Brexit Negotiations

Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

As I said earlier, assuming that the EU Council confirms on Thursday and Friday that we can move on to phase 2 of the negotiations, I expect that work on the transitional or implementation period will start immediately. There are some details to be sorted out, but the general agreement is that it will be agreed as early as possible in the new year. As my hon. Friend says, Michel Barnier has indicated that it could be during the first quarter.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I put it to the Prime Minister that if, for instance, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) and the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) are in full agreement, than either one—or probably both—must be mistaken about what has really been agreed. With respect, the Prime Minister cannot have full autonomy and full alignment at the same time. Cross-border trade in services will require some sort of long-term regulatory co-operation to be in place. When, for instance, will we find out whether solvency II still applies, whether the prospectus directive is still in operation, and whether we are still in the single euro payments area? Those are all genuine questions for consumers and businesses, but we still have no idea about the answers.

[The Prime Minister]

The nature of those arrangements for future trade in goods and services will be negotiated in phase 2 of the discussions. If my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) are in agreement, I think it suggests that the Government have done a good job.

Proportional Representation

Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts

Monday 30th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to be able to follow a member of the Petitions Committee. I thank the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) for opening the debate, although I am afraid that I disagree with him on nearly all the points he raised. I have always been a supporter of electoral reform. It has always seemed to me that the obvious starting point for any electoral system is that the number of votes that people cast for parties should be reflected in the composition of Parliament or whatever body is being elected.

Frankly, I find it absurd that on several occasions in British history we have had elections where a party with fewer votes than another has won the election and formed the Government. That happened as recently as 1974, and before that in 1951 and on several other occasions. People will cite other countries and perhaps compare the situation with the last presidential election in America, but America is different—America is a republic, not a democracy. It clearly has a system based on the representation of the electoral college and the states’ votes as part of that. It is an absurd comparison with this country.

The number of votes cast should be reflected in the composition of Parliament. That is the start and end of the debate for me, but it is not just about the technicalities of systems. In particular, I remember the deep sense of alienation growing up in the north-east of England in the 1980s, which was a time of huge change. The mines and shipyards were going and the social fabric of the area was being completely transformed. There was this sense of having no purchase, no say and no input into a Government who frankly did not care how the north-east voted. In places such as Sunderland and Durham, where I was from, there was this sense of having no ability to change the country’s direction when it was having such a big impact.

We have this argument about strong and weak government, but strong government to me means good government. It does not mean a Government with an artificial majority propelled into that majority by the system when the people have not voted for that majority. Whatever we think of things such as the Iraq war or the poll tax, they are examples of strong government, but I argue strongly that they are not examples of good government.

There is an interesting question—there will be different views about this in the Chamber—of whether our political culture has shaped our electoral system, or whether our electoral system has shaped our political culture, but I worry a lot about the direction of political culture and how we deal with political problems. We are going further and further down a route towards a deep, reductive tribalism that has forgotten the purpose of politics, which is to come together and solve problems. Instead of that, we are seeing a degree of the partisanship that the system is based on, but it is getting more and more absurd.

For instance, a series of interesting Budget proposals have been leaked from the Cabinet. All those proposals would breach the fiscal responsibility charter of the former Chancellor George Osborne, which many Conservatives would have voted for. It was obviously nonsense, but it was trapped in that two-party system that is propelled by the electoral system. We have seen people elected to this House who have expressed strong views that they will not even talk to people on the other side or be friendly with them. That is a completely false direction for this country to go in, and at the heart of it is an electoral system that asks people not to vote positively for things, but to vote against things. That is all that first past the post can do.

We all would find problems with any system—there is no perfect system—but there are clear examples in the rest of the world that have far better democratic systems. Scotland and Wales have better democratic systems than the one we use for general elections in the UK.

[Jonathan Edwards]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech and many valid points. He mentioned Wales. The Wales Act 2017 empowered the National Assembly to devise its own electoral system. Will he join me in calling on all political parties in the National Assembly to use Wales as an incubator to bring forward genuine electoral reform for the UK?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

The devolved nations have led the way on a whole range of policy issues, simply because they have a more representative political culture.

