nuclear weapons state in the region—namely, Israel. Will he assure the House that he and the Foreign Office still have an aspiration to have such a conference and that they will seriously push for it to be held as soon as possible? In this new atmosphere, the chance of achieving a nuclear weapons-free zone is surely one that should not be lost.

[Mr Hague]

That absolutely remains an aspiration of the Government but, as the hon. Gentleman knows, it has been very difficult to bring about. Britain strongly supported the idea at the nuclear non-proliferation treaty review conference in 2010, but it has not yet proved possible, despite the hard work of the Finnish facilitator, to bring together a conference on weapons of mass destruction in the middle east. However, we will continue our efforts to do so. If we make significant progress and achieve a breakthrough in the nuclear talks with Iran, that will greatly improve the atmosphere for bringing together such a conference.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

I, too, would like to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) for the work that he has done. I would also like to congratulate the Foreign Secretary on pressing the reset button with President Rouhani, because Iran can play an important role in bringing peace to Syria. I also congratulate him on his initiative in trying to bring chemical weapons under control in Syria today. Notwithstanding that, there are serious concerns about crimes against humanity—some involving the use of chemical weapons, some not—and as the evidence becomes clear as a result of the United Nations’ work, will he ensure that such evidence is used to bring Bashar al-Assad and his brother Maher to justice?

[Mr Hague]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his support for these initiatives. As I have said, the issues of justice and accountability, and of the gathering of evidence, remain vital. We have used British funds to train human rights journalists and others to document the crimes that have been committed, so that the evidence is there in the future, and we will continue to support that kind of work. I believe that the demand in Syria for justice and accountability will be overwhelming as the evidence from this conflict emerges over the coming months and years, and we need to be ready to support that across the whole world.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

On the “Today” programme this morning, Lord Dannatt said that the diversion of interest into Iraq had allowed the Taliban to regroup in Afghanistan. What implications does the Foreign Secretary draw from that for any future UK military intervention in Syria?

[Mr Hague]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that we are not proposing a UK military intervention in Syria. We are talking about three strands of British policy. One is to implement the UN resolution on chemical weapons, in which we are participating. The second is to continue to lead the world in alleviating human suffering. The third is to bring together a peace conference in Geneva. Those are the things that we are working on, rather than a military intervention.

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

I should like to associate myself with the words of the Foreign Secretary in paying tribute to the talent, decency and integrity of the former Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt).

The Foreign Secretary has rightly condemned the violence of the Syrian regime. He has also said that the violence is not confined to the regime, and that it is also being perpetrated by members of the opposition. Will he take this opportunity to condemn the sickening scenes involving the targeted slaughter of Syria’s Christian community, and make it clear that the people who engage in those acts are not the kind of people with whom we would ever wish to do business?

[Mr Hague]

I totally agree. My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to these crimes, which are utterly condemned by Her Majesty’s Government. I am pleased to say that such crimes are also condemned by the Syrian National Coalition, which is committed to a non-sectarian future for Syria and makes great efforts to ensure that it is broadly representative of different faiths, different communities and political persuasions in Syria. This again underlines the need to support moderate, not extremist, opposition in Syria and to bring about a political settlement in which Christians, along with all others, can live peacefully side by side in the country.

[Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)]

I declare a visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories with Labour Friends of Israel. I would like to thank the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) for his integrity in handling a complex and sensitive issue.

I very much welcome the work being undertaken to destroy weapons in Syria, but has the Foreign Secretary received any reports showing the transfer of weapons from Syria and Iran to Hezbollah, which could endanger the lives of the people of Lebanon, Syria and Israel?

[Mr Hague]

I do not have any evidence of the transfer of chemical weapons to Hezbollah. Clearly, Hezbollah has received supplies of weapons over a long period, and such weapons have been maintained in Lebanon in breach of UN Security Council Resolution 1701. We all have every right to suspect that those weapons have often come from Iran via Syria. On the issue of chemical weapons, however, I do not have any evidence of their transfer to any other nation or grouping in the region. I hope that the destruction of these weapons can take place verifiably—before there is any risk of that happening.

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

I, too, want to praise my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) for the extraordinary patience, intelligence and careful understanding that he brought to his role.

I congratulate the Foreign Secretary on progress made in re-engaging with Iran and on his constructive engagement with the issue of chemical weapons in Syria. I encourage my right hon. Friend, however, to use the opportunity presented by Syria to lead a genuine global campaign against chemical weapons and to devote the resources and staff necessary to make the elimination of chemical weapons one of the key priorities of the British Government.

[Mr Hague]

Britain has a strong history of working to prohibit chemical weapons and of encouraging other countries to sign the chemical weapons convention. Syria’s decision, if verifiably implemented, will of course be a major advance; as it could easily be the largest arsenal of chemical weapons in the world, its destruction would be a major advance. My hon. Friend is quite right that that should lead us only to redouble our efforts to make sure that other stocks of chemical weapons in the world are destroyed.

[Sandra Osborne (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the former Minister, the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), particularly for the regular briefings he provided to Members of all parties; I hope his successor will continue that practice. I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s statement on Lebanon and the extra resources going into the international support group. Has he made any assessment, however, of the impact on the Palestinian refugees, currently living in Lebanon and elsewhere, who have suffered for many years, of the influx of so many Syrian refugees?

[Mr Hague]

The impact on most people in Lebanon is difficult. As the hon. Lady knows, the influx of refugees into that country is proportionately huge, with more than 700,000 refugees living there—a large proportion of Lebanon’s population. The United Kingdom continues to give strong support for Palestinians in Lebanon, and a good deal of the help from the Department for International Development that goes through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency goes into supporting those Palestinians. We are very conscious of the problem; supporting these people is part of our approach to Lebanon.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

In relation to the terrible civil war in Syria, is the Government’s position strictly neutral?

[Mr Hague]

No. We believe that the Assad regime has lost all legitimacy and credibility, not only in the eyes of many of its own people but in the eyes of the world, whereas we recognise members of the national coalition as legitimate representatives of the Syrian people. It would therefore not be right to say that we are strictly neutral. However, we do want to promote a political settlement in which a transitional Government, formed from regime and opposition, can be brought about.

[Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)]

My I add to the many tributes that have been paid to the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt)? I am sure that he has received many letters—from me, and from many other Members—about his excellent work in relation to the middle east, and I am sure that he will be missed by Front Benchers.

I agreed with what the Foreign Secretary said about the catastrophic situation in Syria and the fact that more than 2 million refugees are fleeing from the country into the wider region, but what assessment has been made of the likelihood of the conflict’s spreading within the region as well? We know that there is already sectarian violence in Lebanon, but what is happening elsewhere, and what can we do about anything that is happening?

[Mr Hague]

The conflict clearly presents a danger to the stability of Lebanon, Iraq, and, in a different way, Jordan, because of the pressures on its border. That is why we are placing such emphasis on our work in those countries, and particularly on what we can do to reinforce the stability of Lebanon and Jordan. We give them a lot of help, not only in the form of the humanitarian aid that goes through international agencies, but directly. We have given assistance to the Lebanese armed forces on their border; we have sent equipment to help the Jordanian armed forces to cope on their border. Ensuring that, during the period in which we cannot resolve the crisis, we at least help other countries to contain it, is a very important aspect of our policy.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

Let me also pay a personal tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt). He responded on behalf of the Government to the debate during which I made my maiden speech, and my sadness at seeing him leave the Front Bench is matched only by my great pleasure at seeing him back here in the habitation of us lesser mortals.

Some time ago, I asked my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary how long the two-state solution had. He told me then that it had 18 months, but I cannot remember how long ago that was. Can he tell me how long the two-state solution now has before it becomes unviable?

[Mr Hague]

It does not have long. It has many half-lives, I suppose. None of us ever wants to say that it is impossible and cannot be achieved, but I think that this is the last best chance. If we reach next year without having made the progress and achieved the breakthrough that so much hard work is going into now, that will clearly be an enormous setback, and many people will question very seriously whether a two-state solution could ever be arrived at. That has why it has been so important to get everyone together this year for the bilateral negotiations, and that is why we must do all that we can to help those negotiations to succeed.

[Mr Frank Roy (Motherwell and Wishaw) (Lab)]

In west Africa, Iran gives support to militias that have clashed with Government forces. What discussions has the Foreign Secretary had about Iran’s interference in that important region?

[Mr Hague]

As the hon. Gentleman will understand, we have not yet discussed the full range of global affairs during the meetings that we have had so far. Those meetings have concentrated on the nuclear issue, on Syria, and on bilateral relations. However, the appointment of the non-resident chargés that I have announced today will allow us to discuss with Iran a greater range of issues of mutual concern. Nothing is excluded from that, and what is happening in areas such as west Africa could well be legitimate topics for discussion.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I share the Foreign Secretary’s cautious optimism, given the not inconsiderable progress that has been achieved in the middle east since he last made a statement to the House. No little credit for that progress should be laid at the door of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt).

Without being starry-eyed, as the Foreign Secretary put it, may I suggest that one area in which we can pursue issues of mutual concern, particularly with the ordinary people of Iran, is the hard-drugs trade? Many Iranians are now heroin addicts, and many have been killed at the hands of drug barons controlling drug paths in the north of the country. When I visited the country a few years ago, we had seconded to it Metropolitan police officers with expertise in drugs, who were doing some great work that was of mutual benefit. Is that not one of the routes through which we could open up an early relationship with Iran?

[Mr Hague]

Yes, it is. My hon. Friend makes an important point. Combating that trade is in the interests of both countries. I hope that it will be one of the issues of mutual concern that we address at an early stage.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

May I add my appreciation for the work of the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt)? I think that all Members with an interest in the middle east will acknowledge his complete mastery of his brief, even when they disagreed with the policy that he was defending, on which subject, whatever the Secretary of State is saying to the Israeli Government about withdrawal from the occupied territories, they are not listening. Senior Israeli Ministers said over the summer that they will never allow a Palestinian state, so will the Government take the small step of banning the import of goods from settlements, which the Secretary of State himself is clear are illegal under international law?

[Mr Hague]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, the voluntary guidelines on those imports were introduced by the previous Government and we have continued them and support them. All our efforts in the coming months will be directed at trying to make a success of the negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians, so I am not proposing to do anything that cuts across that. The Israelis in those discussions are discussing the creation of a Palestinian state. That is what it is all about—a two-state solution, which means a sovereign, viable Palestinian state and the resolution of the final status issues, including refugees and borders. Therefore, we must keep our eyes on that main prize and return to the many other issues if the talks do not succeed.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

The Israeli perspective on Iran is that it is very close to completing its enrichment processes, that it has started the renewed dialogue with the west to provide diplomatic cover for a dash to the line, and that with its ballistic technology it can complete a nuclear weapon or weapons deliverable on Israel. To what extent does the Foreign Secretary share the Israeli analysis?

[Mr Hague]

Israelis and others are right to be alarmed about the Iranian nuclear programme. It continues to increase its stockpile of near 20% enriched uranium. It has no credible civilian use for the significant quantities of enriched material that it has. It has continued to install more centrifuges and the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency has reported that it has not provided access to the heavy water production plant at Arak, which is also a cause for serious concern. That underlines the importance of trying to resolve these issues peacefully, and the importance of maintaining the pressure on Iran and the pressure of the comprehensive sanctions introduced by the European Union, the United States and other countries, which I believe has now brought Iran to the negotiating table. Whether that will succeed remains to be seen.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

The House needs to be aware just how restricted humanitarian access is in Syria. Two weeks ago in Amman, the World Food Programme told me that last month it sought to deliver food and other emergency supplies to 3 million people in Syria but was able to get it through only to 1.25 million people, fewer than half of those who needed it. What difference will the welcome October presidential statement from the Security Council make? How quickly will we see a change on the ground for the civilian victims of the tragedy in Syria?

[Mr Hague]

That is a good question, to which we cannot be certain of the answer. The hon. Gentleman illustrates the extent of the problem very well. It is important that the Security Council has agreed such a statement, because that means that it has been agreed by Russia, among others, and it is Russia that has produced the decisive change in the regime’s attitude on chemical weapons. Therefore, we hope that our colleagues in the Russian Government will join us in demanding from the regime the necessary access on the back of the presidential statement. I will keep the House informed of progress on that.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) for doing an outstanding job and, on a personal level, for always being courteous, helpful and understanding. I thank him for that.

It has been said that Iran is prepared to support a transition in Syria without President Assad—a transition between the regime and the opposition. Does the Foreign Secretary have an analysis of that and has he discussed that with the Foreign Minister of Iran?

[Mr Hague]

Yes, I have discussed these issues with the Foreign Minister of Iran. As I said in answer to some earlier questions, I have put the case to the Iranians that they should be supporting the Geneva communiqué of last year that there should be a transitional Government in Syria drawn from regime and opposition by mutual consent. As I understand it, and as I have heard the Iranians talk about it, that is not currently their position, but they have not ruled out adopting that position. I will continue to encourage them to do so so that the international consensus around last year’s Geneva communiqué will be greatly strengthened.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State acknowledged that economic progress and a political settlement need to go hand in hand in the middle east peace process. What impact is the expansion of illegal settlements having on Palestinian economic development?

[Mr Hague]

Of course the expansion of settlements on occupied land, which is illegal and which I think we are all clear about in this House, does not assist Palestinian economic development, as the hon. Lady’s question implies. This again underlines the importance of the talks now taking place to resolve final status issues—to resolve the issues of borders and security and refugees. Their success would mean these problems could be brought to an end. So the current position does not help Palestinian economic development. Finding new ways to assist that development, alongside these efforts on the peace process, is worthwhile, but success in the peace process will be needed for that to have a lasting tangible effect.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

May I also thank the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) for his work at the Foreign Office and his professionalism and courtesy? I congratulate the Foreign Secretary on the appointment of the chargé in order to help build relations, but we should try to minimise the preconditions when talking to the Iranians, as they can often get in the way. There were no preconditions—or very few—when we were talking to Sinn Fein and the provisionals in Northern Ireland back in the 1980s. We need to talk to our enemies in order to make peace, not to our friends. May I also suggest that every opportunity should be taken to explore the other conflicts in the region in which Iran has its finger, because it will offer up many opportunities for progress in the region if we can at least go some way towards normalising relations?

[Mr Hague]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments. We have not set preconditions, as he can see from the number of discussions I have had with the Iranian Foreign Minister already, but we do want concrete actions to go along with words, and we do want to proceed on an agreed reciprocal basis in improving the functioning of bilateral relations. I hope that improved functioning can lead to discussion on a wider range of subjects, and my hon. Friend has mentioned some of those that could be included. We will be exploring that over the coming weeks.

[Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)]

I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s detailed statement, and his efforts to resolve numerous world conflicts. The experts face a year-long mission of unprecedented danger to destroy Syrian chemical weapons that the Syrian President said he never had. How can we trust any other promises the Syrian President may make?

[Mr Hague]

These promises are very difficult to trust, of course. That is why it is so important that verification really takes place and that the OPCW is able to report any non-compliance to the Security Council, as provided for in the resolution, so that the Security Council can consider what action to take. Of course, we all have to approach this subject with a certain degree of scepticism given the previous behaviour of the regime and its use of chemical weapons—the chemical weapons that it denied having for such a long time. On the positive side, however, it has signed up to the chemical weapons convention. Russia has committed itself very strongly to this policy and therefore has a good deal riding on its success. That should give us some cause for optimism about the future.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

Clearly, the best outcome of the peace conference planned for November would be an early resolution of the conflict in Syria. We should not give up all hope, but that is probably somewhat unrealistic and optimistic, and so we hope that a process will start to lead to that resolution. Given that, does the Foreign Secretary agree that it is essential that humanitarian access is also a major focus of that conference, so that even without a wider settlement coming into effect speedily, the international community provides the same pressure to ensure that the access required is given as soon as possible and is not left as part of a longer-term and wider process?

[Mr Hague]

The hon. Gentleman is right to think of Geneva II as the start of a process, rather than a single event. It will be difficult, of course, to make it a success, but it is certainly not something that will be over in a few hours or a few days; it is the start of an important process, if it can be brought together. I see no reason why that should not address, at an early stage, humanitarian access, so that the suffering of the people of Syria can be alleviated. I entirely accept his point.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) for his kind, thoughtful and reflective replies and briefings on all issues to do with Foreign Office matters. May I also thank the Foreign Secretary for his statement, and ask him about refugees and the £100 million dedicated to humanitarian aid? What proportion of that money will go to help refugees, particularly those most in need and those with connections to the UK?

[Mr Hague]

The £100 million will be added to the £400 million we have already committed; the great majority of this goes through the international agencies. We will make subsequent announcements about where exactly the recipients of that will be. I mentioned in my statement some of the totals before the £100 million—for Lebanon and for Jordan, where a great deal has gone. But, as I have also said, a good deal of this aid is getting inside Syria. It is not sent on any discriminatory basis—those connected to the UK or not connected to the UK. It is sent to help people in need. It is providing medicine, sanitation, water supplies, blankets, tents and so on to people, wherever we can get these things to them. I know that my colleagues in the Department for International Development will have more detail that they could give the hon. Lady, and I will ask them to write to her with that.

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

May I endorse the thanks from Members from across the House to the previous Minister and welcome the new Minister? As the Foreign Secretary may have seen, the chairman of the Charity Commission has said that money intended to ease the refugee crisis was “undoubtedly” going to extremist groups. Does the Foreign Secretary agree that in making these general comments the chairman of the Charity Commission needs to be very careful not to undermine the British people’s confidence in giving money to the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal? It is undertaking significant humanitarian aid with the £20 million already raised in supporting those refugees from Syria.

[Mr Hague]

It is very important that we are able to continue to mobilise the immense British generosity we see in cases like this, where people are willing to give to these appeals. Clearly, we are one of the leading nations in this respect in what we provide from taxpayers’ resources, but many individuals and families also make a contribution, which helps to make a serious difference on the ground. I have not seen in detail the Charity Commission’s comments, but all of us will want to continue to urge people to give generously and responsibly to these appeals.

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary and to colleagues. I hope that the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) will proudly preserve his own copy of the Hansard report of today’s proceedings for many, many years to come.

Press Self-Regulation

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

16:44

[The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Maria Miller)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to update the House on the progress regarding press self-regulation.

We all agree that what is needed is a workable and effective system of press self-regulation. Equally, I believe, we must protect our free press while striking the right balance between independence and redress for individuals. There can be no question of undermining the press’s ability to criticise or make judgments; that underpins our democracy and holds us to account. However, we are talking today about ensuring that the public has a fair system of redress through which to challenge mistakes and errors when necessary.

I have always echoed Leveson in saying that the success of a new system will be seen in an approach that offers justice and fairness for the public and clearly protects the freedom of the press. The House will be fully aware of the careful deliberations that followed the publication of Leveson’s report and the weight of responsibility that comes with implementing that system.

Significant progress has been made since I last updated the House, particularly by the press, which is well down the track of setting up its own self-regulatory body. All involved in the process now consider a royal charter to oversee that regulatory body to be the correct way forward. Just six months ago, that seemed impossible.

We are now talking about the differences of opinion about how a royal charter should be constructed. The committee of the Privy Council is unable to recommend that the press proposal for a royal charter be granted. Although there are areas where it is acceptable, it is unable to comply with some important Leveson principles and with government policy, such as those on independence and access to arbitration. A copy of the recommendation letter has been placed in the Libraries of both Houses so that right hon. and hon. Members have an opportunity to look at it in detail.

In the light of that fact, we will take forward the cross-party charter that was debated in this House. The charter will be on the agenda at a specially convened meeting of the Privy Council on 30 October. In the interim, I believe that we should finish making our charter workable so that it will meaningfully deliver independent and effective self-regulation.

We have already improved the drafting of the cross-party charter and we have worked with the Scottish Government to make sure that the press does not have to worry about complying with different frameworks on either side of the border. We have had discussions with the Commissioner for Public Appointments to clarify how his role will work. Those are all important improvements. Having considered the press charter, the committee has identified two substantive areas—access to arbitration and the editors code—where we could improve the 18 March draft.

The right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) and I—indeed, all three parties—agree that those areas could benefit from further consideration. As such, all three parties will work together in the coming days and produce a final draft of the cross-party charter to place in the Libraries of both Houses on Friday. That will allow parliamentarians, the public, the press and whoever else to see the version we intend to seal. If any specific change cannot be agreed by all three parties, we will revert to the 18 March charter debated by Parliament.

We have an opportunity to take a final look at our charter and to bring all parties together and ensure that the final charter is both workable and effective. We have a responsibility to make sure that what we do will be effective and that it will stand the test of time, so we need to make it the best it can be. We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to get it right, and we all want to do that. To give individuals access to redress while safeguarding our country’s free press is a vital part of our democracy, as will be acknowledged on both sides of the House.

16:49

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for her statement, for advance notice of it, and for her assurance to the House that the Conservatives remain committed to the charter that will introduce an independent complaints system for the press, which was put before the House by the Prime Minister, with the support of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, and unanimously approved by the House on 18 March and by the House of Lords. Will she reaffirm that the charter gives redress to victims when the press breach their code of conduct, while in no way interfering with the freedom of the press?

We believe that the charter should have been submitted for consideration at the Privy Council meeting tomorrow, but it will not be going to that meeting because the Prime Minister has chosen to delay its submission till the end of this month. We regret that, because it has been nearly a year since Leveson reported, and six months since the House agreed the draft charter. There has already been too much delay.

I therefore ask the Secretary of State to confirm to the House that the process that she, the Lib Dems and ourselves have agreed will be followed to ensure absolute transparency of the process and no further delay. That is, that the charter of 18 March will be completed by agreeing any matters that were still in square brackets on 18 March; that aside from that, the 18 March charter as agreed by this House will not be changed unless such a change has the agreement of all three party leaders; that the Secretary of State will this Friday place before the House the final version of the charter—that is, the 18 March charter including the issues that required to be completed, and only any changes if they have been agreed by all three party leaders—and that it will then be put forward to the Privy Council before the end of this month.

Will the Secretary of State agree that what is important for us is to get the charter sealed, to get the recognition panel established and for a regulator to be set up? We must ensure that there will be a fair and effective complaints system independent of the press and independent of politicians. As the Prime Minister said to the Leveson inquiry,

“that’s the test of all this. It’s not: do the politicians or the press feel happy with what we get? It’s: are we…protecting people who have been caught up and absolutely thrown to the wolves”.

So let us have no further delay. Let us get on and implement Leveson as set out by the House on 18 March.

[Maria Miller]

The right hon. and learned Lady is absolutely right that the proposal that we are discussing today is all about redress, and that it is also all about ensuring that we retain freedom of our press, which we all value so highly. It is important, though, that we also recognise that the press charter that was put forward had to have a fair hearing, that it had to have a robust level of scrutiny, and that it was only right that a piece of work that had been put before us was treated in that way. I am sure she would agree that the process we followed was the right way to achieve the right outcome.

Now we will move forward, as the right hon. and learned Lady has outlined. Just to clarify, we will agree any improvements that we, on a three-party basis, feel will make this charter more workable, because, as the right hon. and learned lady will agree, she wants to have an effective charter in place to provide the sort of oversight that we have talked about in recent months. Of course, any changes to that charter would have to be subject to three-party agreement and, as I have outlined, that final version of the charter will be available for all Members to see in the Library this Friday. Following on from that, there will be a specially convened meeting of the Privy Council on 30 October, for us to be able to finally ensure that the seal is put in place.

I think it is important that we make this charter workable, but I agree with the right hon. and learned Lady that it is also important that we get going and put all this in place.

[Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend accept the first principle set out in Lord Justice Leveson’s report that any solution must be perceived as credible and effective by the press and the public? Does she agree that it would be infinitely preferable to achieve a system of press regulation that delivers the objectives of Lord Justice Leveson’s report, but which also commands the support of as many of the newspapers as possible, rather than a system which commands the support of none of them?

[Maria Miller]

My hon. Friend goes to the heart of the matter when he reminds the House of Lord Leveson’s statement that whatever we take forward, to be effective it must also be credible, and we must take the press and the public with us. It is vital that we do that. Nobody would thank us for putting in place a system that was ineffective, did not work and did not attempt to make sure that self-regulation of the press in this country is effective.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

Given that this House voted virtually unanimously seven months ago for this charter, will the Secretary of State say a little more about this further delay and reassure the McCanns, the Dowlers and the other victims that this will not mean a further watering down of Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations or kicking them into the long grass, which has happened on every previous occasion?

[Maria Miller]

I understand the right hon. Gentleman’s question and he is right to say that we have been taking some time to make sure that our response to Lord Leveson’s report is well thought through and effective. I make no excuses for doing that. I think he would be the first to offer his own criticism if the process that was put in place were not effective. It may take some time for us to do this. We received from the press a press charter which, as I said to the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham, it was right that we subjected to robust scrutiny to make sure that we looked at it in the correct way. We are now, as I have made very clear, moving forward with the cross-party charter, but there are issues that have been raised which bear further examination in the areas of the standards code, the editors code and arbitration. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will bear with us. I would rather get it right than just do it quickly.

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

I am on the wrong side of this argument as far as 530 colleagues in this place are concerned. The best protection and redress are provided by the courts, and does my right hon. Friend agree that the courts have an important part to play in this and will continue to do so?

