Private Members’ Bills: Money Resolutions
Lord Harper Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Afzal Khan
Absolutely. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the Government can table the money resolution but not then have to agree with it.
The Government have changed their line. Last week, the Leader of the House said:
“money resolutions will be brought forward on a case-by-case basis as soon as possible.”—[Official Report, 10 May 2018; Vol. 640, c. 894.]
There is clear water between saying the Government will always table a money resolution and saying that this will be considered on a case-by-case basis. What has changed since 2015? We have had the disastrous 2017 election, when the Government lost their majority.
Afzal Khan
Let me make some progress and then I will be happy to give way. Too weak to defeat my Bill on a vote, the Government are hiding behind a procedure that they know is wrong. The convention is also that money resolutions are brought forward in the order that Bills pass Second Reading. Members will have seen on today’s Order Paper that the Government have tabled a money resolution for a health and social care Bill. It is the second Bill the Government have leapfrogged over mine. The Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Bill was given a money resolution at the beginning of May, even though its promoter came out 13th in the ballot, whereas I came out third.
The only logic to when the Government are bringing forward a money resolution is: what will help them avoid challenge? We know many on the Government side are willing to vote against them on my Bill, both for principled reasons and because reducing the number of MPs will mean that some Conservatives will lose their seats—turkeys do not vote for Christmas. Based on the 2017 general election results, 34 Conservative MPs are set to have their seats abolished or to lose to Labour at the next election, with the list including six Cabinet Ministers and six other Ministers. The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), who is in charge of my Bill for the Government, is set to lose her seat to Labour if the current boundary proposals go ahead. The Government’s motives are clear: this is not about principles, but about electoral maths. This is not just happening with my Bill; money resolutions are part of a pattern of this weak Government abusing Parliament to avoid scrutiny and challenge.
Andrea Leadsom
I want to come on to talk about some of the excellent PMBs that are finding their way through—[Interruption.] In specific response to the hon. Lady, money resolutions are brought forward at the appropriate time, and it is for the Government of the day to initiate those money resolutions.
Mr Harper
As a member of the Public Bill Committee, I listened carefully to what the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), said. She did not say that the Government would never bring forward the money resolution. She said that she thought it appropriate given the Boundary Commission’s work, which is quite a long way down the road, to wait until it produced its reports to Parliament and the Government would then reflect further. That seems to me to be a perfectly sensible course of action that should command widespread support in the House.
Valerie Vaz
I appreciate the hard work the hon. Gentleman does on the Procedure Committee, but sadly it is not up to me; I wish it were—I would like to support him.
Thirdly, how do the measures in the Bill differ from the Government’s instructions to the boundary commissions? What would the Bill actually do? It was the ninth Bill of the Session presented and passed its Second Reading by an overwhelming 229 to 44 votes on 1 December. It is an important Bill because it would give instructions to the boundary commissions different from the previous constrained instructions. It would do several things to those constrained instructions. Clause 1 would alter the change in the size of the House of Commons made by the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 from 600 to 650 Members and provide a fixed allocation of 18 constituencies in Northern Ireland, with the remaining 632 in Great Britain. Six hundred is an arbitrary figure. Where is the evidence that the number of constituencies should be reduced to 600?
Clause 2 would change the current UK-wide requirement for constituencies, excluding the four island seats, to be within plus or minus 5% of the electoral quota and establish new quotas, one for Great Britain and one for Northern Ireland. In each case, there would be a requirement for constituencies to be within plus or minus 7.5% of the relevant electoral quota.
Mr Harper
The hon. Lady says that 600 is an arbitrary number, but so is 650. However, there is an important difference: 600 is not an arbitrary number; it is the number that Parliament put into law for a boundary review that it legislated for in 2011. Is it not right that we allow the boundary commissions to finish their work so that the House can consider their reports before deciding what steps to take next?
Valerie Vaz
It is an arbitrary figure—it was plucked out of thin air without reference to any evidence. It might have been agreed by the House, but there was no evidence. The Bill would retain the status quo. It would also require the quota to be based on the total number of voters derived from registers of parliamentary electors published for the 2017 general election, or the most recent election thereafter. This would allow the 2.1 million electors registered after 1 December 2015 to be included in the review.
Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)
It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin).
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) for securing a debate on this very important issue after the House voted overwhelmingly in support of his private Member’s Bill. It is unfortunate we have had to have this debate because of the Government’s wrongful persistence. I thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing last week’s Standing Order No. 24 application and for granting this debate. It is extremely important that we are able to discuss this issue.
Having listened to the Leader of the House speak of all the great things she has awarded Parliament and this Chamber, of the Bills she has allowed and of how gracious she has been, I should perhaps be on bended knee to await her grace and favour. I am aghast that I should even be here to question this situation.
Unfortunately for the Leader of the House, we are not in China. We are the longest-serving democracy in the world. We are the mother of Parliaments. Parliament is supreme, and her job as Leader of the House is to convey those things—not to block, and not to stand for the Executive rather than listen to the voice of this Chamber. In her speech she mentioned only what has been put forward by the Executive and the reasons why she is still not able to say, “Yes, we will grant this money resolution because it is the overwhelming will of this Chamber that we do so.”
I do not want to deviate too much on the boundary change issue, to which the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex and others have alluded, but these are the figures on which the boundary commissions have been working: 46,107,152 people were registered to vote in 2011; and in 2017, 46,826,481 people were registered to vote, a 2.67% change. This year’s electoral registration figure is 46,148,035, which means the number of people able to vote has reduced.
The big issues for the boundary changes are, first, the number of people actually on the electoral register and, secondly, how registration has happened over the past eight years and how this Executive have made it difficult for people to register to vote. That is the real problem that the Leader of the House needs to address, and she has not yet done so.
Members on both sides of the Chamber have mentioned the cost factor. The Government say the cost of Parliament is too high. Will a Government Member stand up and tell me how many Members have been appointed to the other place since 2010? What is the cost of those appointments?
Mr Mahmood
More wishful thinking, rather than trying to address the question.
Mr Mahmood
No. The right hon. Gentleman cannot tell me how many people have been appointed. He cannot tell me the cost of the people who have been appointed. Members of Parliament have a specific role. Unlike Members of the other place, we serve the interest of our constituents and we look after their needs. Our constituents come to us at our surgeries. My constituents continually come to my office, which is open five days a week from morning till afternoon—my office has some of the highest caseloads in the country. As has been mentioned, Members of the European Parliament will soon no longer exist, and we will take on their work load. This is not an issue of arbitrarily trying to reduce the size of the House by 50 Members. To be a proper democracy we have to be held to account. To be able to move forward, we have to think about how we address the needs of the people we represent.
The Government’s proposals would dilute the democratic process, which is why the private Member’s Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton is important. The Bill would address the size of constituencies and the number of Members. There would be a 7.5% deviation in the size of constituencies, so the boundary commissions need proper, accountable figures. A census should be taken so we have the right sort of numbers that we can trust. The Bill would allow young people to come on to the electoral register, and the registration mechanism needs to be properly addressed to allow that to happen. That is a key issue.
Another key issue is the number of people we have appointed to the other place and the cost of doing so, and the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) could not answer my question. Democracy has a cost, and democracy is not about saving money. It is important for our people that they are democratically represented. That is what this country is about; it is not about making the House smaller and smaller, which would mean people cannot get to their Member of Parliament. On top of that, our constituents have to deal with austerity cuts on a day-to-day basis. We have seen a huge number of people coming forward about that, and now the Leader of the House tells us that austerity will now apply to private Members’ Bills because we do not have the money.
I could tell the Leader of the House about the issues in my constituency and how the Boundary Commission for England has completely torn asunder the communities in my constituency, but that would take much more time than Mr Speaker wishes me to have, so I will heed his advice.
The Leader of the House needs to be mindful of understanding the issues. She needs to look at granting a money resolution, as is the will of the House, and she must allow sufficient time for the Bill to be passed.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
I want to address most of my remarks to the motion before us. I will touch briefly on some of the points that have come up about the substance of the private Member’s Bill, but I will keep those remarks relatively tight, Madam Deputy Speaker, so as not to stray from the subject of the motion.
First, I want to pick up where my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) left off. He is absolutely right that the Government have the responsibility to bring forward money resolutions and to initiate the spending of money. If we think about it, there is a very good reason for that. In the case of Back Benchers bringing forward a private Member’s Bill under which they propose spending money on a popular cause, people will of course find that very welcome. Members of the public quite frequently like money being spent on good causes. However, if every private Member’s Bill spent a significant amount of money, although each individually might not have a huge impact, collectively they would do so.
That is one of the good reasons why the Government, when bringing forward Bills under their own programme, have to balance the individual measures not only in relation to the good that they do for the money that is spent, but, as my hon. Friend said, in relation to the ways and means—that is, the taxes that have to be levied to pay for those measures. It is therefore right that the Government initiate the spending of money and ask this House to assent to it. That important constitutional principle is worth maintaining.
David Linden
The right hon. Gentleman is speaking at length about the Government having to be careful about how they authorise spending of money and how that money is planned to be spent. Does he have the same feeling about the £1 billion that was bunged to the Democratic Unionist party after the general election?
Mr Harper
I have not really been speaking at length—I had only been speaking for about a minute when I generously gave way to the hon. Gentleman. The Government do have to spend public money wisely. As they said, spending money on the people—the people—of Northern Ireland, who had to suffer over many decades from the impact of terrorist violence and a divided society, is a perfectly proper spending of public money. I, for one, am very pleased that we have got to a situation where the public realm in Northern Ireland is much more peaceful and the communities are living much more closely together. Dealing with some of that legacy of the past is a very welcome and very proper thing for the Government to spend public money on.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
I fully appreciate that there is a cost to putting right some of the legacy of the troubles in Northern Ireland, but why was that not an issue for the Government before the general election?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. For the avoidance of doubt, the right hon. Gentleman is correct. This is a very narrow debate and we must keep to that.
Mr Harper
I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was responding to the intervention by the hon. Member for Glasgow East, but I do not want to be taken off the point.
It is proper that the Government have that role of financial initiation. It is also clear that there is a convention that the Government will bring forward a money resolution, but it has not been an invariable convention. There have been a number of examples—the Leader of the House set them out—where Ministers have not brought forward money resolutions. I was intrigued by the point made by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael). The private Member’s Bill brought forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) on a European Union referendum was not given a money resolution despite the fact that the then Prime Minister was very keen on doing so. There have been plenty of examples of private Members’ Bills not being given money resolutions.
I repeat what the Leader of the House said, as did the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith)—that the Government simply want to wait for the Boundary Commission’s report. One of my hon. Friends, I think, asked whether it could report earlier. It cannot do that because the primary legislation means that it can report only between September and October of this year, and that is what it is going to do. Given that we have been having boundary commissioners look at the parliamentary boundaries since, in effect, 2011, I do not think it is unreasonable that we allow one of those reviews to reach completion and allow this House to make a decision before we then consider what to do. The position that the Leader of the House has set out is not unreasonable. I think the central thrust is absolutely right.
