Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chris Bryant

Monday 24th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Yes, and it is remarkably poorly used, for the simple reason that it is regularly taken to appeal—[Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman wants to intervene again, I would be happy to give way to him, although I would probably be being generous with other people’s time rather than my own.

My argument is that these are imprecise terms. That is not a good way of legislating, not least because at the moment that a court decided that there had been misconduct such as that on which the hon. Gentleman wants it to decide and that none of the get-out clauses in new clause 3(5) applied, to all intents and purposes the court would have decided, in the public mind, that the Member of Parliament was guilty—end of story—and I cannot see how that would not affect whatever might happen in a subsequent recall.

I have one final problem with the drafting. I understand why the hon. Member for Cambridge has provided in subsection (7):

“Nothing in this section shall be construed as affecting any provision of the Bill of Rights 1689.”

That appears because several Members have pointed out that there is a problem: if the Bill of Rights says that no proceeding in Parliament should be “impeached or questioned” in any court of law or any other place, it would be a bit rum for a court expressly to be told that it can go forward on the basis of whether or not an MP has “misconducted” themselves in a proceeding in Parliament. The new clause expressly says that one of the criteria that can be considered is “conduct”, whether it be as a Member of Parliament or not—completely and utterly irrelevantly.

I believe that there is a fundamental contradiction in the new clause. Under it, the court could decide that how somebody had spoken in Parliament or engaged in a proceeding in Parliament could be considered as relevant to a misconduct hearing. That would limit free speech, which we should guard jealously in this House, and, essentially, undo the Bill of Rights. It is a contradictory provision. For all those reasons, I could not support new clause 3, tabled by the hon. Member for Cambridge.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am in a good deal of agreement with the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). I came into this debate, most unusually, undecided as to how I was going to vote. No guidance was provided from the Whips about how I ought to vote, which I view as a great advance. It is to the great credit of my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) that he is not trying to tell people how to vote. It shows a considerable wisdom to return to the traditional practice of having free votes on constitutional matters. I hope that this will be continued by other parties and in other Parliaments. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rhondda says that I do anyway, and he is probably broadly right, but I think this should be encouraged across the House.

I was interested in new clauses 2 and 3. There is a need and desire to widen the ability for recall and to make it easier for constituents to remove Members of Parliament who they think have behaved improperly. The main thrust of the Bill is too narrow, which is a lost opportunity but not a fatal one because it can be developed in future Parliaments. Constitutional development often happens at a slow pace, which is not something I am against. I think we want constitutional reform to take place at a pace with which people are broadly comfortable and that carries the nation with it.

New clauses 2 and 3, however, fundamentally misfire. Instead of making this something that will be decided by the electorate, the provisions introduce a third party—the courts—to try to determine what the hon. Member for Rhondda rightly pointed out are fundamentally political issues. The restrictions to which he referred, particularly the third example where the misconduct case is “brought for party political” reasons, are a complete negation of what is being tried to be achieved. Any complaint must be brought for party political reasons, and any attempt to unseat a Member of Parliament is going to be carried out by somebody who has a party political affiliation of some kind, and it will be to the benefit of a political party to remove a Member of Parliament from another party. Even if the petition and process were started by some wonderfully high-minded figure, of which I am glad to say we have a very large number in North East Somerset, politicians would get involved in it because they would see the advantage, particularly if the Government had only a small majority, of removing a Member of Parliament or indeed of causing such inconvenience that would make it almost impossible for that Member of Parliament to continue in office.

Another issue involved is the legal costs. Are we to provide a fund to help Members of Parliament defend themselves in these circumstances, or do we find that the Member of Parliament could be bankrupted by the very process—to see whether he had committed misconduct in public office—and thus removed from Parliament anyway, even though the misconduct in public office could not, in the event, be proved?

We in this House have always sought to keep the courts out of our own proceedings. There seem to me to be two valid sets of people who can intervene in our proceedings: the general public who send us here, and who have an absolute right not to send us here but to send other people in our place; and our own systems, procedures and Committees, which are able to regulate internal goings-on in the House—a right that we declared long before we achieved it in the Bill of Rights.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his comment, but I am still discussing new clauses 2 and 3. I have not yet moved on to his amendments, towards many of which I am very sympathetic. What concerns me about the new clauses is that they would allow the courts to rule on what was going on in the House. It is very important to prevent that from happening, both from our point of view and from the point of view of the courts. The courts are rightly reluctant to rule on what they believe to be fundamentally political decisions, and it seems to me that new clauses 2 and 3 would give them authority in regard to fundamentally political decisions, such as whether someone’s standard had been that of a decent Member of Parliament who had committed no offence.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman may be interested to know that so reluctant are the courts—and rightly so—to judge on any proceedings in Parliament that when the court was considering whether Rebekah Brooks had ever paid a police officer for information, it was not allowed even to consider the fact that when asked on 11 March 2003, during a proceeding in Parliament, whether she had paid a police officer, she had said “Yes.”

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I happen to think that that is absolutely right, both from our point of view and from the point of view of the courts. It is important that our proceedings allow people to be honest and to speak freely without incriminating themselves, and that must be a protection that we seek to maintain. I think that if we undermine it by bringing the courts into the details of the behaviour of Members of Parliament, we will fail. I would go in the opposite direction. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), I would go the whole way and leave it to the British electorate. I would place my trust in them, and let them get on with it. But the worst of all solutions—worse even than a Committee of chums somewhere upstairs deciding that we have all behaved beautifully—is to involve the court system.

I also cannot agree with the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), which is rare, because I often do agree with him. He has proposed a “pledge” in new clause 4. I do not like the pledge. I think that it reads as a sort of bureaucratic announcement that we are all going to do good things, in that awful “speak” that is so common in conferences, about how you should be a leader and grab hold of your management skills, and all that waffle.

I do not like that at all. It does not accord with my vision of myself as a Member of Parliament. I think that Members of Parliament are here at the service of their constituents, and that their constituents will judge whether they are doing their job properly, rather than someone’s saying that they have not shown leadership. What on earth does “showing leadership” mean? If you are the Prime Minister it is easy, but what is a Back-Bench MP meant to do? [Interruption.] The Prime Minister always shows wonderful, clear, decisive leadership. The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) is cackling from his Front Bench. Many people think it is a pity that he did not show leadership by trying to become leader of the Scottish socialists, which would have been very welcome.

[Chris Bryant]

Or even the Scottish Labour party.

Criminal Law

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chris Bryant

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

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

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Affordable Homes Bill

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chris Bryant

Friday 5th September 2014 Commons Chamber

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

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Member for the 16th century wants to intervene.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, and it is always a pleasure to listen to his speeches, but in his criticism of Margaret Thatcher is he saying that he regrets the fact that millions of people were able to buy their own houses and be property owners, which is surely a great thing that the Conservatives achieved?

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman should listen more carefully to my speeches. I was always in favour of the right to buy scheme and enabling people to buy, and live in, their home—an Englishman’s home is his castle and all of that kind of stuff, and that applies equally to the Scots, Welsh and Irish—but local authorities were not allowed to replace that housing stock with social housing, and we set ourselves a long-term economic problem from which we have still to recover. If the hon. Gentleman wants to have another go and attack me by saying the Labour Government did not do enough when we were in power, he is absolutely right: we did not, and we acknowledge that, which is why one of our key commitments is to guarantee that by the end of a Labour Government in 2020—by that general election—we will be building 200,000 properties in the United Kingdom.

Justice and Home Affairs Opt-out

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chris Bryant

Monday 7th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

No, I am not. The hon. Lady complained that the Government and Members of the House of Lords advanced their argument on the European arrest warrant only because it was more convenient and practical. I am trying to suggest that convenience and practicality are three quarters of the point. In the end, it is in the interests of British people.

I shall take the American point as an example. When the new extradition treaty was agreed between the UK and the United States of America, despite the fact that the American Government—the President—had negotiated the treaty, it was a significant problem that the legislature had to put it in place. We moved much more quickly in this country to ratify the treaty than the Americans, and there was a period when the provisions were not perfectly equal between the two countries and when people such as the hon. Lady who argued that there was an imbalance were right. That is no longer the case, because both countries have implemented the measure.