[Maria Miller]

Of course, my hon. Friend is right to say that the courts continue to have an important role to play, but one thing that we identified through Lord Leveson’s report and more widely was the importance of access to redress. An integral part of Leveson’s report was that an arbitration system should be available, and the lack of that arbitration system within the press charter was one of the reasons that the Privy Council committee took the decision that it has.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

As someone who, throughout this protracted process, has made it clear that I prefer an irresponsible and pernicious press to a state-regulated press, may I nevertheless say that the procrastination by the press organisations has become unacceptable and that the timetable that the right hon. Lady put before the House must be adhered to? We cannot go on like this.

[Maria Miller]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments. I would like to see a robust press, and I am sure the press would never want to be seen as irresponsible. He is right that it is important that we adhere to the timetable before the House, but, again, I make no excuses to the House today for getting this right. Working with the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham and the noble Lord Wallace in the other place, we will make sure that we do everything that we can, particularly to address the issues of arbitration and the editors code, and make sure that everybody is aware of the additional changes that we have made, as we have highlighted before, with regard to Scotland. It is important that the Scottish press is able to have access to the charter in the same was as any other press.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

Further to the royal charter’s extremely swift passage through both Houses of Parliament, what legal advice has the Secretary of State subsequently received on whether exemplary damages and the allocations of costs would breach article 10 of the European convention on human rights, and will that form any basis for future discussions with the industry?

[Maria Miller]

There is no issue, as my hon. Friend outlines, with regard to European law. We have had full legal advice on that and I am content that there are no problems.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It feels like Groundhog day; we have been here before. You dragged us all here urgently in March to force us to look at a particular version of the charter, and we agreed almost unanimously. I do not know whether you have run out of sealing wax or quills or something—[Interruption.] Sorry, Mr Speaker; I mean the right hon. Lady, not you. Surely to goodness it is time we listened to the public, who have said in poll after poll that the self-regulatory system, which was completely and utterly bust, including the Press Complaints Commission, which did not stand up for victims and perpetuated the problems, must go. If she defaults on this timetable, surely this House, not just Ministers and shadow Ministers, should take the matter into its own hands.

[Maria Miller]

Oh dear, Mr Speaker; we hear it again. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is not really implying that he did not want us to make the improvements we have made with regard to Scotland. Clearly, in his world he would exclude Scotland from the charter process, or perhaps he is implying that we should ignore the very real concerns of the local press about the costs of arbitration. He might want to ignore the local press, but I do not.

[Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)]

The Liberal Democrats welcome the rejection of the PressBoF charter, which would have resulted in business as usual for the press, but the innocent victims of press abuse have been waiting a long time. Will the Secretary of State give an assurance that there are no circumstances in which this process could be dragged beyond 30 October?

[Maria Miller]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments, but I will pick him up on just one of them. I do not think that the press charter would have meant business as usual, because clearly it was written in the light of the Leveson report. However, he is right that there were some significant issues that we felt had not been addressed. I can give him a clear undertaking from the Dispatch Box that I have every intention of moving forward with the timetable I have outlined.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

How can the Secretary of State assure the millions of members of the British public who are not involved in the Hacked Off campaign that this will not be a slippery slope to reducing the freedom of the press, particularly with regard to the press saying things about people that nobody likes but that they must still have the right to say? Can she assure the public that this is not a slippery slope?

[Maria Miller]

The hon. Lady speaks a great deal of sense. She is absolutely right that we must ensure that it is not a slippery slope to state regulation. We believe strongly in self-regulation, and the charter simply sets out the framework within which that will be judged. It is of course incumbent on us all, as Members of Parliament, to ensure that no changes are made that might lead to the sorts of problems she outlines, which is why I believe the “no change” clause is so important, because it ensures that any changes to the process will be made only with a very significant majority in both Houses of Parliament.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

I am afraid that, like my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), I am very much with the press on this matter. When all three parties agree on something, I am automatically concerned. As a former journalist, I think that the freedom of our press, for which millions of people died, is absolutely crucial. Will the Secretary of State advise the House exactly what role politicians will have in the new charter? To be precise, will we be able to interfere with the charter and potentially affect the freedom of the press?

[Maria Miller]

Politicians will have absolutely no role whatsoever.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Is it not a fact that the road to Leveson has been littered with many bodies: the News of the World, Brookes, Coulson and, who knows, it might even be Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail next? Instead of this prevarication, why does she not accept that it is refreshing that on occasions the Opposition are right? Get on with it and let us get this Leveson inquiry done and dusted.

[Maria Miller]

I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman has noticed but we are actually working as three parties together here, so it is not about anybody being righter than anybody else. I would gently point out to him that we need to make sure we have an effective charter for the long term, and that if we had simply gone ahead with the charter as set out on 18 March, we would have effectively blocked Scotland from being involved and ignored real concerns coming from the local press. I am sure that he would not have wanted anybody to do that.

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend understand, even if she does not agree, that there is deep suspicion among many elements of the press and that that is born out of how this charter came into being: in a meeting in the Leader of the Opposition’s office in the middle of the night over pizzas with messages to-ing and fro-ing to No. 10 and with Hacked Off present but the press deliberately excluded? Will my right hon. Friend state categorically at the Dispatch Box that it is her determination to have a charter that all the press can live with and sign up to? Will she also— [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) really ought to calm down. We hear all the time about the two-thirds majority. The Clerks have made it clear that that is a parliamentary nonsense. It might well be the wish of this House of Commons that the charter cannot be changed except by a two-thirds majority, but we cannot bind a future House of Commons. It could be a simple majority in a future House.

[Maria Miller]

I understand my hon. Friend’s strength of feeling and I have to say that the optics around 18 March did not help a difficult situation. But I do not think we should let that get in the way of the importance of getting a self-regulatory process in place and ensuring that the charter that oversees that is as strong as it can be. As Leveson said in his report, we will be effective only if we take the public and the press with us. If we are going to have effective press self-regulation, that is exactly what we should do and it is exactly what I intend to do.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

We recognise the shameful abuses that rightly led to the Leveson inquiry but is the Secretary of State aware that although the proposals put forward by the press were inadequate on self-regulation, there is genuine concern among publications that were in no way involved with the abuses of the past about what is being proposed. I have considerable doubts about what is being put forward, and the concerns about the freedom of the press are by no means confined to those on the Tory Benches.

[Maria Miller]

The hon. Gentleman is right that we have to get the balance right between having a framework of self-regulation and making sure that we protect the freedom of the press. He can have my assurance that that is at the heart of all our thinking, but we cannot ignore the fact that the Press Complaints Commission approach has been discredited. I see the hon. Gentleman nodding; I hope that means that he agrees that we need to look at something to put in its place.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Will the Secretary of State make clear how flexible she is prepared to be in enabling an agreement that the press can sign up to? Without that, it would be a complete nonsense. Will she give a cast-iron guarantee that there will be no veto in this process for Hacked Off and its celebrity backers?

[Maria Miller]

I can absolutely guarantee that in view of the discussions on finalising the charter between me, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham and Lord Wallace for the Liberal Democrats.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

My hon. Friends and I believe that there should be an end to self-regulation and, instead, truly independent regulation of the press. The Secretary of State said that all three political parties are involved in drawing up the charter, but there is no one from Northern Ireland; and she has consulted the Scottish Executive but not the Northern Ireland Executive. How is she going to ensure that the views of people in Northern Ireland, where this is a live issue, are fully reflected in the charter?

[Maria Miller]

I remind the hon. Gentleman that the whole premise on which we are putting forward self-regulation of the press is that it would be independent. Indeed, one of the reasons we are not pressing ahead with the press charter is that the Privy Council committee did not feel that it gave sufficient independence. I welcome his interest as regards the involvement of Northern Ireland. He is right that currently the charter would be in place for Scotland. However, we have not had interest from Northern Ireland in becoming involved. If he would like to effect that interest, I would very much welcome it.

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

Already, in the past week, we have seen one shadow Secretary of State threatening to sue his counterpart; the powerful are a sensitive bunch. Is this regulation not far more about protecting the powerful than the public? Can my right hon. Friend reassure me that we are not going to see a slide towards self-censorship by the press in fearing litigation?

[Maria Miller]

I can understand why my hon. Friend might want to raise individual cases, but I certainly would not want to develop a piece of self-regulation based on individual cases. I assure her that we want the new system to be robust but fair and independent, and certainly not to end in the results that she talked about.

[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State truly appreciate that these repeated delays will be interpreted by the public and victims of press abuse as the Government continuing to kow-tow to powerful press barons, and that this currying of favour stands in complete contrast to the courage shown by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition in taking on the malign behaviour and bullying of the likes of the Daily Mail? Given the delays, can she give the House the specific assurance that on 30 October at the Privy Council meeting the charter will take effect immediately on its being sealed and not at some delayed date in the future?

[Maria Miller]

The hon. Gentleman should consider this a little more carefully. We had put before us a charter from the press that, rightly, had to be carefully considered. That charter had important areas of consistency with Lord Leveson’s proposals. I think the hon. Gentleman might have been one of the first to jump up if it had not been dealt with correctly, because he would want to see the right process undertaken, not least because not doing so could have led to even further delay. I can absolutely say to him that we have a clear way forward, and I am very confident that we can stick to the timetable.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

I recognise the efforts of the Secretary of State in seeking to bring about agreement between the three main parties in this House, bearing in mind that many will have shifted their positions significantly since the initial debate following Lord Justice Leveson’s report. May I suggest that a fourth party also needs to agree, and that is the press? Will the Secretary of State not be rushed into any announcement or any decision without the agreement of the press, as Lord Justice Leveson demands?

[Maria Miller]

My hon. Friend is right that if we are going to have effective self-regulation, we need to take the public and the press with us, as Leveson pointed out. If we have a robust but fair process, we have more likelihood of being able to achieve that. I am sure that Members in all parts of the House would want to have a system that people felt that they could work with rather than one that they could not work with, so he can be assured that that is the approach we are taking.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Does not self-regulation almost inevitably mean no regulation? After three quarters of a century of strict charter control of broadcasters in this country, including a duty of balance, is it not true that the press has had a free for all whereby those who are weak and powerless have no chance of challenging it, and that the result is that the public, in overwhelming numbers, trust the broadcast media and do not trust the written press?

[Maria Miller]

The hon. Gentleman has a view on this, but many different industries have very effective self-regulation, so I do not think he can simply write off self-regulation as ineffective. Evidence suggests that he is not entirely correct about that. It is important that the new process includes a very clear way of redress though arbitration. This will be a real innovation. We need to make sure that it is used correctly and in a way that we intend it to be used. That is one of the areas that I hope we can explore further on a cross-party basis, particularly so that we do not leave our local press exposed to any undue costs.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

As this charter is being cooked up by the three party leaders, it is hard to see how my right hon. Friend’s answer to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) can conceivably be correct. Is she able to give any example of the arbitrary prerogative power of the Crown being used to impose a charter on an industry that has not agreed it?

[Maria Miller]

My hon. Friend will know, of course, that what I am trying to do is make sure that we have a fair system in which people will want to take part. We have followed a good process and I think that the new system will improve demonstrably on the current one. I hope the press will find it straightforward to support it once we publish our final document on Friday.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Alongside the architecture of regulation, Lord Leveson commended consideration of proposals by the National Union of Journalists to include a conscience clause in journalists’ employment contracts. That was welcomed by the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Prime Minister on the day that Leveson was published. The last time the Secretary of State appeared before us she encouraged the companies and the NUJ to meet to consider the proposals for a conscience clause. Will she report on what progress has been made?

[Maria Miller]

I have nothing to add other than I am sure that employers will want to look at the proposal. It is important that I am focusing efforts on making sure that the charter is in place to oversee the self-regulatory body. That is my priority at the moment, but I will, obviously, pick up on the point raised by the hon. Gentleman.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

How will my right hon. Friend insist that the self-regulatory system that has already been set up by the press be morphed into the new system if the press refuse to do it?

[Maria Miller]

That is an issue for the press. The last thing I want to see is the Government becoming unnecessarily involved in the setting up of a self-regulatory system. That is very much for the press. As I said in my opening statement, I believe the press is making good progress. We have been clear in our response to Leveson and I am sure it will have taken that into account. It is for the press to deal with these matters.

[Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)]

As a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee I have long held the view that there are forces of darkness within and outwith the House that have a vested interest in keeping this process running up to as close to the next general election as possible so that they can claim that those who support legislation are in some way interfering with the free press, which is a total myth. However, I agree with the right hon. Lady on Scotland: the one thing that unites Scotland is that we do not want Alex Salmond anywhere near the press.

[Maria Miller]

The hon. Gentleman cites forces of darkness, but I am not sure how effective they are, given that we have already made provisions on damages in the Crime and Courts Act 2013 and on the no-change clause in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013. That shows a very clear intention, so perhaps the forces of darkness are not so dark after all.

[Mr Speaker]

I am sure the Secretary of State has noted the hon. Gentleman’s remarks in her little book. I do not suppose it will be published, but we are intrigued by the method she deploys. It may be imitated over a period—I know not.

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is the danger of a legal challenge to any process that the Privy Council adopts? That might delay the implementation of the Leveson principles, which, as she knows, I support strongly. What assessment has she made of the timetable for the process she is proposing? Is it robust enough to withstand any legal challenge from those who are determined to delay this much-needed change?

[Maria Miller]

I will keep my little book well and truly away from you, Mr Speaker.

I understand my hon. Friend’s point. It is important to follow robust procedures at all stages of a process such as this. I make no apology for considering fully the press charter that was put before us. As I have said, there were important areas of consistency with Leveson and it was clearly written in the light of Leveson. That must be acknowledged. I am confident that the timetable that we are following is robust. I have taken the necessary advice at every step of the way to ensure that I can be confident of that.

[Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)]

I understand from information released by the Department today that the Secretary of State met the newspaper editors on nine occasions during the three months to the end of June, but did not meet the victims or the representatives of their campaigns on a single occasion. Does she not accept that the impression has been created today that it is those who own the media who are being listened to, rather than the public, the victims or the journalists and others who work in the media? Leveson has already been severely watered down. Will she assure us that no further watering down will take place?

[Maria Miller]

I am sorry that the hon. Lady chooses those words. I do not think that her party’s Front Benchers share her feeling that the response has been watered down. My meetings are a matter of public record through the Cabinet Office in the usual way. She will know that I and my officials meet regularly with all people who have an interest in this area, as she would expect. I hope that she will welcome that.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

I am slightly disappointed that the Secretary of State, unlike most women, does not appear to be able to multi-task. The period since March does not appear to have been used to best effect and more time is still needed to tidy up this matter. Other aspects of Leveson, such as the recommendations on the ownership of the press, appear to have been disregarded. There has been ample time for the Secretary of State to provide a response on such matters.

[Maria Miller]

Obviously, the hon. Lady may have her own view on this matter. My view is that we need to have a robust process by which we can stand. That is what the Government, working with Labour Front Benchers, have been doing. I am sure that she would not advocate rushing these things. When we agreed to the cross-party charter in March, it was clear that further work had to be done. The Scottish Government have understandably taken time to consider the matter and to debate it in the Scottish Parliament. I am sure that she would not want to suggest that that was unsuitable. Like her, I want Scotland to be involved in the process.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for acknowledging the distinct cross-party initiative in Scotland and the joint work that has been done to meet some of the cross-border challenges that lie ahead. However, a lot of people in Scotland will be surprised to find that we are somehow responsible for delaying the process. Will she assure me that she will continue to work with Scottish Ministers to ensure that we get the best possible outcome for both Parliaments through the joint initiatives?

[Maria Miller]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman did not misunderstand me. I was not saying that any delay had been caused by Scotland—quite the opposite. I was saying that it was right to take time to do things properly. I welcome the involvement of Scotland in taking the proposals forward. As I have said to Northern Ireland Members, I would also welcome their interest.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

It is not just because of the Northern Ireland twilight zone that some of us have doubts about whether a three-party compact, sealed by the Privy Council, is the best way of enshrining the Leveson principles. The Secretary of State has today stressed terms such as “credible” and “workable”. If large sections of the press refuse to work with and credit this proposal, how does she envisage that the courts will end up possibly wrestling with that dichotomy, and what happens if that then reverts back to Parliament?

[Maria Miller]

I perhaps need to get back to the hon. Gentleman on the specific point regarding Northern Ireland. I think I am right in saying that publications issued in Northern Ireland are subject either to the Republic of Ireland’s regime, or to the existing Press Complaints Commission regime, but I am happy to consider the matter further. I feel that we have a strong way forward and I do not think we will end up with the sort of situation that the hon. Gentleman outlines. We have taken the time—rightly—to get this right, and I hope the new self-regulatory process that we put in place is robust and will not fall into the sorts of problems he outlines.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Further to the question by my hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) on Northern Ireland, will the Secretary of State indicate why, as this is a reserved issue, the Government did not initiate consultation and discussion with the Northern Ireland Assembly? Did they initiate consultation with the Scottish Parliament?

[Maria Miller]

My understanding is that we did ask for involvement of the Northern Ireland Assembly, but that has not been taken up at this point in time. I would be happy to get back to the hon. Gentleman with further details on that.

Speaker’s Statement

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Before we move on to the ten-minute rule Bill, I have two announcements to make to the House. The first concerns a matter of privilege. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) has written to me concerning a police information notice, addressed to him by Sussex police and dated 4 September 2013. Having considered the issue, I have decided that this is a matter to which I should allow the precedence accorded to matters of privilege. Therefore, under the rules set out in pages 273-4 of “Erskine May”, the hon. Gentleman may table a motion today for debate at the commencement of public business tomorrow, Wednesday 9 October. The hon. Gentleman’s motion will appear on tomorrow’s Order Paper, to be taken after any urgent questions and statements.

My second announcement concerns the election of a First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means in place of the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans). In accordance with Standing Order No. 2A, I am now able to inform the House of the detailed arrangements. Nominations to fill the vacancy must be received in writing in the Lower Table Office between 10 am and 5 pm on Tuesday next, 15 October. The rules concerning nomination will be set out in the announcements section of the Order Paper, and an information note for Members will be available from the Vote Office and on the intranet.

Only members of a party represented in Her Majesty’s Government may be candidates in this election. If more than one nomination is submitted, the ballot will take place between 11.30 am and 2 pm on Wednesday next, 16 October, in the Aye Lobby, with time added on for any Divisions in the House, in the same way as it is for deferred Divisions. As soon as practicable after the votes have been counted, I will announce to the House the results of the ballot.

Point of Order

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

17:29

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am terribly sorry, but I should have drawn Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I write a column in The Independent, which people might think has a bearing on my views on press regulation. I am terribly sorry that I did not do it—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”]—and I am glad to get some “hear, hears” from the Government side, which I do not normally get.

[Mr Speaker]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his characteristic courtesy. That is on the record.

We come now to the ten-minute rule motion. I call Mr Grahame M. Morris. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman is trying to hoodwink me into thinking that I should be calling the other Graeme Morrice, whose surname is spelt with a c and who does not have the middle initial M. He would expect that his attempted hoodwinking of the Speaker should fail, however, and it has failed. I call Mr Grahame M. Morris.

Freedom of Information (Private Healthcare Companies)

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

Motion for leave to bring in a Bill (Standing Order No. 23)

17:30

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to apply to private healthcare companies; and for connected purposes.

The Bill would extend the provisions of the 2000 Act to all bodies, whether public, private or voluntary, bidding for NHS contracts and ensure that freedom of information legislation is applied equally in the implementation of any public contract.

Freedom of information is one of the Labour Government’s greatest achievements, ensuring transparency and accountability in modern government and allowing the public access to information on what is being done in their name and how their money is being spent. In recent years, we have witnessed an acceleration in the number of public services being outsourced, and today roughly £1 in every £3 that the Government spend goes to independent or private sector providers. Indeed, owing to the Government’s policy of opening up public services to the private and voluntary sectors, billions of pounds of NHS contracts are now being made available to the private sector, following the implementation of the Health and Social Care Act 2012.

Unfortunately, while more and more taxpayer money is being handed to the private sector, especially in the NHS, FOI responsibilities are not following the public pound. There is a big issue here about transparency, because the public should know what is happening in their name, as was brought home to me recently in a demonstration against NHS privatisation in Manchester that I attended, along with more than 50,000 other people, but which was barely reported on by our public sector broadcaster.

Private health care companies should not be permitted to hide behind a cloak of commercial confidentiality. Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is being awarded to private sector companies under barely transparent contracts. Meanwhile, private companies are free to benefit by gaining detailed knowledge of public sector bodies through their use and submission of FOI requests. The same information is then used by the private sector to undercut or outbid the very same public sector bodies when contracts are tendered or put up for renewal.

I understand that the Information Commissioner expressed concern to the Justice Select Committee that accountability would be undermined if FOI did not apply to private providers of public services. I also understand that in opposition the Prime Minister was convinced about this matter, having previously promised to increase the range of publicly funded bodies subject to scrutiny using section 5 of the Freedom of Information Act. The coalition agreement also promised to extend the scope of the Act to provide greater transparency, but unfortunately it would appear that nothing is being done to address the democratic deficit caused by the outsourcing of public services.

The Government should be chastened by recent events. For example, the tagging scandal—involving Serco and G4S and uncovered by the Serious Fraud Office—showed that these companies had defrauded the taxpayer of more than £50 million. Perhaps we need a hard-hitting advertising campaign, with advertising hoardings on vans driven around the City of London warning off corporate fraudsters from bidding for public contracts. The danger for our NHS is that we are inviting convicted fraudsters into our health system.

HCA, which is the world’s biggest private health care company, recently won the contract to provide cancer treatment for NHS brain tumour patients, stopping patients receiving world-class treatment at London’s University College hospital. The Competition Commission has already caught HCA overcharging private patients in the United Kingdom. In the United States, HCA has had to pay fines and costs in excess of $2 billion for systematically defrauding federal health care programmes. The public are right to be concerned about these providers coming into the NHS. If that is to happen, it is essential that their operations and their contracts with the NHS should be open, transparent and subject to public scrutiny.

There is currently little we can do to ensure that private providers comply with freedom of information requests. Under the new NHS framework, clinical commissioning groups and the NHS Commissioning Board are subject to the Freedom of Information Act, but private contractors are not. From the outset, FOI regulations give private providers an unfair competitive advantage when bidding for contracts, due to unequal disclosure requirements. NHS bodies are forced to disclose any poor performance, but private providers bidding for a contract have no similar duty to disclose. They effectively start with a blank sheet. They could have spent many years treating private patients, but the public have no right to scrutinise their performance prior to their being awarded an NHS contract.

As private providers are not subject to FOI legislation, little can be done if they refuse to provide information or state that they do not have the information requested by a commissioning body. The Information Commissioner has no power to investigate a private contractor. He cannot serve information notices requiring a contractor to supply information for an investigation or take enforcement action if a contractor fails to comply with its contractual obligations.

The purpose of the Bill is to strengthen FOI legislation and to introduce vital safeguards so that the public can see how their money is being spent. I hope that Members on both sides of the House will support fair competition, a level playing field and the duty of equal disclosure throughout the bidding process for NHS services. The public have a right to know the record of public and private providers before contracts are awarded. Those safeguards can work only if the Information Commissioner has the same rights to seek information and carry out investigations, and to make all providers of public services comply with freedom of information legislation.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Grahame M. Morris, Ian Mearns, Ian Lavery, John Cryer, Paul Blomfield, Mr. Kevin Barron, Mrs Mary Glindon, Pat Glass, Barbara Keeley, Rosie Cooper, Debbie Abrahams and Valerie Vaz present the Bill.

Grahame M. Morris accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 8 November 2013, and to be printed (Bill 109).

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill (Programme) (No. 2)

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

17:39

[The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Tom Brake)]

I beg to move,

That the Order of 3 September 2013 (Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill: Programme) be varied as follows:

Proceedings on Consideration

For paragraph (6) substitute–

“(6) Proceedings on Consideration–

(a) shall be taken on the days shown in the first column of the following Table and in the order so shown, and

(b) shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the times specified in the second column of the Table.

17:40

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I rise with some sadness to urge the House to reject the programme motion that has just been moved by the Deputy Leader of the House. I do so not because programmes are often inappropriate. When filibustering takes place, as often happens on a Friday, usually led by Conservative Members who sit at the very back opposite, meaningful debate often does not take place, so one can clearly see the case for having a programme motion. It would be fair to say that programme motions can often help to ensure that all topics are covered when a Bill is in Committee. In this case, however, much of the Bill has not been scrutinised in the way that the Deputy Leader of the House tried to suggest that it had been. Given how little time is set out in the programme motion, it is unlikely that we will be able to carry out line-by-line scrutiny.

Sadly, all this continues to be a bit of blot on the record of the Leader of the House and, indeed, his Liberal Democrat colleague, because they did not see the need for proper consultation with the third sector before the Bill was brought in. I accept that there was some consultation on what might be in the lobbying provisions, but there was certainly no pre-legislative scrutiny of either of the first two parts of the Bill. A proper amount of parliamentary scrutiny could have begun to have put this at least partly right. As regards part 3, the whole House is aware that the Government do not like anyone belonging to a trade union or standing up for themselves as work, so the lack of consultation over this part is hardly surprising. It is nevertheless still very disappointing.

What we have, then, is a Bill that is being rushed through Parliament. It has attracted huge concern from across the third sector about the chilling impact it will have on the perfectly legitimate campaigning activities of charities, so detailed line-by-line consideration could have begun to make up for that lack of consultation with charities before the Bill was published.

Indeed, consideration has been further delayed today by two major statements. Of course we would all have wanted those statements to be made, but as a result of them, unless the programme motion is resisted, the House will have even less time in which to consider the legitimate concerns put to many of us about part 1, let alone parts 2 and 3. If the Bill had been debated upstairs, it would have been far less disrupted by urgent business in this Chamber and more comprehensive scrutiny might—I say “might”—have been achieved.