I wanted briefly to touch on some of the points that were made in the debate, before you were in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I will not dwell on them at length because they touched on the substance of the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan). The first is about the timing of his proposed review and about the members of the public who are not on the electoral registers under the arrangement that the current boundary review is considering. That sounds superficially like an attractive point. However, detailed analysis of the changes in the registers between the start of that review and a review that he would like to trigger showed that the distribution of voters across the country was fairly consistent, and so there would not actually be a significant impact on the distribution of constituencies across the country.
To Members who find that a huge point, I simply reiterate that the general election last year was carried out with boundaries that were drawn based on electoral registers that date from 2000, which was a point strongly made by the Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin). If they are worried about voters who were not on the electoral register in the last couple of years, they should surely be concerned that the current boundaries do not take into account voters who have gone on to the register in the last 18 years. That is a much bigger injustice. Allowing the current review to continue and this House to take a view on it is much the best thing to do.
Alec Shelbrooke
If Members are worried about the number of people appearing on the register, is that not a flaw in the argument that we should change to 10-year cycles rather than five-year cycles?
Mr Harper
My hon. Friend is exactly right. I favour having more frequent reviews—one a Parliament—that are much smaller and less disruptive, rather than less frequent reviews that are much more disruptive because so much population shift has happened. That is a better balance. Indeed, that was what the House decided when it passed the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011.
The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) talked about the House of Lords. The Prime Minister’s nomination of peers was very modest; I think it was 13 in total. If we look at the votes on Brexit legislation, I do not think anybody could suggest that it was anything to do with that, given that most of the votes the Government lost in the other place were by significantly more than that number. They were modest and very reasonable proposals.
There is a very real point about the size of the other place. My understanding is that they themselves recognise that, and I know that work is under way to look at reducing the size of the other place. I hope that some consensus can be reached, so that it can be shrunk. I say somewhat immodestly that I am very pleased when we debate this issue, because as some Members will remember, I made modest proposals to reform the other place by shrinking it quite considerably and making it more democratic, although they did not find favour with the House. Indeed, I do not think we received a huge amount of support from the Scottish National party in getting that legislation through Parliament. As much as SNP Members protest now, they were not supportive when it would have been helpful.
My final point, to come back to the debate at hand, is about what private Members’ Bills should be used for. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset touched on this. I do not think they should be used for significant constitutional measures. Detailed debate on those should take place on the Floor of the House, as we did with the 2011 Act. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) put his finger on it when he suggested that most private Members’ Bills do not need money resolutions because they should not be used for significant areas of public policy that involve spending significant amounts of money. That properly should be the role of the Government, not private Members’ Bills. Private Members’ Bills most often should not require money resolutions because they should not require huge amounts of money to be spent; they should properly be for things that do not require the expenditure of huge amounts of money. We would not then be having the sort of argument we are having today.
In conclusion, the Government are right. The Leader of the House’s arguments are very reasonable. She has undertaken to keep this matter under review, and I do not think we can say fairer than that.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) on securing the debate and on being successful in the ballot.
Private Members’ Bills are important and have been responsible for some major social change in this country. The Sexual Offences Act 1967, which legalised private consensual sex between males over the age of 21, was a private Member’s Bill promoted by Leo Abse. Sydney Silverman’s private Member’s Bill became the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965, which suspended the death penalty in Great Britain, excluding Northern Ireland, if I remember correctly.
Major social change has been made in this country through private Members’ Bills. Sometimes, including in the case of those two Bills, Governments have preferred to use private Members’ Bills to make those changes, rather than to legislate for it themselves. Not as famous as those two Bills was the Christmas Day (Trading) Act 2004, which I successfully piloted through the House, to limit larger shops from opening on Christmas day. If anyone asks you, Madam Deputy Speaker, why they cannot shop in a large hypermarket on Christmas day, you can say that it is my fault.
The traditional route for private Members’ Bills then was to get selected in the ballot and then argue the Bill through on a Friday. I remind new Members that in those days, we had the formidable Eric Forth in the Chamber, who was the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst. I successfully fought him for a few Fridays, and then we did a deal to get my Bill through. It is an important way for Back-Bench Members to get legislation on to the statute book. That was the traditional route, but we now have a blocking move by the Government. When Members put in for the private Member’s Bill ballot in future, they will have to think about whether the Government will ever give the Bill a money resolution.
Mr Harper
I am listening carefully to the examples of private Members’ Bills given by the right hon. Gentleman; the thing they all had in common was that they did not involve spending large amounts of public money. I suspect that most of them did not require money resolutions, and that is the proper role for private Members’ Bills
Business of the House
Lord Harper Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Andrea Leadsom
I am very fond of the hon. Lady, but that was quite an ungenerous response to a three-and-a-quarter-hour marathon. Let us be clear: in a statement, there is a personal reply to every single question, which does not happen in a debate, so that was actually commendable of the Prime Minister.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
I listened carefully to what the Leader of the House said. The Prime Minister set out in her statement, and in her replies to the questions from Members, the very clear reasons why she did not recall Parliament last week for a debate and a vote before the decision for military action was taken. I accept her decisions for doing so, but I do think that the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) has a point when he says that the precedent set in 2011 for a statement by the Prime Minister followed by a debate is a good one. Having listened to every question in today’s statement, my judgment is that a full day’s debate tomorrow, opened by the Prime Minister and followed by the Leader of the Opposition, would lead to a very clear judgment by this House that would strengthen, not weaken, the Government’s position.
Andrea Leadsom
Again, I feel like I am on shaky ground here, because as you will be aware, Mr Speaker, the Government did offer a debate for tomorrow, but I think that you already had applications for Standing Order No. 24 debates for tomorrow.
Treatment of House of Commons Staff
Lord Harper Excerpts(8 years, 1 month ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Andrea Leadsom
As I have already mentioned, I certainly agree with the hon. Lady. It was the aspiration of the working group to cover all staff working in Parliament, including staff of the House, in our independent complaints procedure from day one, and I share her concern that we should now take steps to ensure that it does as soon as the independent policy is up and running, which we intend to be the case within three months from now.
The hon. Lady will recall that the working group has made it clear that we will deal with historical allegations, and it will be for the detailed policies and procedures of the new working group to establish how exactly that can be done. The Clerk of the House of Commons has made it clear today that he will look to reassure House staff that any historical allegations will be properly dealt with.
The hon. Lady mentioned that sanctions must be independent. That has been a core part of the work of the working group. We are now looking carefully at how that impacts on the work of the independent Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and the Standards Committee itself, on which there are both parliamentary and lay members, and that work is ongoing. In fact, I am looking forward to meeting the Standards Committee later today to start those discussions.
The hon. Lady mentions consent training. The working group was very clear that all people, not only those who employ staff in this place but those who come into contact with others, should be very clear about what constitutes consent and precisely what does not. I can assure her that I am very keen to provide the carrot to ensure that people want to take up that training, but, as the working group agreed, we did not have the levers at that time to make it compulsory. Finally, I totally share her desire to see all staff here treated with the dignity and respect that everybody in this place deserves.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
May I welcome what the Leader of the House said about her short inquiry? It seems to me that a good test for her to adopt would be to see that the House does what all organisations should do, which is make sure that everybody who works here, whether for Members of Parliament or the House, have the same processes and can expect to be treated according to the same high standards. I urge her to bring in that measure as soon as she can.
Andrea Leadsom
I completely agree with my right hon. Friend, and I can assure him and all hon. Members that that is the working group’s aspiration and my personal goal.
Independent Complaints and Grievance Policy
Lord Harper Excerpts(8 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who is in a more reflective mood than the one he sometimes displays in the House, as befits this serious subject matter. He dealt with the topic seriously, so it is a great pleasure to follow his comments. I add my support to the motion moved by the Leader of the House and the report and proposals that back it up.
Several colleagues have referenced the events of last year that triggered this piece of work and set of proposals, but I want to put something on the record. Shortly after I became Government Chief Whip in 2015, there were several issues in the House, so I started this area of work with all the parties in the House to see whether we could improve how the House dealt with such issues. Parties obviously have their own processes, but for various reasons they do not command the confidence of Members. Conservative Members certainly were not entirely comfortable with processes that were controlled by political parties, and that view was also expressed by people who work in the House and those outside.
Even if a party-run process is fantastic, it simply would not command confidence, and it was clear in the views expressed to me by colleagues, from my conversations with Members from other parties and from the representatives of our staff who came to see me that a House process covering all Members of Parliament on a cross-party basis would be the best way to proceed. We started to set some of those processes in train, and it was to my disappointment that the European Union referendum intervened and terminated the career of David Cameron and, indeed, my career in government and that we were unable to bring those processes to fruition.
I was therefore very pleased—although not about why the Leader of the House had to put these processes in place—that she responded so strongly to the events that took place last year, both in Parliament and outside it. I was very pleased that the processes were put in train on a cross-party basis and that all parties took part. I am also pleased that we have come up with such a comprehensive report, which I have taken the trouble to study. I think that it will be a step forward.
Before I move on, I put on the record my thanks to my right hon. Friend the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills, who served as my deputy when I was Government Chief Whip. She would be too modest to say this herself, but while working with me, she led on many of these issues in that office. Government and, I think, Opposition colleagues know that she takes these matters very seriously. When she responded at the Dispatch Box to an urgent question—I think it was the one in response to the events at the Presidents Club—she made it very clear what her views were and how strongly she feels about these matters. I wanted to ensure that my thanks to her were on the record for the work she did as Deputy Chief Whip.
Although it is clear from the things that have been talked about publicly and from the responses to the survey that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire mentioned that bullying and harassment can affect all members of staff, it affects female members of staff more severely than others. If we are to get more women to be Members of Parliament and to work in this House and be treated as equals, it is incredibly important to deal with this issue. Having taken up a position as co-chair of Women2Win, which tries to get more women to be Conservative Members of Parliament, I strongly support our taking further steps in this area, because it will encourage more women to be Members of Parliament.
I want to say a word or two about fairness. When the report was produced, there was some comment outside the House about the proposals meaning that the investigation of disciplinary matters would take place in private, without everything being published. That is like most workplaces. In most workplaces, when somebody makes a complaint about another employee, those matters are not published in national newspapers. I have always thought in this House—this was true when we were going through the difficulties with expenses—that a very good test is for Members of Parliament to be judged at least by the standards that we expect of everybody else. A good test is that the processes that we use to look at complaints about bullying and harassment should be the same sort of processes that exist in modern, up to the minute, leading workplaces. In those workplaces, one would not expect everything to be published in a national newspaper.
I welcome that the report refers to the need to recognise that sometimes when there are examples of bullying and harassment, there are patterns of behaviour and we need to ensure that other people have the confidence to come forward. Sometimes, it is only when people are aware that there is an issue with someone’s behaviour that they are willing to come forward. The report reflects that, but it is a difficult balance to get right, when we want to protect confidentiality to protect those who might be unfairly accused.
It is also the fact, which I think has been recognised publicly, that Members of Parliament do not employ large numbers of staff. If a complaint is made against a Member of Parliament and they are identified, it would not be difficult for newspapers to identify which of their members of staff had probably made the complaint. Having a disciplinary process take place in the full glare of publicity is not helpful for the Member of Parliament or for the complainant. The balance that is struck in the report is welcome.
