Constitution and Home Affairs

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Straw]

The hon. Gentleman will have to allow me to say that I consult my colleagues about the whipping arrangements that would apply. [Interruption.] My right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) is speculating about whether the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) is worried about something. My advice is for him to worry about how he and his party are going to vote and we will worry about how we vote.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Straw]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, but then I want to make some progress.

[Mr Jackson]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, and I am glad that the sinner is repenting. Does he regret the use of the guillotine on so many important Bills during the last Parliament? In the Housing and Regeneration Bill, for instance, which I was involved in, more than 200 Government clauses were tabled between Second Reading and Report, so Members were not allowed proper analysis and oversight of that important legislation. [Interruption.]

[Mr Straw]

My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) says that there were no guillotines, as they were programme motions—but they come to the same thing.

Let me say to the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) that I regret the use of guillotines full stop, but sometimes they are necessary. However, I sat in the House in opposition for 18 years, and the first Bill I sat on—the Housing Bill, in early 1980, 30 years ago—was the subject of the most ruthless guillotining, and that on a major measure. There are plenty of other measures of profound importance that were also the subject of guillotining.

My view, both in government and in opposition, has been that the House—certainly over the 30 years in which I have been in it—has not got right the way in which it should deal effectively with legislation on the Floor of the House, and I think that there is a better way. We need to provide for more time, but if we do that, the quid pro quo needs to be limits on speeches, so that people can constructively take part. We also need to look at something that I facilitated on at least one occasion, which is ensuring that when the business is subject to programming or guillotining, some Opposition and Back-Bench amendments can also be the subject of votes. I put those proposals before the House for consideration.

I have set out our view on many of the proposals that are, and will be, the subject of a broad consensus. As I have said, on every proposal that the Deputy Prime Minister brings forward, we shall seek constructively to work with the Government to achieve consensus. However, it seems that consensus was the last thing on the mind of the governing parties, when one turns to some of the elements of the coalition agreement. In his first speech as Deputy Prime Minister, outside the House, the right hon. Gentleman told the nation that he proposed to secure the biggest shake-up of our democracy since the Reform Act of 1832. He described the Reform Act of 1832 as a “landmark”, from

“politicians who refused to sit back and do nothing while huge swathes of the population remained helpless against vested interests. Who stood up for the freedom of the many”—

we have heard that phrase before—

“not the privilege of the few.”

Well, not quite, Mr Speaker, for the truth is that even after the passage of the Great Reform Act of 1832, huge swathes of the population—92% of the population—remained without a vote, helpless in the face of vested interests. The Reform Act of 1832 gave the vote, a limited franchise, to the property-owning class, of whom there were remarkably few, and deliberately ensured that nobody else had the vote—no women, no working men; just 16% of men, and no women whatever.

Let me also say to the right hon. Gentleman that had the Great Reform Act been the landmark in democracy that he suggested—I do not know where he got that from; certainly not even from Wikipedia—none of the agitation of the Chartist movement that followed would have been necessary. Those of us who know a little bit of history will remember that it was the wholly dashed expectations of 1832 that fired up the great Chartist movement. However, the comparison with 1832, if not appropriate, is certainly heavy with unintended irony, for, however limited the effect, the first Reform Act at least extended the franchise. The programme to which the right hon. Gentleman has signed up will reduce the franchise, as I will explain. Some reform!