Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Leslie Excerpts

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I certainly agree that, where possible, if not in all cases, the building blocks for the boundary review should follow ward boundaries. It would be foolish to reinvent the wheel in that respect. That is why we are proceeding on the basis that ward boundaries will indeed continue to serve as the building blocks for the boundary reviews.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

In order to force through the gerrymandering of Parliament before the next general election, which the Deputy Prime Minister is trying to do, will he be able to get those 50 friends from among his Tory and Liberal colleagues packed into the House of Lords by next week or the week after? When is he planning to make that announcement?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, we will be publishing a Bill early in the new year, which we are drafting at the moment on a cross-party basis, to reform the other place. In the meantime, in keeping with traditions that were also pursued by his Government, appointments will be made as a proportion of and in line with the results of the general election.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Chris Leslie Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

Well, perhaps the hon. Gentleman needs to look a little more carefully.

May I now move on to the principal arguments that I want to address? I have already said that I have a degree of sympathy with what the hon. Member for Broxbourne said about the reductions.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Heath]

No, not for the moment because I have just said that I want to set out some of the reasons I have difficulties with the new clause.

One point worried me slightly, and I have to say that the hon. Member for Broxbourne and I may have an honest disagreement about it. He appeared to be advocating a complete separation of powers.

Individual Electoral Registration

Chris Leslie Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Of course individual registration might improve security, but it will also raise the threshold for engaging in the voting process. Is the Minister today announcing a reduction in the amount of money that goes to electoral registration officers? In his statement, it sounded as though he was taking about £74 million away, but could he be more specific about the phasing of the budget for councils?

[Mr Harper]

What I announced was that proceeding with the voluntary phase was going to cost £74 million, and we are doing away with that. The hon. Gentleman is an experienced Member of the House, and he would not expect me to announce things that are going to be announced in the comprehensive spending review. I am confident, however, that the funds that we need to implement this in a sensible way will be forthcoming.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Leslie Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The excessive use of consultants—we discovered that there were 2,500 consultants embedded in Whitehall across Government—is not only expensive and a wasteful use of money but demoralising for mainstream civil servants, who feel that they are undervalued. By cutting back on the use of consultants we can begin to re-equip the mainstream civil service with the professional skills that it wants.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Can the Minister assure the House that the Government will not employ any consultants at all on the experimental free market schools strategy at the Department for Education? I am sure I heard a rumour that the Government had paid half a million pounds to the New Schools Network.

[Mr Maude]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that if there are any consultants being used, that will have been signed off personally by a Minister in the Department for Education and will be made public online shortly. He should address his question to my colleagues in that Department and scan the website for notification.

Treatment of Detainees

Chris Leslie Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman and I would probably agree on the need to confront and defeat those who put forward extremist Islamist arguments. That is something that we have to do for the good of our country and for the good of the world. He asked whether an inquiry could draw a line under all this. All I would say is that I do not think there has yet been a proper attempt to look systematically at the set of allegations about whether British personnel were in any way complicit because of the things that they witnessed or were involved in. That has not been done, and it needs to be done. I would ask people who disagree: what is the alternative? Do we really want to let the civil cases roll on year after year, and have the people in our security services jammed up with paperwork trying to fight them? It is much better to clear them away and get to the bottom of this, to ensure that those people can get on with the job that they do so well.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

I think that many hon. Members on both sides of the House will understand the approach to mediation in some of the civil cases, but does the Prime Minister accept that the situation is a bit more controversial when it comes to compensation, particularly if no wrongdoing on the part of the security services has been proven? Will he therefore agree to having at least some level of transparency after these processes have been completed, perhaps by publishing the amounts of compensation involved—or at the very least by not exempting that information from the Freedom of Information Act 2000?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that this is a difficult process. Nobody wants to pay compensation that is not warranted. I would say two things to him, however. One is that it is getting increasingly difficult for the security services to defend themselves in the civil actions, because the information that they would use to defend themselves would then be made public. They do not want that to happen, so they do not bring the information forward and they cannot therefore win the case. The second thing that I would say to him is that the point about mediation is that it is a private process, and if we start advertising our mediation strategy—or, indeed, our mediation outcome—it is not necessarily going to make mediation very easy in future.

Political and Constitutional Reform

Chris Leslie Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

We estimate, on the basis of calculations that will need to be derived from the electoral register published in early December, that the optimal size will be about 75,000.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Deputy Prime Minister think again about the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope)? If there is a reduction in the number of Members of Parliament but not in the number of Ministers as set out in the Ministers of the Crown Act 1975, there will be an increase in the ratio between the number of Ministers and the number of Back Benchers. Does he understand that point, and will he now address it?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I simply do not accept that there is an imbalance between the number of Ministers and the manner in which they are held to account by a House which will be about 7.7% smaller. I believe that a House with 600 Members will be as well equipped to hold this and, indeed, any other Government to account as the present House is with 650.