I want to respond to what the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) said about the Standards Committee. Her issue about MPs marking our own homework would have been a reasonable point before lay members were added to the Committee on Standards, but the fact that lay members are on that Committee should give the public confidence that the MPs on it cannot just decide things on the basis of standards they consider appropriate. The lay members bring a very valuable outside perspective to the Committee.
Caroline Lucas
I am on slightly thin ice here, because I am not 100% sure of my facts, but I am fairly sure that the lay members do not vote. Although I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman that having them there is a great step forward, I still have concerns that MPs will be seen to be voting on their colleagues, even if we have had a perfectly independent and good procedure up until that point. I still think that is a weakness.
Mr Harper
We just need to think through how this works. The ultimate sanction of either expelling a MP or suspending them for a period where the recall provisions would kick in would be a decision for the House, not for the Committee on Standards—the whole House would be voting on it. Obviously, the House would be furnished with the report from the parliamentary commissioner and the report from the Committee on Standards. The valuable change we made when we introduced lay members was making MPs aware that, even if the MPs on the Committee had taken a certain view, the lay members can have their views expressed in the report of the Committee.
Mr Harper
I see the Chairman of the Committee nodding, so I have got that right. That provision gives both the wider House and members of the public confidence that the information put before the House is not just the views of MPs; it is also the views of lay members of the Committee. That brings a useful check on our views about what is and is not appropriate behaviour.
Mr Jenkin
My right hon. Friend is right to say that having the lay members present when decisions are made gives the Committee on Standards more authority, but there is something odd about the Committee adjudicating on rules and evidence—that should be done by a lawyer. These decisions would have much more authority if they were handed to the Committee by someone with the right juridical experience and standing, and the Committee was told, “This is the judgment. If you overturn this, you are overturning a respectable legal opinion. On your own head be it.”
Mr Harper
I listen carefully to what my hon. Friend says and put a fair bit of weight on it, given that he chairs the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, but I do not entirely agree with that. I have taken the trouble over the years to read the reports of the Committee on Standards, particularly the serious ones, and the reports of the parliamentary commissioner. The thing that has always struck me—I do not know whether other Members have thought this—is the thoroughness with which the parliamentary commissioner has looked into serious allegations. I have often thought to myself, “If you were ever tempted not to uphold the very high standards of behaviour, you really would not want to be subject to that level of scrutiny, because it is fairly exacting.”
I do not know whether Members have looked at these reports, but I can tell them that the parliamentary commissioner goes into things in considerable detail. The reports that are put before the Committee on Standards by the parliamentary commissioner are very thorough and detailed. There is a perception outside the House about the view that MPs on that Committee take, but when I have read its reports I have always felt they have been very balanced, tough and fair. When one reads them, one finds that it is not clear that there is any bias coming into them from the party views of the MPs. I have always thought that system is a pretty good one. As I have said, the only gap in it was rectified by the addition of lay members, who bring that useful outside perspective and check. But I listened carefully to what my hon. Friend said and I am sure it will be reflected upon by the House more widely.
Mr Jenkin
We have had one case in which the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and the Committee on Standards reached one view, but when the same issue was then challenged in the courts a judge took a much harsher view. That completely undermines the authority of the system we have, and we need a much more legalistic approach to the adjudication of rules and evidence, whatever punishments the Committee may have decided to hand out.
Mr Harper
I hear what my hon. Friend says. I do not entirely agree with him, but I do not wish to deviate from this debate into a wider discussion of standards.
My final point is about training and culture. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire made a sensible point about MPs’ backgrounds, but I wish to pick up on his slightly prejudicial comment that assumed that everybody on the Government Benches has a privileged background, which is entirely not true. I will not bore him with the fact that I was the first person in my family to go to university, my father was a labourer and we had certainly not had any Members of Parliament in the family before—I just want to challenge the hon. Gentleman’s prejudices—but he made a sensible point: MPs have a very varied set of backgrounds. Some have run their own businesses and employed significant numbers of people. Some, like me, have worked in a business for others, and I have experience of managing teams. Others will come to the House having never managed anybody before in their lives.
Members obviously come to the House at a variety of ages and with a variety of other experiences. We are all then plunged into employing members of staff. As the Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), said, Members come to the House with the very best of intentions but often do not have the required skills. We therefore need to improve the training on how to employ and manage people and on the expectations that we set. We also need to provide HR support not only proactively, so that Members are better trained and supported, but so that we have somebody to ask questions if there are challenging issues that we are not comfortable dealing with. That would be valuable.
I welcome the recommendation that training should be part of the induction process for new Members. I do not think there is a massive gap between the position of the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex. I think that everybody should go through the training, but the challenge is that we can mandate that everyone goes to a training course and physically turns up at the room, but we cannot mandate that they will listen attentively and change their behaviour after doing so. It seems to me that the people who are least likely to go to the training are probably those most in need of it.
As the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire said, the challenge is to persuade people that they should go on the training course, listen and change their behaviour. The proposals to which the hon. Lady referred on publicising whether people had been on the training course, so that there is peer pressure and people feel they should go and so that the staff they might wish to hire put pressure on them, are a good idea. Nevertheless, for new MPs, it should be part of the standard set of training that every Member undertakes, so that we set the expectations correctly.
That leads me to the second part of my final point, which is about the culture of this place. I have listened to the debates we have had on this issue over the past few months and thought about my own working career. I was perhaps fortunate to work for two businesses that took management and how they treated their people very seriously. I went on training courses on how to manage people and set expectations and on what was expected. Staff members were empowered to speak up, and it was recognised that speaking up on a whole range of issues—whether how we ran the business or how people behaved—was the right thing to do. That set the right sort of culture, which is not always the case.
I have thought through some of the comments that have been made over the past few months. Examples of behaviour have been given and people have said things like, “That sort of behaviour was acceptable a few years ago, but things seem to have changed.” I thought back to when I started my working after leaving university, which is tragically a lot longer ago than I care to remember, in 1991. I thought through some of the specific examples we have read about, and whether they involved Members of this House or people outside it, we heard people say, “This sort of behaviour used to be acceptable.”
I was thinking back to when I started work 27 years ago, and I concluded that, actually, those sorts of things were not acceptable. The difference between then and more recently is that people used to get away with behaving like that. What has changed is not that certain behaviours are no longer acceptable—actually they never were acceptable—but that people cannot get away with them now, and that is right and an improvement. What we are trying to deliver with the training and the change of culture is that everybody accepts not only that those sorts of behaviour are not acceptable, but that no one will let people get away with them.
Mr Harper
If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I am just going to conclude.
If the report of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House does nothing else but that and changes the culture, it will have taken us a huge step forward. I am very happy to support the motion and to commend it to the House.
Several hon. Members rose—
Government Policy on the Proceedings of the House
Lord Harper Excerpts(8 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Carmichael
I can see how this is going to proceed, and it will not be as I might have hoped. I had hoped we might raise the debate a little bit higher than that. The hon. and learned Lady is well aware that there are 12 Liberal Democrat Members of Parliament sitting in this Parliament, and if she cares to consult the record she will find that we play a full and constructive part in the proceedings of this House.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
To be fair, I can see that there is a decent turnout of Liberal Democrats today. However, in the important debate about the national health service to which the right hon. Gentleman specifically refers, the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who is their health spokesman, confirmed—I am quoting here from Hansard—that he was the “sole Liberal Democrat present” in the debate and felt it his “duty to intervene”. So in a debate in which the Government were fully engaged, only one Liberal Democrat could be bothered to turn up in Parliament.
Mr Carmichael
I can almost read the Whips’ brief that has gone round about the Opposition day debates—“Don’t make this about the Government, because this is not strong territory for the Government. Make it all about the Liberal Democrats or the opposition parties.” With all due respect to the right hon. Gentleman, whom I like and regard as a friend in many senses of the word, if not the political one, I am not going to play his game. Today’s debate is the Government’s opportunity to tell the House clearly and unambiguously how they intend to approach their business for the duration of this Parliament.
There is a further context to the Government’s approach on 14 September that the House should bear in mind. On Monday 11 September, they brought forward the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, including some quite remarkable Henry VIII powers, which many in this House and beyond see as a marginalisation of Parliament. On Tuesday 12 September, they brought to this House a motion to give themselves a majority on all Public Bill Committees, contrary to all previous practice in this House and the formula relied on for many years.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
I am grateful to you for calling me early in the debate, Mr Speaker. I will reciprocate what the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) said about me—I have been friendly with him, except perhaps in a political sense—but I think he rather overstates his case. Let me run through his argument. First, he describes a particular decision about two particular Opposition day debates, and suggests that that will be the Government’s practice going forward. The only evidence that he presents is a single tweet by a single political journalist, quoting unnamed sources about the Government’s behaviour going forward. It seems to me that the practice has been—it certainly was when I was Government Chief Whip—to consider what we do about Opposition day motions on a case-by-case basis.
Mr Carmichael
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. There have been only those two debates so far. It was for that reason that, at business questions on 14 September, I gave the Leader of the House the opportunity to refute what was in the Huffington Post article. Had she chosen to do so, we would not be here today.
Mr Harper
The right hon. Gentleman says it was about his right Friend’s question. It was a question, but the point is it was about a tweet. Hon. Members would not expect my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to comment on every single press comment about the House and dignify them all with a response. To come back to the point I was making when I took the intervention, the Government cannot be expected to have a blanket policy for what they do about Opposition days. We look at the motion on the Order Paper.
I have got into trouble in the past. When I responded at the Dispatch Box to Opposition day debates, I was often criticised because I used to do that dreadful thing of actually looking at the words on the Order Paper that the House was being asked to agree or not. I would be told that they did not really matter—what mattered was the debate we were having, and the general principle, and that we did not worry about the words. Well actually, the words are important and the right stance for the Government, each time there is an Opposition day motion —indeed any motion—before the House is to look at the words on the Order Paper and then make a judgment about whether they wish to support or oppose them. I will come to the specific motions that were being considered in a moment.
Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)
May I take it from what the right hon. Gentleman has said that from now on, when a DUP Member makes a comment in an Opposition day debate—as they did in our first Opposition day debate in this Parliament—that they are not minded to support the Government at the end of the day in a vote, the Government will not be persuaded by the DUP, will not be dictated to by the DUP, but will actually call a vote? Is that what the right hon. Gentleman is saying?
Mr Harper
No, it is not what I am saying. I am saying what I said in my own words. Let me go to the decision that I think the Government took on the motions; then the Leader of the House may comment in due course.
What the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland said, in his pitch to Mr Speaker yesterday and in his debate today, was that in both debates the Government argued against the motions that were on the Order Paper. Before today’s debate I carefully read the debates to see whether that was right: I do not think it was. In the NHS debate, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health did not argue against the motion on the Order Paper. What he actually said was that it was bogus, because it did not address some of the fundamental issues. [Interruption.] This is exactly as I said, Mr Speaker. As soon as attention is drawn to the motions on the Order Paper, which the House was being asked to agree, people do not like it. That is the fundamental point here, and one I am sure my right hon. Friend considered before he made a decision about the way that Government Members should vote.
Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)
One of the most precious things in this House is a party deciding when it will or when it will not vote. That is up to a party, or indeed up to a Government. This is the first time I can remember an Opposition complaining that they are not being defeated by the Government.