What have we had so far? We have had one day for Second Reading, just three days for Committee and now just two for Report. Virtually every other piece of Government legislation will get more scrutiny than this Bill. I remember charities legislation during the last Session—a small Treasury Bill to amend gift aid provisions, yet that Bill was in Committee for two whole weeks, as well as having a full day for Second Reading and Report.

Most of the lobbying industry and its stakeholders think this Bill is little more than the emperor’s new clothes for the industry. It amounts thus far to a pretence of action: when so few will be covered, the damaging lack of transparency that exists in the industry at the moment will remain even after this Bill, as drafted, goes through. It is thus difficult to see how we will have time over the next two days to do justice to the concerns that have been put to hon. Members—on the Government side as well as on our side. I therefore urge the House to reject the motion and I encourage the Government to allocate more time for debate.

17:45

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

I never thought that I would see the day when I would be on my hind legs opposing a programme motion, because I am one of the strongest advocates of programming that anyone could find. Back in the distant days when I was in the Government Whips Office, Mrs Ann Taylor—the then Chief Whip—and I, along with a number of colleagues¸ worked very hard with the then Opposition to agree on a process of effective timetabling. Effective timetabling benefits the House, benefits its Members, and, above all, benefits those on the Back Benches, although it is not always to the benefit of the Government. That was, at least, the theory about programme motions, and I supported it strongly.

The whole concept of a programme motion is that it is part of the process of the House, and part of respecting our democracy. It is not a mere ceremonial, or a nod in the right direction; it actually means that we end up with better law. It means that the House goes through the processes of Second Reading, Committee and Report before sending a Bill to the second Chamber, but does so in a comprehensive way so that we all end up with much better law.

If that process is corrupted—which is what has happened in respect of this Bill—it means that the House cannot, across the party divides, help a Government of whatever colour to make a Bill more effective. That is precisely what has happened in this instance, and it has happened because, although for a long period the progress of this policy issue was characterised by lethargy, in recent days it has been handled with hyper-speed in the House. It is not appropriate for us to discuss the reasons for that during a debate on a programme motion, but we will discuss them as we proceed through the Report stage.

It took my Committee—the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee—a long time to consider the Bill, or rather to consider a consultative document. We did our job carefully on behalf of the House before submitting our report to the Government, who took the best part of a year to respond. They responded only when they were forced to do so, because, as a result of their own timetable, they were trying to rush the progress of the Bill, which was then subjected to the hysterically fast progress that has meant that it has not been considered properly by the House. Given the time that has elapsed between the issuing of the consultative paper and now, it would have been perfectly possible for us to engage in a proper process of pre-legislative scrutiny involving my Select Committee, to give the Bill a proper Committee stage, and still to have bags of time left according to the timetable that we have now set ourselves.

That is why, for the first time in over 20 years in the House, I am on my feet saying that this is an abuse. Parliament has been disrespected; Parliament has been abused. The timetable that we are now being asked to meet constitutes the exact opposite of the lethargy that caused the Government to take over a year to reply to my Committee. One day before the House rose for the summer recess in July, we were presented with this Bill. It is not a Bill that my Committee had examined, it is not a Bill that the House had considered, it is not a Bill that was referred to the Electoral Commission, and it is not a Bill that was referred to third parties such as charities—10,500 of them. [Interruption.] The Leader of the House was probably busy chattering away at that point and not listening to them, just as he is not listening to me now.

There is a price to pay for not listening. I do not know whether the Leader of the House has learned that price, but, although he has had a couple of experiences, he does not seem to have learned it. The price of not consulting people, and of treating the House with disrespect, is that one of the very few weapons that we can deploy to protest against a programme motion comes into play.

Having appeared one day before we rose for the recess, the Bill was given its Second Reading one day after we returned. Three working days: is that a world record for this Parliament?

We are going to ask our friends and colleagues in the second Chamber to look at the way we have scrutinised the Bill under this programme motion, and they will say, “What’s wrong with these clowns? Can’t they take most of the key issues and debate them?” No, we cannot. A number of important, serious issues in the Bill will receive virtually no consideration. A number of key issues are before us today and tomorrow, but a lot of stuff will fall off the agenda. A lot of stuff has already fallen off the agenda, because Mr Speaker must choose what is debated and what is not; a lot of good stuff has already been filtered out.

We are not even going to present the dog’s breakfast of this Bill in a proper bowl for their lordships—it will not be in the silver platter that they deserve. They are going to say that we are not capable of doing our job. Is it just my Select Committee, an all-party Committee, that feels that way? Is it just that I happen to be a Select Committee Chair sitting on the Labour Benches? Is it a partisan thing? Let us look at some other people who feel that this is not the way to do business, who will be hurt by the Bill or who will be given roles under the Bill and who have not been consulted.

I hope that all Members, on both sides of the House, feel that the Electoral Commission is one of the most valuable and impartial parts of our democracy. We undermine it at our peril. It sorts out the nuts and bolts of our democracy so that we can glide across the top and have the policy and political debates that the country expects us to have. It does a great job. On one of the earlier occasions when we were considering the Bill, I mentioned that it is very difficult to get the Electoral Commission to commit one way or another on the politics of these proposals—believe me, Mr Deputy Speaker, we have tried. The Electoral Commission said, “We are going to stick to our role. We are here to be impartial. We do see some things that are not very appropriate.” However, if we read between the lines, we see that the Electoral Commission is profoundly uneasy about the role in which it is being cast by the Government. Part of the reason it is uneasy is that it was not even consulted at the right time, at an early enough moment, on measures that change its terms of reference and the job it has to do, let alone on becoming the police of freedom of speech and intervening in election meetings, at hustings or at some other point. It is being put in that role without being properly consulted.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I commend my hon. Friend for the work that he and his Committee have done on the matter. He is right to say that there is a lot of concern out there, not only in the Electoral Commission about the role that it has been given, but among small community groups, which feel that they will have to seek advice from an organisation that may not itself be clear on how to deal with the issue or be resourced sufficiently. I have never had as many requests in objection to a Bill from community groups as I have on this Bill. Those people want us to take our time and get this right. They feel that at the moment it is an utter dog’s breakfast.

[Mr Allen]

My hon. Friend is right. There are more than 10,500 charities and voluntary sector organisations. Many of them are big beasts and have been around a long time. Those organisations can look after themselves, summon a barrister, get a brief and argue their corner—eventually, having been let in to see the Government. Many of the big organisations came before the Select Committee, some distinguished members of which are here. However, as my hon. Friend says, many groups are minnows. One court case—no, not even a court case; one legal intervention could bankrupt many of them.

I will not get into the substance of the Bill; you would call me to order if I did so, Mr Deputy Speaker. However, the role of those charities and their trustees is to defend the organisation. They do that not by going to court after a dog’s breakfast has been passed by the House. They do it by listening to debates in the Chamber that have been given adequate time under a programme motion, so that my hon. Friend and others can stand up for those small organisations and say, “Parliament has given me enough time to say why this is wrong.” He is not alone; I suspect that 650 Members in the House have received representations from organisations large and small. I am not referring just to the mass campaigns and the big beasts. I am referring to people who are genuinely worried about the Bill. We must let those arguments be heard and they are not being heard.

[Dr Hywel Francis (Aberavon) (Lab)]

I share my hon. Friend’s deep concern about the timetable and on behalf of the Joint Committee on Human Rights I have written to the Government about the matter. We will only tomorrow be able to discuss our heads of report. I hope that by the end of next week we will be able to produce a report. Only then will our Committee’s view be heard.

[Mr Allen]

My hon. Friend describes my experience, too, as a fellow Select Committee Chair. We have been compressed in our consideration throughout the House. The Select Committee structure is meant to do a job for Members, so that we can discuss the issues properly under a proper programme motion. His Select Committee has been squeezed by the programme motion and by the Government’s haste at the wrong end of the process, and that means that we do not consider the Bill properly. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) and Members throughout the House who are members of my Select Committee came back when the House was in recess to take evidence. I ask the Leader of the House: is that the way the Government want to be seen to be conducting the business and affairs of the House? That is why adequate time is needed, and the programme motion should provide that.

Just this morning, ahead of this debate, I as Chair of the relevant Select Committee and the Electoral Commission convened a meeting, which was open to all Members, to discuss the Bill. One idea throughout the consideration came from the commission: if only we had had a little more time. Instead of being equivocal—perhaps this will work; perhaps it will not. Let us try it; let us have an open mind—the Electoral Commission could have been properly consulted. My Select Committee interviewed the commission, and I quote from our report:

“It is extraordinary that the Government did not consult the Board and Accounting Officer of the Electoral Commission about the change it is making to the Commission's role. We note also that the Commission has concerns about its ability to identify cases of potential non-compliance”.

That would impact on every Member of Parliament. What if we have a meeting attended by the League Against Cruel Sports and the Countryside Alliance and they start picking a fight with each other and complaining about each other on legal grounds? If we are going to ask the Electoral Commission all of a sudden to start policing that, we should at least have the good grace to consult it so that it can pick holes in the measure, we can get it right and, even with bad legislation, make it halfway workable. As this Bill leaves this House, we are still asking fundamental questions about whether it can be useful in practice or whether it is a minefield.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend recall that one of the most surprising bits of information we have heard as a Committee is that under the previous Government, 75 Bills went through all the stages in the House, including Royal Assent, and were never enforced. Is it his view that this Bill is so awful and impractical that even if it goes go through all its stages it will be unenforceable?

[Mr Allen]

I will not answer my hon. Friend’s question because I would incur your wrath, Mr Deputy Speaker. However, were we able to debate under a proper programme motion, my hon. Friend could make those important points at some length.

Leaving aside the Electoral Commission, the bodies that will be hurt most by any legislation of this sort were also not consulted. It takes a truly heroic effort in this place to get 10,000-odd charities up in arms. Members have been contacted by many such organisations over the past weeks and months, and I am sure that even today they will have received lengthy protests from key organisations such as the Royal British Legion and Oxfam who are saying, “We’ve not had our say. We feel we’re being railroaded.” It is not the role of Parliament to push people and push legislation through without a proper case being made by the Government.

Part 2 is the most sensitive part of the Bill, and if this programme motion is passed we may come to it tomorrow, but most of the bodies and people who will be most affected by it feel that the whole of part 2 should be withdrawn. If there had been a Cabinet reshuffle at the higher levels perhaps an incoming Leader of the House might have said, “I’m blowed if I’m going to be hung with this for the next two months,” and might have scrapped it. We are going to soldier on and try to make the best of it, however, but we can only make the best of it if we have the time to scrutinise properly some of the Bill’s key issues.

People outside this House do not want us to play games. This is the first time in my political life that I have asked colleagues not to support a programme motion. I am generally a great advocate of programme motions, but I oppose this programme motion because of what charity after charity, and voluntary sector organisation after voluntary sector organisation, and third sector organisation after third sector organisation, are saying. Civil Society says in its briefing about the programming:

“There has been a lack of pre-legislative scrutiny and consultation with organisations that might be affected by the change which is in stark opposition to the supposed purpose of the Bill which is to increase transparency and oversight”,

not reduce it.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I have been very lenient, but we are in danger of repeating arguments by bringing different organisations into the discussion. I understand the frustration that the Chair of the Select Committee feels, but he will understand that our debate is purely about the timetabling and nothing else; it is not about the detail of what may or may not come.

[Mr Allen]

I strongly support your view, Mr Deputy Speaker, so I will not repeat anything, and will instead move on to the very long list of brand new points that I can put before the House.

The National Council for Voluntary Organisations makes a completely new point about the programming:

“We also have concerns about the lack of pre-legislative scrutiny and the lack of consultation with organisations that might be affected by the changes in order to ensure they are clear and workable. Government is committed”

—apparently—

“to the national Compact which states that ‘where it is appropriate, and enables meaningful engagement, conduct 12-week formal written consultations, with clear explanations and rationale for any shorter time-frames’”.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I know I am quite mature in years, but my hearing is still fairly acute and I think we are hearing about the programme of the Government. About 15 minutes have passed since we last heard about the programming of this Bill.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

I shall repeat what I just said to Mr Allen: we need to get to the point. This debate is about the programme motion. I have allowed a little leeway, and he has used that leeway. I think he is now in danger of taking advantage of the Chamber, and I am sure he is about to finish.

[Mr Allen]

Since, sadly, I am accusing the Government of taking advantage of this Chamber, it is incumbent upon me not to do so, but I am not talking about the Government’s programme; I am instead talking about the programme motion, by which I mean the timetabling.

This timetable is an insult to those who work day and night in charities; it is an insult to Members of this House who are receiving representations about what is a very important matter but are unable to voice them in this Chamber; and—above all, perhaps—it is an insult to our legislative colleagues in the second Chamber who expect us to send them a Bill in halfway-decent repair.

Speaking for my Select Committee, which has members from parties on both sides of the House, we have worked incredibly hard to try to fulfil our role for this House and for Parliament. Unless we are allowed to debate these issues properly and fully, I will ask my colleagues to vote against the programme motion.

Question put.

The House proceeded to a Division.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I ask the Serjeant at Arms to investigate the delay in the Aye Lobby.

18:05

Division 91

Ayes: 317

---

Conservative: 263
Liberal Democrat: 52
Independent: 1

Noes: 249

---

Labour: 228
Democratic Unionist Party: 7
Scottish National Party: 5
Plaid Cymru: 3
Conservative: 2
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 2
Independent: 1
Alliance: 1
Green Party: 1

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[1st Allocated Day]

[Relevant documents: The Seventh Report from the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, on the Government’s Lobbying Bill, HC 601, and the First Report from the Committee on Standards, on the Government’s Lobbying Bill, HC 638.]

Consideration of Bill, as amended in the Committee

18:25

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I should say at the outset that I do not intend to move new clause 1, although I want to take the opportunity to raise matters that concern it and to support Government amendments 28 and 29. Similarly, I do not intend to press amendment 1 to a vote.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. May I advise the hon. Gentleman that he needs to move his new clause so that we can debate the amendments? When he replies to the debate, he can ask the leave of the House to withdraw it.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am rather appalled, Madam Deputy Speaker, that I have had to be pulled up on that procedural matter in my 21st year in this House.

New Clause 1

Bill of rights

‘Nothing in this Act shall be construed by any court in the United Kingdom as affecting Article IX of the Bill of Rights 1689.’. —(Mr Jenkin.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Mr Jenkin]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Government amendment 28.

Amendment 1, in schedule 1, page 51, line 6, leave out paragraphs 1 and 2.

Government amendment 29.

Amendment 78, page 51, line 15, leave out sub-paragraph (2).

[Mr Jenkin]

I want to use this opportunity to draw the attention of the House to the report by the House of Lords and House of Commons Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, which was produced only a month or two ago. I believe that it sets down the terms on which we should consider parliamentary privilege, its importance and its relevance. In particular, chapter 2, on general principles, draws attention to privilege’s continuing relevance and value and notes that parliamentary

“proceedings must be immune from interference by the executive, the courts or anyone else who may wish to impede or influence those proceedings in pursuit of their own ends.”

The principle of parliamentary privilege rests on the concept of exclusive cognisance. That is referred to at the beginning of schedule 1, which quotes an extract from the 1689 Bill of Rights and refers to any matter that

“otherwise affects the scope of the exclusive cognisance of Parliament.”

The term “cognisance” might seem rather archaic, but it encapsulates what privilege is about. That is, as our report states:

“Parliament enjoys sole jurisdiction—normally described by the archaic term ‘exclusive cognisance’—over all matters subject to parliamentary privilege.”

That concept underpins parliamentary privilege. As we explain:

“Thus Article 9 of the Bill of Rights, the most important statutory expression of parliamentary privilege, states that ‘the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament’.”

We go on to explain that the most important part of that is that

“both Members and non-Members… are not legally liable for things said or done in the course”

of our parliamentary proceedings,

“nor are those outside who are adversely affected by things said or done in Parliament able to seek redress through the courts.”

17:30

That causes a lot of concern in some people’s minds because it is, in fact, an exception to the rule of law, which seems to be a fundamental principle of our democracy. But as one of our witnesses, Adam Tucker, a lecturer in law, told us:

“The rule of law is not, however, an absolute principle. Its claims must be balanced against the competing claims of other principles. One of those competing principles is the separation of powers”.

It is even accepted by the European Court of Human Rights that the immunity of parliamentary proceedings is an important fundamental constitutional principle. Its only limitation is a doctrine that has been developed by the courts, known as the doctrine of necessity. That is the test that the courts apply. If Parliament claims privilege, the courts will apply the doctrine—is it necessary to allow Parliament this protection in order that it should be able to carry on its proceedings?

We are engaged in the possibility, in this Bill, of legislating on parliamentary privilege, and this is the most important part of our report in respect of this part of the Bill. As we learned in the Chaytor case, the extent of parliamentary privilege is ultimately a matter for the court, but the courts, as we say in our report, can only interpret and apply the law; Parliament alone can make the law. And as the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Lord Judge, in oral evidence, said to us,

“ultimately it is Parliament that is sovereign”.

That was demonstrated in the Stockdale v. Hansard case, when Hansard was sued for reporting Parliament and we had to pass the Parliamentary Papers Act 1840, which afforded the immunity of Parliament to the proceedings as reported in Hansard so that is on a statutory basis.

It is always a choice for Parliament whether to legislate in order to express what we hold should be immune from the courts, but there are significant disadvantages in legislating. First, parliamentary privilege has to evolve as Parliament evolves and as the law evolves. If we were to try and define what parliamentary privilege is in detail—well, all the advice that our Committee had was not to try and do so. Indeed, were we to try and do so in statute, we would be tempting the courts into limiting parliamentary privilege, perhaps far further than we intended.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

It seems to me that the kernel of the problem is that this is a Bill to regulate lobbying. An important part of an MP’s job is to lobby for his or her constituency and constituents, and we are paid salaries, so in that sense we are paid lobbyists; but surely that part of our role, like every other part of the role, must be immune from the interventions of the court and must not be in any way modified by the legislation before us.

[Mr Jenkin]

I hear what my right hon. Friend says, but it is not generally asserted that, for example, correspondence between him representing his constituents and a Minister is privileged, because it would be difficult to prove that that constituted proceedings in Parliament. I do not think, therefore, that we can seek to extend parliamentary privilege in the Bill. What we do as our job to represent our constituents is clearly not intended to be included in the regulation of lobbying. It would be intolerable if Members of Parliament had to register as lobbyists in order to represent their constituents, or indeed represent any other interests. I will return to that point later, if my right hon. Friend will forgive me.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman will recall that in the previous Parliament there was concern about the way that certain Members were behaving, and two were summoned to the Committee. One was receiving £75,000 to represent a company; the other was receiving £105,000. They received those sums entirely to lobby on behalf of a commercial organisation. One of their excuses was, “The organisation has employees in my constituency.” But surely it is the core job of an MP to lobby for his constituents, and if MPs are offered money to do it, that should be seen for what it is, which is a bung, an inducement or a bribe.

[Mr Jenkin]

I recognise the sentiment the hon. Gentleman expresses, and I share his outrage at any abuse that he suggests took place, but we have our own rules in this House. We adjudicate on these matters, and in fact we apply very harsh terms to people we believe to be guilty of paid advocacy. For many decades, since 1945 or even earlier, paid advocacy has been utterly abhorrent to this House. No longer do we have MPs sitting in the railway interest, as they did during the 19th century. The important distinction here is that we regulate that from within this House, as proceedings of this House. We do not need or require the courts to interfere in those matters. I do not think we are providing any leniency to Members that the courts would not also afford. Indeed, it might be far harder to obtain a prosecution in court for a matter such as that than to create in this House the right atmosphere of discipline and self-discipline that we expect from all hon. Members.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

I am following my hon. Friend’s argument closely. Rather than my standing here in the railway interest, I stand in the anti-railway interest in respect of HS2, hoping that the Government will see sense and abandon the project. Will he confirm that there should be nothing in the Bill that would restrict my standing up on behalf of my constituents against HS2, or restrict my constituents in lobbying this place against that project?

[Mr Jenkin]

I wholly agree with my right hon. Friend. I just want to emphasise that the amendments I am speaking to deal with the narrower question of privilege, although I will return to the risk, which I think the Minister must address, of the wider drawing in of Members’ activities into the scope of the Bill.

[Mr Redwood]

Further to that exchange, does my hon. Friend not see my case, which is that if the Bill is in danger of restricting our privilege to write letters on behalf of our constituents as properly paid advocates for our constituents, we need to stop that happening? Otherwise, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) will not be able to campaign against something in her constituency by writing to a Minister without registering under the Bill.

[Mr Jenkin]

I will return to that matter, but when my right hon. Friend employs the word “privilege” in that context, he is not employing it in terms of parliamentary privilege. It is not a parliamentary privilege that protects our ability to write to Ministers on behalf of our constituents. That is not covered by parliamentary privilege.

With the indulgence of the House, I wonder whether I might quote the Lord Chief Justice when he made it clear that we should, if possible, avoid legislating on matters regarding privilege. He said:

“Parliament has to decide whether it has sufficient privilege to be able to conduct its business in the way that Parliament wishes. If you have reservations about that, you have to produce a system that enables you to have the conditions under which you can perform your responsibilities properly. If you had no real reservations about it, I would not go down the legislative route that defined, semi-defined, subdivided, allowed for, or exercised this and that, because you would end up in interminable discussions, and, in court, interminable arguments, about what that really meant. Unless you are dissatisfied with the way in which your privileges operate, I would leave this well alone.”

By that, I think he means that the courts are predisposed to defer to proceedings in Parliament, whatever statutes may say.

The 1689 Bill of Rights is one of those special statutes in our legal system that is implicitly present in every statute. We do not need to repeat what is in the Bill of Rights 1689 in every statute in order to immunise it for the purpose of parliamentary privilege. The one exception that we have made is in respect of the IPSA legislation—the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009—in which we inserted the words that I am proposing in my new clause:

“Nothing in this Act shall be construed by any court in the United Kingdom as affecting Article IX of the Bill of Rights 1689.”

I submit that the House of Lords put that clause in the Parliamentary Standards Bill in rather extreme circumstances. When that Bill arrived in this House, it seemed that it was going to go into areas that were previously considered part of the exclusive cognisance of this House. It was going to refer to disciplining Members for what we did in this House, and that was going to draw parliamentary proceedings into the consideration of the courts in a way that was unprecedented. All that was eventually taken out by the House of Lords. In those exceptional circumstances, when the courts were under enormous public pressure to take more draconian action following the expenses fiasco, it was reasonable for Parliament to put that clause into that Bill, but generally we should try to avoid putting any reference to the Bill of Rights 1689 into legislation.

My amendment 1 suggested that we delete paragraph 1 of schedule 1. I note that the Government have now proposed that we remove both paragraph 1 and paragraph 2 of schedule 1. Paragraph 1 removes language which is lifted from the Bill of Rights 1689, without referring to the 1689 Act. Because there is no reference to it, paragraph 1 does not place the wording in the special category in which the Act exists.

[Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is reaching the nub of the issue. With something as delicate as article IX of the Bill of Rights, there is nothing worse than trying to produce another version of what it is supposed to mean, which is bound to cause confusion and uncertainty and raise the question of interpretation, making it more likely to be adjudicated by the courts, whereas the Lord Chief Justice said that that should be left well alone.

[Mr Jenkin]

My hon. Friend has, typically, put more pithily than I could a complex legal argument. By drawing the courts into adjudicating on these words, we would be devaluing the 1689 Bill of Rights. That would be irresponsible. If the courts start arguing about all this, we will have to legislate on the matter and risk losing our historic immunity.

Our conclusions, clearly stated in the report, were:

“The extent of Parliament’s exclusive cognisance changes over time, as the work of Parliament evolves”

and it would be impractical

“to draw up an exhaustive list”.

We continued:

“Where there is uncertainty in a case brought before the courts, the extent of Parliament’s exclusive cognisance will be determined by the courts.”

We stated that

“if Parliament were to consider that its privileges had been reduced to the extent that it could no longer effectively perform its core work, it could in the last resort change the law”,

but finally that

“legislation should only be used when absolutely necessary, to resolve uncertainty or in the unlikely event of Parliament’s exclusive cognisance being materially diminished by the courts.”

Neither of those last two conditions exists. There is no uncertainty.

We made further recommendations about how our 1689 privileges could be clarified. It is fashionable to believe that over the years parliamentary privilege has been eroded by the courts. That is a two-way street. In certain circumstances, Parliament might exercise privilege in a manner that has recently been ruled to be subject to court proceedings. It would depend on the circumstances, and we need to hold out the prospect that in extremis we would exercise privilege in a way that the courts might not expect us to do, given the way that privilege has been exercised in the past.

We no longer send out a posse of soldiers to arrest people on behalf of Parliament, and I do not suppose we will return to that in these democratic days, but who knows what will happen in the future? Parliament should reserve its right to assert its privilege in order to be able to conduct its proceedings immune from the courts, immune from the Executive, under any circumstances.

18:45

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

My hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) tabled amendment 1, which is exactly the same as amendments 28 and 29 tabled by the Government. Is my hon. Friend saying that he no longer thinks amendment 1 and therefore amendments 28 and 29 are appropriate and that new clause 1 should be the preferred way forward?

