Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Charles Walker Excerpts

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Commons Chamber

The way in which people—normal people who are not interested in the finer detail of political machinations—make up their minds is by getting glancing reactions from the 10 o’clock news. They turn on their television sets to watch “The X Factor”, but it is not quite time, so they have to watch some boring programme in which someone is talking about something. In other cases, they have read the sports pages, or their wait for a meeting is dragging on and on, so they read a bit of political coverage. Then they make up their minds relatively quickly. That is not to suggest, as some have suggested, that people are unsophisticated; far from it. Unlike us, who require five hours to churn endlessly through these issues before making up our minds and voting in the Lobbies, they make up their minds quickly. They make judgments about our character, our motives and our arguments quickly. They do not need four weeks separately for all of us to go round and round the issues. They do not need more than four minutes to make up their minds.

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that our constituents elect us to use our considered judgments on the big issues of the day, and if we are to have a referendum, let us do it in a way that ensures that we get it right?

[Nick Boles]

I always defer to my hon. Friend, and in particular on the question whether we are right, here and now, to deliberate the issues. I cannot say that it is my idea of fun, but it is what we are here to do, and it is right that we should do it. However, does that mean that we should therefore expect the people to go through a similar process in answering a simple question about a voting system? I do not think that we should.

It is revealing when some Opposition Members talk about the lack of consultation in the other nations of the United Kingdom. They never refer to the opinions of their people. They talk about—I quote the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Mr Davidson)—there having been no consultation with the stakeholders and about political opinion. To me, that sounds as though we are talking about elites.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Charles Walker Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Straw]

No. If I may, I shall make some progress.

We left the Conservative laws in place. To deal with the point raised by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster, we never sought, and would never have sought, to change the laws relating to boundaries without broad cross-party agreement. The insinuation that we somehow contrived to secure a large gap between the average size of Labour seats and Conservative seats is wholly ill-founded. Six of 10 of the largest constituencies are now Labour, and only three of the 10 smallest are. As I say, we would have been happy to discuss with the Deputy Prime Minister sensible and fair ways of speeding up the timetable for drawing boundaries, just as we did in 1992. Unfortunately, he has put political self-interest way ahead of democratic principles. That is especially evident in his proposals to reduce the size of this House to 600 Members.

The justification for that proposal, which we heard yet again today, is that the House is allegedly too large. That claim does not withstand examination. Our ratio of elected parliamentary representatives per head of population is roughly the same as that in France and Italy; the ratio is much smaller for other EU partners such as Ireland, Sweden, Greece and Poland. Of course, our House is larger than theirs because the population is greater here, and we are not a federal state. That said, we have only 20 more Members than the Bundestag in Germany.

In any event, a more sensible basis on which to decide is to ask what level of representation is right for the United Kingdom, and to examine how the electorate and the House of Commons have changed over time. If the number of Members of Parliament had grown out of all proportion to the size of the electorate, there would clearly be a problem, but that is not the case. Today, there are 650 Members, an increase of less than 4% in 60 years. Over the same period, the electorate have grown by 25%, and the work load of Members on both sides of the House has increased exponentially; that is both the work that arises from constituents, and the work that arises from responsibilities in the House.

Perhaps that is why, in 2003, the man who today is Prime Minister argued to preserve the boundaries of his west Oxfordshire seat and made a strong plea for the size of the House of Commons to stay as it was. The right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron), now the Prime Minister, said in his oral evidence to an independent local public inquiry, which existed then and existed under us, but which will no longer exist:

“Somebody might take the view that at 659 there are already too many Members of Parliament at Westminster. They may take the view . . . that Westminster has less to do, with less MPs—I certainly hope that is not the case.”

I quote from the Boundary Commission for England: Transcript of Oxfordshire Boundary Inquiry, 2003.

The Deputy Prime Minister—this was another error by him—said that the number of Members in the House had crept inexorably up. That is not the case. If he had bothered to examine the House of Commons Library research note on the Bill, he would have seen that on the back. The numbers went up to 659 under the Conservatives. They were put at 659 in 1992. They were at 659 in the 1997 election. They are now down to 650. Of course we would have been happy to discuss sensible and agreed reductions in the total size, as indeed we did when we were in office.

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

Is it not the case that we have 650 Members of Parliament because we draw the Executive from Parliament? At any given time there are at least 300 Members of Parliament serving in the Executive or the shadow Executive. That leaves only 350 Members of Parliament to hold the Government to account.

[Mr Straw]

I had not thought of that before, but I commend the strength of that point. It is why the banal comparisons that the Deputy Prime Minister makes are so false.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

When introducing this Bill, the Deputy Prime Minister dressed it up as the beginning of new politics. Well, this is not new politics; it is old politics exercised at its very best or its very worst, according to one’s disposition. It is about the Executive—the Government of the day—seizing more power for themselves. Let us not be coy about this. That is what Governments do. Let us not be afraid of admitting that.