Mr Harper
It is interesting, because when I read the debate it was of course the Opposition spokesman, the shadow Secretary of State for Health, who asked the Government not to divide the House on the NHS motion. The Government then proceeded not to divide the House on the motion, and now all we get is a load of complaints—which seems to me remarkably strange.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend draw any comfort, as I did, from the fact that the party once of Campbell-Bannerman, Gladstone and Lloyd George has now decided to predicate the national debate on information that it ascribes to something called the Huffington Post?
Mr Harper
My hon. Friend makes a very good point, which requires no elaboration from me.
A couple of things struck me about the motion on the Order Paper about the NHS. First, it made very selective use of statistics. For example, it talked about the number of nurses and midwives joining the Nursing and Midwifery Council register, which is an important figure, but of course not directly applicable to the number of nurses working in the NHS, which the Secretary of State correctly pointed out had increased by 12,000. So it would not be right to oppose a motion that had some factually correct statistics in it, but they were not relevant to the argument about the number of nurses and midwives actually working in the NHS.
The final part of the motion talked about ending the public sector pay cap of 1%, and of course my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who excellently wound up that debate, made the point that for the forthcoming financial year, the Government would allow the pay review bodies more flexibility anyway, so it seemed rather pointless to be engaging in that debate.
I have no complaint about the Labour party, but this is what parties do in opposition. It put in the words at the end that suggested that NHS workers should be given a fair pay rise, which I think would probably command support across the House, including from myself and my hon. Friends. The debate, of course, is about what constitutes a fair pay rise—what is affordable. But to think we were going to fall into the trap of voting against a motion that would just then enable lots of Labour MPs to put out leaflets saying that we were against a pay rise! They are playing a political game. We know what the game is. I am going to be very fair: it is what we would do if we were in their position. It is not our job, though, to fall into their trap and make their lives easier. Our job is to get on with governing and making the right decisions, which is exactly what we did.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
I am a new MP and I am still getting to know my way around, but I did not expect my new role to be reduced to being a member of a talking shop. Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that not allowing a vote on the Opposition debate reflects a deep disregard for parliamentary democracy?
Mr Harper
I would have more sympathy with the hon. Lady if she had actually bothered to turn up to listen to the debate in the first place, which, according to her own colleague, she did not—[Interruption.] Well, according to Hansard, the Liberal Democrat health spokesman, the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), said on the record that he was the only Liberal Democrat present and that he felt he had to intervene. If that is inaccurate, perhaps the right hon. Gentleman should correct the parliamentary record. It is not my job to be responsible for the accuracy of the parliamentary record of the right hon. Gentleman. I note he is probably the only Liberal Democrat MP not here today.
Wera Hobhouse
I was in the debate: please check the record. I was there and I was very disappointed that we could not vote.
Mr Harper
I do not dispute the hon. Lady’s thing. All I can say is that I was quoting from Hansard, when the Liberal Democrat health spokesman said:
“I feel that as the sole Liberal Democrat present it is my duty to intervene.”—[Official Report, 13 September 2017; Vol. 628, c. 862.]
If that is inaccurate, that is a matter for the right hon. Gentleman and he should correct the record. That is not my responsibility.
On the motion on the national health service on the Order Paper, my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary laid out the facts about the importance of a strong economy in paying for the health service. He laid out a lot of important facts about our record on the health service, but actually he was not arguing that we should vote against the motion at all. He frequently said it was a bogus motion and that he did not want to engage with it, so I do not think that that can be said.
Mr Harper
Yes I do. I read the motion very carefully. It said that the Government should abandon the 1% pay cap; and my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, in her response to the debate, made it clear that the pay review bodies for the next financial year would have more flexibility—so, in effect, she confirmed that part of it.
The second part of the motion referred to NHS staff getting a fair pay rise. We all agree that NHS workers—indeed, public sector workers generally—should get a fair pay rise. The point of political debate is to ask what “fair” means. We have to balance affordability for the economy, what public sector workers need to get paid for recruitment, retention and morale purposes, and what those in the private sector, who pay taxes to pay for our public services, are being paid. If we read the motion, I think we find it was completely consistent with the Government’s policy, which I suspect is exactly why the Secretary of State for Health did not feel it was sensible to urge Conservative colleagues to vote against it.
Lady Hermon
I am very grateful indeed to the right hon. Gentleman for taking a second intervention. He obviously was unable to hear my first intervention, so may I just repeat my question? If the 10 DUP MPs indicate during an Opposition day debate that they are not going to support the Government, will the Government vote on the motion?
Mr Harper
I am grateful for my colleagues’ support. I suspect the Government will make their decisions on Opposition day motions on a case-by-case basis, when they have looked at the words on the Order Paper.
The second very important motion on the Order Paper that day was about the higher education regulations relating to tuition fees. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education set out the case powerfully on the substance of the proposition before the House on the need for tuition fees. She contrasted it with the position in Scotland, which does not have tuition fees. In Scotland, fewer children go to university, fewer poor children go to university and universities are not properly funded—not a position I want to see in England. She laid that out clearly.
It was also the case that the regulations were laid before the House on 15 December 2016 and came into force on 20 February this year, so voting against them would have had no effect whatever. There was an argument at the front of the debate when the shadow Secretary of State for Education tried to pretend that it was somehow the Government’s fault that the measures had not been debated. She said that the Opposition had prayed against them but had not had time for a debate. Well, I looked at the record, and there were three Opposition days between the regulations being laid and coming into force on 20 February. Those days were Wednesday 11 January, Tuesday 17 January and Wednesday 25 January. On any of those occasions, the Opposition could have used their time to debate the regulations. If the House had voted against them on any of those occasions, they would not have come into force. The fact that the Opposition chose not to do so is their responsibility, not the Government’s.
Chris Bryant
As Government Ministers constantly reiterated, the whole point of secondary legislation was that if the Leader of the Opposition called for a debate not in Opposition time, the Government would provide the time and the vote in Government time. That is precisely what they should have done. They are the people who broke their word—not us.
Mr Speaker
Order. Large numbers of hon. Members are proclaiming from a sedentary position the self-evident truth that it was not their decision to call the election—a perfectly valid piece of information, but entirely useless for the purposes of this debate. The important point is that Members must be able to hear each other speak in it.
Mr Harper
Of course, it was technically the decision of this House to have the early election. The Prime Minister brought the motion before the House but— thanks to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, which I had a little hand in—it was, of course, the decision of the House to have the election.
My point stands. There were three opportunities when the House could have voted down the regulations. The Opposition had the time and chose not to debate them. The point is that the regulations had already come into force when the House was faced with the debate on 13 September, so voting against them would have had no practical effect. It would have been a completely pointless exercise to have a vote that would have had no effect. It is not, as the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland said, the House being a talking shop. Procedures about when we have to vote on secondary legislation are set out in the statutory instruments legislation and the parent Acts; those time limits had expired. That is the Opposition’s fault because they had three opportunities in January when they could have used their time to debate the matter, but they chose not to do so.
Mr Carmichael
If, as the right hon. Gentleman suggests, a vote is a nonsense, surely that is an argument for going ahead with it, not for avoiding it.
Mr Harper
It is an arguable point. I have made my argument and the hon. Gentleman has made his, as he will no doubt do again later.
There were two good reasons why the Government chose, looking at the words on the Order Paper on 13 September, not to divide the House. I do not think that sets a precedent for the future. The Government will make those decisions when they look at future Opposition day motions. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland is making a mountain out of a molehill. I suggest that the House waits to see what happens on future Opposition days before it gets itself so worked up. We have had a good gambol around the subject but I do not really think that the right hon. Gentleman has made his case to the satisfaction of Members more generally.
Mr Speaker
The right hon. Gentleman has concluded his speech, for which we are grateful. I call Valerie Vaz.
Valerie Vaz
I will not give way, because I am conscious that many Back Benchers wish to speak, and I will shut up in a minute.
There were many points of order about the tweet from the journalist—I need to protect my sources, but it was Paul Waugh—stating that this is what would happen, and the matter was also raised in business questions. The Leader of the House then said, “Don’t believe everything you hear on Twitter.” I can understand that for the President of the United States, but the Leader of the House also tweets. Are we to believe her or not?
The most important point is that the Leader of the House gave no clarification or explanation as to why Parliament is being treated in this way, or on finding a way forward. We are now in the spill-over and the House needs this to be explained. Will the Government continue to treat Opposition motions as decisions of the House, as though they were wearing an invisibility cloak? Will the Leader of the House resolve this with Mr Speaker and find a way forward on substantive motions of the House?
Valerie Vaz
No, because I am nearly finished, and the right hon. Gentleman has had plenty of time.
This makes a mockery of Parliament. Parliament is a forum for debate, discussion and amendments, as seen in the example given by the excellent Minister, Phil Woolas, who listened to the House, even though he was ambushed by a celebrity, and changed his policy—whether or not that was the right thing to do. Nevertheless, he said, “I have listened to the House.”
Finally, in the preface to “Erskine May”, the guide to the law, privileges, proceedings and usage of Parliament, there is a dedication to you, Mr Speaker. It entrusts you with the great responsibilities of guardianship of the parliamentary system. You have done that many times in this House, and in granting this debate. I ask you to convey to the Government that they must abide by that dedication.
Pete Wishart
I will move on to Opposition day debates, because I know that is the intended topic of the debate. I do not really understand the Government’s position. Opposition days are a real feature of Parliament. I have been in the House for 16 years and I have always enjoyed Opposition day debates. There is always a bit of tension and there are always good speeches, and they tackle subjects that Governments would not normally bring to the House because they might just get embarrassed —subjects with which they might be uncomfortable. They play an important function in the House, and it is really important that we do not lose sight of their role. The most important thing about Opposition day debates is that they have a conclusion: some sort of decision on the motion is taken by the House. The day that the Government play fast and loose with that arrangement is the day that we really devalue Opposition day debates. We have Backbench Business debates and Adjournment debates. We do not need glorified Adjournment debates; we need real debates that hold the Government to account, and on which we can make a decision and then move on, respecting that decision.
We accept that the votes in question are not binding on the Government. The Scottish National party are a minority Government in Scotland and we know exactly how these things happen: we will get beat, and this Government will get beat. The key thing is that nobody expects them to change their policy or direction on certain issues just because they get beat on a Labour party Opposition day motion—that is the last thing people expect. Nevertheless, the votes on such motions reflect the will of the House, so people expect the Government to respond in a particularly positive way. They should not try to avoid votes or dismiss debates; they should respond and say something. They should go back and consult, review their position and come back to the House with a new set of recommendations. That is what I think the people we represent want from Parliament and from the Government.
Pete Wishart
I think we have heard enough from the right hon. Gentleman. He took up about 25 minutes of the available time so I shall move on, if he does not mind.
We on the SNP Benches have a little experience of minority government: we are in our second parliamentary session as a minority Government. We had a minority Government with just two Members more than the second party, and now we are just two short of a majority. In each case we have tended to try to function as a minority Government, respecting the view that we do not have a majority and trying to work in consensus and partnership with other parties. The exercise we are doing around the budget is an example of how things can be done in a minority Parliament.
