European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Michael Gove and Peter Kyle

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I may not agree with the hon. Lady on everything, but I agree that effective environmental protection is really important. I would make two points in particular in response to her important intervention. First, it is entirely open to us, as we leave the European Union, to maintain the current standards of environmental protection, but it is also open to us, once we leave, to enhance them. We can, if we wish, have higher standards of environmental protection, for example for moving livestock. Secondly, we can reform the common agricultural policy, against which her party has campaigned for many years, and against which her hon. Friend in the other place campaigned so brilliantly by arguing to vote leave. We can replace the CAP with an approach to subsidising land use that is both more environmentally sensitive and more productive.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

rose—

[Michael Gove]

To be fair to the hon. Gentleman, for whom I have a great deal of respect, the next Member kind enough to ask to intervene was the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra).

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Gove]

That is a very important point very well made, but the point I sought to make earlier—the hon. Lady’s intervention gives me a chance to underline and further clarify it—is that if we want more money to be spent on the NHS, or, for that matter, anything else, and we want to take back control of the money the EU currently controls or spends on our behalf, then we should seek to expedite the will of the British people and leave the EU as quickly as possible. We will then have that money back and we can invest it in the NHS more quickly.

[Peter Kyle]

rose—

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland sought to intervene earlier, but I suspect the point made by the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) was very much hers and that it was an example of sisterly collaboration. In the spirit of fraternal humility, I hand over to the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle).

[Peter Kyle]

I am grateful. Many members of the public are also humble seekers of truth. If we do not pass these new clauses and get these impact assessments, how will they be able to judge how Brexit is going? How will they be able to judge the impact on health, education, transport, environment and their communities if they have no information at all?

[Michael Gove]

This gets me back to the heart of my argument, which is that if one believes that the only authoritative evidence, the only view that matters, is that produced by the Government, one is turning one’s back on 400 years of Enlightenment thinking. There is not one single canonical view that is right in every respect. As was made clear earlier, there is a proliferation of views about what the impact of leaving the EU might be in different areas.

Further, if we were to have published the Government’s policy advice in every area, which is the inference behind the hon. Gentleman’s question, it would make the business of Government impossible. He might remember, as I certainly do, reading the words of the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in his autobiography, “A Journey”, in which he said that the Freedom of Information Act was his biggest mistake—I think there were some bigger. [Laughter.] That is one view that commands a consensus around the House. He thought he had handed a weapon to his enemies and made impossible the business of Government, which requires confidential advice to be prepared by civil servants and accepted by Ministers.

When I was a Minister, I received excellent advice—my mistakes were all my own, all the good ideas were civil servants’. Nevertheless, however good the civil service advice that a Minister receives, it is only one source of wisdom, and every Minister worth his or her salt will want to consult widely. Any Minister who sought to steer only by civil service advice would rightly be held by the House to be a timid mouse constrained by their brief, incapable of ranging more widely and of making a judgment in the national interest.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Michael Gove and Peter Kyle

Tuesday 8th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The fact that it is my hon. Friend’s birthday in June means that I am looking forward to celebrating two significant anniversaries in that month. His substantive point is actually very important, because even though instances are still mercifully rare, there is a real danger that drones can be used to smuggle contraband into prisons: mobile phones that can be used in criminal activity; and drugs that can be used in unfortunate ways. That is why we have introduced new legislation to make it illegal to land a drone in a prison or to use a drone to drop contraband.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

Last month, the Prime Minister announced that prison governors would have far more autonomy to start tackling these issues in prisons, based on the academy model for schools. As the Secretary of State will know from his previous job, the lesson of academy schools is that more autonomy must be matched by stronger local governance. Can he reassure us that governors who do have more independence will have a stronger local governance arrangement to match it?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Gentleman makes a characteristically acute and intelligent point, and I absolutely agree that with greater autonomy must come sharper accountability. In the first six reform prisons that we are going to establish, which will model, in some respects, the freedoms that academy schools have, we are exploring exactly how we can ensure both that the local community is appropriately involved and that accountability measures ensure that areas such as mental health and substance abuse are tackled effectively.