The arguments for reducing the size of the House of Commons by 50 are nothing more than very flimsy. We are told that cutting 50 Members of Parliament will save £12 million. Well, colleagues, that is what 350 years of settled parliamentary democracy adds up to—we are going to save £12 million. Why stop there? Let us get rid of 300 Members of Parliament and save £72 million. There may be many good reasons for reducing the size of the House of Commons, but saving £12 million is not one of them. We trot out this ridiculous figure to appease the headline writers in the Daily Mail and the tabloid press, and those journalists who work for The Daily Telegraph, which is just a tabloid in a bow tie.

What really concerns me about this Bill is the fact that the Government talk about reducing the number of MPs to 600, but there is no mention of reducing the number of Ministers. What the Bill does, then, is to increase the patronage of the Executive. There will be yet more incentive for my colleagues to be good little boys and good little girls. That is what drives the public mad—seeing MPs say one thing in their constituency and doing another thing here in the hope of securing ministerial preferment.

I would personally like to see 450 MPs in the House of Commons, but only as part of the separation of powers where we remove the Executive from Parliament. The reason we have 650 Members of Parliament, colleagues, is so that at any given time—in the last Parliament, for example—300 of our number have either Front-Bench or shadow Front-Bench duties. As three hundred of our colleagues were taking their orders either from the Prime Minister or from the leader of their party, it left a mere 300 to 350 of us to hold the Government to account. I am all for reducing the number of MPs, but only as part of a far wider package of proper political reform.

To colleagues on all sides of the House, but particularly to my colleagues on the Government Benches, I say that there is a danger of politicising the issue of boundaries, as this reduction in the number of MPs so nakedly favours my party. I know that the system up to now, by an accident of design, has favoured the Labour party, but if this reform is to carry weight and legitimacy, it must be seen to be fair to all parties, not to the naked advantage of one party.

I have already mentioned what the public hate. They hate patronage; they hate politicians doing deals in smoke-filled rooms. Now, I support the coalition because it was the least worst of the options before us after the May general election, but let us be in no doubt that the coalition was agreed in a smoke-filled room by a few very powerful politicians at the head of two parties. I did not have a great deal of say in the formation of that coalition. I had no say in what policies were included or what policies were discarded. What happened actually transferred power further into the hands of a political elite.

[Martin Horwood]

The hon. Gentleman must make it clear to the House that he is speaking for his own party. In the case of the Liberal Democrats, the coalition was approved by a vote of the parliamentary party and the federal executive, and then by democratic vote of the representatives of every local party in conference assembled—and by a large majority.

[Mr Walker]

I am delighted that the Liberal Democrats had such a frank and open discussion and perhaps we can learn from that, as we are in the age of lessons learned.

[Mr Jenkin]

If my hon. Friend will allow me, let me say, with the greatest respect to the Liberal party, that members of the Liberal party and Liberal MPs are not the people. I believe that my hon. Friend is referring to the people of this country as being those who were excluded from the coalition deal.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Walker]

What I am saying to the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) is that under the AV system, party negotiating teams will more often decide the outcome of a general election than will the public or the electorate, which will not increase confidence in democracy, but further erode confidence in it. “Are we to believe these manifestos?” is what people will say, as they see politicians saying one thing in the manifesto and then doing something different among themselves in a smoke-filled room.

Let us remind ourselves, colleagues, that the second part of the Bill, which is concerned with AV, is purely there to appease less than 10% of the House. That is the future of permanent coalition Government—deals to appease minority parties. I am extremely nervous about this Bill, which I do not think has been properly thought through. It has been presented, brought forward and debated in haste.

I will say this, however. I am extremely pleased that my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr Cameron) is the Prime Minister. I could not think of a better one. That is why on this one occasion—I say this particularly to my Whip—out of loyalty to the Prime Minister and for no other reason, I shall support this Bill on Second Reading. After that, however, every vote that I enter into, for the rest of the Parliament, will be a free vote. The Whip need not concern himself too much, because I am a Conservative to my core. Every fibre in me is Conservative. On most occasions, therefore, I will happily walk through the Division Lobby with my party. However, there will be occasions when I exercise my right, as the elected representative of Broxbourne, to disagree with my party. In essence, that is what I am, and it is what we all are: representatives coming from constituencies, to use our judgment on the great issues of the day.

I am representative of neither the Whips Office nor No. 10. More than anything, people in this country are crying out for independent-minded, honest, brave Members of Parliament, who put being a legislator and sitting in this place above all else. Too often, we are viewed as coming to this place with an aspiration to become a Minister. I say to my constituents that there is no greater honour than being the Member of Parliament for Broxbourne; there is no greater honour than being a Member of Parliament. If we begin to focus on our constituencies and remember why we are put here, we restore confidence in politics.