[Joanna Cherry]

The Scottish Parliament’s d’Hondt system involves a first-past-the-post connection and a proportional representation list. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is one of the best examples of a tried-and-tested PR system that keeps the constituency link that the petition advocates? At the last Scottish election, for example, the Scottish National party got 46.5% of the vote and 48.8% of the seats.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I absolutely agree with the hon. and learned Lady. When we look at the alternatives available to us, we see that no system will satisfy everyone, but the best way forward has to be a system that provides a constituency link—that is clearly such an important feature of our political system, and one that I support entirely—but also a representative election. Through that the whole range of political opinions cast in an election are reflected in the result and the system gives a majority, as the SNP had in the Scottish Parliament for some time, when the public have given their consent to that majority, but it does not give a majority based on this false notion that there should be some multiplier effect when the public are unwilling to give one party a majority.

[John Spellar]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

Yes. My right hon. Friend and I have had this debate for many years, and we will continue to do so.

[John Spellar]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. He cited with approval Scotland and Wales. Is it not the case that every area in Wales voted to reject change and stick with first past the post in the referendum? In Scotland every area apart from the university seats in Glasgow and Edinburgh voted to keep the current system.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

We will come to that issue when I go through some of the commonly raised points that my right hon. Friend and I have discussed for some time.

The crucial point I want to make is that the additional member system used in Germany, Scotland and Wales avoids the vast electoral deserts where people in a part of a country, whether a county or a region, get no plurality of representation despite casting votes for a range of political parties. Front Benchers are called to respond to debates in Westminster Hall. I remember responding to a debate on travel in the south-west of England when I was shadow rail Minister. There were 20 Conservative MPs on the Government Benches and just me on the Opposition Benches to respond. Members would get up and say, “Only the Opposition Front Bencher is here,” but if we look at the election results, we see that even in the south-west more people voted against the Conservative party than for it. Clearly it was the biggest party, but the system delivered 100% representation for a party that was not even getting a majority of the vote in the region. That cannot be right.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Chris Skidmore)]

It is an excellent system.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

It is excellent if we view this simply as a partisan issue where the only thing that matters is our side winning, but as democrats we have to look at this from the point of view of what the public put forward, and we have to respond to that public demand. If we are not doing that, we have to ask ourselves what the purpose of elections is to begin with. It cannot just be about maximising individual party advantage and finding a system that gets us to that point. That is not good enough, and it is not what democratic systems are based on.

I will conclude, because we have such a strong turnout in the Chamber. I just want to go through some of the commonly held views, such as those shown in the points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar) and the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay. It is true that lists are suboptimal—there is no doubt about that—but what I find hypocritical is the fact that many of the people who cite lists as an example of undue party advantage know full well that first past the post is open to manipulation. It has always been the case in every party represented here that favoured sons and daughters have been parachuted into constituencies or selection processes have been manipulated. It is simply not true that that can be transferred to any system that has a list involved.

With regard to minority parties, I think that we should teach better history in schools. As the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay was speaking, I thought, “Well, right now things are dependent on the DUP.” We had the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition before that. John Major was dependent on the Ulster Unionists. We had the Callaghan Government’s Lib-Lab pact. We had minority Governments and coalitions before the war. We had the situation with the Irish nationalists. The history of this country is not one of first past the post delivering clear results. In fact, we have had a situation quite recently in which a proportional system has delivered a majority Government in Scotland while first past the post has delivered a hung Parliament in the United Kingdom, so we need to look more closely at the evidence.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

Our party once stood on a manifesto of proportional representation in the 1920s. We invested a lot of time and effort in the Plant report, which subsequently was taken up by Jenkins. That was never followed through by the Labour party, which is very sad, because Jenkins gave us a way forward. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I absolutely agree. Labour could have seized the initiative many times in our history. Many times we have come close, but we have never followed it through. We must change that now. As has already been said in this debate, fundamentally we have an electoral system designed for two-party politics, which is no longer the case in this country. We will not go back to that. We saw a big increase in the vote share for the two big parties at the election, but that was a response to each other. When I talk to people, I do not find that all of a sudden we have stopped having a plurality of political views in this country and that everyone is happy simply voting Conservative or Labour.