My point to the hon. Lady is that long before we had the European arrest warrant, a Conservative Government under Mrs Thatcher were painfully aware of the problems of not having a proper extradition system across the whole European Union, where most British people do most of their travelling. That is why we had Ronnie Biggs and many others stuck on the costa del crime in Spain. Franco would not extradite anyone.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I shall give way to the 16th century in a moment.

I wholly support the European arrest warrant on the same basis that Mrs Thatcher supported the European convention on extradition.

[Chris Bryant]

I cannot give way to the hon. Lady because I have to give way to the 16th century.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman is extremely kind. I was going to point out that Ronnie Biggs was in Brazil which, as far as I am aware, has not applied for membership of the European Union.

[Chris Bryant]

I realised that there might be some clever soul in the Chamber. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, but there were plenty of other British fugitives from justice who only had to go abroad to evade justice in this country, and we needed a better system of extradition to be able to get British nationals back to the UK to face justice and, for that matter, to do something similar for nationals of other countries.

I would say to Members who regularly say that this is about protecting British people from poor judicial systems in other European countries that, in the main, we bring non-UK citizens back to the UK to make sure that there is justice for families who have lost a loved one or who face some form of injustice. I wholly disagree with the ideological position adopted by some Government Members, because it is pragmatic to have a single system that works across the whole of the EU. I also think that it is a triumph that, despite the fact that the Napoleonic code and English common law are completely different systems, we can work, broadly speaking, in a united way.

[Chris Bryant]

I understand the point that the hon. Lady makes, but the problem for her argument is that that option is not available. For that matter, why would we want to say that members of the European Union, which includes two members of the Commonwealth, can all sit around a table and discuss the European arrest warrant, but we will only be able to sign up to it on a bilateral basis? That makes no sense and it is not a system that other members of the European Union will sign up to.

There is a further point, which is my concern about the process that the Government have adopted: we may get to December and not have any new agreed system in place. I know many members of the European Commission want a new system. Some countries in Europe are so profoundly irritated by the way the United Kingdom has been playing its hand over the past few years and are so concerned about the long-term direction of Conservative members of the Government in particular that they would quite like to punish Britain. I fear that we will not have the opt-ins in place by the time the opt-outs have come into force, and as the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) said, we may well have a substantial period when there is nothing in place. That could raise very significant legal issues about how we would subsequently resolve that, and it would also put us in the difficult and embarrassing position of having to say to our citizens, “We’re sorry. We are not able to extradite back to this country because we opted out and we have not managed to get the opt-in back in place.”

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The treaty provides for transitional arrangements if an opt-in has not been agreed, so the fear that the hon. Gentleman proposes is not a real one.

[Chris Bryant]

The provisions on opting back in are not very clear. The one thing that is clear is who has to pay, which is the United Kingdom. That is the one thing that is absolutely clear. We do not even get to decide how much—the costs are decided by the European Commission.

My anxiety is that the Commission could well say, and has effectively said in some of its public pronouncements thus far, “Well, it’s very interesting that you are interested in 35 opt-in measures, but those 35 are contingent upon at least 18 others”—some of which have been listed in the Home Affairs Committee report. The European Commission may at that point come back to us and say, “We’re sorry. It’s 53 or nothing.” Then we will face a difficult problem, especially as we enter a general election.

The main point that I want to make is about process. As I said, it is somewhat ironic that many Government Members have, for understandable reasons, argued the issues surrounding democratic accountability. The problem is that I do not know what the Government are going to allow us to vote on. The Secretary of State said that it would not be legislation, so we know that it is not going to be a Bill that goes through two Houses, and it is not going to be a statutory instrument either. I do not think it is going to be a treaty, unless she brings us a treaty that has already been signed, but that seems extraordinary to me. I therefore presume it will be some kind of motion.

We have already seen what the Government are trying to do in relation to the Queen’s Speech by not allowing the House to consider an amendment other than one tabled by the Leader of the Opposition. I presume that is largely because any other amendment that was tabled might relate to the European Union and a referendum. I am suspicious about what the Government are going to present to us and the timeliness of that.

There is probably broad agreement about the number of measures that we would like to opt back in to. It is probably slightly bigger than the Government’s list—about 45 or 50—but the House should take a view before the Government start their negotiations. The worst of all possible situations would be the Government coming forward with an unamendable motion which we simply voted on, almost like a statutory instrument. That would unite both ends—the people who would like to see more opt-ins and those who would like to see no opt-ins. In a sense, that is exactly what happened after the American war of independence, when the Earl of Shelburne lost the treaty negotiations on the preliminaries for the treaty with the Americans. My anxiety is that then the Government do not have a leg to stand on in their negotiations with the European Union.

I hope that the Government will make it clear that we will have a debate in the House before the summer recess in plenty of time for them to negotiate with the European Union. That would not tie their hands. They should make sure that the motion is amendable, so that if people want to vote on whether the European arrest warrant is in or out, they can do so, or on any of the other measures, perhaps packaged in some way—I do not mind. A clear list should come out of the House. How can we possibly preach to Europe about democratic accountability and the importance of what happens in this House if we have not done properly in this House what we should have done in the first place? I will vote for a longer list than the hon. Member for Bury North. I may vote for the same list as the Lord Chancellor—I am not sure—but certainly for a shorter list than the shadow Lord Chancellor. But in the end that should be a decision for the whole House. It should not be stage-managed and organised in backroom deals by the Whips so that the House cannot make a proper decision.

European Union (Approvals) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chris Bryant

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

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

It is a particular pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) because he has gone through so much of the rather painful detail of what this money goes towards. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on putting his case as he did. I could not quite decide whether he was modelling himself on Horatius at the bridge or the boy who stood on the burning deck, because I noticed that he was not supported not only by his Secretary of State but by any Secretary of State. He had the occasional support of the Lord Privy Seal, and I am glad that he now has the support of the Minister for Europe, but I think he should feel rather let down by Ministers who have not turned out in greater numbers to rally to this particularly disagreeable cause.

I will mention in passing the first part of the Bill, on archives and the value—or the vanity—of archives. When I was doing my A-levels, I was told that if ever we ran out of something to say when discussing 16th-century history, we should always refer to a report sent by the Venetian ambassador. That is because the archives in Venice were so great—so large and comprehensive—that nobody ever went through them all, and therefore if we attributed a view to the Venetian ambassador nobody could tell us that we were wrong. In the same way, if we were to visit the Escorial we would find that some of the documents of Philip II of Spain still have on them the sand used to blot the ink, because nobody has looked at them in the many hundreds of years that have passed. I have a feeling that the institute in Florence—this wonderful, glorious, illustrious European institute that is going to educate us so much about the virtues and kindness of the European Union—will find that the sand remains on these documents until scholars yet unborn finally get round to sweeping it off.

I want to deal most particularly with the idea of “Europe for Citizens”. Let me start by saying that I object to the idea that I am a citizen of Europe in the first place. I do not believe that it is, was or ever could be legitimate to foist a citizenship on people who have not asked for it or were not born into it. To say in about 1990, as the Maastricht treaty came through, that those of us who were proud to be subjects of Her Majesty were suddenly also citizens of some foreign multinational organisation seems to me an affront. Therefore, I deny— I repudiate—my citizenship of this body.

[Chris Bryant]

What about the Catholic Church?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman says from a sedentary position, “What about the Catholic Church?”

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

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chris Bryant

Tuesday 3rd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

We are so fortunate to have a Prince of Wales who is able to train properly for the job he will have as our sovereign in due course, and to have access to Ministers. Of course, that should be confidential. Compared to some princes of Wales we have had in the past, how fortunate—how blessed—is this nation to have one who does his duty so diligently? I am glad that he does, and I think we can admire His Royal Highness for that—almost as much as we admire the Lord Privy Seal.

