Kew Gardens (Leases) (No. 3) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park and Stephen Pound

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 24th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

It is a rare opportunity for a Member to be able to speak on legislation that pertains almost exclusively to his or her constituency, but I have that honour today, because the magnificent Kew Gardens is in my constituency—

[Stephen Pound]

And really close to mine.

[Zac Goldsmith]

That is absolutely right.

I am delighted that the Government have taken up this small, uncontroversial but nevertheless important Bill. Members who have visited Kew Gardens will know what an extraordinary place it is. With 2 million visitors a year, including 100,000 schoolchildren, the gardens are one of the great wonders of the world. There are stunning landscapes, extraordinary plants and peaceful walks—except when they are punctuated by the noise of aeroplanes flying over, but that is a debate for another day.

Kew is a great deal more than a beautiful garden or a tourist attraction: in addition to hosting the world’s largest collection of living plants, its herbarium contains a collection of more than 7 million plant species. It is an extraordinarily valuable international resource, which is in the process of being digitised, as we have just heard, and made freely available worldwide. Kew Gardens is at the forefront, the cutting edge, of international plant science, which is crucial in providing a response to the existential threats of climate change, antimicrobial resistance, and diseases such as cancer, diabetes and more. Kew is simply a priceless national asset, and we should be doing everything we can to support it.

That brings me to the Bill. Very briefly, let me say that I first brought it to this House as a ten-minute rule Bill in January of last year, following similar efforts by my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset (Mr Liddell-Grainger) and by my friend Lord True in the other place. Unfortunately, it was blocked, I think, nine times by a friendly colleague on the Government Benches. I want to repeat my thanks to Ministers from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for their decision to bring the Bill forward in Government time, and I welcome the changes that have been made to the Bill in the Lords. Although the intention of the Bill was never to allow Kew to lease out core parts of its estate, it is welcome that that is now clear in the Bill, with explicit protections for its UNESCO status.

Having visited Kew many, many times, including this morning, I can assure hon. Members that the clear intention is to use the powers in this Bill to lease out the residential buildings on the periphery of Kew’s estate. In fact, I saw a number of those buildings this morning, all of which are beautiful and all of which have been empty for more than a decade. The anomaly of Kew Gardens being Crown land means that it has several buildings that can be leased for a maximum of only 31 years, which is not commercially attractive compared with the 150 years that the Bill will now allow.

Like the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew), I want to caution against the suggestion that passing this Bill into law will provide some kind of windfall for Kew. There is no doubt that the potential financial gains are significant, but they must not be seen as a substitute either for visitor income or for Government funding. I hope the Minister agrees that this Bill is an opportunity for Kew to do more. With the spending review on the horizon, I urge him to make sure that Kew continues to receive significant support from Government. I want to reiterate that this Bill must not be used as a pretext to reduce such funding sources.

I thank the Bill team for their support and their willingness to take this Bill off my hands, out of the risk of its being blocked by some on the Back Benches, and on to the statute book. I look forward to it passing its first Commons stage this afternoon.

Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park and Stephen Pound

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith]

Again, my hon. Friend will not be surprised to know that I absolutely agree. My concern is that many of the arguments against recall imply that, to paraphrase Lenin’s infamous dictum, democracy is so precious that it must be rationed.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman not just for the Lenin quote, but for his extraordinary generosity in giving way. Will he just elucidate one absolutely straightforward point, not a great philosophical issue? The London borough of Ealing faces £87 million of cuts. Who would pay for this process? Will it be yet another impost on a struggling local government?

[Zac Goldsmith]

I believe that, under the Government’s Bill, the cost of the petition and the by-election would be borne centrally. My right hon. Friends on the Front Bench are welcome to intervene if I am wrong. The same would be true in the alternative that I am proposing. I have checked with Electoral Reform Services, which routinely conducts referendums, and I have been told that the cost would be £35,000 for a recall referendum. That works out at about 40p per person. If that is the price people have to pay for decent representation, I suspect that most people would regard it as a price worth paying.

Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park and Stephen Pound

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith]

I will make some progress and then take as many interventions as there is an appetite for.

It is good that our three mainstream parties and all the smaller parties have understood that recall is necessary. That is a sign of real progress. However, what is not great is the Bill that we are debating today. The Deputy Prime Minister has said that it represents a small step in the right direction. If only it did. I believe that the Bill in its current form will set democracy back, and I want to try to explain why.

For one thing, the criteria in the Bill are so narrow, as we have heard from many Members today, that the process will be virtually pointless. It will still be possible for an MP to switch parties, refuse to attend Parliament, disappear on holiday or break every promise that they made before the election without qualifying for recall. The public will discover, with the very first scandal, that they have been misled. The Bill will inflame the very resentment and anger that gave rise to it. Extraordinarily, the Deputy Prime Minister yesterday called it “the people’s recall”. I call it madness.

Another reason is that, instead of giving voters powers to hold this institution to account, the proposal is that the institution will, effectively, hold itself to account. Except for when an MP is jailed, voters will need our permission to initiate the recall process. Panicking because of the backlash that he has received, the Deputy Prime Minister said yesterday that he would create a panel of ordinary independent people to adjudicate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell) has pointed out, we already have that panel—it is called the constituency. The proposal before us will appal voters and has been rejected, without exception, by every single democracy pressure group from 38 Degrees on the left, all the way over to the TaxPayers Alliance, and everything in between.

The Bill could also destroy good MPs. Under the plans, just 10% of people can throw an MP out of office, although that MP could claw their way back into office if they got lucky in a by-election. Yes, the MP would have had to initiate the trigger, but history is full of hon. Members who have been suspended from this House or even jailed for noble protest. The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) is no longer in his place, but I believe that he has been suspended from the House 10 times. I apologise if I have got that wrong. Is it correct?

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

indicated assent.

[Zac Goldsmith]

It is correct, so hopefully the hon. Member for Bolsover will not be appalled that I have used that figure. Is he an hon. Member who merits recall? No, he is not. Would he have qualified for recall under these plans? Probably, yes.