Debate on the Address
Debate between Lord Beith and Kevin Brennan(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I usually enjoy and can be quite entertained by the speeches of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), who can be very humorous, but today he chose to make a series of very serious allegations, which he has the opportunity to make outside the House where there are proper procedures that can be followed to test them, and I would expect him to do that.
I usually also expect the right hon. Gentleman to have some wider grasp of the context of his comments, but I found no evidence in his speech that he realised that, actually, we are all minorities. No party won a majority at this election, and therefore some combination of parties had to find a way of ensuring that this country had stable government.
The right hon. Gentleman also seems to be unaware of the fact that his party’s Chief Secretary left a note saying that there is no money left, and the scale of the debt seemed to pass him by, too. I was disappointed that on this occasion I did not enjoy one of his speeches as much as I sometimes do, especially as I regard his great seniority—he is one of the four or five MPs who has been here longer than me—as rather reassuring.
I wish to extend my congratulations to the Members who spoke earlier: the two opening speakers and, indeed, the acting Leader of the Opposition, who I thought spoke with some force, and quite a lot of the time with some dignity as well. I, too, am puzzled as to why she is not entering her party’s leadership contest, but I shall come back shortly to the interesting subject of the future of the Labour party.
First, I want to remind the House that we are all minorities now, and that that left my party with a choice. We could enable a Conservative minority Government to take office, which would not have been a stable Government, would not have had broad support and would not have carried out Liberal Democrat policies, or we could reach an agreement to work together to create a stable Government drawing on the ideas and policies of both our parties. We explored whether a coalition with Labour and others was feasible, but there was no sign of movement from Labour on the civil liberties issues, such as identity cards, or on our tax proposals for people on low and middle incomes. There was also no majority for such a coalition and, perhaps most telling of all, there was no real will within the Labour party to take it on. Moreover, I think that some on the Labour Front Bench saw honourable defeat and moving aside to resolve their own leadership questions as a better course—and the more cynical would say some of them thought, “There are too many difficult decisions to be taken; let’s get out of the way and leave it to somebody else to take them.”
Sir Alan Beith
No, I want to make a little progress, but I shall give way later.
Labour Members have now entered a leadership election which I am sure we will all find diverting and entertaining. As the Prime Minister pointed out, two brothers are taking part. Why is that principle not extended further? I wanted the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) to stand in contest against her husband; that would have been good. There might also be the question of the husband of the acting leader of the Labour party taking part, along with her; that would be fascinating. And why should the hon. Members for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) and for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) not also stand, so that we have two sisters in the race? A pack of “Happy Families” cards could be kept handy in case there is a tie at the end of the contest.
Let me make a serious point about Labour’s leadership election, however. I think Labour and its new leader will have to think through the consequences of the massive debt crisis they have left behind. If they are serious, they cannot simply enjoy the luxury of attacking every cut as if no action needs to be taken and nothing needs to be done. Frankly, if there had been no election and they had stayed in office, they would have been confronted with the same difficult decisions that confront this coalition Government now. We cannot tackle this crisis on the basis that something will turn up.
Kevin Brennan
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. He has taken as his theme that we are all minorities; does he believe that 54 per cent. of this House constitutes a minority?
Sir Alan Beith
I was going to come to that point later, but I shall deal with it now. The hon. Gentleman seems to confuse two things. A vote of confidence—a decision to throw out a Government—is at present and in the future a matter for a bare majority of those voting in this House. That is perfectly straightforward: a majority in this House can get rid of a Government in whom it does not have confidence. That is not the same question as whether a general election should immediately take place. If we make it the same question, consequences follow. One is that it influences the potential outcome of a vote on removing a Government and may make some people more unwilling to remove a Government. In addition, we then present the sovereign with a potentially politically controversial choice about whether to grant a Dissolution, as most precedents require, in circumstances in which there is or may be an alternative Government.
That is why the Labour Government legislated in the Scottish Parliament that there should be a distinct procedure. It is why the German Parliament, which we helped to set up after the war, has a distinct procedure for a constructive vote of confidence. It is a well established practice in many countries, but we should be clear—
Sir Alan Beith
No, I have dealt with the point. We should be clear that there is a difference between the vote to get rid of a Government and in effect placing in the hands of the Prime Minister the power to call a general election whenever he feels like doing so and whenever it is in his political interests to do so.