[Mr Jenkin]

I have moved new clause 1, but I shall wait to hear what the Minister says in response to the debate. I suspect that I will be greatly reassured by what he says in respect of parliamentary privilege, and that by removing any reference to the Bill of Rights or any wording thereof, the two Government amendments put this Bill back in the normal category of all Bills, that privilege applies and that the unstated presence of the 1689 Bill of Rights looms over this Bill as it does over any Act and our privileges are therefore secure, there is no ambiguity about that and it is accepted by the courts.

Indeed, I do not expect that the courts wish to be drawn into adjudicating on detailed matters of privilege. It remains uncomfortable and untidy that hon. Members might try to avail themselves of parliamentary privilege when they are not entitled to it and we end up with embarrassing court actions, but that is not an excuse for legislation in this area. The courts have demonstrated, as we saw in the Chaytor case, that they are capable of disposing of those cases in a manner that we would find perfectly acceptable.

Echoing the comments of my right hon. Friends the Members for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) and for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), I still have concerns about the implications of the Bill. These measures were drawn up, presumably, to protect Members of Parliament. Paragraph 2 of schedule 1 states:

“A Member of Parliament who makes communications within section 2(3) on behalf of a person or persons resident in his or her constituency does not, by reason of those communications, carry on the business of consultant lobbying.”

How have we written a Bill that could possibly construe Members of Parliament going about their ordinary course of business as carrying out consultant lobbying? Yes, we are paid by Parliament and therefore we are paid, and yes, we are paid, in part, to represent our constituents, but is it assumed that any court might by accident include us in the definition of lobbying and therefore require us to register as lobbyists in order to represent our constituents?

I am pleased that that is being taken out because it was absurd to confine the exemption merely to representing residents in our constituencies, as defined by section 4 of the Representation of the People Act 1983. If I were representing a 15-year-old, I would be caught by the Act. It was an absurd piece of drafting. Why was it necessary to put it into the Bill? I hope the Minister will be able to give us an assurance that the Government are taking it out of the Bill now. That is the right thing to do.

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman has made an extremely interesting speech, which thus far has touched on issues surrounding Members of this House. Has he given any thought to the possible implications of the Bill as originally drafted, and as it will be without the offending paragraphs if the Government carry the House, for Members of the other place?

[Mr Jenkin]

I note the earlier debate on the guillotine. All I can say is thank God for the other place. The hon. Gentleman raises a point that Members there may want to address, though if the Minister can give us the assurance that we need that he has complete confidence and has had advice that no court could possibly construe a Member of Parliament as a lobbyist, I imagine that would also apply to a Member of the other place. But the hon. Gentleman raises a perfectly valid point.

The point, of course, is that we are paid by Parliament to serve the national interest, and to exercise our independent judgment on behalf of that interest, to represent our constituents and to play our part in proceedings as members of political parties, because without parties democracy would not function. Will the Leader of the House give an assurance that all the normal dealings of a Member of Parliament, whether or not he or she is paid or sponsored by outside interests in the usual legitimate way, will not fall within the scope of the Bill and that we will not be required to register as lobbyists? It is important that he gives that assurance so that the courts are clear that that was the intention of the Act.

[Mr Thomas]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), who made an extremely interesting speech to which I listened carefully. Like him, I am encouraged by the Government’s decision to table the amendments deleting the two offending paragraphs to schedule 1. We tabled amendment 78 as a probing amendment, but I do not intend to move it if the Leader of the House is suitably convincing when he comments on Government amendments 28 and 29. Nevertheless, there is a series of questions that merit asking about how we got to this point and whether the amendments will resolve all the concerns.

I will deal first with some of the context of these discussions. Until the Government tabled their amendments, it appeared that they were determined to write into legislation a set of paragraphs that would have meant more Members of Parliament being affected by the Bill than actual lobbyists being registered under it. Lynton Crosby and all those in-house energy company lobbyists to whom the Government listen will not have to register because the Bill is still so badly drafted, but Members of Parliament raising concerns, perhaps on behalf of people under the age of 18 or asylum seekers fleeing torture who are resident in their constituencies, might have had to register.

[Mr Redwood]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is very important that a shadow spokesman should be able to represent any interest group, company or activity in the country as they see fit and still receive their parliamentary salary without falling foul of the lobbying rules?

[Mr Thomas]

The right hon. Gentleman and I do not agree on much, but we agree on that extremely valuable point.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for taking a second intervention so quickly. Will he add to his list the peculiar situation we have in Northern Ireland, where there are five absentee Sinn Fein Members? MPs who do take their seats receive communications from those five constituencies asking us to make representations to various Ministers. I would hate to be labelled a consultant lobbyist simply for acting properly on behalf of constituents who are not represented in this House by a sitting MP.

[Mr Thomas]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point and underlines the problems there would have been had the Government not listened to the concerns of Members on both sides of the House and tabled their amendments.

[Mr Jenkin]

The hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) has made an extremely valuable point. It shows how narrow a view some of the people who draft this legislation have of what Members of Parliament actually do. They think that we are simply a post box for our constituents. They do not understand that we are meant to exercise our judgment and represent interests from outside our constituencies as well as views and opinions, and indeed the national interest. They have no conception of that, which I am afraid is reflected in the Bill’s original drafting.

[Mr Thomas]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I want to explain how those two paragraphs arrived in the Bill.

[Paul Flynn]

May I raise with my hon. Friend a question that he himself has raised? There is a difference between this House and the other House. There was a recent investigation into the conduct of a Member of the House of Lords who was behaving in a way that would be condemned in this place as reprehensible, but the Lords have not come to a final conclusion. It relates to a Lord who was campaigning and lobbying on behalf of the Cayman Islands. The excuse given was that there is a difference between the two Houses because Members of the House of Lords are not paid and so are entitled to go around making money by hiring themselves out to the highest bidder. Surely that is a matter of public scandal that must be addressed.

[Mr Thomas]

If my hon. Friend, who is an expert on these questions, will bear with me, I will come later to some of the issues relating to the House of Lords and the extent to which the Bill affects the performance of its Members.

I accept that it was probably not the intention of the Leader of the House that Members of Parliament should be affected in the way that I and other Members who have intervened have described and that that was a result of the Bill being so badly rushed. Had Members on both sides of the House not raised concerns, these sensible amendments would not have been put forward by the Government.

As I indicated, I want to ask a couple of questions about the impact of the Government’s amendments and whether any lessons have been learnt from the process by which the offending paragraphs ended up in the Bill. As several Members made clear on Second Reading, and as the standards committee spelled out, there was a series of concerns about the inclusion of paragraphs 1 and 2 to schedule 1 and their impact on parliamentary privilege. The Committee’s helpful report noted the evidence that had been received by the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege in March this year. The evidence from Lord Judge underlined the risk of including specific exemptions for MPs in this, or indeed any, Bill. It also underlined the concern that future legislation relating to Members without such an exemption might inadvertently affect parliamentary privilege.

Did the Leader of the House consider that report from the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, and if not, why not? Did he take any advice on the inclusion of those paragraphs before signing them off and presenting the Bill to Parliament? Does he now accept that pre-legislative scrutiny, and perhaps a further period of public consultation with the industry and its stakeholders, might have prevented such a considerable error?

A further concern the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege highlighted relates to the inclusion of a definition of who is resident in an MP’s constituency using the 1983 Act’s description of who can and cannot vote.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

At least eight or nine major charities are headquartered in my constituency. Does he believe that I would be prevented from representing their interests because they, as corporate bodies, are not resident? How does he see that affecting my ability to represent those charitable interests?

[Mr Thomas]

I think that I did the hon. Gentleman an enormous service back in the 2005 general election, but I am happy to try to be of service to him now. He has rightly raised a concern about whether he would have been able to do the job he wants to do on behalf of those charities had the Government not finally brought forward their amendments.

19:00

[Mrs Gillan]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who has been very generous in giving way. I have taken a great interest in autism and introduced a private member’s Bill that ultimately became an Act. I worked with the National Autism Society, which provided me with back-up, information and material for distribution among colleagues. I worry that the Bill would inhibit any MP in acting that way. I was acting not on behalf of a constituent but on behalf of the cause, and will continue to do so. I want to make sure that nothing stands in the way of that work of an MP.

[Mr Thomas]

I commend the hon. Lady for her work with the National Autism Society, not least because it does an excellent job but also because a former member of my staff works for it. Whether her work with the National Autism Society would have been called into question by the Bill is an extremely pertinent point. It is a worry that Ministers rushed out the Bill, and it appears—this is why I have asked the question of the Leader of the House—that not very much advice was taken from the House authorities before the Bill was published. As a result, considerable concerns have been raised by Members on both sides of the House, detracting inevitably from the House’s ability to look at other parts of the Bill.

Will the Leader of the House set out with whom he, his ministerial colleagues or others involved in drafting the Bill consulted before inserting the offending paragraphs? I ask because it has not always been easy to track which Minister and which Department was leading on this Bill and it would be useful to know whether the Leader of the House has considered whether a repeat of the error might be avoided in the future. I emphasise gently to the Leader of the House that the mistake might have been avoided had there been pre-legislative scrutiny, a further period of public consultation and a proper attempt to involve the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in particular.

I turn now to a question that I raised in an intervention on the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex: the impact of the Bill on the other place. As the Bill is currently drafted, a Member of Parliament’s pay could also be construed—a point the right hon. Member for Wokingham made—as payment for third-party consultant lobbying. In the other place, peers are given an allowance and are not paid a salary. There is an expectation that those in the other place can earn a living beyond their work there. The House of Lords code of conduct is currently being reviewed by a sub-committee of the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege. It would be helpful to get a specific assurance from the Leader of the House, or his colleague the Deputy Leader, on the extent to which, if at all, the Bill as drafted, and as it would be if the Government amendments were carried, would affect the other place. These are clearly questions that members in the other place will want to explore, quite rightly. But we also have a responsibility to think through some of the issues around the other place. It would be helpful to hear from the Leader of the House on the extent to which he has considered this question.

[Mr Cash]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

The Leader of the House.

[The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr Andrew Lansley)]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

May I say to the Leader of the House that I did not realise that Mr Cash wished to come in? I call Mr Cash.

[Mr Cash]

I am sorry for inhibiting my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House for a short moment.

I just want to endorse what my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) said and draw attention to the real reasons why this matter is so important. I have already made the point that the proposal would simply create confusion and the extreme likelihood that there would be interpretations by the courts as a result of a difference of language between what is contained in schedule 1 and the wording of article 9 of the Bill of Rights. It is best left alone; that was the essence of what the Lord Chief Justice said.

As someone who served on the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege with my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex, I want to make something absolutely clear. Curiously enough, the word privilege is almost a misnomer. It is not a privilege; it is a necessity. I would say that of any Member of this House. We cannot have freedom of speech to protect our constituents without having the right to be able to say whatever needs to be said in this House to protect them. That is whether in relation to HS2, on which I share the views of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan)—I am totally against it—or anything else. The absolute necessity for maintaining the right of an MP to speak within the framework of the rules of the House must not be interfered with by any court or any outside agency. We have to have that right as that is the essence of our democracy.

What we are really discussing here, apart from the very important question—I concede that it is important—of not getting into a conflict with the courts or having differences of emphasis or wording that could give rise to interpretations, is that it is absolutely essential to remember that these issues are for the benefit of our constituents and the national interest.

In 1999 the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege —our predecessor committee—said:

“Parliament makes the law and raises taxes. It is also the place where ministers are called to account by representatives of the whole nation for their decisions and their expenditure of public money. Grievances great and small can be aired regardless of the power or wealth of those criticised.

In order to carry out these public duties”—

I repeat the word “public”—

“without fear or favour, parliament and its members and officers need certain rights and immunities. Parliament needs the right to regulate its own affairs free from intervention by the government or the courts. Members need to be able to speak freely, uninhibited by possible defamation claims.”

The Irish Government argued recently at the European Court of Human Rights that

“parliamentary immunity has developed throughout the world not as a constraint upon the rights of the citizen but as a fundamental liberty.”

I could enlarge on this but I do not need to do so.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way at this point. He says “around the world”. It is often thought that parliamentary privilege is unique to our rather odd partly written constitution, where the fundamental principles are accepted and not written down. That is not the case. Every parliamentary democracy in the world grants its legislative authority some kind of immunity in order to ensure that it can carry on its function of holding the Executive to account, and legislating and discussing with impunity. It is not unique to us; it exists in America, Australia and elsewhere. They all wrestle with this problem of how to make it work.

[Mr Cash]

That is the very point I am seeking to make. I would also point out that a number of other countries have got themselves into serious turmoil and trouble where the right of the people to speak freely is inessential and incidental to the manner in which their constitution is construed. In many countries, whether dictatorships or quasi-democracies, the inhibitions on the freedom of their members of parliament to speak as they must on behalf of the national interest or on behalf of their constituents is constrained by a lot of activities which, in effect, put them in fear. It is precisely because this House as a whole ensures, through its own regulation of the behaviour of Members, that that freedom is maintained, that we can guarantee that we can serve our constituents in the national interest.

That is all I need to say, Mr Deputy Speaker.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I need to say something, just to help you, because obviously I know that you want to discuss the new clause and do not want to drift into the wider arena. I am sure you will have appreciated me trying to help you with that.

[Mr Cash]

Absolutely, Mr Deputy Speaker, and there is no wider arena than your remit. Having said that, this is not just about a simple, narrow point; it is about a broader issue that interacts with it. As far as I am concerned, that is all I need to say.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

That is excellent news.

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

Tagged on to this debate is a report by the Committee on Standards and Privileges, which I chair, that we published on the day of the Bill’s Second Reading. It was all a bit of a hurry because of the Government’s haste to get these provisions into Parliament. On 18 July I wrote to the Leader of the House with some major concerns that we had about the Bill’s implications for Members of Parliament and the consequential implications for the codes of conduct—our own rules in relation to Members’ activities.

The House of Commons has long been concerned about lobbying. As early as 1695, the House resolved:

“The Offer of any Money, or other Advantage, to any Member of Parliament, for the promoting of any Matter whatsoever, depending, or to be transacted, in Parliament, is a high Crime and Misdemeanour, and tends to the Subversion of the Constitution.”

Successive resolutions have restricted what Members are permitted to do. The current code of conduct states:

“No Member shall act as a paid advocate in any proceedings of the House.”

Indeed, the “Guide to the Rules relating to the Code of Conduct of Members” makes it clear that prohibition on advocacy is not limited to proceedings in the House or approaches to Ministers but extends to approaches to colleagues and to any servants of the Crown. Consultant lobbying is usually understood to consist of the acceptance of money in direct return for lobbying activity. Under the code of conduct as currently written, this would almost certainly be a breach of the advocacy rule. We noted that the requirements for the registration of Members’ financial interests are far more detailed than the Bill’s requirements for entries in the register of consultant lobbyists. There was grave concern that had it remained as first published, there would have been major conflict between Members of this House and organisations outside.

We recognised that although Members are permitted to have outside interests, a Member who carried out consultant lobbying would be breaking the current rules of conduct of the House. None the less, we also recognised that that could change if the House changed its rules to permit such activity, though we considered that to be extremely unlikely. If that were the case, Members would then not be immune from the general, nor should they be. If the advocacy rule were ever rescinded, a Member who acted as a consultant lobbyist should be subject to the same rules as any other such lobbyist.

We had to draw up the report very quickly because of the timetable that we have had for the Bill. We brought up two major concerns in our conclusion. First, we said:

“In our view, the difficulties about the way in which the legislation applies to Members of Parliament would be swept away if paragraph 2 of Schedule 1 was removed.”

The Government’s amendment 29 does that, I am pleased to say. As has been clearly pointed out in the debate, under the paragraph I would be potentially restricted to lobbying the Secretary of State or a senior civil servant only on the basis of a constituent having contacted me about an issue. That would be nonsensical. It would mean that to be able to do the work that I have been doing on public health for many years in this Chamber, I would first have to get a constituent to write to me about it. It could also affect my ability to go to a recognised charity that is concerned about public health issues and work with it in the hope of getting more effective legislation. We all do that, as the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) said.

19:15

I was deeply concerned, and remain so, about the registrar’s powers to decide on the powers of consultant lobbyists. Numerous people pointed out to us in written evidence that, in effect, there was no consultation between the registrar and Parliament about the rules that could be brought in and about lobbying in relation to constituents. We saw a great danger that, as a consequence, there could be conflict not just with the registrar but with the law, which would potentially become involved and get mixed up in our rules.

Secondly, we said:

“We consider it necessary to make clear that Members’ ordinary work is not caught by the Bill.”

In our correspondence during the few weeks up until 3 September, the Leader of the House clarified that that was to be the case. We also said that the Bill should state that

“reference to payment does not include a reference to the salary”

of a Member of Parliament. To the Government’s credit, that was taken out in Committee and during the early proceedings on the Bill. It was fairly well clarified that neither the registrar nor anybody else could say that someone’s salary for being a Member of this House could be construed as being a payment for lobbying.

On those two issues, I am quite happy with the action that the Government have taken, as is, I am sure, the rest of the Committee. However, this is hasty legislation that has been thrown into the public domain. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), I came back a day early and gave evidence to his Committee on this matter, although we were all brought back anyway on wider issues. These things need to be better thought out.

As an individual Member,I have further concerns that my Committee did not much look at, such as the powers of the registrar, which could mean that we end up with conflict. I am worried about the effect on charities, be they locally or nationally based. Charities play a major role in lobbying us as Back Benchers, as opposed to Front Benchers, about what should or should not be happening in legislation. If we are not able to be lobbied by charities and others, we will just become creatures of the Executive, who will be telling us what should and should not be happening. That would be unhelpful.

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

I thank the Government and the Leader of the House and his team for paying attention to the report that my right hon. Friend put together. That shows that it can be done. We improve legislation the more we talk and the more we listen. This is a very good example of that, and I hope that there will be many more examples to come.

[Mr Barron]

On the two issues that we were concerned about, the Government have seen sense. This hasty piece of legislation has been changed so that we, as Members of Parliament, are not prevented from representing our constituents on wider issues. The day this Chamber can listen only to advice coming from the Executive, we may as well be in Stalinist Russia, and that is not something that I would feel comfortable with.

[Mr Redwood]

A couple of Opposition Members have raised the issue of paid advocacy and I want to reassure anyone following our debate that no one in this Chamber is saying that MPs should be allowed to receive top-up money from outside this House and then advocate the cause of those paying them. That is clearly wrong. It is against the rules and nothing in the Bill would facilitate it. I think we all agree on that, so that argument is a red herring.

The issue we are debating is the crucial one of the legitimate role of an MP and whether it can continue untrammelled by a Bill that could inadvertently capture legitimate things that an MP does. If the Leader of the House is going to guide us to reject the new clause, I want reassurance that the lobbying element of an MP’s job will be completely untouched by the way in which he wants the Bill to end up. In moving the new clause, my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) made it clear that he is trying to resolve the issue of the legitimate work of an MP.

A very important part of an MP’s job is to be the chief lobbyist for their constituency but, as colleagues have said, we may also wish to be a lobbyist for another interest group that is not based in our constituency. It may be a very important part of a shadow Minister’s job to represent an industry, charity or group of underprivileged people who are not in their constituency, in order to shape national policy. Individual Members may wish to pursue similar themes, even if they are not prominent in their constituencies. It enriches our debates and makes for a fairer society if anyone from outside this House can find MPs who support their cause and who can be their advocates. We are lobbyists for all sorts of groups and interests throughout the country, whether they are in our constituencies or not. It is very important that a court or external body does not assume that, because we are paid a salary and because we lobby Ministers on behalf of the interests of people and companies throughout the country, we are subject to the rules under discussion.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) that we are not seeking special privilege. We are saying that this Bill is designed to stop abuse of the lobbying system and I want a reassurance from the Leader of the House that it has not been worded in a way that inadvertently could trap MPs as if we were an abuse of the lobbying system, when the healthy expression of lobbying, through and of MPs, is fundamental to our democracy. I think that view is shared throughout the Chamber. The great difference between a free society and a tyranny or an authoritarian regime is that any group, interest, person or company in our country can try to find an MP who thinks they have a fair cause, and if they persuade an MP of that—without any payment of money or anything inappropriate—their cause can run in this House and have the chance of influencing Ministers.

I hope that the Leader of the House can reassure me that the Bill will leave absolutely no doubt that we can be lobbied and that we can lobby, and that we are the free lobbyist for anyone with a good cause.

[Mrs Gillan]

I do not wish to detain the House for long. I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood). When the Leader of the House responds to the debate and speaks to his amendments, it is very important that he makes it clear that we as MPs are not placing ourselves in any special position other than to represent the interests of others, which is why we have been sent to this place.

The two instances that I have raised in interventions are highly personal to me, namely HS2 and the National Autistic Society. When people throughout the country read the HS2 Bill they immediately interpreted it as a drag on their lobbying of Government and on MPs who want to speak against the project. More importantly, we have to make sure that charities and other bodies that seek our help do not misconstrue the situation and think that we will be gagged in any way. This is called the gagging Bill in common parlance, which is why I want to make sure that the Leader of the House gives us a reassurance, as I am sure he will. The one thing I know is that he has been listening very carefully to the cases that have been made across the board. Rather than detain the House any longer, I look forward to receiving the reassurances sought by Government and Opposition Members that the Bill will not inhibit us in any way.

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to hon. Members for their contributions to this short debate, and particularly to my hon. Friends the Members for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) and for Stone (Mr Cash) for tabling the new clause. I hope I will be able to reassure them that, through Government amendments 28 and 29, we will achieve the objectives that they and other Members seek. I hope that this debate on Report will begin with full agreement on how the Bill should be structured.

There are two issues with regard to this group of amendments: one is parliamentary privilege and the other is the position of Members of Parliament themselves. I reassure Members that the Government are committed to ensuring that the Bill’s provisions do not infringe on parliamentary privilege. The Government recognise that the privileges of Parliament are an integral and, indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stone has said, necessary part of our constitutional arrangements. As the 18th century Clerk of the House, John Hatsell, commented, they are absolutely necessary for the due execution of Parliament’s powers.

Parliamentary privilege is an intrinsic and essential element of our democracy. It upholds Members’ right to freedom of speech and protects Parliament from external interference.

Article IX of the Bill of Rights 1689 reflects those historic and vital rights by providing that

“the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament should not be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament”.

This Bill will in no way challenge the freedom of speech of parliamentarians.

Equally, we are committed to ensuring that the provisions do not intrude on Parliament’s exclusive cognisance and to upholding the principle famously set out by Sir William Blackstone in 1830, that

“the whole of the law and custom of Parliament has its origin in this one maxim, that whatever matter arises concerning either House of Parliament, ought to be examined, discussed and adjudged in that House and not elsewhere.”

As Members have made clear and helpfully acknowledged, following careful consideration we have concluded that the inclusion of a reference to parliamentary privilege in the Bill—either in the manner provided for by paragraph 1 of schedule 1 or in that outlined in new clause 1, if we were to proceed with it—could invite examination, discussion and judgment from sources external to Parliament. The retention or inclusion of such a provision could prompt unhelpful rulings by the courts regarding the nature or extent of privilege or its interaction with other statute. That point has been made by my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex and by the report of the Standards and Privileges Committee.

I am grateful to the Committee and to its Chairman for his contribution to the debate. The Committee’s view and its helpful reference to the views of Lord Judge have helped us reach a conclusion. I hope the Committee will agree that Government amendment 28 meets its objective.

I am confident that Members will share our desire to protect Parliament’s right to regulate its own affairs and, as provided in the Bill of Rights, not to have its proceedings questioned. I am equally confident that the way in which that will be ensured in the context of this Bill will be to remove the reference to privilege outlined in paragraph 1 of schedule 1 and, as a consequence and for the same reason, to resist the inclusion of a similar provision as proposed by new clause 1. Government amendment 28 will therefore help to protect the privileges of Parliament from undue judicial interpretation in the context of this statute. I would be grateful if my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex would withdraw the new clause in consequence of Government amendment 28.

[Lady Hermon]

I have listened carefully to the Leader of House’s explanation and am slightly concerned. Paragraph 22 of the explanatory notes states specifically that paragraphs 1 and 2 of schedule 1

“make provision to ensure that no provision of the bill could be infringing parliamentary privilege”.

Is the Leader of the House saying, therefore, that if paragraphs 1 and 2 are removed by the Government’s amendments there is no possibility of any other provision in the Bill infringing parliamentary privilege? Is that the assurance he is giving?

19:29

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex explained the matter well. A provision was inserted into the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009 because that statute would have impinged directly on the privileges and rights of Parliament. A saving provision was necessary in that context.

Lord Judge was right in what he said to the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege and that is at the heart of our thinking on the matter. If we say in some Bills that nothing in the Bill infringes the principle of parliamentary privilege, not only would that be subject to judicial interpretation, but courts might conclude that other statutes that do not have such a saving provision may infringe parliamentary privilege. They might take the lack of a saving provision as an indication that Parliament did not expressly wish to avoid that happening. That is not our view. Our view is that parliamentary privilege subsists, that nothing in the Bill will infringe it and that courts should not interpret any part of it as infringing parliamentary privilege, for the reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex explained.

The second issue under this group is the exemption of Members of Parliament. The Government have always been clear that the normal activity of a Member of Parliament will not be captured by the definition of consultant lobbying. The right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) referred to the report by the Standards Committee. I wrote to him with an explanation at the end of August, which stated:

“In order to be required to register under the Bill a person must lobby ‘in the course of a business’ and ‘in return for payment’.”

That is part of the definition of consultant lobbying. I continued:

“Performing one’s public role as a Member of Parliament does not amount to carrying on a business and is therefore exempt. This is equally true of anyone holding an elected office such as an MEP or councillor.”