With regard to the AV referendum, AV is not proportional representation. I and many people here voted for it simply because we knew that people such as my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley would cite the result as an endorsement of first past the post. The referendum was really about Nick Clegg and dissatisfaction with the decisions that led to the formation of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition Government, but that cannot be the end of the debate. It would simply cheat people and ignore serious issues if we did not continue the discussion.

I will finish with the point that the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay often makes, which is that the result of the AV referendum shows that people do not want it, they are not asking us for it, and it is simply a political obsession. I ask everyone here today: when they are out in their constituencies or talking to anyone about what they do, how many people say, “You know what? I think British politics is spot on. There is nothing we should change. I am satisfied with British politics. Get back there and continue”? I do not think that is true. I think there is alienation and a huge amount of concern about how we are reducing our political culture so that it is no longer capable of solving the problems this country faces. There is no magic wand that we can wave to change everything, but if we want a better politics we have to start reflecting on how the people vote and what they want in the composition of our Parliament. That is why we must change to a system of fair votes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Craig Mackinlay]

I am talking about the system for this place, one that has served us well. I have a lot to say about what is wrong with any type of PR system, and I am no more in favour of the Scottish system now than I ever was. In Northern Ireland there is a slightly different system of a single transferable vote.

Moving on to the European parliamentary elections, which were mentioned by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), I am not against the d’Hondt formula just because it was created by a Belgian mathematician from 1878. How many hon. Members have knocked on doors and dared to asked the elector: “Do you know who your MEPs are?” I am within this bubble in the south-east region, and I can only name four MEPs for the region. What chance do others have of getting a reply they want, when they send out their letters to that faceless 10?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

Is it the hon. Gentleman’s assertion that when Members of the European Parliament were elected by first past the post, the country knew who they were?

[Craig Mackinlay]

That is a point well made, and that leads us to the state that we are in today. My point is that the constituency link is lost, but how can we have a region? When we have a pure system, a little like Israel or the regional system for European parliamentary elections, how on earth can we have a constituency link from Milton Keynes to the Isle of Wight and through to east Kent? How can people feel any familiarity with or knowledge of the people who represent them? To have a proper system in which those elected completely reflect the votes cast, the area has to get bigger and bigger, and that link is lost.

Even under the d’Hondt system we have closed and open lists. The worry with the closed list system is that hon. Members cannot say with any sincerity that it is the right system and that it puts the power in the hands of the electors. It puts the power in the hands of the party machines, electing people who are in favour with the party leadership of the time to be top or bottom of the list, or wherever in between.

Debate on the Address

Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts

Wednesday 21st June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron]

The short and blindingly obvious answer is yes. The fact that no savings were made in the security services’ funding whatsoever is testament to that, as is the fact that we have in my right hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) the person who has done most in living memory to advance mental health in this country from a Government Bench.

As is very clear from recent statements and from the Gracious Speech, the Prime Minister has sought to pursue, and continues to seek to pursue, an extreme version of Brexit, having failed to gain any mandate to do so. There is, as the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe mentioned, no plan to keep Britain in the single market or the customs union. We will therefore seek to amend the Queen’s Speech to add membership of the single market and the customs union. We are pleased to hear that 50 colleagues from the Labour party take a similar view, believing that we should be members of the single market. Access to the single market is a nonsense; many countries around the world have access to the single market. I could be wrong, but I think North Korea has access to the single market. The issue is: are we members of that market?

