European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Harper and Oliver Letwin

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 6th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, certainly the Opposition Front Bench was desperately looking around for amendments that would not stop the Bill in its tracks, and this was about the best they could come up with. But it does not really add very much and is rather unnecessary, and, as I have said, many of the new clauses are rather repetitive, talking about reports and information about a whole raft of EU institutions, which will, of course, be covered in any event.

[Sir Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the effect, if not the intent, of the Opposition new clause would be to make all these matters justiciable and therefore bring the courts into the question of whether the Government’s reports were sufficient and, indeed, appropriate?

[Mr Harper]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. Once we put things into primary legislation and set out the nature and terms of the report, it will, as we have seen, be justiciable, and it will allow people to go to court and argue—they might be successful, they might not—that what the Government have brought forward is not adequate, and we will then have a continuation of the legal arguments that we have seen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to you for calling me to speak, Ms Engel. I can see that Members are looking forward to this. There are a number of new clauses and amendments in this group, and Members will be pleased to know that I do not plan on speaking to all of them. I shall group them in a way that I think is sensible. There are some that are unnecessary, some that arguably do very little but run a risk of doing harm, and some that are outright vetoes on the process, which is completely unacceptable. There is one about a national convention, about which I will speak briefly, and a couple of very important ones about Northern Ireland, which I would also like to speak to.

Starting with new clause 4, to which the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) has just spoken, I think my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) put his finger on it when he asked her about consensus. I think we need to explore this point further. The new clause proposes that

“the Secretary of State must seek to reach a consensus”.

My right hon. Friend pointed out that it was unlikely that any such consensus would be reached because the Scottish nationalists fundamentally disagree with our leaving the European Union. Not only that, but unlike the other First Ministers, they also do not wish to see a continuation of the United Kingdom—[Interruption.] They have just confirmed that verbally in the Chamber. So it seems unlikely that consensus would be reached. The problem with putting this new clause in statute is that it would then become justiciable, as my right hon. Friend said earlier. A court could then be asked to adjudicate on whether the Secretary of State had tried hard enough to reach consensus. Even if the court then ruled that everything was fine, this would still be just a way of delaying the process.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Did my right hon. Friend also notice that the Opposition spokesman referred to “embedding” the Scottish Government in the proposals? Does he agree that, roughly speaking, that is like Wellington being asked to embed Napoleon in his strategy for the Napoleonic wars?

[Mr Harper]

My right hon. Friend has a much greater command of history than I do, but even with my limited reading I think he is probably about right.

My right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire) asked the hon. Member for Darlington to distinguish between the First Ministers of the different devolved nations, and I think the distinction is that the First Ministers of Northern Ireland and of Wales wish to see the continuation of the United Kingdom, but the First Minister of Scotland does not. That is material to the sensibleness of proceeding with new clause 4.

Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill

Debate between Lord Harper and Oliver Letwin

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 18th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

As a matter of fact, very few are. Even if there were a few, the net distributional impact is very slight. That has to be put in context to be understood. This was another point that my right hon. Friend made very clearly. I will come in a moment to the point that the Bill very clearly has the purpose and the effect of ensuring that we will not proceed with redistribution before 2020. If we do not proceed with it, the disequilibrium—the lack of equivalence that Labour’s spokesman, the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), said his party favours—would be far, far greater than the discrepancy would be, even on the House of Commons Library figures, if the distributional impacts from the new registration were not taken into account. So either equalisation matters or it does not matter.

[Mr Harper]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

In a moment.

It appears that we have cross-party consent, at least on the face of it, to equalisation. Equalisation will be achieved to a far greater degree by proceeding with the current arrangements than by not proceeding with them. The only further question we have to ask is whether it was the hon. Member for North West Durham, who introduced the Bill, or my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean and my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) who were right when the discussion went on about whether it was possible to proceed with the hon. Lady’s Bill and for it to become an Act, and to proceed with the Boundary Commission proposals in time for 2020.

As it happens, I spent quite a lot of the past few years talking to the boundary commissions about these issues. I am prepared to say in Parliament, and I think it is not improper for me to say in Parliament, that I am absolutely certain from what they told me that there is not the ghost of a chance—and I think the spokesman for the Opposition, who appears to be a clever person, is perfectly aware that there is not a ghost of a chance—that we could have a redistribution before 2020 if we were to proceed with the hon. Lady’s Bill and it became an Act. That is, I think, the very purpose of the Bill.

[Mr Harper]

I am very pleased that my right hon. Friend finished that powerful point before he gave way to me, as it highlights what the Bill is really about. On the so-called missing voters, the point that he was just developing is that if we are not able to proceed with the boundary changes that the commissions are currently working on, we will fight the next election on seats that are drawn on electoral registers dating from 2000, so not only would we not be including the 2 million people who registered for the referendum and the 700,000 people who registered subsequently, but we would be missing the millions and millions of people who have registered to vote since 2000, and, by the way, we would be including all the people who were on the register in 2000 but who, sadly, are no longer with us.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

My right hon. Friend is clearly right about that. It is a matter of fact, not of opinion. There would be less approximation to an equal distribution of population per seat and of registered voters per seat if we do not proceed with the current proposals than if we do. The Bill would therefore diminish the chances of there being an election based on roughly equivalent numbers of electors in each seat.