I might add, in response to an earlier question, that the same would be true of a Member of the House of Lords. A Member of the House of Lords, in exercising their public duty, would not be regarded as carrying on a business and would therefore be exempt.

Concern was expressed by various people that the normal activities of elected officials might be captured by the provisions on the register. I am happy to provide the reassurance that they will not be. That was never our intention and, in our view, the Bill will not have that effect.

Out of an abundance of caution, in addition to the “in the course of a business” requirement, the Bill included a specific, overlapping exemption for Members of Parliament because of their uniquely high level of communication with Ministers and permanent secretaries. However, it became clear on Second Reading that there was dissatisfaction with the exemption, as drafted. That has been expressed again in this debate. There was concern that paragraph 2 of schedule 1 described the normal activities of a Member of Parliament inadequately.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am listening carefully to what the Leader of the House is saying. Of course, all this depends on what one means by the normal activities of a Member of Parliament. Does he agree that the normal activities of a Member of Parliament include representing anybody, so long as we are not paid to represent them? We are free to represent anybody, whether they be a business in the City or a charity.

[Mr Lansley]

I understand that completely. If I have not explained my point fully, let me explain it again. Under clause 2(1)(a), part of the definition of consultant lobbying is that it is carried out

“in the course of a business and in return for payment”.

When the Bill was introduced, in order to make it absolutely clear that Members of Parliament were not covered, we included a provision about the communications that are made by Members of Parliament in paragraph 2 of schedule 1.

On Second Reading, I explained that we believed that Members of Parliament were exempt by virtue of their public duty meaning that they were not engaged in the course of a business. It was clear that the inclusion of the additional provision in schedule 1 created an unnecessary and unhelpful confusion because, as has been said in this debate, it does not encapsulate all the activities of a Member of Parliament in carrying out their functions.

Members will recall that my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith) said in Committee that we would therefore adopt a different approach. I thank her for all her work on the Bill and welcome the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), who has responsibility for cities and constitution. I will not ask him to explain the Bill at this stage, but will allow him to take responsibility for the policy when he has had a chance to apply his considerable talents to it.

We discussed, welcomed and accepted what the Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee said and, in Committee, we accepted an amendment that he tabled. That amendment resulted in an improved exemption in schedule 1, which clarified the interaction between parliamentarians and the register. Members will recall that the definition of consultant lobbying states that it must be

“in the course of a business and in return for payment”.

Paragraph 6(2) of schedule 1 states that “payment” in those circumstances

“does not include any sums payable to a member of either House of Parliament”—

again, this refers to the point about Members of the House of Lords—under the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009, pursuant to a resolution, or out of money provided by Parliament or the Consolidated Fund.

Members of Parliament are therefore exempt under both limbs of the definition. They are not engaged in the course of a business and the payment that they receive is not regarded as payment for the purposes of the Bill. For that reason, we think that there is now a cast-iron, belt-and-braces exemption for Members of Parliament.

I might add that Members of the House of Lords are exempt in so far as they are acting in their public duties. If a Member of this House received payment for contacting a Minister or permanent secretary, it would be contrary to the Members’ code of conduct. The Chairman of the Standards Committee will correct me if I am wrong. The code in the House of Lords makes it clear that nobody can undertake paid advocacy in the House of Lords or advise somebody on the proceedings of the House, but it does not preclude somebody engaging in lobbying activity in the course of a business and in return for payment. My reading is that it is not inconceivable that some Members of the House of Lords would be required to register as consultant lobbyists as a consequence of their business activities. They would certainly not be required to register by virtue of their activities as Members of the House of Lords. I apologise for that detour.

As a consequence of accepting the amendment tabled by the Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, we would have removed paragraph 2 of schedule 1 in Committee, but it was not reached. Amendment 29 will remove that redundant paragraph. I hope that the Opposition accept that amendment 78 is therefore unnecessary. I also ask my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex to withdraw new clause 1.

[Lady Hermon]

I am most grateful to the Leader of the House for his very helpful explanation. Just to be sure, will he confirm that if I receive communications from constituents of the five absentee Sinn Fein Members—and, indeed, of any other Members of this House who take their seats—and I make representations or write to a Minister, the Director of Public Prosecutions or a senior Government official, that will not be caught by the Bill?

[Mr Lansley]

Yes, I can give the hon. Lady that assurance. She would not be affected by the Bill as she would be behaving as a Member of Parliament and not engaging in the course of a business. The payment she receives as a Member of Parliament is not regarded as payment for these purposes, and she can undertake all her normal activities. The same is true for the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) who sits on the Opposition Front Bench, because shadow Ministers and Members may raise any issues they wish. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) can represent not only her constituents but anybody she likes in her responsibilities as a Member of Parliament, and is in no way constrained from doing so.

[Mr Thomas]

The Leader of the House has been at his most reasonable in the past few minutes, but he has not yet touched on how we ended up in this position. I asked whether he would set out who was consulted—were the House authorities consulted before the Bill was published? I asked, and I gently ask again, whether he would accept that one lesson of this episode and this Bill might be that pre-legislative scrutiny would have been helpful?

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman knows from our previous conversation that we talked to the House authorities about parliamentary privilege. The implication of what he says is that the Bill was in a sense deficient because Members of Parliament were caught, but they were not. In the original Bill, Members of Parliament were exempt by virtue of the fact that they were engaged in a public duty as office holders, not in the course of a business. To that extent, we included provisions intended to give additional reassurance, but that simply muddied the waters and it was simpler to do it in the way that we, together with the Chair of the Standards and Privileges Committee, accepted. We accepted an amendment in Committee, and all I am doing today—I hope—is making it clear that the combination of those amendments in Committee and the amendments now being considered respects the views of the Standards and Privileges Committee and protects the rights of this House in relation to privilege. It also entirely protects the position of Members of Parliament who are undertaking their duties, however they construe them. On that basis, I hope Members will support Government amendments 28 and 29.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for being utterly clear about the intention of this Bill, which is that Members of Parliament and Members of the other place are not intended to be included in the provisions of the Bill. He has listened and read the report from the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege and the Standards and Privileges Committee of this House, and has understood the concerns raised. I emphasise the importance of removing the second paragraph in schedule 1, subject to amendment 29, because were it to remain it would have the effect of narrowing the exemption to an absurd degree. That is why it is important to remove it; it is not only redundant but would be highly damaging because it would suggest that what is not excluded by the clause would implicitly be included under the Bill. I will not press new clause 1 to a vote, because the Leader of the House is dealing with these matters in an exemplary manner, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 4

Duty to apply a code of conduct

‘(1) The Registrar shall, after wide consultation with relevant stakeholders including the Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee, prepare a code of conduct with which all registered persons will be required to comply, and may produce revised codes from time to time.

(2) The Secretary of State must lay any professional lobbying code of conduct before Parliament.

(3) Any code shall provide that any inappropriate financial relations between registered persons and Parliamentarians are strictly forbidden.

(4) An organisation or person included on the register which contravenes the provisions of the code of conduct shall be liable to civil penalties as set out in section 14.’.—(Mr Thomas.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Mr Thomas]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

19:44

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 6—Duty to report—

‘The Registrar will report annually to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of the House of Commons on the operation of the Register.’.

Amendment 84, page 54, line 15, after ‘satisfied’, insert ‘after consultation with the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of the House of Commons’.

Government amendment 31.

Amendment 85, page 3, line 7, leave out from ‘business’ to end of line 8.

Amendment 86, page 3, line 15, at end insert—

‘(h) the name of the employer and the address of employer‘s business; and

(i) the names of members of staff employed by the person registered.’.

Government amendments 17 and 18.

Amendment 87, page 3, line 21, at end insert—

‘(c) the approximate value of the registered person’s spending on their lobbying activities for each quarter.’.

Government amendments 19 and 20.

Amendment 89, page 3, line 37, after ‘client information’, insert ‘and spending on lobbying’.

Government amendments 21 and 22.

Amendment 100, page 3, line 47, at end add—

‘(c) if the registered person engaged in lobbying in the quarter in return for payment (whether or not the payment has been received), the purpose and subject matter of the lobbying services provided by the registered person; and

(d) if the registered person received payment in the quarter to engage in lobbying (whether or not the lobbying has been done) the purpose and subject matter of the lobbying services provided by the registered person.’.

Amendment 90, page 4, line 7, at end insert—

‘(7) Spending on lobbying for each quarter is the approximate value of the amount a registered person spends on their lobbying activity for each quarter.’.

Government amendments 23 and 24.

Amendment 92, page 4, line 40, after ‘appropriate’, insert ‘including in written form’.

Amendment 93, page 5, line 26, leave out Clause 10.

Government amendment 25.

Amendment 94, page 6, line 28, after ‘incomplete’, insert ‘or misleading’.

Amendment 95, page 6, line 36, after ‘incomplete’, insert ‘or misleading’.

Amendment 96, page 6, line 42, after ‘incomplete’, insert ‘or misleading’.

Government amendments 26 and 27.

[Mr Thomas]

Reasonable though the Leader of the House was about the previous set of amendments, he will have to reach unprecedented oratorical heights for the Opposition not to press new clause 4 to a vote. The new clause seeks to establish a code of conduct that would help establish standards of behaviour for consultant lobbyists. Such codes exist already in a number of other countries that have tough lobbying regulations—Canada and Australia, for example, both have codes of conduct to which registered lobbyists must adhere. Indeed, this House’s Political and Constitutional Reform Committee also recommended a statutory code of conduct.

There was some debate in Committee about the elements of a possible code of conduct, and that point bears dwelling on and expanding a little. Surely, top of the list of standards in a code of conduct should be the requirement that lobbyists and their clients tell the truth to those they meet. Another element that might be worthy of inclusion in the code is that lobbyists must be open about who their clients are. Members of the House, Ministers and permanent secretaries are entitled to know who is lobbying them and for what purpose. Surely there should be a requirement that lobbyists advise their clients if they are about to commit illegal or unethical acts.

It is not clear to Labour Members—and, I suspect, to other Members—why Ministers do not want such basic principles of good behaviour enshrined in a code of conduct. In Committee, the then Minister, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith), suggested:

“The experience of regulators in other jurisdictions clearly shows that statutory codes of conduct for lobbying can be unworkable and unenforceable.”—[Official Report, 9 September 2013; Vol. 567, c. 786.]

Sadly, she did not feel able to give the Committee any more information than that bald statement. If it remains the Government’s position that they do not support a code of conduct, it would be helpful for the House, those in the other place and those who watch our proceedings if they set out clearly the international examples that led them to the conclusion that statutory codes of conduct are unworkable and unenforceable.

If there is no code of conduct, we will be in the rather odd position in which the registrar can punish lateness in providing or submitting information, but cannot punish lobbyists who deliberately hide who they are working for from those they are lobbying. Before being drawn up, a code of conduct would need to be properly consulted on with all relevant stakeholders, including the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. I accept there are already a number of voluntary codes of conduct in the lobbying industry, some of which are extremely comprehensive. Sadly, however, not every lobbyist is a member of one or other of those voluntary codes.

Gavin Devine, chief executive of MHP Communications, one of the bigger lobbying firms, noted there is a risk that simply securing a place on the register might enable lobbyists to imply they had a kitemark or some sort of endorsement, without having to operate to particular standards. Other evidence presented to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee suggested there might be an economic issue for some who decide to register and pay the registration fee, but do not want to pay any more for the cost of being a consultant lobbyist, and therefore would no longer be part of a voluntary code of conduct.

Surely, there is a risk that, once registered, a lobbyist will simply decide not to bother with any of the voluntary codes of conduct. On 9 September, the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) tried to argue, interestingly, that peer pressure would drive lobbyists to adhere to a voluntary code of conduct. Unfortunately, given that there are several voluntary codes across the industry, that would risk having different standards. Having one clear basic code of conduct would offer clarity about the minimum standards that lobbyists should meet, avoid confusion about which voluntary register was the best one and offer clarity to the House and the Government about the standards required of those who seek to lobby us. A code of conduct might also help to regulate those who want to lobby the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Greater London Assembly or the National Assembly for Wales, were they to be included in the code of conduct.

One voluntary code that bears looking at is that produced by the Association of Professional Political Consultants. Why do not Ministers think that its 18 elements should be standardised across the industry? Item 2 states:

“Political consultants must act with honesty towards clients and the institutions of government.”

Surely, we all want to see consultant lobbyists acting with honesty towards clients and the institutions of government. Why do the Leader of the House and his colleagues in government think that such a provision should not be written into a code of conduct and that every consultant lobbyist should have to abide by that most basic of standards?

The APPC code also states that lobbyists

“must use reasonable endeavours to satisfy themselves of the truth and accuracy of all statements made or information provided to clients or by or on behalf of clients to institutions of government.”

Again, that seeks to continue the principle of truthfulness among those who seek to lobby Parliament and the institutions of government. Why should there not be such a reasonable expectation that when we are told something, it is truthful and accurate? It is not clear, certainly among the Opposition, why Ministers think that such basic standards should not be required of all those who lobby.

The APPC code also makes it clear that those who sign it should be

“open in disclosing the identity of their clients and must not misrepresent their interests.”

Again, I ask the Leader of the House why such a basic standard for the lobbying industry should not be enshrined in a code of conduct. Why should everyone who seeks to lobby us not be required to meet that most basic of standards?

Another provision that might be included in a code is the requirement that lobbyists do not make misleading, exaggerated or extravagant claims to clients. Anyone who has followed the unfortunate publicity that some lobbyists have generated will be aware that some have made exaggerated claims for their influence on the Government or Members of Parliament. Again, a basic requirement that lobbyists should not make misleading, exaggerated or extravagant claims would surely help to protect those who use the services of the lobbying industry. Why do Ministers not think that clients should be protected from such basic bad behaviour by a would-be lobbyist and therefore have it written into a code of conduct?

Interestingly, the APPC code deals with payments and offers of entertainment and mementoes. It makes it clear that

“political consultants must not offer or give, or cause a client to offer or give, any financial or other incentive to”

somebody in government

“that could be construed in any way as a bribe or solicitation of favour”

Again, that must be a basic standard we would want all consultant lobbyists to abide by. If one shares that view, it should be written into a code of conduct, so that all consultant lobbyists have to abide by it, not just those who, in this case, choose to be members of the APPC.

[Lady Hermon]

The wording of new clause 4, to which the hon. Gentleman is speaking, is curious. It states:

“Any code shall provide that any inappropriate financial relations between registered persons and Parliamentarians are strictly forbidden.”

That suggests that there are inappropriate financial relations and appropriate financial relations, which I am sure is not what he meant.

[Mr Thomas]

Indeed not, although I do not see the hon. Lady’s concern about the wording. She will be aware of several cases of allegations of inappropriate relationships, which we need to address, and a code of conduct could help us to do that.

[Lady Hermon]

To clarify, is it the Opposition’s position in the new clause that some financial relations between parliamentarians and registered consultant lobbyists are in fact appropriate? Surely, any financial relationship should be strictly forbidden. The word “inappropriate” should not be there at all.

[Mr Thomas]

We are seeking to establish the principle that there should be a code of conduct dealing with the relationship between Members of Parliament and the industry and covering a whole series of other questions. I hope that the hon. Lady will be persuaded of the need for such a code of conduct. I accept that consultation on the detail would be required, but if we could persuade her and the whole House to join us in the Lobby to support new clause 4, and if it were carried, I would hope she wanted to respond to such a consultation.

[Lady Hermon]

I am so sorry to be persistent, but I am even more confused than when I made my first intervention on this point. I am wildly enthusiastic about having a code and am willing to support the principle, but I cannot support the wording in the new clause. I would like the hon. Gentleman to explain what could possibly be an appropriate financial relationship between a registered lobbyist and a parliamentarian. No financial relationship is appropriate, so my problem is with the word “inappropriate”. Will he address that point, please?

[Mr Thomas]

The hon. Lady is right that it is very difficult to see how any direct financial relationship could be appropriate. I come back to a particular provision in the APPC code that might shed some light on this issue. The provision makes it clear that in relation to entertainment, for example, or to token mementos, no incentive should be given. It might be possible to suggest that such circumstances involve a financial incentive, but my point is that we need a code of conduct and we need clear details of what should be in it. I hope that that explanation will persuade the hon. Lady to support our proposal for a basic code of conduct, and that she will be able to play a role in being consulted on the details.

New clause 6 would place a duty on the registrar to report to Parliament annually on the operation of the register. The Information Commissioner has a similar duty under the Data Protection Act 1998. At the moment, the Bill implies little accountability to Parliament by the registrar. Given the registrar’s powers to impose civil penalties, to issue guidance and to make financial decisions, some accountability ought surely to be provided for in law. Let us remember when, all those long days ago, Government Members supported the signing of the coalition agreement. Page 21 of that document contained a commitment to strengthen the powers of Select Committees to scrutinise major public appointments. Surely new clause 6 follows the spirit of that provision. Indeed, even the Liberal Democrat manifesto promised to increase parliamentary scrutiny of Government appointments. New clause 6 would allow just that.

Even at this late stage—if not today and tomorrow, then in the other place—we hope that the Bill can be made more effective and, crucially, more wide ranging in regard to the number of lobbyists it covers. It remains our view that it should cover all lobbyists, and that it should provide for a clear code of conduct. The registrar would have an even more important role to play if these proposals were accepted, as we hope they will be. There is therefore even more need to ensure the registrar’s accountability to Parliament.

20:00

Amendment 84 provides that, in the unlikely and unusual circumstances of the registrar facing dismissal by Ministers, the dismissal could be confirmed only after consultation with the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. Given the registrar’s importance in regulating the activities of those who seek to lobby Members of this House, as well as Ministers, it is surely reasonably to ensure that the ultimate disciplinary sanction could be taken only after discussions with Parliament.

Amendment 86 would require lobbyists to name those for whom they were working, and for whom their staff were working. Whether the Conservatives like it or not, the adverse publicity that the employment of Lynton Crosby has secured for them has been caused in part by the lack of clarity from the Prime Minister about whether Mr Crosby’s firm and its many members of staff are working for anyone else in the UK at the same time as they are working for the Conservative party. We want transparency in lobbying, and the Government say that they too want to abide by that ambition. In that case, lobbyists should at least be required to disclose which clients they and their staff are working for.

Amendments 87, 89 and 90 would require a declaration of how much had been spent on lobbying in a particular period. If we want to understand what lobbyists are doing, and if we want proper transparency in our politics regarding the scale of lobbyists’ influence, we need to understand where and why big money is being spent on buying consultant lobbying services.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

I have followed the debate with a great deal of interest. It seems to me that the additional safeguards that the hon. Gentleman wants to put in place would be so convoluted as to create a lawyers’ nightmare. Surely it would be simpler to strengthen the guidance to Ministers and Members of Parliament than to try to enshrine all this in the Bill.

[Mr Thomas]

I say gently to the hon. Lady that I understand her frustration with the process, but we are trying to make the best of a bad job by the Government, and to tidy up a poorly prepared Bill. She makes a reasonable point, however. Had we had the opportunity for pre-legislative scrutiny and for a further period of consultation with the industry on the details of the lobbying provisions in the Bill, we might not have needed to table amendments to try to make the Government’s proposals more workable.

[Mrs Main]

I have a degree of sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman is saying. Many of us have concerns about the Bill, but he might just be making matters worse, despite his best intentions. I do not believe that the Bill will catch the behind-the-scenes lobbying that the public are most concerned about. The emphasis should therefore be more on ensuring that Ministers and Members of Parliament act totally correctly, rather than on trying to second-guess every little nuance that a lobbyist might come up with.

[Mr Thomas]

I have to disagree with the hon. Lady. If we can get the rules for lobbyists right—or as right as we possibly can—at the beginning of the process, we should be able to limit the scope for problems further down the line. In tabling our amendments, we have been motivated by what has happened in other countries that have statutory codes of conduct. Our research suggests that such measures have had a positive impact in helping to make lobbying more transparent in those other jurisdictions. That is why I commend our proposals to the hon. Lady and to the House.

I suspect that, once lobbyists had got used to the new regime, they would become extremely comfortable with a code of conduct and with the other requirements that I have set out. Clearly, there would be a need for the registrar to do some educational work, but I am sure that that would be possible. I am concerned, however, that because so few lobbyists will be covered by the provisions of the Bill, the registrar might not be financially sustainable in the way Ministers hope. If that is the case, I fear that there would not be sufficient resources to do the educational work that would form part of the registrar’s public duties. I hear the hon. Lady’s reluctance, but I urge her to keep the faith and to come with us into the Lobby tonight in an effort to make a bad Bill a little bit better. [Interruption.] I think I heard her say that the Bill was rubbish, or at least saw her mouth those words. I would not use such terms, but I understand her frustration with those on her own side.

I look forward to hearing my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) speaking to amendment 100. His interesting amendment seeks to require the declaration of the purpose and subject matter of a lobbying exercise. Our amendments 86, 87, 89 and 90 would have a similar effect, but I have no doubt that my hon. Friend will offer his own specific analysis of the merits of his amendment.

Amendment 92 would allow the registrar to publish the register—not only on a website, but in any other form that the registrar thinks appropriate, including, I would suggest, in written form. The key here is to ensure that the register is as accessible as possible.

Amendment 93 would remove the provision that deals with privilege and self-incrimination. This is surely a somewhat archaic principle, holding that an individual cannot be compelled to provide information that would then incriminate them. I am not sure why we need this provision to be included, so the Leader of the House might like to dwell in his reply on the need for its inclusion. This is essentially a probing amendment, intended to allow the Government to set out their argument.

Amendments 94 to 96 would ensure that a lobbyist who submitted a misleading entry to the register would be committing an offence under the Bill. Again, we seek to make the register a more transparent document and an accurate source of information about who lobbyists are working for and how much they are receiving for doing so. We want the legislation to provide for clear consequences if lobbyists fail to provide the required clarity and transparency about their lobbying work. If, for example, a lobbyist’s entry were somewhat ambiguous, the registrar could, under our amendment, take steps to compel the lobbyist to be more open, clearer and more transparent about their activities. If the Leader of the House intends to oppose these amendments, I would be interested to hear his thoughts on whether misleading entries should be regarded as acceptable and on why no sanctions should be imposed on lobbyists who provide the registrar with misleading information.

I very much hope that the Government will, in the end, come round to the view that in-house lobbyists need to be brought under the scope of this legislation. A code of conduct, provided for by the principal new clause in the group, could then cover a whole series of lobbying activities and require all lobbyists to adhere to clearer standards of behaviour. Many in the lobbying industry who are practitioners of political lobbying work to high ethical standards, and they unsurprisingly support a code of conduct. It is far from clear why the Government do not support a statutory code of conduct.

[Mr Allen]

rose—

[Mr Lansley]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

I call Graham Allen; Ministers must wait.

[Mr Allen]

I am happy to give way to the right hon. Gentleman, even before I have said anything, if he wants to say something.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

You have the floor, Mr Allen. Please continue.

[Mr Allen]

I am just trying to be helpful.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) has given us a tour de force on this group of amendments, leaving me mainly to sweep up on amendment 100, which I am happy to do.

Amendment 100 emerged from the considerations of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform when the Bill was put before us and we had a chance to take evidence from witnesses. I hope that the amendment is helpful in raising a number of issues that I would like the Government to consider.

We heard a few moments ago from my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron), the Chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee, and I endorse his views in that the Government have listened on the particular item he mentioned, as a result of which we have a better Bill, although it is still far from perfect. That just shows that where there is interaction—this does not mean that the Government have to swallow every probing amendment that finds itself on to the amendment paper—there is a possibility of a little bit of give and take. From my perspective as a parliamentarian, I understand that some of the ethics coming from the Front Bench have to be a little sharper and a bit more oppositional, but I sometimes have the luxury of posing a view on behalf of Parliament that might find favour, albeit not necessarily in its existing form. Let that debate continue.

20:15

This is why, unprecedentedly in my own political career, I opposed the programme motion earlier today—because we did not have the chance in so many fields and areas to interact with the Government. Where we have had that chance, it has, by and large, been a productive relationship. I hope that, because this House has not had as much of that chance as we would like, colleagues in the other place will find an open door and be allowed more give and take so that the Bill evolves and gets better and better as it goes through the parliamentary process. [Interruption.] I do not know whether the Leader of the House was about to launch forth from the Dispatch Box or whether he was merely stretching, having sat in his place for 40 minutes. Clearly, he was just stretching.

As I say, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West has covered most of the issues, but on a more specific and narrow point, I would like to look at the issue of the information provided in the register. It was an issue that my Select Committee took very seriously, and we took a lot of evidence on it. Looking at the nitty-gritty of the Bill through the first consultation we undertook, we thought that we would have a Bill that dealt only with what we are discussing today—not with what we will be discussing tomorrow, as that was added at a later stage. Today, however, we are discussing lobbying, lobbyists and the process of lobbying. We thought that we had made quite a sensible and constructive contribution to that debate. Subsequently, we then rather hurriedly took additional witness evidence, including from the Leader of the House, but from people on all sides of the arguments about what lobbying is and what form regulation should take.

One point that was common to all those who spoke to us was that they felt that the big chance had been missed. They believed that the lobbying problem had been accurately identified by the Prime Minister and perceptively identified by the Deputy Prime Minister in the run-up to and during the last general election. People were surprised, however, that none of those issues that raised such public concern—and the concern of two party leaders who became partners in the coalition—were addressed in the Bill that was produced to deal with lobbying. Rather, lobbyists were narrowly defined and those to be lobbied were narrowly defined. We thus felt through that period that a big chance had been missed to do what we all thought the lobbying Bill was about. The detail of all that was taken seriously, as people from a wide range of views said, “Let us try to help; let us try to define the problem a little more accurately”—by reflecting, for example, on what sort of information should be provided. That is clearly at the heart of amendment 100.