[Chris Bryant]

I am slightly worried that the hon. Gentleman’s respect for the Lord Privy Seal is based on a fundamental misconception. I do not think he has read the Bill, because it does not say anything about regulating lobbying Parliament, only about lobbying Government. That is one of the Bill’s flaws.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Oh dear, the hon. Gentleman gets so over-excited on these occasions that he intervenes far too early. What I was going to come on to say is that the matter of what happens in Parliament is, rightly, not covered in the Bill. It is the duty of Parliament and the House of Commons itself to regulate its own affairs. If the Bill interfered in the procedures of this House I would oppose it. We have an absolute right, under the Bill of Rights, to freedom of speech in this House, and members of the public have the right of access to Members of Parliament. That absolute right must be defended. Members of the public must be free, whether individually or collectively, to express their views to Members of Parliament. If MPs fall foul of the high standards that are expected of them, then that is a matter for the Privileges Committee to deal with. We have powers not only to expel Members if necessary, but to imprison them, and they have no right of appeal to any court in the land.

That is how we should proceed in terms of Parliament. Government is another matter and that is why it is right that part 1 deals with the lobbying of Ministers of the Crown and of civil servants. That is a matter rightly confined to legislation.

2014 JHA Opt-out Decision

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chris Bryant

Monday 15th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding me of the activities of my late noble kinsman, who did indeed bring an action on the Maastricht treaty, supported by the late kinsman of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), who was the backer of that great venture. It may be that we can fight on where our fathers once fought, with the continuing help of my hon. Friend, the seemingly immortal hon. Member for Stone.

[Chris Bryant]

I have just been cogitating on the hon. Gentleman’s earlier reference to Horatius Cocles. If I remember correctly, Tacitus admits that Rome was surrendered despite the efforts of Mr Cocles.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I thought the hon. Gentleman was going to refer to the geese that saved Rome and divert us with a bit of cackling of geese, but it was not that in the end.

Let me return to the exciting detail of where we are restoring powers. The first example that I shall regale you with, Madam Deputy Speaker, is the Council act of 3 December 1998, laying down the staff regulations applicable to Europol employees. I think that staff regulations are very important and noble, but I hardly see that as a fine repatriation of powers. There are lots of other examples—I will not go through them all, because time is short and there are far too many.

However, there are eight decisions relating to classified information. If hon. Members are willing to return to the analysis by the Government, they will see that of those eight, all of which are being opted out of, the Government say:

“To our knowledge only small quantities of classified information are currently shared with third countries under these agreements. If the UK decided not to participate in the agreement, we would continue to be able to exchange UK classified data directly with any third country.”

Therefore, eight of the 98 powers that we are repatriating are so trivial that we have not used them and, crucially, the point has been made that we could do that by agreement with the third countries individually and get exactly the same benefits. Indeed, one of the classified information-sharing deals refers to Croatia before it was a member of the European Union, so that one falls automatically, even if it were useful. I am therefore agreeing, to my horror—and probably equally to her horror—with the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the shadow Home Secretary, who made the point about the triviality of some of these matters. They are really not very important.

The Schengen measures that we are pulling out of relate to the accession of member states to Schengen, which is hardly still relevant. Those measures include—oh, this is glorious—a council decision made on 18 September 2008 on the test of the second-generation Schengen information system, to which we are no longer committed. That is a serious repatriation of power!

I was thinking of the ancient types, making a comparison to Horatius on the bridge, but it is not Horatius; it is more like Sisyphus, perhaps in both senses of the man. The rock was pushed up to the top of the hill, and he tried to get it over the top, but straight it rolled back down again. To use a cricketing metaphor—which is appropriate in the middle of an Ashes test series—the degree of spin required to say that we are seeing the repatriation of power reminds me only of that famous ball bowled by Shane Warne, when he was first visiting England, when he removed Mike Gatting. It spun so much, so far that it went down in history as one of the great balls in cricket. Even Tich Freeman at his peak, when he got 305 wickets in a season, did not bowl so much spin as this Government are bowling. Even Jim Laker in 1956 was not spinning away so much when he got 19 wickets in Manchester against the Australians, for there is no real repatriation of powers.

Unfortunately, there are two sides of most ledgers. When we look at the powers that it is intended to opt back into, we see rather the reverse. To go into more of this tedious detail, which I know hon. Members find somewhat soporific, the first area—the biggest and most important—is the arrest warrant. We have heard from the Home Secretary about how the arrest warrant will be placed under strict controls. She even mentioned that there will be some limits on the joint recognition of offences, but that will not be decided by our courts or our Parliament. Instead, it will be decided by a foreign court, by foreign judges, and it will be subject to the agreement that has already been made in Brussels.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is always an enormous delight to follow the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). I always feel as if I step back in time a little and a Beaufort, Neville or Spencer is addressing the House and taking us back to the 15th century when things were simpler and a Welshman knew that he could not trust an Englishman and that was about as far as xenophobia went. The hon. Gentleman gave us a fascinating tour of spin, and it is only a shame that the Home Secretary was not in her place to hear his complete demolition of her speech earlier this afternoon.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Given that the Home Secretary now is here, I should like to say that that was not what I was trying to do.

[Chris Bryant]

The great thing about the hon. Gentleman is that he sometimes achieves that to which he does not even aspire—and on this occasion he did precisely that.

Let me start with what we all agree about. International criminals co-operate; they commit crimes in many different countries; they travel and they can commit crimes in one country from another country; and they try to get away with it. Crime does not stop at the channel, which is why co-operation on justice and home affairs across the European Union is a vital part of ensuring national security in the modern era. It is why I think Members of all parties have long supported the position of leadership that the British Government have taken in trying to improve these standards across the whole EU.

We also agree, I hope, that it makes sense to review that co-operation. That is precisely why Labour secured an opt-out—the one we are talking about using at the moment—in the first place. It is a Labour opt-out available to a coalition Government. I therefore suggest that the question before us now is really fairly simple. Is this motion right—the original Government motion, notwithstanding the intervention that the Justice Secretary was forced to make earlier when he suggested that he might accept an amendment that has not even been moved—is it necessary, and is it necessary now? Let me start with the “necessary now” question.

I suggest to hon. Members that we have heard no argument to say why the Government want this vote today. They signalled months ago that they were provisionally minded to opt out—fair enough—but their decision to seek to opt in to any measures, let alone the measures listed in the Command Paper, was announced less than a week ago. The Select Committees have been clamouring for more information for months, as has already been said by three of the Select Committee Chairs, begging for a list of potential opt-ins so that they could look at the matters in hand. They asked for explanatory memorandums and never received them. True, there were briefings to the media, particularly to The Daily Telegraph, but not to the Committees about how the Government saw each of these measures. The Government expected the House to endorse opting out and opting in, including the precise list of measures, without a single word of evidence from any outside body being taken by any Committee of this or the other House.

Royal Charter on Press Conduct

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chris Bryant

Monday 18th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I think I will leave that to one side, but I did object slightly to the front page of The Sun today, because its hyperbole did it no favours. It did not inform the debate and I think it was unwise.

My interest in this issue started before I was elected as an MP, when the two girls were murdered in Soham. A friend of mine, Tim Alban Jones, was the vicar of Soham and I remember clearly that every door in that village was knocked, not just once but many times, because members of the press—and, sometimes, television and radio crews—were desperate to find some new angle to the story in order to sell their newspapers. Frankly, that community was in complete and utter shock. The press was not doing anything illegal, but it was unethical and immoral and it bullied and hounded the local community, which was deeply distressing, particularly to the families who had lost loved ones.

It took the vicar to stand up for the community and say, “Listen folks: will you please just leave this community alone?” The Press Complaints Commission in that instance was completely and utterly useless. I think the Prime Minister once referred to the PCC as a busted flush and that is exactly what it has proved to be.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The BBC has a royal charter. Will the hon. Gentleman remind me of how well it has behaved in recent years, particularly in relation to Jimmy Savile? Is a royal charter an amazing thing that prevents abuses from ever taking place?

[Chris Bryant]

No, of course not. I think it was Thomas Hughes, who wrote “Tom Brown’s School Days”, who said that simply passing a law will not make everybody obey the law and that making theft illegal did not prevent everybody from being a thief.