I mentioned fracking: it is important that we come back to the Scottish Parliament on that with another view. On other issues on which we are defeated, we will consult further and try to address the concerns. That is how we govern as a minority Government. I am happy to talk things through with the Leader of the House to help her to understand better. If she wants to come to the SNP, we can give her some lessons about running a minority Government. If she is having difficulty with it, which it seems she is, she can come and have a chat with us. I will not break the confidence of our meeting, as she did to me at the most recent business questions. She can come and have a chat and perhaps we can talk through some of the issues.
Mr Bone
I am grateful for that intervention, but may I give the new Liberal Democrat Member some advice? He should never agree with me if he wants to progress in his party.
Let me go back to another false argument that was used today. There was criticism of the Liberal Democrats for not being here for certain votes, and I have on occasion pointed that fact out in this Chamber. However, if we extend that to say that only people in this Chamber who know what the debate is about can go and vote, we would have quite a lot of different results in this House. It is not a bad idea.
A business of the House committee would solve a lot of these problems. That was proposed by Wright. It was supported; it was Government policy. Unfortunately, it was not Whips’ policy, and that is both lots of Whips. Many of the problems we have would be solved by having such a committee.
I am not sure whether anyone from the Government will be winding up the debate, but it would be useful to have a commitment from them on this matter. On an Opposition or a Backbench business day, if the House votes on something—we did vote; it is just that no one opposed the motion, so there was no recorded Division—that is the will of this House of Parliament and we should have a Government response.
Mr Harper
Presumably, my hon. Friend is asking the Government to say something only if the House votes for something that is counter to the Government’s existing policy. My argument was that the motion on the NHS was completely consistent with the Government’s policy, which is of course why the Government did not oppose it.
Mr Bone
I am grateful to the former Chief Whip for his intervention. As usual, he will not expect me to say anything other than that I completely disagree with what he said. I am saying that, if the House expresses a view, a Minister should come to the Chamber. The Minister can stand up and say, “I absolutely agree with the motion”, if that is what it is, but that should happen if, on an Opposition day, on a substantive motion, the motion is carried.
The issue of circus animals is the best example we have had in the House. There is no doubt that the overwhelming majority in the House wanted something done about circus animals.
Mr Bone
I am sorry, I do not think I have time to take another intervention.
We really do need this to be done: the Government must take notice of what the House decides. It is a fact that, when the Backbench Business Committee came into being, the Government used to take it seriously. They used to vote on the motion. Then a former Leader of the House decided that it would be a good wheeze just to ignore votes and carry on. The reason we did not vote against the motion on circus animals—we can deny it as much as we like—is that we would have been defeated. It would be good in this parliamentary democracy if the Government on occasion were defeated. It would not be the end of the world and the Government would take note of it. That lot on the Opposition Benches would cry about it, but so what? Let us get used to it. This is Parliament. The people sitting here are not members of the Government—they are MPs sitting on the Government side. No one tells me how to vote.
Mr Bone
The former Chief Whip knows that. If I had wanted to, I could have been the only one to oppose the motion on that particular day. However, I did not feel like that.
This is not a wasted debate. It is a chance for parliamentarians to say that Parliament should come first and the Government should listen to what the House says when it votes.
Nomination of Members to Committees
Lord Harper Excerpts(8 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
I thank the Leader of the House for the explanation, albeit fairly brief, of why the motion is before the House. I want to ask three questions: why, why and why? Why are the Government doing this, why is this necessary, and what does the motion say? Basically, for the benefit of hon. Members, it gives the Government an extra place on the newly named Selection Committee.
When the motion was tabled last Thursday, the Government included only eight names. They hastily added the hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) to the list. Members will note from part C of the motion that the Chair will be remunerated. The name has been changed to the Selection Committee and it feels rather like a Select Committee. If that is so, should not the whole House vote on the Chair?
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
In case the hon. Lady is unaware, under the existing arrangements the Chair of the Committee of Selection is a remunerated position, so that is not a change, but just carries forward existing practice.
Valerie Vaz
I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman was listening, but the name of the Committee has changed from the Committee of Selection to the Selection Committee.
The Selection Committee appoints Members to the Standing Committees. The Government want the extra place on Public Bill Committees to give them the majority that they do not have. This is not about the smooth running of business; it is a power grab. It is not about allowing proper scrutiny; it is a power grab. It is not about wanting to abide by the democratic result of the election; it is a power grab. What are the Government relying on? I heard nothing from the Leader of the House on why the Government want to do this.
Pete Wishart
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I want to move on to what happened in the 1970s, because it is very instructive and there are real lessons that the House could learn from that experience.
We now know why this Government have been so lax in putting together the normal functioning arrangements of the House. I raised this matter on the day we came back to Parliament, and I always feared that we would reach the stage when a motion such as this would be presented to the House. All this nonsense about Select Committees and why they were delayed was mere collateral damage resulting from the Government’s intention to control the legislative Committees. Now, at last, the rest of the House and the media are alert to the dangerous path that this Government are taking us down.
This House is determined by parliamentary arithmetic, and the day that we play fast and loose with that arithmetic and the verdict of the British people is the day that we start to walk down a murky, anti-democratic path. Our membership of the Select Committees is based on the number of Members that we secure. That allows us our membership on Select Committees, and it allows for our speaking rights and for all the other arrangements. These orders do not reflect the numbers of the House. We know that because the Clerks were charged with coming up with the formulae that allowed us to determine the Committees of the House. When it came to the Select Committees, the Clerks went away and crunched the numbers and then came back and presented the results to the parties. It was expected that there would be five Conservative members, five Labour members and one from the other parties, and everybody accepted that because it reflected the arithmetic of the House.
The Clerks also said that the Government should not have a majority on Standing Committees because they do not have a majority in this House. When it came to even-numbered Committees, they agreed with the Government that there should be no majority. That was fine, and everybody agrees with that. The Clerks did the numbers and the Government accept that. For Committees with an odd number of members, however, the Clerks said that there should be an Opposition majority. Remarkably, according to the Clerks, the Government only have a majority on Committees of 13 members. If we disregard the information supplied by the Clerks of this House—the people responsible for arranging the arithmetic, crunching the numbers and coming up with the formulae—we are again entering some seriously dangerous territory.
Mr Harper
I hesitate to start talking about spreadsheets on the Floor of the House, but the hon. Gentleman has tempted me. It is true that the Conservative party does not have a majority by itself—[Interruption.] That is not a revelation. But the Government command a majority because they have the support of a smaller party. If we take those two together, which is all that we are talking about, we do have a majority. The official Opposition party does not command a majority in the House either, but the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that that should be the case.
Pete Wishart
The House is going to get sick and tired of that argument because it is a feeble fig leaf that does not for a minute cover the fact that this minority Conservative Government do not command a majority in the House. They have their murky arrangement with the DUP—they have them in their pocket—and they command that majority on the Floor of the House, but we have to do what is right and what reflects the reality. We must respect the verdict of the people of this country, but we are not doing that.
Mr Carmichael
That is indeed the case. My party was not party to the discussions that resulted in the convention and have not felt themselves to be bound by it. But it remains the fact that it is something on which the majority within their lordships’ House have proceeded until this time, and which continues to be the case to this day.
It is a fundamental principle of this House that the composition of Committees should reflect the composition of the House. That means that if the Government have a majority in the House, they will have a majority in Committees. It goes beyond that. On matters where we decide things by way of a free vote and the matter then goes upstairs to a Public Bill Committee, the composition of that Committee reflects the vote of the House here. That is the most fundamental principle that we have, and I use these terms advisedly. It is not a convenience, nor something that is just here to be discarded when it becomes difficult or messy. It is absolutely fundamental to the way in which we do and have always done our business.
The Prime Minister went to the country. She asked for a bigger majority. She was denied it. She was returned as the largest party and that offered her a number of different options: she could have sought to govern as a minority; she could have entered into a coalition and got a majority that way; or she could have entered into a confidence and supply arrangement. She chose to take the latter approach. As a consequence, she has a majority on the Floor of the House for matters of confidence and supply. Matters of confidence and supply do not go upstairs to Public Bill Committees. They are dealt with on the Floor of this House. So it is simply wrong for the Leader of the House to assert—as she has done tonight along with others on the Treasury Bench and Government Benches—that the Government have a working majority. Beyond confidence and supply matters, they do not.
Mr Harper
I do not like disagreeing with the right hon. Gentleman, but he is just wrong. I have looked at the agreement. It does not just cover confidence and supply. This is rather pertinent given how much legislation there will be. It also covers matters pertaining to the country’s exit from the European Union and legislation pertaining to national security. So the agreement is much wider, and Brexit will be a big chunk of the legislative agenda of this Parliament.
Mr Carmichael
The right hon. Gentleman will also be aware that constitutional matters such as the question of the future of our membership of the European Union are also dealt with on the Floor of the House, so although the agreement may go slightly further than that which is normally understood by the terms of confidence and supply, it is not a comprehensive deal that gives the Government a majority on the Floor of the House. If it were, the Democratic Unionists would not be on the Bench behind me; they would be on the other side of the House on the Government Benches.
There is no direct precedent for this. There has been talk in this debate about the position that pertained relating to the Labour Government from 1974 to 1979. The clear distinction—this is an important point, of which the House should not be ignorant—is that, on that occasion, when the country was asked to choose a Government, it chose a Labour Government by a very narrow majority. That Government started with a majority—something the present Government simply do not have. I do not like what the Harrison motion did. My party opposed it then, as we oppose this measure tonight, but let us not pretend that it is somehow the same thing.
That takes me back to my quarrel with the right hon. Member for West Dorset. Surely, in advancing a change as profound as this, there has to be something more substantial by way of argument to support it than, “They did it when they were in government.”
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
Rather than repeating arguments, let me go through the arguments that have been raised so far and comment on them as I think fit, which I hope will be of assistance to the House.
The Leader of the House made an admirably short speech—I do not know what the shadow Leader of the House was moaning about. Normally everyone moans in this House that people go on for too long, but the Leader of the House crisply enunciated the purpose of the motion and set it out very clearly. That was an admirable thing for her to do.
I listened to the shadow Leader of the House very carefully. She moaned about references to the Selection Committee rather than the Committee of Selection. I am afraid that reminded me—we have already mentioned Monty Python once in the debate today—of the argument about the People’s Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Front. I do not think that what the Committee is called is significant. [Interruption.] It is just not important—arguing about what the Committee is called is not important. In addition, the Chair of the existing Committee of Selection is already paid, so the current proposal is not a change, and there is no sinister aspersion the shadow Leader of the House can cast on that. So I did not think that those arguments really had any great weight.
The substance of the hon. Lady’s argument was driven through precisely by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), who put his finger on the issue: if we pass this motion this evening, it will demonstrate again—as have all the votes we have had since this Government were formed—that we actually command a majority in this House. The hon. Lady’s only possible motivation for not wanting to agree to the motion is that she wants to gum up the works.