[Lady Hermon]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene. I think it would be most helpful if he gave us some examples of the range of people who wanted to know more about what the subject matter of the lobbying was.

[Mr Allen]

I would be pleased to do so. My Select Committee, composed of Members of all parties, pulled together the full list of those who gave us evidence, and we published it. On the specific point that the hon. Lady mentions, my report heard from interested people ranging from a former chief executive of five trade associations, Mark Boleat, the Information Commissioner’s Office and Spinwatch, which was on one particular wing of the argument, to academics such as Dr Hogan, Professor Murphy and Dr Chari, to Iain Anderson, the deputy chairman of the Association of Professional and Political Consultants, the Committee on Standards in Public Life—mentioned earlier by my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley—and the list goes on and on. Many people and organisations in all parts of the lobbying industry gave evidence to the Committee, and there was a surprising degree of consensus on the issue of what might happen, particularly in relation to information provided in the register.

This is another missed opportunity. First the Government missed the opportunity to tackle some of the big issues involved in what the public regard as lobbying; now, by ramming the Bill through the House of Commons at such a late stage like a bull charging at a gate and by leaving any effective scrutiny to the other place, they have failed to cash in on the good will that exists among organisations in the lobbying business which might be expected to be at daggers drawn.

In fact—partly as a result of a process of discussion and debate in which my Committee played its part, but partly because of public interest in the issue—people began to say things such as “Let us try to find a sensible way forward. Let us find some basic steps on which we can all agree.” Perhaps the issue could be revisited in a couple of years when things had settled down, or perhaps cases could be responded to as they arose when loopholes were identified.

No one ever expects a measure to be perfect initially. I think that we missed that chance, that possibility of consensus. We suggested that there could be a pause, certainly in respect of clause 2, and that we, or at any rate a Committee of the House, could—within a set time such as six months, and not as a means of delay—bring back to the House a fully fledged Bill that would command consensus among all those with an interest, rather than a Bill which, sadly, commands consensus because no one likes it.

The Bill has no friends. It has a driver in the Leader of the House, but no one is saying “Thank goodness for this Bill.” There are no people out in the streets marching up and down saying “Thank goodness Parliament has got it right.” I think that it reflects badly on the reputation of this place, and we are seen to be failing the public, when a public issue such as anxiety about lobbying can be put to bed in a rational way but we produce a Bill that has so many loopholes, one of which relates to the information provided in the register.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

I have just observed that other members of the Joint Committee on Human Rights are not in the Chamber. Although I did not attend the last meeting, I know that it is in the public domain that the Chair of the Committee wrote to the Leader of the House expressing similar concern about speed and lack of scrutiny. The report has not been written and I am therefore not at liberty to reveal the likely proposals, but I think that there is a fairly widespread cross-party view that more time would produce a better and more comprehensive Bill.

[Mr Allen]

I think that if I am allowed to speak for long enough in replying to the right hon. Gentleman, the Chair of the Human Rights Committee may appear from somewhere, and may be able to inform the House of the Committee’s view on whether the Bill, as currently constituted, should be subject to a pause so that it can be examined effectively in the context of the human rights aspects to which the right hon. Gentleman has referred.

[Dr Hywel Francis (Aberavon) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Allen]

Ah! The Chair of the Committee is present.

[Dr Francis]

But not in my usual place.

My hon. Friend has made an important point. As he knows, tomorrow the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) and I will discuss the heads of the report. In September, we agreed that it was very inopportune that we should have to deal with matters of great import in such great haste. The Committee feels strongly that we need far more time.

[Mr Allen]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The amendment to which the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) is speaking relates to the issue of registered persons, which, as he said at the outset, is specific and narrow. The debate is not about the time that has been allocated to discussion of the Bill. The hon. Member for Aberavon (Dr Francis) has assisted the hon. Member for Nottingham North, and I hope that he will now speak directly to his amendment.

[Mr Allen]

I am very sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. Two experienced Members led me astray, and diverted me from the points that I was seeking to make about delays and human rights. I am sure that they took your strictures very personally.

[Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman seems to be saying that we are not where we would like to be, and that an opportunity has been missed. Why does he think that? Why, in his view, have we not taken action that most Members would support?

[Mr Allen]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. The Members who are present this evening are indeed experienced, and the hon. Member for Nottingham North is very experienced. He knows that the purpose of the debate is to focus on the matters contained in the amendments. Perhaps Members who wish to comment on matters relating to Third Reading, or to other amendments, could save their remarks for those occasions. I am sure that, given the huge amount of work that has been done by the hon. Gentleman’s Committee, he will now want to return to the subject of amendment 100.

[Mr Allen]

I must ask Members to stop tempting me to stray, because I have some important points to make about the amendment. Other points can be made at other times.

Let me now make some comments relating specifically to the information provided in the register. I shall try to be even-handed, as my Committee was, and balance the arguments that were presented to us. I have already mentioned Mark Boleat, the former chief executive of five trade associations. He thought that the Bill, as constituted, was sufficient. He said:

“Subject to the definition of ‘lobbyist’ being widened, the information to be included on the register is satisfactory.”

The Information Commissioner’s Office commented:

“It is clear that the nature of the information to be provided for inclusion on the register by those engaged in lobbying activities will provide a useful source of information not previously available on a routine basis.”

I do not suggest that this is a clear-cut, black-and-white issue—I think that there are contending views—but the balance of the evidence given to the Committee clearly indicated that slightly more detailed information could be provided in the register. For example, there was a significant degree of agreement that the additional information should include disclosure of the subject matter of lobbying, and some agreement about inclusion of the purpose of the lobbying and the list of those who had been lobbied.

Having put that on the record, I hope that, either today or at some other stage, Ministers will digest it and decide whether they consider it reasonable for such measures to be included in the Bill. I am hopeful that that would receive consent both here and in the other place.

Some people also argued for financial disclosure in the register. As one might expect, Spinwatch stated that the information required under the Bill was “wholly insufficient”, adding:

“For a register to meaningfully allow public scrutiny of lobbying, it must include information from lobbyists on their interactions with government. In other words: whom they are meeting and what issues they are discussing. Members of the public wanting to see which outside organisations are exerting influence on a particular policy area, for example, will be unable to do so under this proposal.”

As I mentioned, there was a joint submission to the Committee from three eminent academics: Dr Hogan, Professor Murphy and Dr Chari. They argued for the inclusion in the register of

“the subject matter and purpose of the lobbying”.

20:30

The Royal College of Midwives commented:

“It is hard to see how the information requested will add greatly to the transparency of the lobbying process...Would it be too burdensome, at the very least, to ask for the register also to spell out the issues on which clients are seeking to lobby (e.g. improved conditions for farm animals), and the nature of the lobbying that has taken place (e.g. all-party group on road hauliers established)?”

Therefore, evidence was coming in all the time about how seriously the detail, the nitty-gritty, of the lobbying part of the Bill should be examined. Those are important, serious issues that will not only affect the livelihoods of those in the lobbying business, but influence the transparency of those who are being lobbied, their accountability and how effectively they are lobbied. That is one detail of an important, extended set of original legislative prerogatives that we are being asked to look at. I briefly allude to the fact that earlier I felt that we needed not just more time on the Floor of the House but adequate time to tease out these issues. There are not wild differences of view but there are understandable differences of nuance. Parliament has a role in helping to make legislation work. If we have that starting point, people can come together and make even a Bill that some of us largely disagree with workable. I hope that the second Chamber can pick that up, too.

Iain Anderson, deputy chair of the Association of Professional Political Consultants, supported publishing information about the purpose and subject matter of lobbying, but suggested that that could be done most effectively and efficiently when details of ministerial and official meetings were published, rather than in the register. That is a perfectly valid view. I have heard it put by Government Front Benchers. It is perfectly justifiable. The Committee on Standards in Public Life also argued that information on the subject matter could be included either on the register or in the details that were published of meetings. The difficulty with including the information in the data about ministerial and official meetings is that, if the definition of lobbying is expanded to encompass conduct and contact with the rest of the senior civil service, special advisers and others, who do not necessarily publish details of their meetings, the coverage of such information would be patchy at best. That would not necessarily be advantageous when we are trying to pull such a Bill together.

[Dr Francis]

My hon. Friend is making an interesting and powerful point. Did his Select Committee consider the possibility that the public, if enough time had been allowed, would have considered it appropriate for national newspapers to be seen as lobbyists?

[Mr Allen]

Again, my hon. Friend is seeking to take advantage of my good nature. Madam Deputy Speaker gives me the row when colleagues do that, so I am going to avoid the temptation that he puts in my way. I do not wish to offend again.

[Lady Hermon]

rose—

[Mr Allen]

I hope that the hon. Lady is not going to do something similar and get me into trouble.

[Lady Hermon]

I would never lead an hon. Member astray. The hon. Gentleman has raised a serious issue to do with the transparency of lobbying. Those are the words in the Bill: transparency of lobbying. Therefore, it is essential that the subject matter of the lobbyist group that meets the Minister or senior civil servant, talks to them, phones or whatever is noted. Clause 4(2)(g) says that the entry must include

“such other information as may be specified in regulations.”

Therefore, I would like the Leader of the House to confirm tonight that there is provision in the Bill for the subject matter of the lobbying to be required by regulation. If he were to give the House that assurance tonight, would that influence the hon. Gentleman’s decision on whether to press amendment 100 this evening?

[Mr Allen]

I do not want to incur the wrath of the Deputy Speaker, so I had better not say anything on clause 4(2)(g) as my amendment relates to clause 5. I do not intend to press my amendment to a Division, however. What I wish to do is engage the Leader of the House on an issue on which there is both concern and a lot of constructive activity. If he chooses to tap into it, there is a lot of constructive endeavour out there seeking to get this right for all the people who are concerned about lobbying. On that basis I am putting a number of items on the record in the hope that, either here or in the other place, we examine the following very difficult question: if we are going to register lobbying, do we register the subject too, and if so, how do we best do that for the sake both of convenience and of the transparency and accountability on which this whole Bill rests? I am sure that it is not beyond the wit of my Select Committee, and that it is absolutely not beyond the wit of Government, to come up with something, put it on the Order Paper in the second Chamber and find a way forward that allows everybody to make progress.

We are not talking about a detailed note and a minute and so forth—I do not imagine the hon. Lady is talking about that either. Alexandra Runswick, the director of Unlock Democracy, is one of the people who gave evidence to us. She said:

“I think that misrepresents the nature of the information we are looking for in the register. We are not expecting a transcript of the meeting, but what policy area it is that is being lobbied on. There are already individual MPs who publish their diaries and say, for example, ‘I met Unlock Democracy about the Lobbying Bill.’ That is the level of information that we are looking at—the policy that is being lobbied about, not the exact information that was shared with the person whom you are lobbying.”

That strikes me as eminently reasonable, but if it is not in those exact words something that the Government feel they can adopt, perhaps it is something they feel they can work with, so what we produce from these Houses is not a laughing stock to people out there who say, “There they go again; the old boys in the club have stitched it up again. Look at what they’ve done. This isn’t going to tackle lobbying. We’ve seen that it’s not tackling some of the key lobbying issues that got this subject into the public domain, and now look at it! They’re not even going to tell us what they want to talk about in two words.”

That does not do a service to the House or to this Bill. Lobbyists and those being lobbied are also very clear that that does not help them in what most of them do, which is a fair day’s honest work trying to do their job effectively. They understand that this looks as though there is something to hide, when in fact, as in most walks of life, 99.9% of them are just doing a fair day’s work.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

The hon. Gentleman rightly makes the point that if the topic on which the lobbying is taking place can be kept secret, people will have no sense of true transparency, but does he agree that not only do the public need to be satisfied about, and protected by, such transparency, but so, too, do the people contracting the lobbyists and the lobbyists, because they should be free of any accusations of ulterior motives or ulterior agendas, or lobbying on other issues, by being able to say clearly, “This is what it was for; that is what it was about”?

[Mr Allen]

That is why I think sorting out the information provided in the register is essential to this part of the Bill.

Political Lobbying and Media Relations stated:

“Explicit information on the details of meetings between lobbyists and ministers should not be published.”

I agree with that. It continues:

“This removes the right of privacy to individual organisations who often have sensitive information that they wish to share with elected representatives.”

As far as I can gather, nobody is actually suggesting that that should be done and that there should almost be a video camera present whenever such an interaction takes place. We are modestly suggesting, as food for thought, that there should be some means of registering the subject that is the object of the debate involving the lobbyist.

[Mrs Main]

As the hon. Gentleman will have realised from the last debate, I have great concerns about a specific development of rail freight in my constituency. If the topic was lodged just as, “Discussion about getting freight off roads and on to rail”, I would be none the wiser as to whether the discussion was about a specific development that I am particularly concerned about. So I am a little concerned that his broad-brush approach might end up with people who wish to phrase things in such a way concealing matters rather than revealing them.

[Mr Allen]

The hon. Lady made a telling intervention about that in our last set of debates. I am sure she will forgive me for not knowing enough about the detail of the case; the subject appeared to be very specific. It would have been a lie to say that this was a general discussion about transport and haulage; that would have been to conceal the truth. It is not for me to judge, because I do not know the case, but that particular interaction would have been much better described in specifics; without going into technical detail, mention could have been made of the constituency and the people involved. That could have been done in a few words, and the hon. Lady, one of her constituents or someone interested in this particular case would have picked that up from the register. She would then, rightly, have been able to ask further questions of a Minister or a friend of a Minister. She would have been able to say, “Hang on. What does this actually mean? I have a constituency interest here. I have been following this. What went on here?” From that, we can move things forward. We are not saying, “Let’s have a full minute of that particular thing in the public domain for everybody.” We want to give people the lever to make transparency and accountability actually work.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I know what the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) is talking about, and she made an important point that we should recognise: the distinction between those lobbying for commercial interests and those, apparently or even genuinely, lobbying for an altruistic case, for example, on behalf of the environment. Members of a lobbying group wanting to reduce emissions and to get people off road and on to rail might be being used by commercial interests. The distinction between the two things is very important.

[Mr Allen]

We need a dose of common sense here, so that the stuff in the public domain is not onerous for all those people involved in it but is none the less informative for those who wish to go further and ask questions. Deciding on a form of words that makes that apparent and makes it acceptable to almost everyone who is lobbied or who is a lobbyist is well within our capabilities. That is why my Committee has suggested—I speak not as an individual MP but on behalf of a Select Committee of this House which looked at this matter with care—that the Leader of the House and his team have another look at this. In order to get that debate going, we have suggested, in amendment 100, that we add the words

“the purpose and subject matter of the lobbying services”.

Our amendment states:

“if the registered person engaged in lobbying in the quarter in return for payment (whether or not the payment has been received), the purpose and subject matter of the lobbying services provided by the registered person”.

We hope the proposal is helpful and I think that people out there would expect it of us. We should not be pressing to have a particular form of words, but we should certainly be pressing to have the Government think about how they meet this very obvious public requirement. On the basis of good faith that the Government Front-Bench team will take this issue away, I will not seek to press amendment 100 to a vote.

20:45

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to colleagues for the two speeches on this group of amendments.

Let me start with new clause 4, moved by the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas). The proposed new clause would require the registrar, after consultation with stakeholders including the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, to produce a code with which all registered persons must comply or face a civil penalty. We are talking about a statutory code with a requirement for a penalty if it is not complied with. The exchanges between the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) amply illustrated that there is scant detail about what such a code would contain, so the amendments reveal that the Opposition intend to create not only a register of lobbyists but a full-blown general regulator of the industry. While the Government are seeking to shine the light of transparency on the key issues in lobbying and the impact on key decision makers, the Opposition are bent on regulating the lobbying industry as a whole. They would regulate the behaviour of the huge number of individuals and organisations that would be captured by the definition of professional lobbying that they suggested in Committee.

The Government recognise the industry’s efforts to improve lobbying practice by introducing its own codes of conduct and we are confident that that will continue. Those codes promote the ethical behaviour that is essential to the integrity and reputation of the lobbying industry. The voluntary, self-regulated codes contain laudable principles and good practice guidance, but their translation into statute is hardly sensible—nor is it feasible. The experience of regulators in other jurisdictions illustrates clearly that statutory codes of conduct for lobbying are effectively unworkable and unenforceable.

[Mr Thomas]

Will the Leader of the House give way?

[Mr Lansley]

I was going to answer the point that the hon. Gentleman made earlier, so let me give him an example and then I will let him intervene.

The consequence of seeking to regulate the whole industry is that in Congress the point has been reached at which there is an 894-page manual. Is the hon. Gentleman seriously proposing that we should go down that path, having a similar relationship between the lobbying industry and this Parliament to that in Congress?

[Mr Thomas]

The right hon. Gentleman is now making a different point from that made by the hon. Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith) in Committee. She argued that there were plenty of examples of statutory codes of conduct that were not working. The right hon. Gentleman is making a different point and I would gently suggest to him that the experience from Canada and Australia, where statutory codes of conduct exist, suggests that such codes can be made to work perfectly effectively.

[Mr Lansley]

I do not agree. The consequence of large-scale statutory codes is considerable expenditure.

Let us consider the simple questions to which we have no answers. The new clause states only that there should not be inappropriate financial relationships; the hon. Gentleman does not tell us what those inappropriate relationships are or explain why they are not already prohibited by instruments such as parliamentarians’ codes of conduct, which we discussed earlier, or laws on bribery and corruption. How would the provisions of the code be enforced? What resources would the registrar require to monitor and enforce compliance, particularly if seeking to enforce compliance against imprecise, vague and wide-ranging—understandably so, as far as the voluntary code is concerned—principles and prescriptions? Trying to set up such a structure of enforcement in relation to such a wide-ranging code for such a large number of people is completely unsustainable. Who would foot the bill? The bill for the measures in Canada is equivalent to £3 million and this proposal would clearly cost much more. In any case, the Canadians go about things in a different way from us. It is not a case of adopting what they do, because they do not take our approach. We set out, through the transparency of Ministers’ and permanent secretaries’ diaries, to approach the issue in a completely different fashion.

We are not trying to set up a register that controls what the lobbying industry does. Our approach recognises that lobbyists have a job to do. They are engaged in a self-regulatory structure. We are not trying to introduce a bureaucratic monster to oversee all that. We are clear that the key decision makers should be transparent about who they are seeing, and that—as the Bill would now ensure—where it is not transparent, in that they are meeting someone who is representing, as it were, their own interests, where they meet consultant lobbyists, those consultant lobbyists, through the register, are required to disclose who their clients are.

I am afraid that new clause 4, and much of what we heard from those on the Labour Front Bench and from the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), suggests that either they are not clear about what problem they are trying to address or they are simply trying to create a bureaucracy. We are not in that business. They are trying to create something that the Government have been very clear we do not want to create. We believe in transparency. We do not believe in the large-scale regulation that they are pursuing.

[Simon Hughes]

Like my right hon. Friend, I am keen that we do not have some great bureaucratic invention to deal with this issue. There is one thing I do not understand, however. If a public relations company that has 500 clients comes to speak to my right hon. Friend or a Secretary of State or a permanent secretary, what would be the difficulty in making it a requirement that the company makes it clear which client it is coming to speak on behalf of? Otherwise, one does not get very much further by just knowing which company is making the representation.

[Mr Lansley]

My right hon. Friend, characteristically, makes a better point than those on the Opposition Front Bench did. It is consistent with the approach that we are taking, but I respectfully suggest that we should not include such a requirement in the Bill, as amendment 100 seeks to do, because the register is not the place where those meetings are recorded. They are recorded in ministerial diaries. The issue is getting transparency in ministerial diaries.

We are the first Government to publish details of those meetings and other transparent relationships. We have extended the scope of that, not only in lobbying but in relation to the media; we publish that information. The Minister of State, Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), picking up the work undertaken by his predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith), is engaged in ensuring that information provided by Departments provides sufficient detail about the subject of meetings. If one has the register, which discloses who the consultant lobbyist is and their clients, and Ministers’ diaries, which are clear about the purpose of a meeting, one should be able to see the character of the relationship —who is lobbying whom, and for what.

[Simon Hughes]

I completely understand that, and I commend the Government, as my right hon. Friend knows, for the change in the rules about the publication of diaries, which is very welcome. May I ask him a practical question, which may answer my concerns and those of others? What will be the intended delay between the meeting and the diary publication or the appearance in the register? People often need that knowledge soon after the event—not a long time after, when it may be too late to be relevant.

[Mr Lansley]

We have already made a commitment that Ministers’ and permanent secretaries’ diaries for each quarter would be published by the end of the subsequent quarter.

[Mr Thomas]

Is not the point about Ministers’ diaries that so few consultant lobbyists actually go to meet Ministers directly? Making a great virtue of the publication of Ministers’ diaries is therefore a complete red herring.

[Mr Lansley]

That brings us to some of the other amendments. We are clear that the key decision makers are the gap in terms of transparency. We want to be clear whom the key decision makers are seeing. There are plenty of amendments on that subject in the next group, so I will not answer that point. It would of course be possible to extend that to lots of other groups, but we should consider the bureaucracy that would be created by doing so, by imagining 5,000 senior civil servants all publishing their diaries.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Lansley]

Let me make some progress, then I will give way again. There are quite a number of amendments in the group and I want to address each of them briefly.

New clause 6 requires that the registrar provide an annual report to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. The Chair of the Committee did not, I think, refer to new clause 6, and I am not aware that the Committee made such a proposal. If the Committee wants to call the registrar to give evidence to it on an annual basis, it is quite within its rights to do so, and the Government would be happy to support that, but we do not believe it is appropriate to set this down as a statutory requirement.

Opposition amendment 84 requires the Minister to consult the PCRC before dismissing the registrar—another interesting proposal, but I am not sure that the amendment adds anything of substance to the Bill. In essence, this is part of the same issue as the independence of the registrar, which I believe is already made clear in the wording of the Bill. The registrar will be independent of the lobbying industry and the Government and will have a clear remit to operate independently of both. The Minister will be able to dismiss the registrar only when he or she is satisfied that the registrar is unable, unwilling or unfit to perform the functions of his or her office, and any decision by the Minster could be challenged in the usual way via judicial review.

Opposition amendment 85 removes the requirement that lobbyists who have no business address must register their private residence. I can understand the concern to protect the privacy of individuals on the register, especially given the more onerous and invasive reporting requirements proposed elsewhere by the Opposition, but I am not sure that the removal of the requirement to register an address is a helpful one. A registered address is critical if the registrar is successfully to issue information notices, investigate compliance, and serve penalty notices. The great majority of consultant lobbyists will have one or more dedicated business addresses, so no issue will arise. The handful of individual consultant lobbyists who have no separate business address—I recognise that there is no requirement to register for those who do not meet the threshold of undertaking a business that is VAT-registered—can choose to obtain such an address and use that or they can submit their personal residential address. I therefore do not agree that this step is a wise one.

Given the Opposition’s concern about privacy, do they really want to require, as proposed by their amendment 86, that every organisation that lobbies must declare the names of all members of staff employed? Let us take an example. Given the way in which other Opposition amendments would apply, if an academic were engaged in contact with a Minister in pursuance of a subject on which they had undertaken research, the Opposition’s definition—not ours—would require that to be registered, whereas we would say that that was incidental and that the academic was not engaged mainly in lobbying activity. The Opposition would say that it should be included and, by extension, the names of everybody who works for the university should be entered in the register. That is unrealistic and makes no sense.

Amendments 87, 89 and 90 would amend the information requirements outlined in clause 4 to require that lobbyists also disclose financial information. Amendment 100, as I mentioned earlier, would alter the information requirements outlined in clause 4. We have been very clear that the objective of the register is the identification of the interests that are being represented by consultant lobbying firms. Lobbyists should therefore be required to disclose their clients. We are not persuaded that the burden of providing further information that would be imposed on the industry and the regulator is justified by the limited insight that it would provide. One can readily envisage the administrative nightmare that would result from trying to determine the costs of lobbying activity, especially where this had to be disaggregated from wider business activities. Requiring the disclosure of financial information relating to lobbying activity is not, in our view, proportionate to the problem identified.

Amendment 92 makes it explicit that the registrar may publish the register in written form. I can assure the Opposition that this is already implicit in 7(2), which states that the register may publish the register

“in such other form or forms as the Registrar thinks appropriate.”

The registrar can do whatever is necessary, including publishing the register in written form.

[Lady Hermon]

I am grateful to the Leader of the House for allowing me to intervene, even at this stage. Before he concludes his comments rejecting amendment 100, may I remind him of his opening remarks in response to this group of clauses? He said that the Government intend to shine the light of transparency—a great phrase—on lobbying, and we say, “Hear, hear” to that, but I cannot understand his justification for not requiring the subject matter of a meeting to be registered. He suggested that that is publication of the diaries of Ministers and permanent secretaries, but the Leader of the House will know better than any of us that the definition of permanent secretary includes the DPP, the chief medical officer and the chief executive of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Are they obliged to publish their diaries?

[Mr Lansley]

The point I was making is that the register that the Bill establishes is not where meetings will be listed. Meetings will be listed in the diary of the Minister or the permanent secretary. Consequently, in so far as it is appropriate for a meeting’s character to be disclosed, it will be disclosed in the ministerial diaries. To try to construct in the Bill the idea that the subject of meetings will be disclosed in the register would be to misunderstand what the register does. The register discloses the clients of consultant lobbyists, not the subjects on which they are lobbying.