The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe pointed out earlier that apparently we all believe in free trade now. Do not believe what people say; believe what they do. People may say, “We are in favour of free trade now,” but if they vote in these Lobbies in the coming weeks and months for us not to be members of the single market—and therefore not just to rip up our biggest free trade deal, which is with the largest and most valuable economy on the planet, but, as a consequence, to rip up the deals that we have at second hand with North Korea and the rest of it—they are not free traders.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have a genuine inquiry for the hon. Gentleman. If we were to retain membership of the single market and the customs union, what, in his view, would be different about that arrangement in comparison with being a member of the European Union?

[Tim Farron]

I think I am right in saying that the hon. Gentleman and I both indicated during the referendum campaign that, according to those who cited Norway as a model, in such a situation we would get the economic benefits of being in the European Union, but none of the political ones. We would not get decision-making powers, and all the rest of it. Norway was always the least-dreadful option on the menu if we were to leave the European Union, and it remains so. I am all in favour of the least-dreadful option, if we cannot have absolutely the best one.

It is fair to say that the lack of clarity over the version of Brexit that the Government are pressing for and pursuing is alarming. What does success look like? What does a bad deal look like? Nobody knows, because the Government’s plan is as clear as mud, and the only details we have had are empty platitudes. The Government today have presented us with a number of so-called Brexit Bills on immigration, customs and agriculture, but how on earth can we be expected to support these things when we have no idea what the end goal is? The majority of people in this country did not put their faith in the Government at the ballot box, and it would be dangerous for any Member of this House to put blind faith in these Brexit Bills without full details of what they will mean for our borders, our trade, our security and our jobs.

As the Brexit Secretary begins the horse-trading and concession-making with politicians in Brussels, the fact is that we are no closer to knowing what Brexit will look like. Those who have expressed concern about this House and the people of this country having insufficient sovereignty over the law of this country must, surely, see the irony in our children’s and grandchildren’s future being stitched up in vape-filled rooms in Brussels and imposed on the British people, without a single inhabitant of this country—outside this House—having any say whatsoever. And yet the Prime Minister still refuses to give the people the final say on that deal, with the right to reject it and remain if they do not think that it is a good deal.

The Prime Minister may pretend that it is business as usual, but clearly that is not the case. She wanted a landslide, but the people said no. She wanted a mandate for her plans for an extreme version of Brexit, but the people rejected that, too. She promised strong and stable leadership, but no Government have ever looked weaker or less in control. The Prime Minister has gone cap in hand to the DUP and tried to stitch up a deal to keep her in power, and now it is making her look like a fool as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is with honour, and humility, that I rise to respond to the Queen’s Speech today as the three-times-elected Member of Parliament for the Stalybridge and Hyde constituency. I would like to record my sincerest thanks to all those who showed their faith in me, and to the steadfast people of Greater Manchester for their solidarity and defiance in the face of the terror attack we experienced during the campaign.

This was not an election that was needed; it was an election that was, initially at least, not really wanted. It was an election called in the partisan interests of the Prime Minister rather than the national interest. Frankly, who could blame her given the poll lead she enjoyed on the eve of that election? But as is so often the case, the British public took a rather dim view of someone who appeared to put their own needs before theirs. It now seems inconceivable that this Prime Minister will stay in office for the full term of this Parliament. She has gone from honeymoon to lame duck, with nothing in between.

As ever, analysis of the Queen’s Speech should begin with a focus on the national interest. As yet, this Queen’s Speech has no majority in the House of Commons and so will require the support of the Democratic Unionist party in order to pass. I strongly disagree with the remarks of the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), because I find it unconscionable that any British Government would even contemplate risking the Northern Irish peace process in order to prolong their own existence. Under the Good Friday agreement, the British and Irish Governments are the neutral arbitrators of Northern Irish power-sharing. It is simply not possible to breach that political neutrality and remain faithful to the terms of the agreement. The progress made in Northern Ireland in the past few decades is, for me, one of the greatest political achievements in this country in the post-war era, and we should pay tribute to the DUP for its role in that. However, the peace process cannot be taken for granted. The criticisms from Sir John Major were legitimate, serious and informed. They deserved an audience and they deserve a response, because the peace process is being taken for granted if the Government feel they can act in this way. The Prime Minister should be aware that the public would never forgive any Government, and particularly not her, if she again puts her own interests ahead of the national interest.