I was in the High Court this morning to hear yet more revelations about how a phone belonging to a Member of this House was stolen from her car in 2010 and then, only late last year, its private details accessed by The Sun. Personally, I do not think that the editor of that newspaper should still be in his job. It is incredible that an organisation that had said that it was cleaning out the Augean stables was still, in September and October of last year—long after the Milly Dowler revelations came out—behaving in this extraordinary way.

Succession to the Crown Bill

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chris Bryant

Monday 28th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

That is not in the Bill. Indeed, the Government have said that it is entirely a matter for the Crown, in the double sense of the monarch and the monarch’s Ministers, who might have a role in advising the monarch.

Incidentally, I would not want to be a monarch apart from Elizabeth with a “II” in my title, but when James II was removed, Parliament decided, through the Bill of Rights and then the Act of Settlement, to hand over a joint monarchy to William and Mary rather than to anybody else. Then, when the Stuart line was going to end with Queen Anne, Parliament decided how the succession should proceed. Again, when Edward VIII tried to abdicate in 1936, the abdication could be allowed only because there was a statute of Parliament the next day.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

This is waistcoat-to-waistcoat business, isn’t it?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman missed out the succession of Mary Tudor, when the Act of Parliament —the Third Succession Act of Henry VIII—was followed rather than the instructions issued by Edward VI.

[Chris Bryant]

That is absolutely right. It is interesting that we had gone through three Succession Acts, but again Parliament decided the process. Incidentally, exactly the same situation applied in Scotland. The calling of the first Scottish Parliament was prompted by a contested succession in Scotland on who the next monarch should be.

For the first time in our history, the monarch himself or herself will be allowed to decide whether somebody is barred from the succession by refusing to provide consent, without any reason given, at the moment that that person chooses to marry. We do not have a capricious monarch at the moment, but we have had plenty of capricious monarchs in the past, and I suspect that we will have a capricious monarch in future. At that point, we will rue the day that we passed the legislation in this form. I desperately hope that a good Bill is made better by their lordships. This is the kind of moment when one wants to vote both Aye and No, because it is a good Bill in principle but a bad Bill in its detail.

Succession to the Crown Bill

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chris Bryant

Tuesday 22nd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

That is really a question for the Minister. There is a real question about pulling at one thread in the jumper. Are we undermining other aspects of the present settlement, and will we therefore need a whole new settlement? That is what I think will need to happen in the next 10 to 15 years. Charles II changed his religion on his deathbed; he became a Catholic. If he had then lived, people might have wanted to exclude him from the throne, just as they went on to remove James II.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I can see the hon. Member for North East Somerset stirring his loins.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Does the hon. Gentleman recall that the mother of Charles II and James II was a Catholic? That was in many ways the start of the problem.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman might say that that was the start of the problem, but I think it is fine to have a Catholic mother. I did not have one myself, but some of my best friends are Catholic mothers. I do not see this in quite the same light. The point is that the bringing up of children leads to the nub of the problem.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am sorry that my earlier intervention seemed like a speech, Mr Bone, but these are technically complex issues and one sometimes gets a bit more long-winded than one had intended.

During the debate, a number of hon. Members have asked about the specific requirement. I know, because I tabled an amendment on the matter that was not selected, that the Act of Settlement states that

“whosoever shall hereafter come to the Possession of this Crown shall joyn in Communion with the Church of England as by Law established.”

So it does refer to the Church of England and not simply to the Protestant Church.

I also want to return to the point made by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) about the age of the child being a Catholic. I think that the earliest age is relevant, because the Act of Settlement goes on to say that

“the said Person or Persons so reconciled holding Communion professing or marrying as aforesaid were naturally dead.”

The succession would pass as though they had died. I know that Christianity is all about the resurrection, but I do not think that statute law is. If a child of a marriage were christened and brought up a Catholic, that child would be deemed “naturally dead” under the Act of Settlement in relation to succession to the Crown. That is why the clause is, I think, so complex, without any further amendment. My view is that it would be better to leave well alone. I am in entire agreement with my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth), who looks as if he wants to intervene.

Succession to the Crown Bill

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chris Bryant

Tuesday 22nd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman makes that point extraordinarily well. This is the time, while we are legislating on the issue, to clarify the order of precedence among sisters. Otherwise, there is a risk that clause 1 will simply provide that the children of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge would be co-heirs to the Crown. The question whether Princess Margaret could have claimed the throne in 1952 is an interesting one. Surely the best time to settle this once and for all is while we are legislating on the matter. We should make it clear that, at least as far as succession to the Crown is concerned, female primogeniture has the same effect as male primogeniture, and that the co-heiress problem that exists in peerages will not apply.

I think it was Baron Grey of Codnor whose title was in abeyance from the late 15th century until the late 1980s. That is an example of how having co-heiresses in common can lead to an extensive abeyance. Why is that detail ignored in the Bill? It seems to me that the main reasons are the rush to pass the legislation and the failure properly to consider the ramifications of what is being done. That also applies to how dukedoms will pass. Will they pass as ordinary titles, or are they to be deemed to be within the Crown? If they are deemed to be within the Crown, why is that not in the Bill?

I have already discussed my concerns about clause 2 in relation to Catholics. It is unreasonable of an Act of Parliament to allow a Catholic to do one thing then deny that Catholic the ability to carry out the requirements of his faith. That is an illogical position to take, and it will bring out all the anti-Catholic terminology of the Act of Settlement and the Bill of Rights. Many Catholics can live comfortably with that terminology as part of our historical tradition, lost in the mists of time, but when it is brought firmly to our attention this week, it is a matter of the deepest concern. As other hon. Members have said, if a reform is to be made, it should be a thorough-going reform.

[Chris Bryant]

Is it not one of the ironies that clause 2 states that no one should be disqualified from succeeding to the throne through being married to a Catholic, yet clause 3 allows the monarch to exclude someone by refusing to consent to their marriage, potentially to a Roman Catholic?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman is making a similar point to mine, which is that there has been a failure to consider the detail of the Bill. Trying to add two further clauses to the major provision that everyone was interested in has created confusion.

Succession to the Crown Bill (Allocation of Time)

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chris Bryant

Tuesday 22nd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

We are discussing what may be the most important constitutional issue to which the House has ever turned its mind, namely, who shall be our sovereign. Who shall be eligible to receive perhaps the greatest office in the world? Who shall be the King or Queen of England?

When the Bill that became the Act of Settlement was debated, it spent six days in Committee. The allocation of time motion allows us two days in which to treat this Bill as if it were anti-terrorism legislation, which seems a particularly inopportune comparison given that it relates to matters that could not be further removed from that type of activity. As far as I am aware, the only constitutional Bill that has been treated to such a small amount of time—or, rather, an even smaller amount—is the Bill that became His Majesty’s Declaration of Abdication Act 1936, which, I believe, completed its passage in the House of Commons in under a minute; but that, too, is not a happy precedent.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Is not the point that there really was rather an emergency on that occasion? The King had signified his abdication the previous day, and on 12 December the House had to enact, because there was no existing means of enabling the King to abdicate.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

For once I am in agreement with the hon. Gentleman. There was a genuine emergency then, but it is hard to see that there is a genuine emergency now. I am a great admirer of the Deputy Prime Minister and Lord President of the Council, because he has managed, in his role and in the coalition, to put into effect what Palmerston promised: that the Government would eventually run out of matters on which to legislate. It is not as if we have an enormously packed legislative programme waiting for this House to turn its mind to and to pass. We spend hours debating the taxation of lorries and other such matters, which get a full day allocated for Second Reading, whereas the succession to the Crown is to be dealt with in a truncated Second Reading debate, a brief Committee stage, and then one day for the remaining stages. That seems to me to be an insult to the nation, to our sovereign and, indeed, to Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The answer is simple: the amendments being introduced by Her Majesty’s Government. There is no need to change the Act of Settlement and there is no need to make this provision for a Catholic to marry into the Crown, but once we start fiddling, we have to do it properly.

[Chris Bryant]

I rather agree with the hon. Gentleman. Of course it may be that he is a true Tory and he is not happy that some of this legislation was Whig legislation. He referred to some specific words in the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement:

“is are or shall be reconciled to or shall hold Communion with the See or Church of Rome”.