[Mark Durkan]

The Leader of the House has still not made any convincing case for why the register should not specify the topic of the lobbying. The idea of relying solely on ministerial diaries, with people having to look up the register and then the diaries on the basis that they already have a suspicion, clearly imposes more difficulty. If this is meant to be about transparency in lobbying, why cannot there be transparency in the register?

21:00

[Mr Lansley]

With respect, I do not think that the hon. Gentleman was listening to my previous answer. Consultant lobbyists disclose in the register who their clients are. The diaries of Ministers and permanent secretaries disclose who they meet. If the Secretary of State for Transport meets British Airways, it is transparent that British Airways is representing its interests. However, if the XYZ airline is represented by a consultant lobbyist, the register will disclose that the airline is the client of that lobbyist, and it will be transparent through the Minister’s diary that he or she has met that lobbyist and, as a consequence, it will be clear who they are meeting. The issue is not whether there is transparency but the mechanism by which transparency is delivered. It is delivered through the publication of Ministers’ diaries, and the gap in transparency that we have identified, and which the Bill remedies, is the gap in understanding, if Ministers or permanent secretaries meet consultant lobbyists, who their clients are.

[Lady Hermon]

Will the Leader of the House give way?

[Mr Lansley]

No, I have answered that question.

Amendment 93, tabled by the Opposition, would remove clause 10. I must confess that I am still bemused. We made it quite clear in Committee that the effect of doing so would be that in response to an information notice a person would not be required to provide any self-incriminating information, including in relation to any offence committed in relation to the register itself. The amendment would entirely undermine the enforcement regime relating to the register.

The Opposition’s amendments 94, 95 and 96 would make it an offence for consultant lobbyists to report misleading information. Although the intention behind the amendments is undoubtedly sound, I do not believe that they would have a substantive effect, as in order to be misleading the information must be either inaccurate or incomplete, and that is already covered by the clause.

The Government’s amendments in this group include amendment 31, which will allow the registrar to make direct payments to staff who have been seconded to support the office holder in addition to or instead of payments being made to the Minister or other person who seconded staff to the registrar. The registrar can also make payments to Ministers or other persons who supply accommodation or other services to the registrar under the general provision to make arrangements set out in paragraph 8(1)(b) of schedule 2.

Clause 4(3) outlines the client information that should be included in each register entry. Amendment 17 clarifies that if the registered consultant lobbyist has not engaged in lobbying or been paid to engage in lobbying during that quarter, its register entry for that quarter will contain a statement to that effect, as set out in clause 5(5), in lieu of any client information.

Amendments 18 and 19 will ensure the clarity and consistency of references to the periods for which consultant lobbyists are obliged to provide information. In the existing Bill, the three-month period prior to their initial registration about which consultant lobbyists must provide information in their register entry is called the “relevant pre-registration period”. This amendment changes the references to that phrase in clause 4 to the phrase “pre-registration quarter”, reflecting the references to the quarters for which client information is required after registration and ensuring consistency across the Bill. I hope that is clear.

Amendment 20 will ensure that the parameters of the pre-registration quarter are unambiguously defined as the three months ending on the date on which the person applies to be registered. The amendment changes the definition of the relevant pre-registration quarter period from the period of three months preceding the application date to the period of three months ending on the application date.

Amendments 21 and 22 will make it clear that register entries must include the names of the person or persons on whose behalf lobbying is undertaken, reflecting the reality that consultant lobbyists are likely to be engaged by more than one person during a quarter, and ensures consistency across the provisions of the Bill.

Amendment 23 clarifies the registrar's duty to update the register in accordance with the information returns submitted by consultant lobbyists by removing the unnecessary reference to “receiving the information return” which is covered in the following sub-paragraph.

Amendment 24 makes clear the separation of what the registrar is required to do, and what it may do. The registrar must publish the register in accordance with requirements set out in section 6. The registrar may also publish entries in respect of persons who were but are no longer entered in the register, but this is not a subset of its requirements under section 6.

Amendment 25 makes it clear that it is an offence for a “registered” person to carry on the business of consultant lobbying if they have submitted incomplete information to the registrar. This puts beyond any shadow of a doubt the class of person that is caught by this provision.

Amendment 26 will clarify that a person guilty of an offence relating to the register is liable to a fine, whether they are summarily convicted or are convicted on indictment. If convicted in a Crown court, the fine will be unlimited. If convicted in a magistrates court in Scotland or Northern Ireland, the fine will not exceed the statutory maximum. If convicted in a magistrates court in England or Wales before the coming into force of section 85 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, the fine will not exceed the statutory maximum; if convicted after the coming into force of that Act, which removes the statutory maximum in England and Wales, the fine will be unlimited.

Amendment 27 further clarifies that an appeal against an information notice or the notice or imposition of a penalty can be heard either by the first tier tribunal or, if so determined by or under the tribunal procedure rules, the upper tribunal.

When the time comes, I would welcome the opportunity to move the Government amendments standing in my name.

[Mr Thomas]

We have had a very good debate on these amendments but, sadly, what has become clear is that whenever meaningful transparency has been suggested, the Leader of the House has cited the danger of a huge level of bureaucracy as the reason real transparency cannot be achieved. This Bill is badly titled; instead of the Transparency of Lobbying Bill, it would be better and more accurate to describe it as a little bit of transparency on a little bit of lobbying Bill.

The Leader of the House did not revert to the attempt made by the former Minister, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith), who suggested that there were plenty of examples of countries around the world that had statutory codes of conduct that suggested that such codes were unworkable. The one effort that the right hon. Gentleman made was to cite the American political system as being a reason that a statutory code of conduct would not work here. Not even the scale of incompetence that the coalition parties are managing to achieve in government comes close to the scale of dysfunctionality in the American political system at the moment. It is not a meaningful comparison to cite the American code of conduct; more sensible would have been to point to the examples of Australia and Canada, as I sought to do. Experience there does show that a statutory code of conduct can be made workable and enforceable, and could help to achieve the objective of delivering real transparency when lobbyists meet Ministers and indeed members of the House of Commons. A clear, basic code of conduct would avoid confusion over which voluntary register was the best one. It would offer clarity to the House and, indeed, to those in Government about the standards expected and required by those lobbying. I urge the Government to accept, even at this late stage, the benefit of having a code of conduct, even for the tiny number of lobbyists their Bill will cover.

My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), in a very well-judged speech, highlighted the number of loopholes that exist in the Bill. He cited the balance of evidence presented to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, suggesting that further information should be included in the register, including the scale of financial information, the subject matter of the lobbying, and the purpose of the lobbying activity. He noted that representations for that additional information had come to the Committee from a range of organisations as diverse as Spinwatch all the way through to the Royal College of Nursing.

Our amendments sought to inject that greater level of information and transparency into the process. I deeply regret that even at this late stage Ministers are not willing to consider even their own versions of the amendments. I therefore seek the opportunity to press the new clause to a vote and urge all Members of the House to support it.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

The House proceeded to a Division.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

I ask the Serjeant at Arms to investigate the delay in the Aye Lobby.

21:11

Division 92

Ayes: 224

---

Labour: 208
Democratic Unionist Party: 5
Scottish National Party: 5
Plaid Cymru: 3
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 2
Independent: 1
Green Party: 1

Noes: 292

---

Conservative: 247
Liberal Democrat: 43
Independent: 1

New Clause 7

Consultant lobbying

‘A person does not carry on the business of consultant lobbying if—

(a) the person is a constituent contacting or communicating with their Member of Parliament;

(b) the person is making communications solely on his or her own behalf;

(c) the person is responding to a government consultation exercise;

(d) the person is responding to an invitation to submit information or evidence to a Committee of either House of Parliament;

(e) the person is acting in an official capacity on behalf of a government organisation;

(f) the person is making communications without remuneration; or

(g) the person is responding to or complying with a court order.’.—(Chi Onwurah.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 68, in clause 2, page 2, line 1, leave out ‘a business’ and insert ‘their lobbying activity’.

Amendment 69, page 2, line 3, after ‘persons’, insert ‘or employer’.

Amendment 70, page 2, line 4, leave out paragraph (b) and insert—

‘(ba) the person concerned is trading as a sole trader or company, or is an employee of such a person’.

Amendment 97, page 2, line 8, leave out subsection (3) and insert—

‘(3) The communications within this subsection are oral or written communications made personally to a Member of either House of Parliament, a Minister of the Crown or permanent secretary or senior civil servant or special adviser relating to—

(a) the development, adoption or modification of any proposal of the Government to make or amend primary or subordinate legislation;

(b) the development, adoption or modification of any other policy of the Government;

(c) the making, giving or issuing by the Government of, or the taking of any other steps by the Government in relation to—

(i) any contract or other agreement,

(ii) any grant or other financial assistance, or

(iii) any licence or other authorisation; or

(d) the exercise of any other function of the Government.’.

Amendment 98, page 2, line 8, leave out subsection (3) and insert—

‘(3) The communications within this subsection are oral or written communications made personally to a Minister of the Crown or permanent secretary or senior civil servant or special adviser relating to—

(e) the development, adoption or modification of any proposal of the Government to make or amend primary or subordinate legislation;

(f) the development, adoption or modification of any other policy of the Government;

(g) the making, giving or issuing by the Government of, or the taking of any other steps by the Government in relation to—

(iv) any contract or other agreement,

(ii) any grant or other financial assistance, or

(iii) any licence or other authorisation; or

(h) the exercise of any other function of the Government.’.

Amendment 71, page 2, line 8, after ‘written’, insert ‘, including electronic,’.

Amendment 73, page 2, line 9, leave out from ‘communications’ to ‘relating’ in line 10 and insert ‘are made to government or parliament’.

Amendment 116, page 2, line 10, after ‘secretary’, insert ‘or special adviser’.

Amendment 72, page 2, line 12, after ‘subordinate’, insert ‘or European’.

Amendment 74, page 2, line 20, at end insert ‘or parliament’.

Amendment 75, page 2, line 21, leave out ‘Minister or permanent secretary’ and insert ‘person being lobbied’.

Amendment 76, page 2, line 25, leave out from beginning of line 25 to end of subsection (5) and insert— ‘

“government and parliament” includes within the United Kingdom—

(a) Ministers or officials of government departments;

(b) Members and staff of either House of Parliament;

(c) Special Advisers and senior civil servants;

(d) Non-Ministerial Departments, Non-departmental public bodies and executive agencies and their senior staff; and

(e) Advisers and consultants to government and parliament within the meaning of this subsection, who are not employed by, or seconded to government or parliament but have an official, if temporary, role.’.

Amendment 99, page 2, line 33, at end add—

‘“senior civil servant” means a person holding a position of Grade 5 or above in the Civil Service of the State.

“special advisor” had the same meaning as in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010.

Government amendment 30

Amendment 80, in schedule 1, page 52, line 7, leave out paragraph 4.

Amendment 83, page 53, line 26, leave out paragraph 12.

21:30

[Chi Onwurah]

With your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to start by paying tribute to the hon. Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith), following her decision to focus on her constituency and resign from the Cabinet Office. I wish her well, although those good wishes do not extend to success in the next general election campaign.

Everyone in the Opposition certainly felt for the hon. Lady, however, and I am sure that she is glad to be out from under this garland of an albatross, this dog’s dinner, this lobbyists’ charter—just some of the ways in which the Bill has been memorably described. Although there might be some debate about how best to describe the Bill—perhaps a dog’s dinner of an albatross—there is absolute unanimity that it is a total mess. Rarely have so many diverse groups been united in agreement—truly, the Government can claim to be a force for unity in the country in regards to the opposition they manage to inspire.

New clause 7 would ensure that some critical groups and individuals are not caught up in the Bill. One of the reasons the Bill attracts so much opposition is that it stands up for the powerful against the weak. A small firm of lobbyists, perhaps specialising in green technology on behalf of social enterprises that cannot afford to hire expensive lobbyists, will be caught up by the Bill and forced to pay possibly thousands to be on the register, but a 150-person-strong public affairs team in a big six energy company will absolutely not be caught. As the Public Relations Consultants Association has said, fewer organisations will be required to sign this register than are currently on the voluntary register. As a result, these consultancies, which will mainly be small and medium-sized enterprises because larger ones tend not to be exclusively lobbying businesses, will each be required to pay potentially thousands a year—not my estimate—mainly to register a list of names of staff and clients, which most of them already do.

With this Bill, it is hard to distinguish between the result of poor drafting and poor judgment on the part of the Government. Only a Government of startling incompetence could draft a so-called lobbying Bill that captures only 1% of lobbying activity. In an apparent attempt to address that, the Government have tabled some amendments, but as the chair of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, Iain Anderson, said recently:

“The amendments have not changed the scope of the Bill's impact on the lobbying industry. It shows that they are not listening. There has been no change to the definition of those who lobby, and who they lobby. Rational arguments and Parliament’s wider concerns are being ignored.”

So there we have it. Rational arguments and Parliament’s wider concerns are being entirely ignored in the drafting and redrafting of the Bill.

It is not just lobbyists, however, who are queuing up to mock the Bill. In Committee, very few Government Back Benchers stood up to defend the Bill, and I see that there are hardly any here this evening. I hope that such as are here will support us in trying to change the Bill. In fact, not a single Government Back Bencher spoke in support of the Bill in Committee.

New clause 7 and its dependent amendments would make it clear who should be excluded from lobbying regulation and ensure that certain historic duties in relationships were not damaged. Paragraph (a) of the new clause would ensure that any person who was

“a constituent contacting or communicating with their Member of Parliament”

was not defined as being engaged in lobbying. We have already talked about the importance of the role of Members of Parliament in representing the interests of their constituents. We are all here because our constituents elected us to represent their views and interests here in Parliament, and the word “lobbying” relates to the ability of people to come here and find their representative —in the Lobby, perhaps—and ask them to do something or to vote in a certain way. Technology has changed the way in which we are lobbied, but this incompetently drafted Bill must not cast a shadow on the right of our constituents to lobby us, in whatever way they choose.

I hope that you will forgive me for going off at a slight tangent, Mr Speaker, but some of those new forms of contact and lobbying, including those used by campaign groups such as 38 Degrees, are threatened by part 2 of the Bill, which we shall discuss tomorrow. This leads me to question again whether this is a deliberate attempt to undermine our democracy or merely carelessness and an attempt to rush a Bill on lobbying on to the statute book before the next election, no matter how badly drafted and incompetently set out it might be. It is essential that the link between Members and their constituents should be protected, and not damaged—inadvertently or otherwise—by poor legislation.

Paragraph (b) of the new clause would add a person who was

“making communications solely on his or her own behalf”

to the list of exceptions. Similarly, paragraph (f) would adds a person who was

“making communications without remuneration”.

It is important that people should be allowed to communicate with the Government on their own behalf, and that communication with the Government that is not being paid for should not be disrupted. New clause 7 would ensure that those who were not paid for their lobbying would not have to bear a financial burden at the expense of big corporations and large firms. Nor should that burden fall solely on small and medium-sized enterprises, which is why we have tabled separate amendments widening the scope of the register.

Paragraph (c) of the new clause would exempt a person who was

“responding to a government consultation exercise”

and paragraph (d) would exempt a person who was

“responding to an invitation to submit information or evidence”

to a parliamentary Select Committee or Public Bill Committee. Similarly, paragraph (g) would exempt a person who was

“responding to or complying with a court order”.

Paragraph (e) would exempt a person

“acting in an official capacity on behalf of a government organisation”.

I think that hon. Members on both sides of the House would agree that those scenarios should not be caught up by the Bill simply because of poor drafting.

The other amendments in the group seek to extend the range of lobbying activities covered by what is supposedly a lobbying Bill. Amendments 68 and 69 would extend the range of such activities. Amendments 71 and 73 would widen the scope of the Bill. Amendment 71 in particular would widen its scope to include e-mails, an electronic form of communication that the Government might not value but which can certainly be used for lobbying. Amendments 74 and 75 would widen the scope of who it would be possible to lobby. Amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), the Chairman of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, would ensure that it was not only permanent secretaries who could be lobbied.

I am eager to hear the response of the Leader of the House to the points raised. We have seen this evening a lack of willingness to consider making changes to the Bill, despite the almost complete unanimity of the lobbying industry—it stands strangely at one in this—in viewing this Bill as badly drafted and likely to reduce transparency in an industry that is well in need of increased transparency. That is contrary to what the Bill set out to do and contrary to the promise in both coalition parties’ manifestos to increase transparency. As I say, I am eager to hear the right hon. Gentleman’s reply. I am not sure how the Government intend to offer the protections that we seek without our amendment, but I look forward to hearing the right hon. Gentleman address the concerns that I have raised.

[Simon Hughes]

I shall make just a brief point in support of my amendment 116, which would make a simple change to list of people who, when lobbied, are to be subject to appropriate registration. At the moment, the list includes a Minister of the Crown or a permanent secretary, and my proposal is to add special advisers to that list. They are clearly a group of people known to be part of the political system operating out there as a bridge between Ministers, Departments and the public. It seems to me that they are naturally perceived to be people who can receive messages from lobbyists and pass them on to their political bosses. It would be good politics and not a complication to add this group of people to the list. I know that so far this has been considered but rejected by the Government. I hope that they will be open to the possibility of adding it either tonight or, if not, when the Bill goes to the other place for further consideration.

[Mr Speaker]

Has the right hon. Gentleman finished? He has. I thank him and call Mr Paul Flynn.

[Paul Flynn]

It is a rare occasion when one feels that the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) has been disappointingly brief. [Laughter.] I cannot remember any similar occasion.

I rise with a sense of excitement about the Bill because anyone who speaks to it will go down in parliamentary history as partaking in one of the worst Bills that has ever appeared before the House. Students of the future will study this with amazement—to think that a Bill of this kind could ever be introduced. Speaking to the amendments is rather like trying to chromium-plate a pile of horse dung, imagining that we could improve it in any way.

I feel sympathetic, as was said from the Front Bench, towards the hon. Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith), who as the responsible Minister was given the gloomy task of introducing this Bill to our Select Committee in July, on the last day before we went off for the summer recess. She had a torrid time, trying to defend the indefensible. I said that I was sympathetic to her, given that she was sitting there, garlanded with an albatross of nonsense. I am delighted to know that she has given up and gone to spend more time with the truth, having escaped from the Front Bench. I wish her well in her future career; it could not have got worse. I am sure that when she was assailed by this blizzard of e-mails—not from just 10 or 20 charities, but from hundreds—she realised how damaging the Bill was. These amendments would go some way to improving it.

As was said earlier, we should see the wheeze. Of course no hon. Member behaves badly; nothing done in this House or the other place would be dishonourable. The whole purpose behind the Bill and why it was introduced was to address hints of a scandal. It was not yet established, but there was a fear that a scandal had taken place, involving the country of Fiji. The matter has still not been settled, but there was also an equally minor scandal involving a Member of the other place with respect to the Cayman Islands.

21:44

We are in a very vulnerable position. The Member involved in the Cayman Islands case was doing something that would be absolutely forbidden in the House of Commons, but it was justified after the first stage of the investigation in the other House on the grounds that Members of that House are not paid and have to earn a few bob here and there. If they are taking money from another country—and there are Members in this House who are doing the same thing, acting as representatives of countries such as Azerbaijan and various other oppressive regimes—that is apparently okay. However, it is not okay. We have a serious group of scandals here that we are not addressing.

The right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark suggested that we should include special advisers. Well, of course we should, and—one of the amendments deals with this—we should also include electronic mail. I believe that 500 e-mails were sent by one of Murdoch’s lackeys to a Secretary of State’s special adviser in an attempt to influence him in regard to a decision. Is it okay for the Bill not to cover that?

The Bill does not cover the great problems that we had with one particular Secretary of State who achieved absolution through resignation. There was a very worrying situation involving a lobbyist who was working for that Secretary of State. He was not employed by that Secretary of State, or by the Government; apparently, he was employed by certain right-wing think-tanks in America, but he was certainly present at private meetings, and was privy to all kinds of information. When the matter came out, it should have been referred to the adviser on ministerial interests, but it was not. The adviser resigned, and another was appointed. When our Committee held a hearing to consider whether the proposed replacement was the right man, we decided unanimously that he was not. We voted against it, but he got in. We said, “What we need is a Rottweiler, but what we have is a poodle.” We must deal with the lobbying that takes place at the highest level in respect of decisions to go to war and decisions to buy armaments.

Let me give an example of something that could happen here; indeed, something similar is happening here. In America, a couple called the Kagans were at Petraeus’s right hand. They were present at every private meeting that took place, and constantly advised Petraeus to beef up the aggression and play down the war movement. They were not employed by Petraeus, they were not employed by the military and they were not employed by the American Government. They were employed by the American arms industry. That gives us some clue as to why we have continual pressure for perpetual war to keep the orders going. Is that taken care of in the Bill?

We have a scandal in this country, which was revealed by The Sunday Times. Apparently, in the past 15 years the astronomical figure of 3,500 former civil servants have been working for the arms industry. Many members of the civil service now retire at a very early age and embark on a second career, using their civil service expertise and contacts files. In one instance, a General Kiszely offered his services. He said that when he went to the Cenotaph and was waiting for the Queen to turn up, there was not much else to do: one would not be thinking about the fallen. He said that it was a good marketing opportunity, and that he could talk to people there and settle contracts.

New clause 7, in particular, is designed to deal with the fact that the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments provides very weak rules to limit the way in which former Ministers, civil servants, generals and admirals can prostitute the knowledge that they gain when they are in high office in order to make as much money as they can afterwards. The problem is not the damage they do afterwards, because their knowledge is a wasting asset and soon becomes out of date. The great problem is this. When people are Ministers, top civil servants or heads of Department, what are they doing? When they have to settle contracts involving billions of pounds, do they say they will do so in the public interest and in the pursuit of best value for money, or in the back of their mind are they thinking that if they give the contract to firm A, B or C, one of them might do a deal with them and they may get their hacienda in Spain in retirement as a result of that decision? It is a deeply corrupting part of our system. ACBA never succeeds in limiting it; it has no powers. It can take any decision and give any advice, but it cannot impose those decisions.

In a fascinating television programme, the ACBA chair—

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I am listening with great interest to the hon. Gentleman, who is making a powerful speech, as usual, but I am slightly worried that if he carries on for much longer we will not be able to grill the Leader of the House.

[Paul Flynn]

I would not want to deny the hon. Gentleman—a possible future Deputy Speaker of the House—that privilege. I believe that he is one of the candidates. It is fascinating to get these invitations. One from an hon. Lady said, “Vote for me and you won’t have to put up with me on the Benches. I will be silenced.” Therefore, we are voting for the one we most want to silence as a Deputy Speaker and we think is most loathsome. It is a hard task, because we have a rich choice.

We were waiting for the Bill. We were promised it on 10 March 2010. This was going to be the great crusading Parliament against lobbying. This was going to be the new scandal. Nothing happened: comatose for nearly three years. Suddenly there was a scandal on the way and the Government decided to act. The Bill was conceived in haste. It was written in fear and in malice. The legislative process has been conducted with incompetence. These modest amendments will make some improvements but it will be one of the many Bills that will go through the House. We are very poor at legislating.

We should look at the history. During the 13 years of the Labour Government, 75 Bills went through all their stages and were never put into practice. A permanent secretary has that figure. We have this disease. If we see a problem, what do we do? Dogs bark, children cry, politicians legislate. This is a piece of utterly futile legislation. It does not deal with the problem. It misses 97% of the problem but it takes a spiteful side-swipe at bodies that are blameless such as charities and trade unions. The Government are trying to save corporate lobbyists, who are doing the greatest damage, from the bureaucracy, and they have hit out at people who are doing no damage whatever. They are reducing bureaucracy for one and increasing needlessly bureaucracy for the other. This is an awful Bill.

[Mr Lansley]

As has been demonstrated, the effect of new clause 7 and the other amendments proposed by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) would be to bring into the register of lobbyists not just consultant lobbyists but all those who are in-house lobbyists. She knows that the approach we have taken is not to seek to create a register of everyone who engages in lobbying, which would be a very long list, but to ensure that the details of the meetings of the key decision makers—Ministers and permanent secretaries—are published and by extension we understand who is lobbying whom as far as the key decision makers are concerned. She rather shot her own fox by talking about the big six energy firms. The reason that earlier this week The Independent was able to run the story about the number of times that Ministers have met representatives of the big six energy firms is that we as a Government for the first time have published details of Ministers’ diaries. Putting the names of the big six energy firms in a register of lobbyists adds no information: we know who they are; we know on whose behalf they are lobbying; and we now know—as a result of this Government, not the previous Government—when they are meeting the key decision makers. That is clear. In this Bill we are extending transparency and addressing the key failing, and we are doing so not through having a large list of the kind the Opposition amendments would create.

New clause 7 proposes exceptions to the definition of those who are treated as consultant lobbyists. It may be of comfort to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) and the Opposition that there are some sensible exclusions from their concept of lobbying, but all those sensible exclusions are already provided for in the Bill. Some of the proposed exclusions are less sensible, however. In their explanation for amendment 70, the Opposition say that they seek to remove the reasonable requirement that consultant lobbyists must be VAT-registered, which is aimed at protecting small businesses engaged in consultant lobbying, and to insert in its place a requirement that the lobbyist be a

“sole trader or company, or employee of such a person”.

