Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Daniel Kawczynski

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I am afraid I completely disagree with the Minister’s interpretation of events over the past few months. I wholeheartedly congratulate their lordships on the process they have engaged in, and I make no apologies for the fact that Labour MPs have been holding the Government to account in this House, or for the fact that in the House of Lords there are people who were elected previously and who are able to bring a degree of expertise to the debates when discussing elections.

I note that yesterday Sky News was reporting that the Prime Minister, David Cameron, would take revenge on Labour peers. Bring it on. In legislation on the reform of the national health service, the reform of schools and public services that everybody depends on, Labour peers down the other end will do as robust a job as they have done on the Bill. If there was anything that showed that the Government have not been acting entirely in good faith, it is today’s programme motion, which allows only four hours for 104 amendments to be considered, including the time taken for votes.

I am not sure that my interpretation of what has happened is the same as the Government’s. I say to all hon. Members in all seriousness that I fear that many Members who end up voting for the Bill will regret the day that they did so. The Government have bulldozed their way through every convention so far, ludicrously combining two pieces of legislation that should never have been in one Bill—only because that was a way of keeping the coalition together—pushing forward with no pre-legislative scrutiny of a measure that had no electoral mandate, curtailing debate in this House, for the first time ever threatening the guillotine in the House of Lords, then packing the Lords with pliant new Conservative and Lib Dem Members every day and suspending all the normal rules in the House of Lords.

We will rue the way in which the Bill was pushed through and the legislation itself, because we are not legislating on the basis of long-term democratic health for this country, or on the basis of sound principle, but solely so as to meet the partisan needs of the coalition.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman seems to be suffering from a certain amount of amnesia. When his party was in office in the previous Parliament, there was guillotining all over the place.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman sometimes suffers from amnesia himself. I was talking about guillotines in the Lords. It has been a fundamental principle of the constitutional settlement in this country that the House of Lords is a self-governing House and never has a programme motion.

When there was a Labour Government of just one political party, we never had a majority in the House of Lords. By virtue of how the Government are progressing at the moment, with a large number of new peers being appointed—117 since the general election—they are approaching the point at which they will have an absolutely majority in this House and the other House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Kawczynski]

The hon. Gentleman is being cynical. If the people of Acton Burnell, who are in my constituency, wish to remain there, they can feed that information through to me and I will put that view at the public meeting.

[Chris Bryant]

I am impressed by the hon. Gentleman and I am sure that all views expressed by anybody in his constituency should undoubtedly, at all times, be expressed solely through him. However, there is another version of democracy, whereby sometimes people disagree with their local Member of Parliament and might want to adopt a different position.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Daniel Kawczynski

Monday 25th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Well, the hon. Gentleman should be. He carries himself as if he were right honourable—if not most reverend as well.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

He was magisterial.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I agree. That is why I have been trying to argue that Members such as the hon. Gentleman who have taken a long-standing interest in constitutional issues should feel free not necessarily to vote with their Front Benchers. I know that he has already exercised that right on several occasions.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

The hon. Gentleman says that having a large group of PPSs will make it more difficult to hold the Government to account, but some might argue that when Mr Blair was Prime Minister it was the rebellion among PPSs threatening to resign that finally forced him to go.

[Chris Bryant]

I know too much about that episode to want to divulge exactly what went on. The hon. Gentleman is a PPS now, is he not?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Yes.

[Chris Bryant]

Right, but he is not yet listed on any publicly available list of PPSs. [Interruption.] Well, I am sure that the country is grateful and that people will welcome the hon. Gentleman with acclaim and instantly start putting up red and white bunting in honour of his historical associations with Poland.

My point is that the payroll vote has increased. It has increased because of the dramatic increase in the number of PPSs, which partly happened under our rule but I think is happening again at the moment. The increased payroll vote is not just because of that, though. It is also because of unpaid Ministers. I was an unpaid Minister for a while and sympathise with the Deputy Leader of the House, who is one now. We now also have a particularly interesting concept, which is a Liberal Democrat Whip who is not even an unpaid Minister but an organiser of the Liberal Democrats, but who is sort of on the payroll as part of the ministerial team. Clearly, because their job has the word “Whip” in it, they are expected to vote with the Government at all times.

In addition, a vast extent of patronage is still available to Prime Ministers. They can make Members chair an ad hoc committee or ask them to be a delegate to some conference here or there. The whole business of patronage can be profoundly dangerous to how we do our business. I have already referred to how that applies to Opposition parties.

I will be warm towards the Government briefly and say that they have made some moves to remove one element of that patronage, which we had suggested before and for which I remember fighting when Robin Cook was Leader of the House. They have done that through the election of Select Committee Chairs. That has been entirely beneficial and I support it fully. I can see at least one Committee Chair in his place, and he is a splendid chap. He might not have become Chair of that Committee if it had been a matter of patronage, or if he had become Chair by virtue of patronage, he might not have felt so free to use his voice in these debates over the past few days. He has pointed in the direction of the new politics, but we can still go much further.

Of course we must consider the financial costs of ministerial office that can be saved, although I do not want to go too far down the populist route attached to that. Sometimes it is valuable to have Ministers who are properly supported and can do their job well. When I was in the Foreign Office it had only three Ministers in the House of Commons, which made it very difficult for foreign delegations to be met by a Minister from the Foreign Office. I do not know whether that did the United Kingdom any favours. I do not wish to adopt every populist measure that is thrown in front of us, or to kick it in the net, but I do want to ensure that the House has sufficient Members with Back-Bench independence to be able to hold the Executive to account.

Many of those who have made the most significant contributions to the House over the centuries have not only never sought ministerial office but actively declined it, from Andrew Marvell, who turned down office on five or six occasions, to Plimsoll, Bradlaugh and a series of others. They made dramatic changes to the lives of many ordinary people in this country, and they did not need ministerial office to do it. They were able to do it from the Back Benches.