If an Anglican marries a Catholic in a Catholic service in a Catholic church, it is difficult to argue that that person is not reconciled to or holding communion with the see or Church of Rome. That is precisely the kind of issue we need to tease out.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Once again, I am in agreement with the hon. Gentleman. That is why it is so important that we should have proper time for this debate and to debate the full ramifications of what the Government are trying to do. The argument that the measure has been agreed by Her Majesty’s other realms is not sufficient. It needs to have been thought through properly in one of her realms first, before we see whether the other realms will accept it. Yes, there might be a child—a happy event for Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge—and let us hope that that is the case, but there would be no harm in allowing the legislation to be dated from today, even if that birth were to take place. There is no urgency. The succession is apparently very secure: the heir apparent is a youngish man and so is his son.

UK Extradition Arrangements

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chris Bryant

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

The Committee makes it clear in its report that the

“EAW is based on the principle of mutual recognition of judicial decisions and… mutual trust”

between the judicial authorities of EU states. That is a legitimate position for us to adopt, just as it was adopted in 1991 by the Conservative Government when they signed us up to the ECE—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman is chuntering, but I cannot hear what he says. Unless he wants to chunter louder, I am at a loss—[Interruption.] He says he will chunter more quietly, for which I am very grateful.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

Of course I will give way to the hon. Gentleman—he will chunter from a standing position.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I will indeed. I cannot believe that the hon. Gentleman, wise and sensible as he is, thinks that justice across all European states is equal. It self-evidently is not: some systems are much less good than ours, and none is better.

[Chris Bryant]

That kind of casual British superiority sometimes does not carry the day when it comes to making decisions about our legal systems—[Interruption.] It was a joke. I am sorry. I clearly missed that.

Ministerial Statements

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chris Bryant

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

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

This debate is the continuation of a debate that has gone on for centuries in another form. In the 18th century, the line was that the influence of the Crown had increased, was increasing and ought to be diminished. It is the perpetual, almost the eternal, job of this House to try to keep the Executive, Her Majesty’s Government, under check.

There is a wonderful picture in this House of the Commons trying to persuade Elizabeth I to marry. Elizabeth I said clearly, “It is not your business to talk about it.” Governments always wish to do that. They wish to maintain information for themselves, to use at their convenience. As a former Lord High Chancellor said, “Knowledge is power”. Governments preserve knowledge carefully. That is not an unreasonable thing for the Government to do from their point of view. However, the ministerial code, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), says otherwise. It is a splendid document, because its foreword shows the ambition of Her Majesty’s Government and the Prime Minister to restore people’s trust in politics:

“It is our duty to restore their trust. It is not enough simply to make a difference. We must be different.”

I discovered, thanks to listening to “Yesterday in Parliament”, that the previous Government leaked the whole time. Or perhaps, to go back to “Yes Minister”, the approach was “I brief, you leak, he breaks the Official Secrets Act”. There has been a change, and this Government have got rather better at putting Parliament first, coming to the Chamber and telling us what is going on rather than gratuitously leaking every little titbit of information that is available. They have therefore done something to move towards the ministerial code.

However, the ministerial code is a most unsatisfactory document. Although it runs, I think, to some 30 pages, the truth is that Ministers abide by the code as long as they maintain the confidence of the Prime Minister and, as shown by newspapers and other media outlets, of the British people. Those 30 pages are quite a lot of waffle around that main theme, whereas a resolution of the House is something substantial, solid and dignified. It seems to me that things that go on in this House ought to be regulated by the House of Commons, not by the ministerial code.

It is worth bearing in mind that one Deputy Prime Minister could punch an elector on the nose and still not be deemed to have broken the ministerial code in any way. I know that it was secret at that point whereas it is now a public document, but it seems to me that it is flexible in its interpretation. The fundamental point, as I said, is that Ministers must maintain the confidence of the Crown and of Her Majesty, as advised by her Prime Minister. Indeed, the code states that the Prime Minister is foremost within its application and is the judge and jury of it.

That brings us back to the motion, to how we should deal with statements that are leaked and to why statements should not be leaked. That is the rather important question that we have perhaps neglected slightly. With some honourable exceptions, everyone broadly feels that statements ought to be made to the House first, but why? Why does it matter that we hear things before the News of the World, as was, or Sky News or the BBC? The reason is that control of the news agenda gives the Government an extra advantage over the Opposition, over their critics and over those who wish to hold them to account, which they would not be able to afford themselves. That advantage is paid for by public money.

The Government are indivisible but have two parts and two hats. They are party political on the one hand, yet they are the impartial Administration of the nation’s affairs on the other. The Labour party has perhaps two dozen press officers sitting in its current headquarters, but the Government can have two dozen in a single Ministry, able to brief and guide the press. The same is true when the situation is the other way around—the Conservatives have a small number, and the Government still have a massive advantage in controlling the news agenda. They use taxpayers’ money to do that, rather than money given to them through free donations, and they use that power to guide the views of the nation.

Nobody pretends that propaganda is not powerful. We all know it is, otherwise Unilever would not be, as I believe it is, the second largest spender on advertising in the country. I believe the Government are still the largest. Propaganda underlies how all of this works, and it is why the Government are so determined to maintain control of their ability to leak statements when they feel it is right to do so. They feel that if they use that power, they can ensure their electoral popularity and their re-election, at the expense of the British taxpayer. That is when the other, non-political side of the Government has to say, “This is improper. This is wrong. It is all right while we are in office, but we will not be in office for ever. The other side will come in, and they will be more ruthless than we are. They will use this propaganda advantage to ensure their continuation in power.”

The check on that is, and has been for centuries, the House of Commons nit-picking, banging away at the Government and saying, “This isn’t right. We are holding you to account on this. Our electors want to know about this”. It is not about us, or the fact that we are here representing North East Somerset or other, lesser parts of the country. Actually, I cannot say that with my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight) here, because I get into trouble if I am not very polite about Yorkshire on all occasions. We are representing our constituents, who wish us to hold the Government to account. Once we are elected, our constituents are not necessarily our political friends and supporters, but we represent every one of them and all their concerns.

I sympathise with the Government. I say that not because I am a loyal hack—I do not think I am the loyalest of loyal hacks—but because I absolutely understand the predicament in which they find themselves.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman referred to the non-political side of things, which I suppose in part means the civil service. One problem is that when we make an accusation—it could be an important one, such as, for instance, that the Government have issued false immigration statistics deliberately four days prior to the real statistics coming out—we write to Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, and he writes a beautiful episode of “Yes, Minister” back. The Cabinet Secretary will never find against a Minister. Without the motion, there is no proper arbiter.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is a model in opposition of how people ought to approach this matter. As I understand it, he was a model in government, although not as invariably successful as a model ought to be.

The hon. Gentleman raises the issue of the indivisibility of the Government, who are both political and impartial. In a sense, it is much easier to be a judge or to be the Speaker, because people in those positions are always impartial. The Government are always seeking re-election, but at the same time, they must make decisions in the interest of the nation impartially and fairly—one hears Ministers talk about being in a quasi-judicial position in certain circumstances. Parliament seeks to divide those indivisible roles and to say, “That bit is political. Therefore we are holding you to account for political reasons, not necessarily because we disagree on the benefit to the nation.”

The Procedure Committee debated with a great deal of amusement whether impeachment could be reintroduced. I would love to see the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) introduce articles of impeachment against a Minister whom he thought had misbehaved. If that did not work, perhaps he could go further and attaint a Minister, which would be the final sanction.

However, the Committee decided, cautiously and prudently —to some extent this answers the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms)—that, as the conclusion of part 1 of the report states,

“We do not believe that it is practical or desirable to produce a detailed protocol that would cover all possible situations”.

That is clearly right, because there will be circumstances in which Ministers must answer questions urgently—perhaps they would be pressed to do so or the financial markets demand it. However, there will also be occasions on which the Minister knows perfectly well that he has a jolly good, fat, juicy news story that he would like to put out to his chums and he does so. That is what we ought to be trying to stop.

I have great confidence in this Government when I think of what they have done so far to restore the standing of Parliament. We can see how much better debates are attended than they were under the previous Government.