The amendment therefore excludes charities, partnerships and any other type of body a lobbyist might be. The Opposition would therefore reduce the effectiveness of the register in relation to consultant lobbyists.

The Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee said that we took a long time in responding to its report. That was because it was arguing for this large-scale regulatory structure for lobbying. We looked carefully over a substantial period of time at whether satisfactory definitions could be achieved, and they cannot. We would end up with very large-scale registers that tell us very little that is new.

Opposition amendments 73 to 76 and 83 would alter the definition in clause 2 with the intention of extending the scope of the register to those who lobby each of the many categories of people, including special advisers, senior civil servants, Members of either House of Parliament, parliamentary staff and non-departmental public bodies.

Amendment 97, tabled by members of the Select Committee, offered a more limited expansion of the scope, aimed at including special advisers, the senior civil service and, in the case of amendment 98, parliamentarians. Amendment 116, in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), would extend the scope to special advisers.

The register is designed to complement the existing Government transparency regime whereby Ministers and permanent secretaries proactively publish details of their meetings with external organisations. It is intended to focus on communications with the key decisions makers in Government, not on the large-scale surrounds of people who are intermediaries. There is a question as to the value of increasing the scope of the ministerial transparency regime. Is there really value in collecting and publishing data on every meeting of every one of almost 5,000 senior civil servants?

Amendment 71 would add the term “electronic” to the concept of written communications. I can assure the House that such communications—including a fax, an e-mail, a text message, and even a personal tweet or BlackBerry Messenger conversation—are already currently captured by the definition of communications.

Turning to European legislation, amendment 72 would not be effective in the terms in which it is drafted. We do not make European legislation, but lobbying in relation to it or lobbying the policy of the Government in relation to it would be captured.

There is one Government amendment in this group: amendment 30. It provides that a person does not fall within the scope of the definition of consultant lobbyist if they carry out a mainly non-lobbying business and any consultant lobbying communication they make is incidental to those activities. Paragraph 3(2) of schedule 1 defines non-lobbying activities as any activities other than the making of communications about policy, legislation or contracts and tenders and so forth to any Executive, including the UK Government, the devolved Administrations, UK local government, any national Government, and any institution of the EU. This amendment will clarify that the reference to the lobbying of the Northern Ireland Executive in paragraph 3 includes the lobbying both of Ministers and their Departments. When the time comes, I shall wish to move that amendment on behalf of the Government, but I now give the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central a moment to respond.

[Chi Onwurah]

Given this Government’s clear lack of understanding of lobbying activity, the new clause will not improve the Bill substantially and so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

22:00

Proceedings interrupted (Programme Order, this day).

The Speaker put forthwith the Question necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded at that time (Standing Order No. 83E).

Schedule 1

Carrying on the business of consultant lobbying

Amendments made: 28, page 51, line 6, leave out paragraph 1.

Amendment 29, page 51, line 11, leave out paragraph 2.

Amendment 30, page 51, line 35, at beginning insert

‘the First Minister, the deputy First Minister, the Northern Ireland Ministers and’.—(Mr. Lansley.)

Schedule 2

The Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists

Amendment made: 31, page 55, leave out lines 1 and 2 and insert—

‘( ) The payments that may be made under arrangements under sub-paragraph (1)(a) include payments to the staff in addition to, or instead of, payments to the person with whom the arrangements are made.’.—(Mr Lansley.)

Clause 4

The register

Amendments made: 17, page 3, leave out lines 17 and 18 and insert—

‘() for each quarter in which the registered person has been entered in the register, the person’s client information (see section5(3)) or the statement under section5(5), and’.

Amendment 18, page 3, line 19, leave out ‘relevant pre-registration period’ and insert ‘pre-registration quarter’.

Amendment 19, page 3, line 22, leave out ‘relevant pre-registration period’ and insert ‘pre-registration quarter’.

Amendment 20, page 3, line 22, leave out ‘preceding’ and insert ‘ending on’.—(Mr Lansley.)

Clause 5

Notification of client information and changes

Amendments made: 21, page 3, line 44, leave out ‘any person’ and insert ‘the person or persons’.

Amendment 22, page 3, line 46, leave out ‘any person’ and insert ‘the person or persons’.—(Mr Lansley.)

Clause 6

Duty to update register

Amendment made: 23, page 4, line 15, leave out subsection (4) and insert—

‘( ) The Registrar must update the register to include any information or change which is notified in an information return.’.—(Mr Lansley.)

Clause 7

Duty to publish register

Amendment made: 24, page 4, line 34, leave out ‘and’ and insert—

‘( ) The Registrar’.—(Mr Lansley.)

Clause 12

Offences

Amendments made: 25, page 6, line 27, after ‘a’ insert ‘registered’.

Amendment 26, page 7, line 10, leave out ‘in any other case’ and insert ‘on summary conviction in England and Wales, or on conviction on indictment,’.— (Mr Lansley.)

Clause 25

Interpretation

Amendment made: 27, page 12, line 8, leave out from ‘means’ to end of line 10 and insert ‘—

(a) the First-tier Tribunal, or

(b) in any case where it is determined by or under Tribunal Procedure Rules that the appeal is to be heard by the Upper Tribunal, that Tribunal.’. —(Mr Lansley.)

Bill to be further considered tomorrow.

Business without Debate

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

Delegated Legislation

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Public Bodies

That the draft Public Bodies (Abolition of Victims’ Advisory Panel) Order 2013, which was laid before this House on 25 April 2013, in the last Session of Parliament, be approved.— (Anne Milton.)

Question agreed to.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Representation of the People

That the draft European Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) Regulations 2013, which were laid before this House on 9 July, be approved.—(Anne Milton.)

Question agreed to.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Social Security

That the draft Jobseeker’s Allowance (Domestic Violence) (Amendment) Regulations 2013, which were laid before this House on 8 July, be approved.—(Anne Milton.)

Question agreed to.

Burma

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Anne Milton.)

22:01

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

Mr Speaker, may I start by thanking you, on behalf of my colleagues the right hon. Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce) and the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), for granting us this debate, which seeks to place on the record details of our recent Speaker’s delegation visit to Burma? I want to set out the background to the visit, what we saw on the visit and points of action to influence Government policy on Burma. I am sure that we can, between us, cover the events of what was a remarkable experience.

Mr Speaker, you have been most gracious in inviting me to accompany you. Of course, I also have to thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock), because her not being available to make the visit enabled me to take her place. Following your invitation to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to speak to both Houses, you made it clear that, on behalf of Parliament, you wanted to leave a lasting legacy of help and support to Burma, particularly as you have had a long-standing interest in Burma. You said that you did not just want to have a visit and leave, but you wanted to fulfil your promise to Daw Suu to help in a practical way. At this stage, I want to thank the embassy in Burma and all its staff, your office and others in the House service who were involved in setting up the visit, organising and accompanying us to the meetings.

Mr Speaker, you said on many occasions at our meetings that we were not in Burma to tell the Burmese how to run their country, but that we were there to show them how we do our work here and how they can perhaps learn from us and adapt it for their use. So what did we see? May I pay tribute to you, again, Mr Speaker, for holding together and being the focus of the 24 meetings we had over eight days, and acknowledge your courageous speech at Yangon university, which may be a topic for a Speaker’s lecture?

We all appeared on our trip with the book by Benedict Rogers “Burma: a Nation at the Crossroads”, which was launched at the Speaker’s House. We note from the book that progress has been made. Despite the elections in 1990, the results of which have not been recognized, Daw Suu now sits in the Burmese Parliament, along with many other MPs and also the generals. At the Parliament in Nay Pyi Taw, we met both Speakers of the upper and lower Houses, the President, Minsters from the presidential office and committee chairs. The delegation managed to raise the issue of the release of political prisoners and I know that you, Mr Speaker, have already sent a list to the President’s office. The President had already agreed that the United Nations could set up an office for the human rights commissioner, but he was no clearer about when that would take place. I am pleased that the embassy now has a human rights post.

It seems to me that we can have influence on two levels: the political level and service level. Daw Suu said that she wants active parliamentarians and to give all MPs the tools to be effective MPs. We can help and are helping to set up a library. I explained that our Library provides research facilities for all Members on an independent and confidential basis. The right hon. Member for Gordon led the session on how Select Committees work, and as all the delegation had served on Select Committees we could show MPs that we can work together for the good of the country.

The non-governmental organisations we met told us that arbitrary arrests and detention had worsened over the past few months, which was something we also heard from members of the “88 Generation” who are still being arrested, having to pay fines and having their cases regularly adjourned. Getting permits to allow humanitarian aid is difficult, particularly in Kachin state. We also heard that the rice federation regulates itself and is headed by someone close to the Government. A major census was under way that would provide useful information in 2014, such as how many girls were getting equal education, or an education at all. An MP from Kachin state told me that displaced people could not return to their villages as there were landmines; we have the technology to help them move out of those camps.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving the House a chance to recognise the contribution that has been made. At the release of the Nobel prize laureate, there was a perception that democracy had returned. The House, Mr Speaker, the hon. Lady and her colleagues and many other Members have contributed to trying to help that move forward. Unfortunately, in Kachin province we have seen the persecution of the Christian minority and other groups. Human rights deprivations are rampant. Burma is now in the top 10 countries in records of human rights abuse. Does the hon. Lady agree that the Minister and our Government need to play a more effective role in stopping that happening and giving freedom to the people of Kachin province?

[Valerie Vaz]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and absolutely agree with him. That is a still a big issue, which forms part of my 10-point plan. It is also a key point, as I was about to move on to the ethnic and religious differences.

Such differences are enshrined in everyday use: ethnic regions are states and Burmese areas are divisions. I am sure you will agree, Mr Speaker, that one of the many highlights were our meetings with Rakhine and Rohingya representatives and representatives of the different faiths.

What of aid? When we give aid we give the gift of life, and Britain should be proud of its aid-giving programme. We saw the malaria clinic from which within 15 minutes they can find and treat a person who might have malaria. That is important for migrant workers because they tap rubber between 10 pm and 2 am when the mosquito is active. There was the HIV clinic, and the school we visited where we saw lively children singing and learning. There was a legal advice centre staffed with mainly women lawyers. We need to provide them with some of our legislation and books on administrative law.

What are my points of action? Many other countries are offering help. We know that the Foreign Minister from Poland has already hosted people from Burma to work on the United States Institute of Peace’s strategic economic needs and security exercise—SENSE—programme, which simulates government; and so has the Indian Parliament.

Here are my 10 suggestions. First, one person should co-ordinate or keep track of what work Britain is doing, based in either the Foreign and Commonwealth Office or the Department for International Development. Secondly, the work on setting up the library and research facilities for MPs should have a time limit.

Thirdly, there should perhaps be an induction course like the one we had for new Members in 2010. We already have the blueprint, so that could be done now. We could also offer work with the Select Committee structure. I do not know whether you recall, Mr Speaker, but one person asked, “How do we clone these officials?”

Fourthly, will the FCO or DFID work with the Burmese Government to ensure that humanitarian aid workers do not have to keep applying for a permit for different areas? The international organisations should be able to negotiate that. We also heard that Médecins sans Frontières doctors cannot work alongside Burmese doctors—why not?

Fifthly, there needs to be constitutional reform before the elections in 2015, not least to lower the age of MPs. Although age is quite rightly revered, many young people we met were ready to serve and want to be MPs. Importantly, Daw Suu should not be excluded from taking part in the presidential elections, but she currently is.

Sixthly, there should be regular discussions on the release of political prisoners. Can the Minister say what has become of those on Mr Speaker’s list? But might we also look to others who, you will recall, Mr Speaker, we heard may have committed serious crimes? Perhaps an international lawyer could review those cases.

Seventhly, progress must be made on setting up the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Eighthly, on the ethnic issue, there should be a new Panglong conference—along the lines of the Northern Ireland Good Friday agreement.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

I commend the hon. Lady for the visit. It was a shame that I could not make it myself. Particularly on the “to do” list, what about responding to the Prime Minister, who in a letter to me on 4 September, said:

“We”—

the Government—

“will monitor progress on Burma taking a zero tolerance approach to those who fuel ethnic hatred”?

Given that last week, on 29 September, there were significant outbreaks of violence, again against the Muslims in Thandwe, Rakhine state, and although there was control and order, the following day, as I understand, over 60 homes were destroyed and at least five people, including a 94-year-old Muslim woman, were believed to be killed, how can we in this country help to bring about that zero-tolerance approach to those issues of ethnic hatred?

[Valerie Vaz]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, who was sorely missed on the visit. I know he had another engagement, but perhaps he will visit another time. I agree with him. Part of my 10-point action plan should, I hope, address that issue. We need to keep monitoring because things are not changing as fast as we would like.

Let me return to my point No. 8—the ethnic issue and the Panglong conference. Mr Speaker, you will recall the number of times we said we had sorted things out in Northern Ireland. We know that people who were involved in Northern Ireland, who can help, are active in Burma. We need to get people into a room and draw up a schedule and heads of agreement. Perhaps someone like Mary Robinson could play the role of a George Mitchell character. She could chair such a conference.

The Rohingya said they want their right to live there to be recognised. They say they have the papers and a judgment from their Supreme Court. Representatives of the different faith groups, some of the great religions of the world, sat with us together in a room. They need to be encouraged to continue their joint work. There are many international inter-faith foundations that can take on this work, to keep putting out joint statements that they will not be divided on religious grounds.

Ninthly, civil society groups, which came together so notably during Cyclone Nargis, should be supported. Currently, they have to register as organisations; otherwise, they are deemed to be illegal. Could the FCO or DFID look at ways of supporting these organisations without going through the Government?

Tenthly, and probably most importantly, the rule of law needs to be firmly established, with an end to arbitrary arrests. People need to know the case against them and to have a fair hearing before an impartial court.

Those would, I hope, be our way of ensuring that the Government look at—

[Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)]

I am aware that the hon. Lady is painting a broad-brush picture, covering all the different ethnic groups, but there is a large Rohingya community in my constituency. Can the hon. Lady offer them any hope in terms of the persecution that they are facing?

[Valerie Vaz]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. The only comfort I can give him and them is that there are people, in this country and in the international community, who are aware and are watching what is happening. We have to monitor any movement that the Government in Burma make; they cannot talk about trade without also looking at human rights. Hopefully, that issue will also be part of the Panglong conference.

In conclusion, Burma knows that it is at a unique place in its history. Having met the Burmese people, I can see why Daw Suu could not leave them to suffer, and although there is progress, people are still being displaced and there are conflicts. However, there needs to be an irreversible move to democracy and the rule of law, so that the Burmese diaspora feel they can return to their country, and those who live there, eager to serve their country, can do so and live together in peace.

22:13

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) on securing the debate, and on the excellent 10 points that she has put forward, with which I wholly agree. I echo her thanks to you, Mr Speaker, for inviting us to be part of your delegation to Burma. It was a great privilege for us.

Our visit highlighted to us that while a great deal of progress has been made in Burma—or Myanmar, as we were told we should now consider calling it—over the past two years, there is still a long way to go before there will be full democratic involvement of Myanmar’s ethnic and religious minorities. Fundamentally, that requires nationwide and meaningful dialogue with them.

I was tremendously encouraged by the meetings that we had with members of civil society, young people and minority ethnic and religious groups, and their determination to be a part of building a wholly peaceful Burma and to ensure that their country progresses from a fledgling to a more mature democratic state. The young people we met included 20 or so youth peace activists, some from a committee for working peace progress formed only six weeks earlier. Others were representatives from the Mon youth progressive organisation, journalists, a teacher, students, the Mon human rights organisation and the Mon youth education group.

I was most impressed by these young people’s perceptive and articulate response when asked what they wanted for their country. They had quite a list—ethnic equality, a genuine democracy, clarity of the rule of law to promote peace, a clear framework and timetable for a working plan towards peace across the nation, respect for human rights, self-determination, equality across the genders, strong federal Governments, meaningful engagement with civil society, that MPs should be more available to meet and be accountable to their constituents, and a Government who truly represent all the people, including all ethnic and religious groups. All this was from young people who have lived virtually all their lives under military rule. It gave me enormous encouragement that with such actively engaged minds and hearts, there is real hope for democratic progress in Myanmar.

I was also tremendously impressed by the meeting we had with young former prisoners of conscience, the “88 Generation”. What struck me was their lack of bitterness and their dedication to a country where so many of them have suffered so much, some imprisoned for years simply for speaking out politically under the former regime, yet they are still determined to use all their energy and limited resources to help bring about a freer society.

[Mr Burrowes]

Can my hon. Friend give me encouragement that the entrenched attitudes in relation to ethnic division have not been passed on to the younger generation? For example, even in some non-governmental organisations, sadly, there is an entrenched view of Rohingya people. The double discrimination of not being Muslim and not being Rohingya has, sadly, had an effect on some children, making them afraid even to attend school. Has there been a reaction to that among young people who represent hope in the future?

[Fiona Bruce]

I can indeed encourage my hon. Friend. The young people whom we met wanted to engage. They wanted to have a dialogue with other ethnic and religious groups and they were looking to the Government to take forward such a dialogue.

The former prisoners of conscience requested, among other things, that the Government address human rights violations in prisons, which are still continuing. I was pleased that during our meeting, when we raised concerns about recent mistreatment of prisoners at Myitkyina prison, the Minister in the President’s office, U Soe Thane, agreed to look into that. I hope it is now being urgently addressed.

Further requests from the former prisoners were for the urgent review of cases of those who are still in prison and whose only offence appears to have been to criticise the previous regime. If Burma is to demonstrate to the rest of the world that it is genuinely moving forward in its respect for freedom of speech, conscience and belief, this is essential. The former prisoners expressed concerns that the media are not wholly independent or free. A recent press law, they told us, limits rather than extends press freedom and was not preceded by promised dialogue between press industry representatives before being implemented.

Another former prisoner spoke of unfair legal procedures, often involving those accused having to go to court many times, and the overall impression that I had was that although there is change, a fundamental review of the legal sector, its practices and procedures is needed. We were told, too, of the need for the constitution to be amended so that it clearly bans the use of torture. Other issues raised with us included the fact that although new laws are passed, there is a lack of capacity to monitor their implementation, so that in some areas old laws are still being used. Individuals whom we met had been sentenced or told us about friends who had been sentenced within the past year for organising protests or allegedly inspiring people to riot, such as one young student who distributed CDs near a mosque.

Having said that, I was enormously encouraged by the visit to the free legal advice centre, which has been referred to, in the fourth largest city in Burma in Mon state. The 10 or so young trainee lawyers had three impressive objectives: to establish a steering group for a legal aid system; to provide legal advice and assistance to the poorest, including court representation; and to raise awareness that every citizen in the country should have legal rights under the law. Those aspiring young professionals were smart, visionary and personable, and at the same time they were realistic about the journey that they and their fellow countrymen have to make towards a new Burma. Meeting them and the other young people I have quoted gave me real hope that they could achieve that.

In closing, I have a few questions for the Minister. With regard to the need for a meaningful peace and a process of political dialogue that includes all relevant parties, what steps can our Government take to press for that, and what plans has DFID to increase humanitarian assistance for those who have been internally displaced or subjected to human rights violations? I ask him to consider the necessity of DFID ensuring that international efforts are co-ordinated. Finally, what is his assessment of the number of political prisoners still in jail? What can be done to ensure that they are released by the end of the year and that there are no more prisoners of conscience, political prisoners or unjustly imprisoned people in Burma?

22:21

[Sir Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for inviting me to take part in the delegation and for leading it so ably. I congratulate the hon. Members for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) and for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on bringing these matters to the House’s attention. The International Development Committee, which I have the honour of chairing, will be producing a report on Burma, and I hope that we will have an opportunity to elaborate on some of these findings and debate them more fully in the House. At this stage, I think that it is important that we hear from the Minister.

22:21

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Hugo Swire)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce) for allowing me time to try to answer some of the questions. I thank the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) for securing the debate following what to all intents and purposes was clearly a very successful trip to Burma—we still call it Burma—along with you, Mr Speaker, and other Members of the House. The situation in Burma is rightly of great interest to many Members, so this is another opportunity for the Government to set out our approach.

We have a strong record of support for the Burmese people. Our bilateral relationship with the Burmese Government is more recent, but we are deepening and strengthening it as a platform for influencing and shaping the reform process. President Thein Sein came here in July, the first official visit to the UK by a Burmese President. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, and separately my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and I, used the visit to set out our aspirations for the relationship. We will be an open, constructive and critical partner of Burma, realistic about the scale of the transformation and the challenges that that entails and honest where we have concerns.

At the latest meeting of Friends of Burma—it was called Friends of Myanmar, to be fair—chaired by the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, at the UN General Assembly in New York just two weeks ago, I made a number of points. I reiterated the United Kingdom’s calls for the Burmese Government to honour their commitment to establish an Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. I also stressed the need for the Government to act to address the lack of citizenship for the Rohingya community and the incitement of inter-communal violence affecting Muslim communities in Rakhine, which I have visited, and other parts of Burma. It should be noted that it was the first such meeting attended by a Burmese Minister, which in itself is an encouraging step.

There are signs that the ambitions of the Burmese people for greater democracy are slowly being met. In June the Foreign Office hosted members of the “88 Generation” movement, and they were delighted to meet fellow Members of this House, some of whom are among us this evening, to discuss their thoughts for the future. In August I welcomed the fact that the people of Burma were able to commemorate freely the bravery and sacrifices of those who campaigned and marched for democracy during the student uprisings of 1988.

Earlier today President Thein Sein took another small step towards fulfilling the commitment he gave during his visit to London to free all political prisoners by the end of the year. We welcomed the announcement that over 50 political prisoners are to be released. We will continue to press for the release of all political prisoners. As I said in New York, releasing political prisoners is one thing, but we do not expect the jails to be filled up with new political prisoners. Releases of longer-standing political prisoners are welcome, but ongoing detentions of political activists remain a cause of concern. We will continue to lobby on specific cases, and to press for the repeal of repressive legislation.

There are indications that the ethnic conflict that has blighted Burma since independence could end. Recent fighting in Shan and Kachin emphasises the need for continued concern, and the Kachin Independence Organisation remains in constructive dialogue with the Burmese Government. We are providing £13.5 million of humanitarian aid to Kachin this year, the largest bilateral contribution of any donor. We welcome the clear commitment the Government have made towards political dialogue. As the hon. Member for Walsall South said, UK experts have shared lessons from our experiences in Northern Ireland, and we will continue to offer our support to all sides.

Our aid continues to form a vital part of our engagement. By 2015, the Department for International Development will have delivered over £180 million, providing health care, tackling extreme poverty and assisting those affected by conflict. I heard clearly what the hon. Member for Walsall South said about better co-ordinating the efforts of some of these agencies.

We are helping the Government and others improve transparency and create a responsible business environment, we are strengthening the work of Parliament and civil society and we are helping Burma's efforts with ethnic reconciliation and the peace process.

As the right hon. and hon. Members who accompanied you, Mr Speaker, on a visit to Burma in July will have seen, the Government and this Parliament are delivering significant and valued support to Burma's Parliament. This support has been requested by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and Lower House Speaker Shwe Mann, reflecting the world renowned reputation and expertise of this Parliament. Through an exchange of visits, which we plan to continue, we are helping Burmese parliamentarians to develop a culture of holding the Executive to account; sharing the extensive knowledge of the Libraries so that the Burmese parliamentary staff can produce high quality research and draft better legislation; and allowing the Burmese Public Accounts Committee to examine the best practices of its British counterpart in monitoring public expenditure.

Burma's Parliament has also formed a committee to review the constitution. The work of this committee is fundamental to achieving Burma's eventual democratisation. During the President's visit to the UK, the Prime Minister welcomed the prospect of free and fair elections in 2015, and emphasised the importance of completing necessary changes to the constitution. I send this message again clearly and loudly now.

Recent events demonstrate only too clearly that the situation in Rakhine remains volatile. We called immediately for action to restore security and the rule of law in response to the violence last week, and we welcome both the President's visit to the scene and the arrests of suspected perpetrators. We have pledged £4.4 million to further the humanitarian effort. During my visit last year, I called for more co-ordinated action by the UN and the Burmese Government to ensure that assistance reaches those among the displaced who need it most. We continue to monitor the situation carefully. Continued action and strong political leadership are needed to resolve the citizenship status of the Rohingya community, and underlying sources of tension.

The Government share the concerns echoed by many Members regarding sexual violence against women in Burma. This is an important issue to address, as the President acknowledged during his visit here. I pressed the Burmese Foreign Minister to endorse the Foreign Secretary's preventing sexual violence initiative—signed by 119 other countries—and protocol at the UN General Assembly. We will continue lobbying to strengthen accountability systems and eliminate impunity for rape in Burma.

The British Government are committed to a stable, prosperous, more democratic Burma, where the human rights of all its peoples—of any religion and any ethnicity—are upheld, and where diversity is valued as a strength. We should not forget how far Burma was from this goal only two years ago. Continued progress will require determination, commitment and energy from the Burmese President and his Government. We will seek to deepen our engagement, offering support where it is requested and continuing to press where changes still need to be made.

It is not only the Burmese President and his Government who need to show determination, commitment and energy; it is parliamentarians in this House—in both Houses—who have expressed solidarity with the people of Burma and who want to see a better future for them. I congratulate you, Mr Speaker, on taking your group to Burma. I hope we will have many more exchanges and visits on both sides in order that we can export some of our best practice to the Burmese and show them that a fair and proper democratic society where people of all races, ethnicities and religions are respected is the way forward for a country in the 21st century.

Question put and agreed to.

22:30

House adjourned.