The hon. Lady invited us to look at the Opposition Members being put forward for the Committee and to assess their reasonableness, and I do not necessarily quarrel with that—they are very reasonable people. I would argue that the Government Members who have been put forward to serve on the Committee, including the Chair, are very reasonable people. However, if we want to look at the Opposition’s approach to reasonableness and the progress of business, we do not have to go back very far; we only have to go back as far as yesterday, when the Opposition were faced with the decision of the British people to leave the European Union. They knew it was necessary to have the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill and to pass that legislation, but they chose to oppose it. If they had got their way, they would have frustrated the will of the British people. Rather than abstain and try to improve the Bill in Committee, as a number of my right hon. and hon. Friends chose to do in saying that they support the principle of the Bill but it needs improvement and they have tabled amendments—the Lord Chancellor has indicated that he is going to discuss those amendments in a constructive and appropriate way—they chose to vote against the Bill to try to vote it down. A number of Opposition Members spotted the inconsistency between that approach and the referendum result and called them out on it. That betrays the hon. Lady’s real motive.
Mr Nigel Evans
Does my right hon. Friend find it somewhat bizarre that representatives of the Scottish National party and the Liberal Democrats are saying that Conservative Members are trying to circumvent democracy, and yet although on 23 June 2016 the British people decided to vote, by a margin of more than 1.3 million, to leave the European Union, on every piece of legislation we have brought before this House, those Members have voted against the democratic wishes of the British people?
Mr Harper
My hon. Friend makes a strong point very well, but I think my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset put his finger on it.
I listened very carefully to the arguments made by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). I should just counsel him that he wants to be a bit careful quoting Margaret Thatcher. While she is held in high regard by Conservative Members, I note that the leader of his party, the First Minister of Scotland, says that her entire political mission to get independence for Scotland was driven by Margaret Thatcher, so if he starts quoting her in this House with approbation, he may be putting his own future in his own party at great risk—and Conservative Members would not want to see that.
The hon. Gentleman’s arguments did not hold much water. Again echoing my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset, if we win the vote on this motion, we will have demonstrated that we command a majority. As I said in an intervention, he is entirely right to point out that the Conservative party on its own does not have a majority in this House, but the Government do. The Opposition cannot command a majority either.
Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
Does it not boil down to this? Up until now, the Government have managed to garner the support of the DUP on the issues that have been brought before the House, but they do not garner its support on all issues, hence they foresee problems and want to bring forward this measure. The measure is quite convenient for the DUP because it means that it keeps hold of its Short money, so it suits everybody. Is not that the nub of the issue?
Mr Harper
Not at all. As I said to the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), the confidence and supply arrangement is quite wide. [Interruption.] No, it does not cover everything, but it covers legislation pertaining to Britain’s exit from the European Union, and that is going to be a significant proportion of what the House considers during this Parliament.
Mr Harper
Let me finish responding to the hon. Gentleman before he intervenes again. If it is the case—this is where my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset put his finger on it—that the DUP does not support the Government on a particular matter, then whatever happens in a Public Bill Committee or a Delegated Legislation Committee, when that matter returns to the Floor of the House, Opposition Members will get their way. There is therefore nothing for the hon. Gentleman to worry about. It will not be possible for Conservative Members to force through our wishes if we do not command a majority in the House. That is the democratic check that my right hon. Friend explained very well.
Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)
Is not the other point that if the Government can command a majority in this place on the ground floor, it would be utterly bizarre if they lost it on the first floor, where the Committees take place? People outside Parliament would perceive that as perverse and illogical.
Mr Harper
My hon. Friend makes a good point. The shadow Leader of the House talked about the British public being outraged about what was going on in Public Bill Committees. I have to say—I do not know whether my constituency is particularly typical—that if I went out into the street and spoke to 100 people, I doubt that more than two or three of them would even know what a Public Bill Committee was. I do not think she is accurately characterising what the British people think. What they think was described by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset: they had an election, they had a referendum, they had another election, and we have a Government who got a considerably larger number of seats than the main Opposition party. The people want us to get on with governing the country, making decisions and delivering a smooth exit from the European Union as well as to deliver on important domestic matters. That is what they want us to do and we are well aware of that responsibility.
In conclusion, this is a reasonable measure. It is about ensuring that the Government can conduct their business in a reasonable way but there is always a check and a balance. Ultimately, if a measure is brought forward in a Committee that does not command majority support on the Floor of this House, this House will have its way, not the Committee. There is a democratic check and balance in place, so Members should have no trouble supporting the motion when it is put to a vote in a short while.
Private Members’ Bills
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Mr Lidington
We will certainly consider the report as quickly as we can, but equally we want to make sure that we have given serious and proper consideration to the various proposals that the Committee has made. It is important that legislation, whether it stems from Government or from a private Member’s Bill, is thoroughly scrutinised in the House of Commons and enjoys a clear majority of support across the House. It would be wrong for legislation that lacked that support or that scrutiny to hit the statute book.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
You will remember, Mr Speaker, that, before I was fortunate to be in government, I was a regular attender on Fridays. Who knows, now that I am back on the Back Benches, I may well become so again. From my observations it seems to me that the real problem with Fridays is that many colleagues profess support for measures, but do not consider them important enough to bother appearing here in this House of Commons when it is sitting. That is the problem, and Members have it within their own power to deal with that by turning up here and supporting measures that they feel command the support of the House.
Mr Lidington
My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. Last Friday a closure motion was moved, but only 57 Members were present to vote in its support.
Business of the House
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Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
Will the Leader of the House look at providing an urgent debate on the importance of having regular elections? He may not be aware that the senior Labour peer, the noble Lord Grocott, has a Bill in the other place that would repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, but leave no mechanism for dissolving Parliament and no mechanism for having elections at any point. Although that would lead to the remarkably positive result that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister would be in power for ever, the British public might occasionally like a general election!
Mr Lansley
My goodness, what my hon. Friend says sounds jolly tempting. I am surprised that the noble Lord Grocott considered it wise to legislate in such a way. Perhaps he and the Labour party are rather worried by the prospect of elections and the dangers they might represent. I am pleased to reassure my hon. Friend that we in the coalition Government are not frightened of elections and we have no intention of returning to a “Long Parliament”, as it were.
House of Commons Business
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Mr Lansley
We move on to happier subjects. I will speak first to the motion on e-petitions. I will also address the other motions in my name, on parliamentary privilege and on Standing Order No. 33, and I will seek to move them formally at the end of the debate. I will also address the motion relating to programming, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) and is supported by the Government.
Hon. Members may recall that, following the work of both the Procedure Committee and the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, I have previously undertaken to bring forward proposals for an improved e-petitions system. I want to build on the successful features of the current system, which has seen more than 10 million individuals sign one or more of the 27,500 e-petitions that have been submitted, 145 of which have reached 10,000 signatures, leading to a formal response from the Government. Of those, 29 petitions have reached 100,000 signatures and become eligible to be considered for debate, 25 of which have been debated.
The system provides a straightforward means by which people can submit a petition to raise an issue and press for action. As we have seen in debates such as those on Hillsborough, the badger cull, Sophie’s choice and the ban on female genital mutilation, petitions can be and are debated in Parliament. However, the system by which they are submitted is not approved or in any way owned by Parliament, and that is what I want to change. I want Parliament to share in the ownership of a modern e-petitions system that allows people to petition their Parliament, engage their elected representatives and, where appropriate, get a response from their Government.
I have already held constructive discussions with a number of interested parties throughout the House on the principles of a new system, but a lot of stakeholders are involved and there is a lot of detail to be worked out. I am therefore not initially coming to the House with a fully worked up blueprint for approval. I want to work with others on some ideas that will produce the best result for petitioners, who are our constituents. This is a therefore a paving motion, which will allow the House to agree on the principle that a new system should be jointly owned and run by the Government and the House of Commons.
To develop the detail of the new system with the House, the Government need a partner with which to work. We therefore propose that the Procedure Committee acts on behalf of the House in helping to shape the proposals. There will, no doubt, be other interested parties in the House and outside who will want to contribute, and that is entirely welcome.
I wish to refer briefly to amendment (a) to the e-petitions motion, tabled by the Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen). I confess that I am disappointed that he has felt the need to table an amendment that is largely about the detail of the new system, not least because those are exactly the sorts of discussions that I hope we can have as we develop it. I do not disagree with all the elements that he suggests, but I am confused by an amendment that rejects the notion of a collaborative system yet goes on to envisage the sharing of the existing Government platform. The amendment is internally inconsistent and, I would argue, flawed in principle as a consequence. I cannot, in any case, imagine what the public would make of our establishing two competing and overlapping e-petition systems, which would be the effect of the amendment.
The hon. Gentleman is usually, and quite volubly, in the business of calling for the Executive to work in partnership with Parliament on legislation, on constitutional principles and on much else beyond. That is exactly what I am offering on e-petitions. It would be uncharacteristic of him to turn down such an offer, so I hope that he might not move his amendment.
I hope that a new system can provide better service and support for petitioners. It would provide more flexibility for the House to consider e-petitions in a variety of ways and an enhanced capacity for the House to ensure that the Government respond to those petitions in a significant and adequate manner.
The use of the platform already developed by the Government Digital Service will minimise the costs of the new system. Any additional staff costs will depend largely on the level and nature of the support provided to petitioners, and it may be that it can best be provided by the House’s outreach and information service. You will recall, Mr Speaker, that in the medium-term financial plan the House of Commons Commission has envisaged the provision of some modest support of that kind for a new e-petitions service.
I do not seek to hide the scale of the system. Just under 10,000 petitions are submitted each year—the number settled down after an initial burst in 2011 to about 20 per day, which is a lot of petitions. The moderating, monitoring and sifting of those petitions is a considerable task, but the rules relating to them can make it a manageable, and I think a fair one. Whether we have a petitions committee to govern that process is a matter for discussion. I confess that I am in favour of some form of petitions committee to act on behalf of the House, to develop engagement with the public on petitions, and in the longer term to liaise with Government on e-petitions and the system. For the avoidance of doubt, this motion and any proposals we have do not impinge at all on the existing paper petitions system. That is a matter for the House, and in particular the Procedure Committee.
The existing Government system will be taken down when Parliament is dissolved at the end of March next year. To ensure that a new system, based on the principles that I hope we can endorse today, is up and running from the start of the new Parliament, we must have reached agreement on the details of that new system by the end of this year, when I hope the House will be able to debate and decide on our joint proposals. With that in mind, I ask the House to approve the motion to allow the work we have started to continue, in close consultation with the Procedure Committee, as proposed.
The Government are happy to support the proposal from the Procedure Committee in the motion on programming, which I hope will benefit the whole House. As hon. Members know, the Government have already addressed concerns expressed about Report stage by providing more time where necessary, with the result that fewer groups of amendments are now left undebated than in the last Parliament. In this Session alone, no fewer than 11 Bills have benefited from more than one day on Report. I remind the House that there were only 10 such Bills in the whole of the previous Parliament.
By extending the deadline for the submission of amendments on Report from two to three days, the Government will be able to take full account of the number of amendments selected and grouped before tabling the supplementary programme motion. That will allow us better to match the available time to the weight and nature of amendments tabled. The deadline will rightly still be subject to the discretion of Mr Speaker. I emphasise that the Government will continue to seek to table amendments one week in advance of Report.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
On the supplementary programme motions, I have had to wrestle with getting the amount of time for each group of amendments correct when drafting programme motions. Does my right hon. Friend propose that in each case the Government will use knives to allocate time for each group of amendments, or will they try to balance that—perhaps in conversation with the House—with what they think is the demand? In some cases, it may be better just to let the debate fall in the usual way. I am not sure from the motion what is being proposed.