We have had a difficult few years, but if colleagues genuinely feel that they do not have the character to represent their constituents bravely in this place, they should stand down now and let someone else take their place.

Debate on the Address

Charles Walker Excerpts

Tuesday 25th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

Mr Deputy Speaker, thank you for calling me to speak on this first day of the Queen’s Speech. It is fantastic to see you in the Chair.

There are so many new things going on: this is the first time that I have been on the Government side of the House and I am getting a new perspective on the Chamber; and it is the first time that I have been in the House with a Conservative Prime Minister, and I would like to pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr Cameron). He spent four long, hard years getting us to this position. He made huge personal sacrifices in his life, and I wish him the very best as he leads this country through some difficult times. He has it in him to be an outstanding young Prime Minister. I also welcome the Liberal Democrats to this side of the House. I have many friends among the party—I like them very much—but it will take me some time to get used to them being in government with us. I will get used to it, I promise, but it will not happen over night. However, I have a great deal of time, particularly for the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), the Deputy Leader of the House, whom I know has a great love and passion for this Chamber.

I have been very disturbed by today’s maiden speeches, because they have been awfully good. My hon. Friends the Members for Sherwood (Mr Spencer), for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris) and for Watford (Richard Harrington) have been dangerously erudite. They are either geniuses or total creeps, but I think that they are geniuses, because I have never heard such good speeches in this Chamber from new Members—I certainly did not hear them in my first six months, and I doubt that we will hear much better in the months ahead. They were fabulous speeches, and I am sure that their families are extremely proud of them. I bet that their constituents are very grateful that they have them as their Members of Parliament.

I am enormously excited by the number of new colleagues on the Government and Opposition Benches. They are a very self-confident and vibrant bunch, but what excites me most is that they are independent-minded. I am sure that that does not excite the Whips on the Front Bench so much, but I think it is a great asset to this place to have independent-minded Members of Parliament who will go on to be brave and courageous, because if our constituents want anything, they want people who say something in their constituency and then go down and do it in the House of Commons. They want consistency. They want their Members of Parliament to deliver on their promises.

We in this House will be faced with an enormous number of challenges in the weeks, months and years ahead. We will have to make some enormously difficult decisions—decisions that will cause us personal pain and, I am sure, personal pain for our constituents, but decisions that need to be made. They need to be made for the sake of our children and grandchildren. We need to rebuild our economy. We need to have a strong and vibrant economy that can support high levels of employment. It does not matter if we represent a Labour seat, a Conservative seat, a Lib Dem seat or, now, even a Green seat; the most important thing to the majority of our constituents is having a job, because with a job comes self-respect and the ability to put a roof over their families’ heads and food on the table. We in this House have a duty to ensure that we have a vibrant economy that can continue to generate high levels of wealth. I and others will be working to achieve that.

We also have to deliver on our promises. All of us—or almost all of us—said that immigration was a concern that needed to be addressed. My constituents in Broxbourne are fair-minded, decent and compassionate people. They want skilled workers coming to this country who can add to the wealth of this country and pay taxes that help to support hospitals, schools and infrastructure. My constituents also want to provide genuine sanctuary to those who are in genuine fear for their lives. However, we have to recognise in this place that uncontrolled immigration is not an unalloyed good for everyone.

Immigration tends to work very well for the middle and upper classes, but many of my constituents are competing for scarce public resources, such as education, health, transport and housing. That has created a level of concern and bad feeling which has caused me a great deal of concern, because in my constituency and others we still see the British National party getting a foothold and gaining traction. I am delighted that the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) and the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) had such fantastic results against the British National party, not only turning back Nick Griffin, the leader of that party, but ensuring that night that many BNP councillors lost their seats. We need to continue that progress, but if we are to do so, our constituents need to know that we are serious about addressing their concerns.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend when he is in full flow, but may I just point out two things? First, I come from an immigrant family—I am third generation—and the thing that made it work was that my ancestors came to this country because they admired it and wanted to be part of it, to learn the language and to integrate. That is an essential component to which he might give some attention. The second thing is that if we were unwise enough to have changed the voting system, we might have BNP MPs in this place right now.

[Mr Walker]

My hon. Friend makes two powerful points. Of course we want to enable people to integrate into our wonderful society. It has many benefits—freedom of association; freedom to hang out with who we want to hang out with; freedom to marry who we want to marry; freedom to go to a polling station and vote for the person who we want to represent us, for better or for worse—so I agree with him: there are many, many things that need to be done.