The irony is that the Queen’s Speech we have heard today is so meagre—so limited in vision and scope—that the Government will have almost no legislative agenda at all. They may as well continue as a minority Government on an issue-by-issue basis. All the decent stuff in the Queen’s Speech, such as the action on energy prices and the action on bad landlords that we have been promised, has been lifted from the last two Labour manifestos, so we will almost certainly be here voting for it, while all the unpleasant things that caused the Conservative party so much pain—austerity, the dementia tax, grammar schools, and scrapping of free school meals—will almost certainly get nowhere near a vote in this House. In that sense, while we may not have won this election, Labour Members can claim a significant victory from it.

This did not feel to me like an election about Brexit but an election about austerity, the state of the NHS and social care, the threatened cuts to school funding, and the desperate state of declining real wage levels. That is what people wanted to talk to me about. In my constituency, the fundamental economic premise of this Government, which is that prosperity lies in cutting public services and public spending to pay for cuts to corporation tax and other reliefs, has been soundly rejected. We need prosperity and competitiveness that is generated by improving our infrastructure and our education and skill levels, and a strategy therefore not just to generate jobs but to generate good jobs with good wages and good lives that can be led as a result. I am concerned to already hear SNP and Northern Irish colleagues compete over the additional resources they believe they will get as a result of this hung Parliament, because there is no policy justification, as a rule, for public services being funded more generously in those nations than in the north of England. The Government would be wise not to rouse the anger of northern MPs by compounding that unfairness. Public spending, wherever it is in the United Kingdom, should be determined by need, not by back-room deals based on Commons majorities.

Let me turn to the major issue we will be dealing with in this Parliament, which is of course Brexit. While the election was not dominated by it, this Parliament certainly will be. I agree with the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) on one aspect of his speech, which we have heard from him several times—that the language around “soft” and “hard” Brexit is not particularly helpful. The fact is that we are leaving, and the conversation has to be about the bespoke relationship we now need to negotiate. My constituents, in the main, tell me two things. First, they want the immigration system reformed to end freedom of movement as it is currently constituted. That does not mean that they are anti-immigration—it just means that they want to see greater control of immigration. Members of this House may disagree with that view and cite the underlying economic data, but that is the genuine view from my constituency in the north of England. I recognise that there are those who are motivated strongly by resolutely anti-immigrant sentiment, but I do not believe that the majority of leave voters in my constituency could be described in such a way.

Secondly, I believe that many people want the UK to have the ability to negotiate our own trade deals with the rest of the world. That is a difficult issue, because there is no doubt that the customs union has created significant benefits, especially in cross-border supply chains, which play a particular role in the automotive industry. It is a paradox; at times, I find the EU to be too protectionist, too bureaucratic and too unresponsive in how it allows ordinary citizens to express a view and change the impact of its policies. The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee looked at the matter briefly while I was a member, and I was—even as a remain voter—fairly shocked at some of the genuine case studies brought to us by British business.

I would like the UK to negotiate a close relationship with the single market, particularly to avoid the loss of any jobs in financial services as a result of regulatory changes, but with a new immigration system and the ability to negotiate a more open and freer trading relationship with the rest of the world. That, to me, would implement the result of the referendum, bring new benefits to the UK and protect the best of what we have now.

Of course, some sort of interim deal and interim arrangement simply must be put in place as soon as possible while we negotiate this rather complex deal. An interim arrangement is no use if British businesses are only told about it several months or years down the line. They have to know now, so that they have the certainty that will enable them to plan how to deal with the next few years.

Given the fact that, based on what we have heard today, the Government have almost nothing else to negotiate apart from the Brexit deal, they should get serious and drop the platitudes. We should not be hearing about a red, white and blue Brexit, because that is not a serious response to a huge moment in British history. Instead, the Government should take responsibility for delivering a new deal for Britain, and they should work with all Members of this House to deliver it.