Equality and Diversity (Reform) Bill

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chris Bryant

Friday 21st October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Well, no, not quite. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that the ambulance service, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned earlier, turned up at the household of a young Muslim woman who was in labour and having a difficult childbirth, and had absolutely no understanding of what was acceptable in a Muslim household. It would not be able to do its job properly. That is precisely why all public services need to be culturally sensitive not just to how Britain has always been but to how it is today.

When homosexuality was illegal—that era is fortunately long gone—and when David Maxwell Fyfe, as Home Secretary, ran a particularly nasty campaign of entrapment of gay men, some friends of mine, a couple who had lived together for many years, were burgled, but because they had only a one-bedroom flat, they were terrified of bringing the police round, because they knew that the police would investigate them for buggery rather than investigating the burglary.

I am afraid that there is a lack of understanding in far too many public services of how work could be improved by sensitivity to the ways other people live their lives—I would not say that there is deliberate prejudice, out-and-out racism, homophobia or sexism. In addition, many minority communities are simply forgotten by local authorities and the health service when they make their spending plans. That is one issue that needs to be addressed and one reason why the Bill is wrong.

Incidentally, there is significant cultural prejudice against the Catholic Church. I passionately disagree with the Pope on just about every issue, starting with transubstantiation. However, all too often prejudice against Catholics in society is quite marked and that is why it is not a good idea to ask people to give the name of their primary school when they are applying for public sector jobs. People will say, “Aha, this person went to the Cardinal Vaughan school! We’re not very keen on Catholics, so we won’t shortlist them.” It is illegal to do that, but it would be simpler and better if that element were taken out of the equation.

The hon. Member for Shipley said that he wanted a tolerant society. That phrase is very often used—I believe that an Archbishop of Canterbury started calls for a tolerant society in the 1960s. However, I dislike the concept of a tolerant society, because I think that a respectful society is far more important. “Tolerance” implies that although someone completely and utterly disapproves of someone who lives in a different style—

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

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I will tolerate the hon. Gentleman in a moment. Unfortunately, “tolerance” smacks of reluctance.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman starts tolerance in the 1960s, because surely John Locke did that in his essay on tolerance. The theme has run through Whiggish behaviour, of which he is symbolic, ever since.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I do apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is just that clause 2 is entitled “Definition of ‘affirmative or positive action’”. The Prime Minister is seeking to change the legislation at the meeting of Commonwealth Heads of Government next week and I worry that that could be seen by the hon. Member for Shipley as positive discrimination on the grounds of sex, listed in paragraph (b), and religion, in paragraph (g). I would hope that the hon. Gentleman was in favour of equality in the succession.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

How could I resist?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I wonder whether it might be right to look at the matter the other way round. Is this actually a rather dangerous Bill that would impliedly repeal positive discrimination in favour of Protestants in the order of succession—and, of course, of men as well? Has the hon. Gentleman considered that point?

[Chris Bryant]

I do worry about the prejudice in favour of Protestants, although the issue is even more complicated. It is not quite in preference of Protestants, but in favour of somebody who is able to take communion in the Church of England and subscribe to its articles of religion, a difficult thing even for most Anglican clergy, as well as be a member of the Church of Scotland. That is quite a tall ask.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that clause 2(1)(g) might be problematic for true equality. Incidentally, I would not often say this but I support the striving for equality in the House of Lords advanced at present by Baron Fellowes, who is worried that his wife will not be able to inherit her title, because women in this country are not allowed to inherit titles.

There is still a problem in this country. Only 22% of Members are women. In the Labour party, all-women shortlists have played a significant role in trying to bring about a more equal and representative House of Commons. When we move forward to an elected second Chamber, I hope that we will be able to use the same legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

But she did become Queen. That is the point—that she was able to become queen because our constitution has always evolved gently and happily so that more and more people become included in it without necessarily being given a helping hand or a lift up. This is the key point to the Bill: we want to have equality of opportunity as an objective, but not equality of outcome. I think that is what has always divided the Conservative—the Tory—from the socialist: the socialist always wants equality of outcome. Socialists want to meddle and muddle; they want to socially engineer—or perhaps to engineer socially for the benefit of Hansard who do not like their infinitives to be split—and they want to make sure that they direct and control so that everybody should be made into a neat little machine. We have had this terrible socialist proposition recently that the elderly should sell their homes so that they can be put into properties that have fewer rooms. That is what it is all about; it is about controlling people, guiding their lives and taking away their freedoms.

When it comes to this Equality Act, to which my hon. Friend’s Bill would make splendid improvements, with some caveats that I may come to, it is desperately condescending to women. They do not want to be looked down upon as if they cannot cope. I am going to speak of the example of my younger sister Annunziata Rees-Mogg, who was the candidate for Somerton and Frome, where she fought a noble campaign. I discussed this with her and I said, “Actually, for the political advantage of the Conservative party,”—I am all in favour of the political advantage of the Conservative party—“perhaps we should have all-women shortlists.” It might not have helped me but it would have helped her and it might have answered a political problem for the party. She could not have been more strongly against it because she viewed it as condescending. She wanted to get the nomination for a seat on her own great merits—and very considerable her merits are, too. She did not want to be told she was a poor little thing: that is the sort of line an elder brother can use to a sister but it is not the sort of line that should be used by political parties or by the state. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) points out, from a sedentary position, that she lost. Well, she did because the Labour vote went down to 4%. Labour lost its deposit and that was to its horror when it discovered that the Lib Dems then supported us, so the aim to keep the beastly Tories out by voting Lib Dem failed miserably. Without that, she would have won by a landslide and I expect that next time around that will be the happy occurrence.

It is condescending to women to assume that they cannot cope without special measures and to people from what are genuinely minorities, because of course women are not a minority. Some of the time they are in the majority, although not at birth. There are more live births of boys than of girls, but women tend to live longer and therefore can easily be a majority of the population.

We have discussed Catholicism. The hon. Member for Rhondda said that he disagreed with the Holy Father on transubstantiation, but I cannot think why. It is clearly a very sensible and right doctrine. However, I do not think, as a Catholic, that I have any fear of discrimination, nor ever have had, although it did happen once to my father—my noble kinsman, as I ought to call him. He was going for a Conservative selection many years ago and was asked by one of the members of the committee if he would be able to go to the lord lieutenant’s funeral as he was a Catholic, at which point another member of the committee pointed out that actually the lord lieutenant was the Duke of Norfolk, so there would be absolutely no difficulty in my father’s attending his funeral. But he did not need special measures to help him. He had to get on and, if there was discrimination in those days, to overcome it, to strive and move forward—as, of course, Margaret Thatcher did and Nancy Astor too.

We have seen in the development and evolution of this House that it has become broader based. One might think that the days when it was simply knights of the shires, when the borough Members had not been let in, were glorious days when the knights of the shires could come in wearing spurs, as I believe we still can, to indicate that they represented a county.

[Chris Bryant]

Wrong!

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I believe it is true, actually.

[Chris Bryant]

It is not.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I believe it is true.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Mr Deputy Speaker, I was shocked at such a sedentary intervention. I have never known such things in this House before.

But things evolved and we let the borough Members in, and we now look upon them as equals.

[Chris Bryant]

That probably takes the biscuit for lèse majesté—“We let the borough Members in”! I know that the hon. Gentleman has been here for a very long time in some shape or form, but to suggest that we have now become representative when he himself is the son of a peer seems a little odd.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his typically helpful intervention. Of course sons of peers should be represented, and they are a minority too. Perhaps as a son of a peer I should be given special help and intervention to help me to get through all the prejudice there is against sons of peers—not that I would ask for it or that I have ever noticed a particular prejudice against sons of peers. Mr Deputy Speaker, I hope that such prejudices never fall upon so distinguished a figure as yourself either.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Well, I do not really like change as a general rule, and I would be very nervous about intervening in the line of succession to the throne. I think that the line of succession to the throne works very well and changing the Canadian constitution is a particularly difficult thing to do. With Her Majesty’s fantastically successful visit to Australia, we want everything to have a settled continuity of that succession. However, I think that the world has changed and that it may not be unreasonable to allow hereditary titles to pass through the female line, particularly if they are in danger of becoming extinct, because it would be a great sadness for titles to die out over succeeding generations with no new hereditary peerages being awarded. I must briefly declare an interest, because my mother-in-law would be able to resurrect a title if this law were to be changed.

