Privilege (Withdrawal Agreement: Legal Advice)

Debate between Lord Beamish and Chris Philp

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)]

At the heart of our debate today is a question of Parliament’s powers and prerogatives. The right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) laid out a simple and clear case at the beginning of the debate. He said that the House passed a motion on 13 November compelling the Government to do something and that the Government have not done it. He said that it proceeds simply from those two facts that Ministers are therefore in contempt. I say that that analysis is too simplistic and is lacking in nuance, and that it presupposes that Parliament’s power, generally, is unqualified and unconstrained.

Indeed, two Members have made that point explicitly in this debate. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) described Parliament’s power as untrammelled, and the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who is at the Bar of the House, also suggested that Parliament’s power is entirely without limitation. Without wishing to open up an enormous debate on those two points, I would suggest that those two assertions cannot be taken at face value as self-evidently the case.

For example, the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European convention on human rights impose limitations on Acts of Parliament. Any Act of Parliament we pass must conform with human rights legislation and with the European convention on human rights, so there are limitations on what Parliament may do.

When I asked the hon. Member for Rhondda whether Parliament really has the right, for example, to trample on somebody’s personal liberty, he replied that Members of Parliament could be relied upon not to trample on people’s liberty in that way. Yet when one reads the great tracts on personal liberty, and particularly John Stuart Mill’s essay “On Liberty,” one sees that Mill urges that we should seek to protect individuals from what he describes as the “tyranny of the majority.” We need more than simply a reliance on good will to protect, for example, individual liberty.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), who is not in his place, also referred to the limitations on parliamentary authority by highlighting the distinction in the powers exercised by the Executive versus those exercised by Parliament as a legislature. There are all kinds of areas where the Government act with prerogative power and Parliament does not seek to usurp that power by essentially becoming the Government or becoming the Executive.

There are all kinds of areas where the limitations of parliamentary authority can, at the very least, properly be debated. The assertion that parliamentary authority is unlimited is not something one can take immediately at face value, attractive though it is to us as parliamentarians.

Of course, in no way do I wish to fetter Parliament’s ability to make its will felt. For example, our Select Committee colleagues were entirely within their rights to summon Mark Zuckerberg, and it is deplorable that the chief executive of such an influential company contemptuously refused to appear before a parliamentary Select Committee. I urge the Chairman of that Select Committee to use his good offices to compel Mark Zuckerberg to appear.

A question has repeatedly been posed by Opposition Members: “Why didn’t the Government oppose this motion when it was first put on 13 November?” I would suggest that the reason is that, in order to properly debate what parts of the legal advice might or might not be disclosed, the Government would have had to disclose the legal advice. We would have had to examine what the legal advice says before deciding what could or could not be disclosed. The very act of debating it would cause its disclosure, which is why when matters of disclosure arise in a court of law, they are decided by a judge in chambers, not in open court. The judge then decides what can be disclosed and what cannot be disclosed. No equivalent provision existed when the House debated this matter on 13 November; it would have been a case of disclosing everything and debating it openly, or disclosing nothing.

There is clearly a tension between Parliament’s desire to get disclosure and the desire of the Executive to protect the public interest. The question is: how do we balance those two competing considerations? A number of right hon. and hon. Members today have suggested that there are various appropriate forums in which that might occur, one of which, evidently, is the Privileges Committee or indeed some other Committee of the House. Such a Committee might, behind closed doors, look at the legal advice—

[Mr Kevan Jones]

The hon. Gentleman is talking complete nonsense with the idea that in order to vote against the motion on 13 November the Government would have had to disclose the evidence in that debate. Is it not a fact that the reason why they did not oppose that vote is that they would have lost it?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Philp]

The hon. Gentleman is engaging in speculation. The fact is that when matters of public disclosure are considered in other environments, for example, a court of law, an independent person, in this case a judge, in chambers, in private, decides what might publicly—

[Mr Kevan Jones]

rose—

[Chris Philp]

I must conclude, because Mr Speaker wishes to move on with the business. That independent person decides what gets publicly disclosed. No such device or mechanism was available to this House on 13 November and it strikes me that the Privileges Committee is a suitable forum in which the balance between the desire for disclosure and the public interest can be struck, and it is appropriate that that balance is struck in private. I will therefore be supporting the amendment. I know that you wish to move on, Mr Speaker, so I will conclude my remarks there.

Private Members’ Bills: Money Resolutions

Debate between Lord Beamish and Chris Philp

Monday 21st May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

No, that is not what we should do. I am specifically referring to the expenditure of significant amounts of money that requires budgetary balance—a discipline Labour Members may well want to reflect on.

The right hon. Member for North Durham listed a number of private Members’ Bills over the years, some of which have been very significant, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean pointed out in an intervention, almost all—in fact, all—of the private Members’ Bills that were listed did not require significant expenditure. The distinction I draw is about initiating expenditure and the balance between the Executive and the legislature.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

That is fine, but will we then get a situation in which, when someone initiates a private Member’s Bill, we get into a debate not about whether it needs a money resolution, but whether it needs what is deemed to be a significant amount of expenditure? As we all know, what is significant in the eyes of one person is different from what is significant in the eyes of others.

[Chris Philp]

I hope that the right hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that the expenditure in this case—I think it is some £13 million—is insignificant; that money would pay for 300 nurses. If Labour Members are seeking to advance the argument that £13 million of our constituents’ money is insignificant, I think they are sorely mistaken. If that is their attitude, it perhaps explains why the deficit they bequeathed us in 2010 was quite so large.

To move on to the process, the Government are taking quite a sensible view by saying that they will wait and see when it comes to the money resolution for this private Member’s Bill, because we have an active process that is currently running and on which considerable time and money have already been expended. There will be a report to the Government and also to the House in a matter of three or four months, and to have two separate processes cutting across and indeed contradicting each other before the House has reached a decision on the first process strikes me as duplicative and wasteful. It is therefore quite reasonable to wait for three or four months—it is not very long: a matter of a few weeks—before deciding how to proceed.

The House itself will reach a decision about the proposed boundaries with 600 constituencies in the month of October, and having waited seven or eight years we can quite comfortably wait until then. At that point, we will of course have a debate about the Boundary Commission proposals, and the fact that the Government are prepared to wait and see with regard to this private Member’s Bill until then hints at some degree of open-mindedness about the outcome of whether we are equalising at 600 or 650 constituencies. That open-mindedness actually shows respect for the House because the Government are saying that they will listen to the House’s opinion in a few months’ time. There are of course good arguments on both sides—in favour of 600 and in favour of 650. The arguments in favour of 600, of course, relate to reducing the cost of and having a more manageable House, but there are clearly good arguments in favour of 650, not least—