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

Debate between Christopher Chope and Andrew Turner

Wednesday 11th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

My hon. Friend raises an important point, but the proposal addresses someone who might be not stealing electricity, but using it unlawfully. In such circumstances, they would have paid for it.

[Mr Chope]

I look forward to hearing my hon. Friend’s speech on the amendments because I am not sure that there is a distinction between using electricity in an unintended way and stealing it.

[Mr Turner]

I am not suggesting that the person has not paid for the electricity. He could have paid for it, but acted unlawfully under the clause.

Collective Ministerial Responsibility

Debate between Christopher Chope and Andrew Turner

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bayley. The debate is surprisingly topical. Only two hours ago in the Chamber, in response to an urgent question from the Opposition, the Minister responsible for press regulation, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, answered on behalf of not the Government, but the Conservative party, which I thought was rather bizarre. There followed a contribution from the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech)—who is not a member of the Government or part of ministerial collective responsibility—who purported to make a statement on behalf of the Liberal Democrat party. Surely the whole purpose of collective ministerial responsibility is to ensure that there is certainty outside about the Government’s view on a particular issue, so that they do not speak with forked tongue.

Although I welcome the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith), who will respond to the debate, I am rather disappointed that the Prime Minister is not here in person, because it was primarily his failure to answer my written questions on how he exercises collective ministerial responsibility that caused me to request the debate.

I started asking questions about the subject in December. I asked the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr Maude)—to whom my question to the Prime Minister was transferred—about the number of occasions on which collective ministerial responsibility had been set aside in this Parliament. I received a non-answer. I then went to ask some questions directly of the Prime Minister, but again my questions were not answered. Some of those non-answers are referred to in the briefing that is available to hon. Members. I will not go through those answers, because they are not answers. I could not understand why the Prime Minister was so reluctant to be accountable to Members of Parliament and put a straight answer to a straight question on how many occasions collective ministerial responsibility had been set aside.

After the set of answers—or non-answers—from the Prime Minister, I asked specific questions about what had happened in relation to the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill last month. During consideration of Lords amendments, the Leader of the House of Commons announced that collective ministerial responsibility had been set aside—the first time that we have heard officially that that has happened—and, in answer to my intervention, explained that that was the Prime Minister’s decision. Following that, I asked the Prime Minister on what day he had set aside ministerial responsibility in relation to the Bill and the reasons for that. I have had no answers to those questions; in fact, I have had a deliberate refusal to answer. I cannot understand why, because I thought that the Government were interested in transparency and openness and that they would want to put their answers on the record.

My last stab at trying to get some answers from the Prime Minister was in the form of questions, which were answered on Monday this week. I asked,

“what the arrangements are for informing Ministers of the setting aside of collective ministerial responsibility in respect of votes in the House”

and

“on how many occasions a formal Cabinet decision has been made to set aside collective ministerial responsibility in the last 12 months.”

The answer I received was:

“It has been the practice of successive Governments not to disclose information relating to internal discussions”—

I did not ask about internal discussions, of course—

“information or forums in which decisions are made.”—[Official Report, 11 February 2013; Vol. 558, c. 462W.]

Apparently that is the Government’s policy.

However, that does not fit in well with a report in The Daily Telegraph on 15 January, by Tim Ross, about the “revolt”—as he put it—in the upper Chamber by six of the seven Liberal Democrat Front Benchers, who voted against the coalition Government on the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill. He wrote:

“Downing Street said Prime Minister David Cameron would seek to overturn the amendment in the Commons, but without an overall…majority the parliamentary arithmetic is against him. The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg had formally agreed to suspend the convention of ‘collective responsibility’ which applies to all Cabinet ministers on Government decisions. No. 10 said the decision to suspend ministerial responsibility, agreed before the Lords vote yesterday, was ‘the first time it has happened under this Coalition’.”

In a sense, a No. 10 spokesman was giving answers to my parliamentary questions, which the Prime Minister himself had refused to answer before the House. I find that extraordinary.

The situation was compounded. The article continued:

“Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, witnessed and recorded the agreement between the Tory and Lib Dem leaders yesterday and ruled that the approach was permissible under current rules governing the ministerial code.”

Where does that fit in with the non-answer that I received from the Prime Minister, saying that it is not the practice to disclose information relating to internal discussions, information or forums in which decisions are made?

The article continued:

“‘Having consulted the Cabinet Secretary they (Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg) have recorded their agreement to set aside collective responsibility on this occasion,’ the spokesman said.”

My concerns are, first, to see whether we can get the issue of collective ministerial responsibility out in the open, and secondly, to chide the Government and the Prime Minister—I have to name him, as head of the Government —for not following the policy that he has said he would follow, which is to promote transparency in government.

In a speech the Prime Minister made on 26 May 2009, titled “Fixing broken politics”, he said, under the sub-heading of “Transparency”, that

“there’s one more item on the agenda: transparency. Ask most people where politics happens and they’d paint a picture of tight-knit tribes making important decisions in wood-panelled rooms, speaking a strange language. If we want people to have faith and get involved, we need to defeat this impression by opening politics up—making everything transparent, accessible and human. And the starting point for reform should be a near-total transparency of the political and governing elite, so people can see what is being done in their name.”

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for spelling out his argument. Before the upper House broke ranks, as it were, when some Liberals voted with the Labour party and most Conservatives voted with the Government, was it clear that that would happen? Those of us who just read the newspapers were told that it was a surprise; we were not told that it was planned in advance by the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, because the revolt was on primary legislation, whereas the only issue on which the Deputy Prime Minister had given notice that he would lead his troops in the opposite direction to the rest of the coalition was when, in August, he said he would withdraw his support for any Boundary Commission proposals put through the House via a statutory instrument. The revolt must have come as a bit of a surprise, but back in August he was giving public notice that he himself would set aside collective Cabinet responsibility, with or without the Prime Minister’s consent. In light of the information I have set out, it seems as though there was no consent at that stage to set aside collective ministerial responsibility.

European Union (Approvals) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Andrew Turner

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

The background to this, as right hon. and hon. Members will know, is that a reduction in the number of EU Commissioners was proposed, but the Irish—among others—said that that would potentially be very unfair on them. They wanted to be guaranteed the right to have a Commissioner and, as part of the compromise deal that was done to try to win the support of the Irish people in a referendum, the concession was made. They were told, “Don’t worry, every country can have an EU Commissioner.” We are now being asked to give approval to the decision relating to the number of EU Commissioners.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Can my hon. Friend explain why it is felt necessary that each country should have a Commissioner?

[Mr Chope]

It is difficult for me to speak for them, but perhaps some countries feel that only if they have a Commissioner of their own will they have sufficient patronage to distribute. It is within the patronage of any Government to appoint an EU Commissioner. For example, we have heard rumours that the way out for the Deputy Prime Minister will be to be appointed the next UK EU Commissioner.