[Chris Bryant]

Could she not just petition the Queen to allow her to hold it sui juris?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am not sure that that is—

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chris Bryant

Thursday 8th September 2011 Commons Chamber

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

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman is a fine, tall gentleman, so I give way to him.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. While he is urging their lordships to stand firm, I wonder whether he might like to remind them that the Parliament Act does not apply so they can insist for as long as they like.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, although I am surprised he is only taking us back to 1911. He normally takes us back a little further. The Parliament Act cannot be used in relation to this legislation because the Bill would allow for the extension of Parliament beyond five years—possibly to five years and two months—and that Act expressly prevents the Speaker from forcing the Bill on their lordships. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: your lordships, stand firm.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chris Bryant

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. That was why I was opposed to the versions of thresholds that were brought forward in Committee. There were two different versions. One was that it was necessary to get 25% of the electorate to vote yes, as well as more people voting yes than voting no. The other was a 40% threshold. If neither of those two conditions were reached, the result was to be an automatic no and we were to stick with first past the post.

That is not what this amendment’s threshold would do. This is a very different referendum, and consequently needs a very different style of threshold. All this threshold would do is say that Parliament ought to have a second thought. It would say that if we do not get up to 40%—if, for instance, the turnout in England is 15% or 20 %, whereas in Scotland and Wales it is closer to 43%, 44% or 45%—there ought to be a moment when Parliament thinks again about the implementing process in going forward.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman is a distinguished constitutionalist, and I wonder whether he thinks that in the context of referendums being used more frequently, and for deciding on European matters and constitutional issues, it would be a good idea to settle on a threshold for all referendums, so that people knew where they stood.

[Chris Bryant]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, I am very grateful to be called distinguished about anything, but I do not think he would carry the House on that point. I am not a fan of referendums generally at all, because I think the whole point of parliamentary democracy is that Members are elected to take decisions, provide leadership and represent the people in our constituencies. I think that is the best way of advancing policy. However, where there are referendums, I think it is better if they are advisory ones rather than implementing ones. That is the point I would make about the whole referendum issue before us.

I think this is a special referendum and I therefore think it needs a special threshold. That is precisely what Lord Rooker’s amendment provides for, which is why we will be supporting it tonight.

Legislation (Territorial Extent) Bill

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chris Bryant

Friday 11th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I would like to see the issue addressed in different ways—as it has been addressed in other countries. For example, the role of the second Chamber needs to be looked at. It has been embarrassing that the vast majority of people who have been appointed to the second Chamber in the past few years have been from London and the south-east of England. That is almost inevitable when we have an appointments system. I would prefer to move to an elected system, where we had more people representing the whole of the UK. It might be possible to devise a better answer to the West Lothian question through reform of the second Chamber on an elected basis.

However, as the hon. Lady has said, the whole business of parliamentary privilege comes into play. It has been a fundamental assumption from when the first commoners were allowed to attend parliamentary proceedings under Simon de Montfort in 1258 that grievances that they presented on behalf of the people should be able to be presented without any difference between one and the other Members.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I thought that going back to the 13th century might stimulate the hon. Gentleman.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The right of shires to send people for address of grievance pre-dates Simon de Montfort. It is the boroughs that came in at that point.

[Chris Bryant]

Simon de Montfort invited four knights from each of the shires and six from Yorkshire in 1258 to present in Parliament their grievances on behalf of others. We do not know that all the knights attended. Of the ones who did attend, we only know that because they presented expenses and had them paid, so this problem has been with us since Mauge Vavasour had his payments made in Michaelmas 1258. It was a significant moment. The burgesses obviously arrived after 1258, though earlier in the 13th century there were occasions when some burgesses from the Cinque ports were invited, and some from those cities where there were a large number of Jewish residents were brought to Parliament to debate specific issues.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The knights of the shires came much earlier than that—they come from the reign of Richard I. That is attested thoroughly.

[Chris Bryant]

Well, not all 37 shires had representation, and they certainly did not have that as of right. I am perfectly happy to debate this at another time, but for now Mr Speaker has got that slightly fascinated but also slightly irritated face on.

It would be very dangerous to dismantle the fundamental principle of the equality of all Members of this House. That is why I think that, in the end, the direction of travel the hon. Member for West Worcestershire is moving in with this Bill is an unfortunate one.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point, but I was rather hoping she would not, because there is a desperate tendency on Fridays towards motherhood-and-apple-pie Bills that say nothing very much about anything in particular. If her Bill is that type of Bill, what on earth are we doing discussing it? If it just says that the Minister, out of the kindness of his heart, will say a few words about where an Act applies, it is completely and utterly pointless, and the House should not discuss things that are pointless. We do that on Fridays, and Madam Deputy Speaker is amazingly patient in listening to some of these discussions.

My hon. Friend’s Bill has to be an important stepping-stone in answering the West Lothian question, or it is nothing. I give her credit for having the courage to begin to address that question, rather than just detaining us here when we could be doing work in our constituency on a Friday. I hope that she will not try to hide behind the minutiae of the Bill instead of looking at the bigger picture, because that bigger picture is crucial.

My hon. Friend is right to put pressure on the Government to come up with a solution that can be debated in Government time. In that respect, the Bill is really noble, because the Government do have to think about the issue. It is unfair on the British—the English; I apologise for using those two words synonymously, as I know the English do a great deal.

[Chris Bryant]

And the French.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The French?

[Chris Bryant]

The French very regularly confuse “anglais” with “britannique”.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that illuminating point. I always thought that the auld Alliance meant that they were rather keen on the Scots, but that may be a slight diversion.

What ought the Government to do and to think about as they approach a solution to the West Lothian question? They have to think about the practicalities. We have had learned discussion already today about how difficult it would be to have an English Parliament, because one would then have an English Government, and that would be simply too big. That is the problem that Balfour identified when first discussing Home Rule. He asked what we do about England, when we have Ireland, Scotland and Wales as nations. Do we chop England up, or simply have it swamping the whole new system that is being established? If there is an English Prime Minister and a UK Prime Minister, who does the President of the United States visit when he comes? He sees the English Prime Minister, because the UK Prime Minister would have peripheral powers. He might have a slightly better house, but that would be the extent of it. There is not an easy solution to the English Parliament issue.

There is then the question of English votes on English issues, but the more one discusses that superficially hugely attractive option, the more one discovers that it does not work, because there would be two tiers of MPs, and a Whitehall Government that could not get a major part of its legislation through and would therefore begin to fail. One would then begin to try to chop up the procedures, so that the Government could decide which MPs debated which bits of legislation, but that would not work either, for reasons that we have discussed. There was mention of the Welsh Grand Committee and how little that was able to succeed in doing; and when the Conservatives were last in government, they thought that a sop to devolution would be to have a Scottish Grand Committee. The fact is that the governing party has to be able to get its parliamentary business through. Whatever schemes it sets up will not work if that fundamental principle is not followed, and will be changed to the extent that they cannot be used.

So what do I suggest that the Government do? That is the nub of it. We will have an election at some point in which the Conservatives have a clear majority in England but are not the major part of the governing group. At that point, there will be squeals of anguish from the English electorate, and the Conservative party will use that all it can for political advantage. We will find that the Union comes under fundamental attack. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) that any attack on the Union is likely to come not from the Scottish nationalists but from English nationalists, fed up with the way that they are being treated.

I would like the Government to consider the proposal that we heard earlier about allowing the two Parliaments and the one Assembly to come together to some extent, but I accept that that is difficult: As a result of how they were set up, it would be problematic to change them at this stage, but it may be that something could be done along those lines. Alternatively, the thing will simply have to be done in the best form of British fudge—that is, Labour Members, when in government, will have to be enormously responsible and self-denying about what they do in England, and conventions will have to become very important in our constitutional settlement. If it becomes a convention, but is not formalised, that English representation will have a majority, or will at least accept a veto on extremely controversial measures, that may be a fudge that would work.