G8 and G20 Summits

Chris Leslie Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes the important point, which the International Monetary Fund also makes, that if we carry out fiscal consolidation and demonstrate that we have a plan and are getting on with it, that can enhance confidence. Confidence is the key to growth. If we are going to get people to spend and invest, they need to know that the Government have a plan for getting us out of the mess that we inherited, so that is key to getting our economy moving.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

When the Prime Minister was discussing the banking levy at the G20, did he explain to his colleagues why he was so lenient on the banks? Instead of taking the axe to public services, he should be asking the banks to contribute more to address the mess that they created, instead of letting them off the hook.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Leslie Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

My right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling asked me whether I would advise the Standards and Privileges Committee, but that is not a matter for members of the Government. The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) himself will be appointed, if the House so desires it, to the Speaker’s Committee on IPSA, and I know he will use his undoubted skills to make sure that IPSA is given correct advice so that Members of this House can do their jobs to the standards our constituents require.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

4. What criteria were used to decide on a 55% majority for a vote in the House to trigger a dissolution of Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful, Mr Speaker. Labour Members clearly do not want to listen to answers to their questions. The answer is that we want to make sure that no single party in this House is able to seek a Dissolution for its own party political advantage. That is why the coalition agreement makes the provision that it does.

[Chris Leslie]

Is it not an outrage that the Deputy Prime Minister makes such a transparent attempt to rig the way in which this House of Commons holds the Government to account? What an outrage that he sold his soul to the Conservatives to ensure that he is in office, even when his own colleagues try to undo the mess.

[Mr Harper]

I was having trouble detecting a question in that rather intemperate rant, Mr Speaker. I have already made it clear that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, who chose to walk in at exactly that moment, was the first Prime Minister to give away the power to seek a Dissolution of this House. He has given away his own power and given it back to this House. The hon. Gentleman should be grateful for that move forward.

European Council

Chris Leslie Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Perhaps when it is a person’s first European Council, they give them a slightly softer ride. If Britain states our positions clearly, and if we work hard, particularly with allies in France and Germany, to put forward our positions and why they matter so much to us, we can meet with success, but we should have a positive agenda. As well as protecting our competences and keeping ourselves out of the single currency, we should have a positive agenda about trade, Doha and completing the single market, because all our economies need the stimulus that trade and investment can bring. There is no money left in the European kitties; one can see that by looking at the other leaders sitting around the table, and at how they are feeling, given their own budget deficits. So the best stimulus that we can have is free trade, Doha and completing the single market.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

As a matter of record, will the Prime Minister say that, at the European Council, there was absolutely no discussion whatsoever of the risks to economic growth from cumulative or excessive spending cuts across Europe, or was he just not listening to those bits?

[The Prime Minister]

I was focused and listening to every minute of the discussions. We want to get it right in dealing with deficits and encouraging growth, but the conclusions make it clear that those countries with really bad deficit problems have to take action. When one sits at the table and looks at the problems in Greece, and at the difficulties in Spain, one asks oneself who has the biggest budget deficit, and the answer is Britain, because we were left it by the Labour party.

Constitution and Home Affairs

Chris Leslie Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) for opening today’s debate, which he did at considerable length—so much so that I am increasingly attracted to the idea of time limits on speeches.

The right hon. Gentleman spoke with great knowledge and at times some generosity about our proposed programme. That is no wonder given what we are proposing: a referendum on the alternative vote—a Labour manifesto pledge; the power of recall—a Labour manifesto pledge; moves to reform party funding, fixed-term Parliaments and an elected Second Chamber—all Labour manifesto pledges. In fact, never before will a Government have delivered quite so many of Labour’s election promises. Who would have thought it would be a Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalition that finally got around to doing that?

I recognise of course that the right hon. Gentleman has great authority on those matters. His Government, in their early days, had a clear reformist streak—devolution, freedom of information and progress on Lords reform. Unfortunately, that momentum was lost, but after the right hon. Gentleman’s speech today perhaps that zeal for political reform, which Labour lost in government, will now be rediscovered in opposition.

I have heard the right hon. Gentleman’s concerns, particularly his lengthy concerns about the boundary review, which seem a little coloured by the almost unsettling suspicion that there is a political plot at every turn. I shall seek to address some of his concerns, although I shall leave debate about the merits or otherwise of the 1832 Act to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) and other historians. I shall focus primarily on the constitutional reforms being pursued by the Government, for which I have direct responsibility, although I shall say a few words about some of the issues raised by the Opposition that will be taken forward by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. She will pick up those issues later.

On the constitutional side, yes, of course we will need to work out the precise detail of the reforms we are proposing, but I sincerely hope that their underlying principles will bring both sides of the House together. Despite any differences, we all share a single ambition: to restore people’s faith in their politics and their politicians. The Government’s plans will do just that, because our programme turns a page on Governments who hoard power, on Parliaments that look inwards rather than outwards, and on widespread disengagement among people who feel locked out of decisions that affect their everyday lives. This is a moment when together we have a real opportunity to change our politics for good.

[Christopher Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Stepping off his moral high horse for just a moment, could the right hon. Gentleman take the time to define the word “gerrymander”?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I do not think anyone in the House, and particularly outside it, would question the value of trying to reduce the cost of Parliament, by making a modest cut in the total numbers. I do not judge the quality of our democracy—nor should the hon. Gentleman—by the simple number of politicians in the House.