Mr Lansley
As my hon. Friend will recall from his experience of these matters, we sometimes believe it necessary to introduce what are known colloquially as “knives” into the programme motion to specify when discussion on certain groups of new clauses or amendments is to be concluded. However, we discuss that with the usual channels, and we try to ensure that the House gets the opportunity to debate all significant groups of amendments. The process of deciding whether we should do that or—as we sometimes rightly allow—whether to allow the debate on the amendments to proceed naturally, as it were, is not changed by the motion.
In effect, the motion creates during its trial period an agreement across the House that amendments on Report should be tabled three rather than two days earlier. The benefit of that is that we are more likely to get the programme motion right and not find, as has happened in the past as my hon. Friend will recall, that Opposition or Back-Bench amendments are tabled on Report at quite a late stage and at a time when it is very difficult—not to put too fine a point on it—to incorporate them successfully into a programme motion that understands where the weight of the debate will be. That is what this motion is principally about. A trial period in the next Session would enable us to see whether the proposal turns out to benefit Back Benchers and whether there are any unforeseen disadvantages. I am pleased that the Procedure Committee has secured the support of the Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition for the trial period, and has committed to reviewing its operation towards the end of the next Session. If judged successful, the Government will support a permanent change.
Let me clarify that we start from a shared understanding that we use the term parliamentary privilege to describe a fundamental constitutional principle that guarantees freedom of speech in Parliament and allows us in this House to work on behalf of our constituents without the threat of interference from the courts. The motion on parliamentary privilege arises from the work of the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, which was established to consider the Government’s White Paper on that subject published in 2012. I place on record my thanks for the diligent work of the Committee on that complex issue, and I stress that, as set out in the Government’s formal response, we agree with the Committee in its central conclusion that there is no strong case for comprehensive codification. None the less, there are steps that the House can take—I stress that the operation of parliamentary privilege is a matter for the House rather than Government—to provide greater clarity.
Mr Lansley
I am hoping to make absolutely clear that this motion is in no sense about the law not applying equally to us as it would to any other member of the public. It is about what happens in this House and its proceedings, which require to be protected. Parliamentary privilege may have originated centuries ago, but it must always remain true. It may take a different character in terms of judicial activism, rather than Executive action, but none the less on behalf of our constituents we require what we do here to be done without fear or favour, and without risk of impeachment or prejudice from external parties. As my hon. Friend says, it is important for that privilege to be maintained for the benefit of our constituents.
The motion before the House is a means by which I hope we can provide the clarity necessary for the effective operation of parliamentary privilege. An equivalent motion was agreed by the House of Lords on 20 March this year, after a full debate. In essence, it calls for clarity in the application of any particular legislation to Parliament. The need for further clarification on that point arises because there is some legal uncertainty as to the consequences of a decision of the courts in the Graham-Campbell case of 1935, which held that the protection afforded to this House by the doctrine of parliamentary privilege was wide. The scope of parliamentary privilege has been revisited by the courts and commentators in more recent times—notably by the Supreme Court in the 2010 Chaytor case. However, the Graham-Campbell case has not been expressly overruled, which has sometimes led to uncertainty over what needs to be said in an Act intended to apply to Parliament. The boundaries of parliamentary privilege will in practice be determined by the courts on a case-by-case basis, so it is helpful to them if legislation makes clear Parliament’s intent when legislating in areas that might encroach on those boundaries. That is why this motion provides for explicit provision on that point in cases of doubt.
In practice, that will require discussions between parliamentary counsel and the authorities of the two Houses on whether relevant provisions in Bills should apply to the activities of the two Houses, and for there to be express provision in the Bill where necessary. That is a sensible and pragmatic move towards providing greater clarity on a relatively obscure but important issue. As a matter of principle, I am sure we all agree that the law of the land should apply equally to Parliament, subject where appropriate to the protections of parliamentary privilege. I hope the House will agree to the motion so as to provide for that consistency across the two Houses.
Mr Harper
Of the two recommendations in the report by the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, the second was for the Government to take steps to ensure that Departments complied with the official guidance, issued by the Treasury Solicitor, to consult with the House authorities on legislation. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the Government will do that in every case? The report said that it happened in some cases, but not in every case.
Mr Lansley
Yes, my hon. Friend is right. It was not an invariable practice. A moment ago I spoke about the necessity for discussions between parliamentary counsel and the authorities of the two Houses, and I hope that those discussions will enable us to meet the recommendations of the Joint Committee. That is important.
What has, in part, led to the necessity of the motion is that different Bills have taken different approaches, sometimes seeing it as necessary to disapply parliamentary privilege and in other cases seeking to make it clear in legislation that parliamentary privilege applies. Our general proposition is that it is not required to say that parliamentary privilege applies—it does apply. However, we need to make it clear where the provisions of a Bill intend to have an effect on Parliament. In particular, we need to identify and specify where they may encroach on the boundaries of parliamentary privilege, so that the courts have an unambiguous legislative provision that sets out to what extent Parliament has determined that the law, in that respect, applies to it.
Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)
First, I want to thank the Leader of the House for being so expansive in his arguments and when explaining the reasons behind many of the Government’s positions. I will focus first on some of the Procedure Committee recommendations, and come on to the issues relating to e-petitions at the end of my short speech.
I think that the decision on Standing Order No. 33, which allows amendments to be called at the end of the Queen’s Speech, was made after consultation between the Leader of the House and interested parties. I think it reflects a certain maturity in his office, a willingness to listen to diverse views and, in the end, an ability to make the right decision. The Leader of the House knows that no decision will be met uniformly with acclaim. That is just not possible, but I think that what we have before us today is about the best result we could have hoped for. It reflects the original position put forward by the Procedure Committee after consultation with various interested parties, including the Speaker’s office, the Leader of the House’s office and the shadow Leader of the House. So the decision on Standing Order No. 33 is a step in the right direction and I welcome it.
The Procedure Committee has also made some recommendations around programming. I could spend the next 10 minutes focusing on those aspects of our report that the Government rejected and do not feel comfortable about, but that would be extremely churlish. Today, as we head towards the Prorogation of this Parliament, we should focus on the positives that have come out of our reports, not the negatives. I regard this as a journey and all journeys start with a step, and then baby steps along the way until eventually we reach our point of arrival. I might not be alive to see that point of arrival, but it is just possible that my grandchildren or great-grandchildren will be able to celebrate that.
Our changes to programming come under the heading “Boring but important.” Anybody who reads The Week magazine, which makes us all instant experts—give it 10 minutes of our time and we become a world expert on what is going on in Ukraine, South Africa or Brazil—will know it has a section headed “Boring but important”, and I think that that applies to our changes to programming. They might be boring but they are very, very important.
Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)
Let me start by touching on a couple of democratic principles that underlie some of the issues before us. The first is about whether we are a representative democracy or whether, because we are held so much in contempt by the public, we want to become a direct democracy. That is why e-petitions could either be advantageous to us or play into the hands of those who want to see a Parliament even more diminished, especially those in newsrooms and media offices up and down the land who have the ability to get up 100,000 signatures and put pressure on Government and Parliament. Under motion 3 as it stands, that pressure could be transferred from Government to Parliament. Parliament is a handy whipping boy for so many of these issues, including expenses. Governments of all parties have shown a great facility in ditching Parliament—leaving Parliament holding the baby for issues that have been the responsibility of Government.
One issue is about explaining what we are. Earlier, we had a mini debate about privilege. It was all about these poor people out there who do not really understand these arcane bits of judicial archaeology, and the fact that there is something wrong with the public. One Member said that we need to lead them and be stronger in explaining these things, but we have tried that for many decades. We have all discovered that even when we try to explain the concept of reimbursements using the word “expenses”, it does not always work. Explaining how Parliament and Government are different from each other is one of our main duties, because people lump us together. Indeed, this business in front of us today is an example of the Government trying to get that conflation of two institutions. Even though we will not change minds today on the Government Front Bench, it is important that we keep those Front-Bench Members honest and point out that we know what they are trying to do, even if there is not much we can do about it other than heckle the steamroller.
That choice over whether we go to a serious representative democracy and continue to try to rebuild Parliament or whether we abstain from that and hand over to a plebiscitary democracy is one that all Members need to consider.
Mr Harper
I think the hon. Gentleman is being a little cynical about those on the Front Bench. The problem with what he is trying to do, which is to have two petition systems—one to Government and one to Parliament—ignores the fact that Government are accountable to Parliament. They are only the Government because they have a majority in Parliament. Having two separate systems would be worse than having this House and the Government working together collaboratively. With respect, what he is suggesting is not helpful; it is the opposite.
Mr Allen
Obviously, I do not spend all my time in the Chamber, but during the 26 years that I have been here, I have missed that occasion when Government were accountable to Parliament. What we have here is the mythology of parliamentary sovereignty—the hon. Gentleman knows that and we have discussed it in front of my Committee—in which Government can use and abuse Parliament on a daily basis. They can set the agenda of Parliament on a daily basis. It is a little disingenuous to pretend that it is Parliament holding Government to account. If we conflate two systems, we will make things harder. Rather than Parliament being able to say, “The Government have not responded to a legitimate petition”, we will have to share the blame for the problem. If we do not have a petitioning system of our own, we will not have direct redress, through which we can say to the Government, “We have discussed this, as many people have requested of us, and we have a view. What are you now going to do?” Parliament legislates and, in theory, holds Government to account, but it is the institution of Government who execute and put Acts into the parliamentary sausage machine. Putting the two together continues the deception that Parliament can effectively hold the Government to account. What we need to do is build our accountability function, not give it away to Government.
Mr Harper
The problem is that, if we have a petitioning system directly to Government, we then suggest to Government that they respond directly to the people who have petitioned them, completely bypassing this House. I would prefer Government to interact with the public through Parliament, keeping Members of Parliament in that conversation rather than excluding them.
Mr Allen
We have an e-petitioning system at the moment which is to the Government and to which the Government have to respond. What we are discussing is giving Parliament its own e-petitioning capability, so that it can engage as a partner in a debate with Government. That has to be healthier than one organisation or the other imposing its will, as happens continually in our proceedings, with Government dominating Parliament. This is a minor demonstration of the mythology and fallacy of parliamentary sovereignty, and therefore it is useful to bring it to the attention of the House.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
We have had a good debate. I shall say some brief words on the motions about petitions and parliamentary privilege and devote most of my remarks to the motion on programming.
The motion on petitions is sensible. I view the word “collaborative” in the phrase “a collaborative e-petitions system” rather more favourably than the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), as meaning the House and the Government working together. The House is not a sub-office of the Government. I prefer to think of it the other way around, with the Government being a sub-office of the House. The hon. Gentleman and I have had many discussions about this. I know that the theory of Ministers being accountable to Parliament sometimes does not work as well as it ought to, but rather than throwing it away and adopting a different model, we should all work hard to make sure that it does work properly.