While I have the attention of the House, let me say that it is so nice to speak to such a packed House. Many new Members will smile at that, but let me tell them that there will be evenings when they are speaking to no more than three or four people, so this is a good outcome for those who have made their maiden speeches today.

Within the Government’s priorities, of which there are many, they have paid great attention to the issue of health and the provision of health care to our constituents. I would make one plea to them. I see my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) in the Chamber; he has played a great part in raising in this place the profile and status of mental health. Nevertheless, mental health remains a very unfashionable subject, and that is a great shame. Many of our constituents live daily with terrible conditions that impact on their lives, on their happiness and that of their families, and, collectively, on their families’ prospects.

I know that tough decisions will need to be taken on the allocation of scarce resources, but, for too many decades, mental health has been left behind. It has been at the back of the queue. It would be churlish if I were not to pay tribute to the previous Government, because they did start to address the shortcomings in funding and to ensure that the mentally ill got the care that they deserved. I have every confidence that my Government—this Conservative Government supported by my Liberal Democrat friends—will pay the same attention to mental health and elevate it further up the list of priorities in the NHS.

There is nothing more rewarding, having made a speech in this place raising an issue of great concern, than to have someone come up to you very quietly in your constituency, take you by the arm and thank you in a private, understated way. That is when you know that you are making a difference and giving people a voice who would otherwise not have one.

[Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)]

Mental health issues affect almost a quarter of people at some stage in their lives. During the last Parliament, I was surprised to discover how many people on incapacity benefit had mental health problems. They have particular difficulty in getting back into work, and they need special packages. This is a key issue, and my hon. Friend is perfectly right to raise it.

[Mr Walker]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The longer people are out of work and not socialising with people in the workplace, the worse they feel about themselves. They disengage from society, which has an impact on their mental health and on their ability to lead fulfilled lives. It is incumbent on the Government to ensure that people who are not in the workplace and not actively involved in the economy are given every chance to take part in the world of work again, and to make a useful contribution to society—a contribution in which they can take great pride. This is not just about the amount of money they earn; it is about giving them a sense of self-worth. My hon. Friend has made a very good point.

[Mr Syms]

My hon. Friend is making a compelling argument. A key point is that many of those people were persuaded to take jobs on the basis that they would receive support packages—perhaps to do with travel or other forms of support—that have not necessarily turned out to be as good as they expected. The difficulty is that, once someone comes off benefit, they find it very difficult to get back into the benefits system if a job does not work out. The transition from benefit to work is an important stage at which to ensure that they get the support that they need to undertake a fulfilling job.

[Mr Walker]

Again, my hon. Friend makes a good point.

In concluding my remarks on mental health, I must point out that there are far too many initiatives. There are also far too many different groups and professional set-ups providing support services to people with mental health problems. We need to streamline all that. People with mental health problems do not want to have to relate to seven, eight, nine or 10 teams; they want to relate to one team that can give them the support that they need in order to manage their illness, recover from it—if that is possible; it is not always so—and get back into work to lead a fulfilling professional life.

So, Mr Deputy Speaker—Mr Speaker! I see that you are back in your Chair! How exciting! I have waffled on for far too long, but I should like to conclude with these few slightly rebellious remarks. There is a great tension in this place between Parliament and the Executive. For 100 years, the Executive have cleverly taken powers out of the hands of Parliament, taken them on board and used them for themselves. I hope that in the years ahead we will start to take some powers back from the Executive, find our collective voice on behalf of this nation and restore people’s confidence in us.

I say to new Members, “Do not look towards any Government to raise the status of the House of Commons.” That is not the responsibility of the Government and I assure new Members that if the Government try to do it they will not do a particularly good job. It is our responsibility to raise the status of the House of Commons, and I am very much up for the challenge, just as I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East, who wants to intervene, is up for it.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I intend this to be an intervention rather than a subsequent speech. Before my hon. Friend sits down, may I say that should he be successful in becoming a vice-chairman of the 1922 Committee—a matter that I know he is far too modest to raise himself on the Floor of the House; it is being voted on tomorrow—I am sure that he will put into practice the very message that he is preaching to us tonight.

[Mr Walker]

I thank my hon. Friend for doing that advertisement for me.

Let me conclude by saying that a self-confident Government and a self-confident Opposition will tolerate and encourage independent-minded Members of Parliament. They will actually derive great strength from such independence of mind. I am delighted that there are so many new and able colleagues on both sides of the House. We have said goodbye to some very talented individuals who until six weeks ago were respected Members of Parliament for their constituencies. What I have seen over the last few days quite frightens me, as we have seen some enormously talented people here and the Whips are going to have their job cut out for the next five years—if it is five years. I wish new colleagues every success. This is a great place to be; it is the mother of all Parliaments; new Members have done fantastically well in getting themselves here.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Miss Chloe Smith.)

Debate to be resumed tomorrow.