It is interesting and worth noting that on both big constitutional issues—reform of the House of Lords and the West Lothian question—after 100 years of the best brains trying to find a solution, no obvious solution has come up. With every solution that does come up, after one has thought about it for a week or two, one sees any number of holes in it. I therefore see absolutely no reason to oppose the Bill when we come to vote on it. There is nothing objectionable in it, and my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire has been very sensible to ensure that that is the case. It is good to push the Government, but I would not hold my breath—I do not think that I can breathe in for the next 100 years —waiting for a solution to this almost intractable problem. However, we have to recognise that, as my hon. Friend says, the English may get deeply fed up with the current situation, and when they do, that is when the Union will be most at risk. That is, I think, what most Government Members, and at least one Member on the Opposition side of the Chamber—the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley)—would be extremely keen to avoid.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chris Bryant

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Yes, although as the hon. Member for North East Somerset said at the very beginning of his speech, all this will become rather unnecessary once we have legislated for an elected, whether fully or substantially, second Chamber. At that point, elements of the Parliament Act, or even the whole Act, will almost certainly have to be reshaped.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I absolutely understand the hon. Gentleman’s point that a Government elected on a manifesto for four years would not want to be obstructed by the House of Lords, and I doubt whether the Lords would obstruct them in those circumstances. Does he have any sympathy with the view that constitutional issues ought to have greater protection than ordinary Bills, particularly as judges have decided that there is a category of constitutional Acts? Should we decide that rather than the judiciary?

[Chris Bryant]

My general approach is that we should always seek to take decisions ourselves, rather than leave them to judges to take for us, because we are elected. However, the history of English common law and the way in which it has developed is such that judges have, by the precedents they have set, elaborated on that law. We have sometimes then decided to incorporate those interpretations into statute law, so there has been a constant relationship between the two. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) is muttering about Scottish law, but I am being very careful because I know much less about Scottish law than I do about English law, which also applies in Wales, so I am going to the edge of my knowledge and not a step further.

The hon. Member for North East Somerset is right that we will need, at some point, to put into statute law the relationship between this Chamber and an elected second Chamber, as we will want to establish that more firmly. Perhaps, as has happened in every other constitution that has been written in the world, special provision will be made for changing the constitution itself. In Germany, there has to be a vote of a certain majority in both Houses both before and after a general election. That was enforced by us in the writing of the German constitution after the second world war. In Spain, changes have been made to the constitution since the death of Franco, but the Spanish, too, can proceed only if there is a significant majority within the Cortes and the Senate. In short, my answer to the hon. Gentleman is yes.

In essence, my argument regarding new clause 3 is that it is not necessary and that it could be problematic for a new Government, because they might not be able to get their way even on a manifesto commitment that had been clearly laid down. The real danger concerns the extension of parliamentary terms—something that has always worried people in relation to the freedoms and rights of the British people, or rather the people of the United Kingdom. That is already protected in the Parliament Act, which will stand until we revise all these measures. Parliament has been extended in the past. That happened during the second world war when extensions were agreed on an annual basis. I am not sure whether that was voted on every year, but the hon. Member for North East Somerset might know.

Let me move to the new clause of the hon. Member for Stone. I note that the hon. Member for North East Somerset said that we have a choice between Scylla and Charybdis—he being Scylla and the hon. Member for Stone being Charybdis. My uncertain memory of Homer is that Odysseus chose to surrender a few sailors to Scylla rather than a whole ship to the whirlpool that was Charybdis, but I am in favour of Charybdis this afternoon.

European Union Bill

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chris Bryant

Tuesday 7th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I do not think Margaret Thatcher had anything to do with the advance of freedom in Spain, Portugal or Greece. Mrs Thatcher achieved many things—in the Rhondda we are certainly aware of, and resent, many of them—but the hon. Gentleman cannot claim that the advance of freedom was because of her, except that she was pro-European; in that regard, she did do something in the interests of the whole of Europe.

My problem with the Bill is that it does not do what it says on the tin. It is not an effective referendum lock, which was the promise. Two or three hon. Members have already made the point, in questioning the Foreign Secretary, that the House has perfect freedom to amend these measures in future, so if a Minister wanted to advance legislation implementing some change in the relationship between the United Kingdom and the EU, and if they thought it would offend against the measures in this Bill, they would have only to add a clause saying that the measures in this Bill did not apply. Of course they would have to take that change through both Houses, so there is an element of a brake, but the Bill is in no sense a substantial referendum lock.

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

Is it not true of every piece of legislation that it can be repealed later? There is a political cost in repealing legislation that makes this a lock.

[Chris Bryant]

It is true that every piece of legislation can be repealed or sidestepped, and there may be a political cost in doing so. In a few weeks’ time, when a number of extra peers have been added, the Government will have a majority not only in this House but, uniquely since the second world war, in the other House as well, so there will be a further slowing down. The Bill provides not a lock but a brake—that is all. It does not do what hon. Members want, which is to draw a line regarding all further innovations in the relationship between the UK and the EU.

The Bill will not deal with the real problem. The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) and my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) are right that my views on the EU are those of a minority. I know that partly because my father sends me an e-mail every Sunday to remind me of that fact and also to remind me that he moved to Alderney primarily so that he does not have to abide by any EU laws. He also regurgitates vast quantities of things that I hear regularly from hon. Members. I think it is a great embarrassment to him that I was not only the Minister for Europe but the Labour Minister for Europe.

The problem in Europe with those whom others have referred to as the elite and with ordinary members of the public is that there are real difficulties in advancing the European cause because there is no single European demos or political opinion. The waves of views crash upon the electoral shores in different parts of the EU at different times and it is very rare for two meetings in a row of the General Affairs and External Relations Council to include the same set of Ministers. Consequently, it is a phenomenal triumph to achieve any European co-ordination.

Some of the EU’s founding principles—indeed, the economic ones—are very powerful, such as the right to freedom of movement and to work anywhere in the EU. In the UK, Labour brought in civil partnerships—I have benefited from those changes this year—and other EU countries have introduced other ways of recognising same-sex unions. Many of us believe there ought to be a system for recognising those unions in every other country in Europe; otherwise there will clearly be discrimination against people whose partnership cannot be recognised for the purposes of taxation, benefits and the right to freedom of movement around the EU. I do not want Europe to decide the law on marriage in any European country, but I do want it to be able to enforce the basic principle of freedom of movement, and that will require a shift so that civil partnerships in this country, or same-sex marriages in Spain, can be recognised in every other country. Otherwise, married same-sex Spanish couples who move to France will have to divorce and form a new civil partnership there. The seeds that have been sown in the underlying principles of the EU will not go away. The British people who live in Spain and demand that Europe should act on property rights in Spain are arguing for an extension of the EU’s powers although many of them are profoundly Eurosceptic.

I am not a fan of referendums, because I believe in representative democracy. I believe that we are elected to come here and that the sovereignty of Parliament is the important principle on which we should act.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Chris Bryant

Monday 18th October 2010 Commons Chamber

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

I am slightly puzzled as to why schools attached to religious establishments in Northern Ireland should be excluded, but not those in England and Wales. I can think of a number of Roman Catholic schools attached to monasteries that it might be wise to exclude in the amendments.

[Chris Bryant]

I know personally only one public school in England and Wales that is attached to a monastery, which is Ampleforth. There is also Downside. I know of a considerable number of others, and many are attached to Anglican foundations in various ways, such as Charterhouse. The point I was making was specifically in relation to the Northern Ireland settlement. I now have two Northern Ireland colleagues present. I did not want to disturb the complex equilibrium that sometimes exists in relation to these matters in Northern Ireland.

In the case of Ampleforth, for example, which has a large number of pupils over the age of 18 and a large number of teachers who live on a very large campus, I see no reason why there should not be a polling station for Ampleforth itself. That might apply to a number of the larger public schools which, to all intents and purposes, would represent as large a polling district as some other polling districts. The amendment does not require any action to be taken against public schools. I hope they would see it as an enabling measure so that they might be able to encourage more of their students to vote.

I still hope the Minister will support the amendments.