The multifaceted role of the Leader of the House as both the member of the Government responsible for the Government’s legislative programme and also—I know he takes this responsibility seriously as the Leader of the whole House—the person who has to ensure that the House functions properly is reflected in the motions tabled by him.
The hon. Member for Nottingham North talked about the technology of the platform. The Leader of the House mentioned the Government Digital Service. When I was doing my job as Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform, I worked with it on some of the individual electoral registration technology. This is one of the rare occasions when the words “Government digital service” and “Government IT” refer to positive things. It works in a modern way, producing material iteratively and on quite tight timetables. The Leader of the House is right: if we can give it a clear direction by the end of this year, we can realistically expect a good process to be up and running at the start of the next Parliament.
Giving the Procedure Committee the responsibility to lead on doing that is sensible. It will enable Members on both sides of the House, including the hon. Gentleman, to make representations to the Committee over and above what we have said today, and the Committee, as can be seen from its reports on other matters, can be trusted to reflect and balance the views across the House and come up with a sensible set of proposals. I agree with some parts of his amendment, but not all. I hope he reflects on it, does not press it to a vote, takes the content of it as an input and gives evidence, if necessary orally, to the Committee.
Finally, let me expand a little on what I said about the difference between the Government and Parliament. I do not want two different systems to operate because I do not want the public to make representations to the Government separately from representations made through this House. I want to make sure that Ministers remain accountable to the House. When the petitions that the Leader of the House mentioned were debated in the time provided by the Backbench Business Committee, part of the point of the debate was not only that Back-Bench Members could debate it, but that a Minister had to come to the Dispatch Box, answer questions and account for the Government’s policy. That is why it is important that any petitioning system keeps the House at its centre, rather than having two separate systems. There would be nothing more confusing for the public than an e-petitions system to the Government and a separate one to the House of Commons, and the two not being connected in any way. A collaborative approach—yes, with education and a clear set of messages to the public about what the system is for, how it works and what expectations someone might have after going through the process—is very important and is more likely to improve the reputation of the House.
I take a more optimistic view on the motion on privilege than my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) set out. Privilege is well understood by many people in various professions. We should explain what it means, rather than think about an alternative label for it. The problem is that the misunderstanding is often created deliberately by some of the hon. Gentleman’s favourite people, by the sound of it—those in newsrooms—who deliberately try to create confusion about what privilege means. We must explain what it means and we have people in the outside world who are familiar with the concept as well. It is our job to explain, as Members have ably done today, the purpose of privilege, which is to enable us to speak on behalf of our constituents without worrying about powerful interests.
The only question that I had on the privilege motion has been answered by the Leader of the House. It was about making sure that we follow through recommendation 227 on Treasury Counsel working with the House. He made it clear that the Government would do that.
I welcome the report on programming, which I read very carefully, and the Government’s response to it. The Leader of the House is right. This Government have worked hard to try to improve how the Report stage works. He referred to a significant number of Bills having two days on Report. I should say in passing that the Government have also done a good job of increasing the number of draft Bills brought before the House for pre-legislative scrutiny. The Committee chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) has done an excellent job. In response to one of the measures debated in the earlier Standards motion on recall, his Committee scrutinised the draft Bill that I introduced and made some sensible recommendations, which may or may not be debated in the future.
The Government have done a good job of dealing with the House. Listening to the comments of the shadow Leader of the House about scrutiny and the time allowed for the Report stage of Bills, it was difficult to believe that she had something to do with the previous Government. I do not pretend that the current Government are a paragon of virtue and get absolutely everything right, but I remember frequent occasions when there was a single day for Report, there were a large number of amendments and we barely got through any of the groups. She did not acknowledge that anywhere in her remarks.
Ms Eagle
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his final remark. What I was trying to say was that there is an issue with timetabling in general. I have been in the House at the time when we had no timetabling, apart from guillotining on specific Bills. That is certainly one way of working, but it leads to 80-hour working weeks. I have experienced them; I do not know whether he would like us to go back to that. Given that we have a timetabling structure now, we have to make certain that we can get away from some of the game-playing with timetabling that leaves large swathes of legislation not discussed in the Commons. As the Minister who took through two extremely important constitutional Bills at a rapid rate, perhaps he should get his own House in order.
Mr Harper
I am glad the hon. Lady raised that. I was going to come on to those. I accept that the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 was taken through at something of a pace because of delivering the referendum. There is sometimes a slight cynicism in the House, with the suggestion that all Ministers do not like having things debated. When that Bill was going through, I took great pains to make sure that all the important issues were debated in the House, and they all were, even though in the debate on thresholds I had to indulge in the device of moving a Back-Bench amendment from the Government Front Bench—following the model of the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw)—in order to ask Members to vote against it, to ensure that this House was able to take a decision and not leave it to the other place.
Another Bill that I had some responsibility for was the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, for which we did not have that imperative. In fact, we ran out of Bill before we ran out of time, and we debated all of it fully. My hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), who ably assisted me in taking that legislation through, and I took great pains to ensure that the House had ample time to debate all of it. I will say a little more in a minute about how I think the Government should do the timetabling.
I also welcome the Government’s suggestion of a three-day deadline for tabling amendments, which supports what the Procedure Committee has said. I welcome the Opposition’s support for that. It will of course be challenging for Opposition Front Benchers and for Back Benchers, but I think that without it we cannot ensure that time is used more sensibly.
Another point that I want to put on the record—I got the answer I wanted, and expected, from the Leader of the House when I asked how the Government and the usual channels would approach programming—is that I think Back Benchers can help in this regard by indicating where the focus of debate is likely to be. With the best will in the world, timetabling is an art, not a science. Having amendments tabled earlier in the process would enable their full scope to be seen by the Government and the usual channels before the supplementary programme motion is devised, so the amendments could indicate what the issues of controversy are and on which provisions debate is likely to concentrate. Even so, it is still an art, not a science. I think that it will take good will on both sides of the House to ensure that the right decisions are made on whether to allow a debate to flow or to put knives in place and manage it more tightly.
I also think that it might be worth engaging the Chair in this process, Madam Deputy Speaker. I know that there are rules about avoiding repetition and so forth, but clearly the Chair must be mindful of the need to allow a proper debate by making the proper judgments when Members step over those lines and engage in game-playing. If the House is to debate things properly and table amendments earlier, and the usual channels are going to try to ensure that that happens, it will be interesting to see whether the Chair experiments with the severity with which it imposes the rules of the House, and the extent to which Members find that agreeable, to ensure that we balance properly progress—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. I hear what the hon. Gentleman is saying, and this seems to me to be an opportune moment to make it clear to the House that, although he is perfectly in order and has not taken a unreasonable amount of time this afternoon, it would nevertheless be helpful if Members speaking from the Bank Benches could limit their remarks to between 10 and 15 minutes, and possibly 12 minutes. That way, everyone who wishes to speak will have an opportunity to do so.
Mr Harper
I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. When putting on the record things that the Chair might wish to consider, there is always a risk of provoking the Chair, as I have just done. I can hardly complain, having invited you to do that.
There is sometimes game-playing on the Back Benches, on both sides of the House, to try either to get something debated or to ensure that it is not debated. The Chair has quite a lot of scope, both in the selection of amendments and in enforcing the rules of debate, for ensuring that we make progress.
My final point, and an important one—I agree with the shadow Leader of the House on this—is that this House, the elected House of Commons, should have the opportunity to debate and vote on all the important issues when legislation starts its journey through the House. Sometimes it is unavoidable that important matters have to be added to Bills in the other place, and often that is in response to issues raised in this House. Indeed, if issues are raised in this House and Ministers say that they will take them away and consider them, clearly it would be absurd for the Bill not to be amended in the other place.
However, I think that it is important that this House does its job properly to avoid the other place using the refrain, as it frequently does—it is sometimes justified, but often not—that we do not do our job properly and that we always rely on it to do so. This House can and does do its job properly, and it does it increasingly well, for example because of the extra time that the Leader of the House often makes available for us on Report. I want to ensure that we step up to the plate and do not give the other place the opportunity to pretend that it has to do our job for us.
I support the motions and hope that the hon. Member for Nottingham North will take his concerns up with the Procedure Committee, rather than pressing his amendment.
Helen Goodman
I am glad that the Chair of the Procedure Committee, who chairs it most ably, is showing once again his political nous in his attempts to corral us. I hope he is right and that, after this experiment, the Procedure Committee will be able to return to the matter and see whether it has achieved its purpose. If not, I hope not only that the experiment will result in a permanent change to Standing Orders, but that all of the third report’s proposals will be fully implemented.
Mr Harper
My intervention is likely to be more prosaic and not as poetic as that of my hon. Friend the Chair of the Procedure Committee. Having read the Government’s response to the Committee’s recommendations, I am not as depressed as the hon. Lady, because all it said was that they did not agree with the suggestion for a proportionate and rigid allocation of time. They said they wanted to be able to exercise judgment on how to allocate the time and that a proportionate model would be complex and unwieldy. The sense I got from the Government’s response is that they want every group of amendments and all the major issues to be debated; they just do not want to do it in the mechanical way suggested by the Committee’s report.
Helen Goodman
We will hear whether that was the intention when the Deputy Leader of the House winds up the debate. What the Government actually said was this:
“The Chair would have to make rapid calculations on the number of minutes available per group in response to the progress of the...business”,
as if the Chair is not capable of doing some straightforward arithmetic. I know that education standards in this country are not what they ought to be, but I am absolutely confident that the Chair, supported, of course, by the Clerks, would be able to do that. The Government’s response also said that there is no evidence of a “systemic problem”, but there is a systemic problem, which is precisely why it is worth changing the rules of the game.
Business of the House
Lord Harper Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Lansley
The hon. Gentleman and the House will know that the development of the personal independence payment system is proceeding in stages and it is important that we get it right. It is geared to the needs of people with disabilities far more than the previous system, under which they were often not subject to assessment for years on end. I recall that the figures for those with life-limiting illnesses showed that a high proportion of those assessments had been undertaken. However, I will look at the figures and ensure that the Department for Work and Pensions responds to him. I am sure that we would be grateful to have the details of any particular case so that we can respond to it.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
I listened intently to the Leader of the House’s impressive list of legislative achievements, and, following yesterday’s debate, I look forward to the Immigration Bill joining that list, which should really improve our immigration system. However, now that we have listened to the shadow Leader of the House for a number of weeks, will the Leader of the House remind her and the House that this House’s job is not just to be a legislation factory? It is important that we take time to debate important issues, have question sessions and hold Ministers to account as well as passing legislation.
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The legislative achievement in the course of this Session has been impressive and the Immigration Bill and the Care Bill, which will, I hope, pass its final stages next week, will add substantially to that list of achievements. He is quite right, too, that our work goes beyond that. It has been depressing week on week to hear the shadow Leader of the House and other Opposition Members interpret debates nominated by the Backbench Business Committee and even their own Opposition day debates as of no consequence. Such debates are the essence of what we do in this place and the fact that in this Session we have been able to give the Opposition and the Backbench Business Committee more days than we were required to while securing Royal Assent for some 20 Bills by the end of the Session is a good use of parliamentary time.