European Council
Paul Flynn Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s remarks. In other European countries, many people want the approach that we are taking—greater flexibility, greater competition and powers flowing back to nation states, not just towards Brussels—and support our views.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
Does the Prime Minister agree with the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans), who has great experience of Europe, who said on Radio Wales yesterday that had the Government still been in the EPP, they could effectively have exercised a veto on the decision to elevate Mr Juncker? Is it not true that the worthwhile reforms in Europe will come from the moderate parties and not from the headbangers with whom the Prime Minister is associated at the moment?
The Prime Minister
The question I would ask back to the hon. Gentleman is, if it is so easy to veto the Spitzenkandidat process, why did Labour not do it in the Party of European Socialists? The idea that we would have been able to do so if we had been in the EPP is nonsense. There were other Prime Ministers in the EPP who did not stop the process. I am proud that we have our own political grouping in Europe and that it was the one group that decided not to take part in the process.
Conflict Decisions and Constitutional Reform
Paul Flynn Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mr Allen
I will not give way any more to the hon. Gentleman. The final point that I will make on this part of the argument is that no one, to my knowledge, and certainly not my Committee or me, has ever said that there has to be a vote before we go to war, because there may be occasions when the Executive have to be free to respond. If bombs were falling on London as we were speaking, Mr Weir, I would not want Parliament to be convened and to have a debate in a couple of days’ time. I need to be able speedily to execute—that is where the word “Executive” comes from—action in defence of our nation. However, at an appropriate moment, the House should be reconvened, should look at the reasons why we took military action and should, we hope, endorse that. If it does not—if the decision does not go my way—I have to accept that due process has taken place. I accept that the vote did not ultimately go my way on Iraq, but I do not think that due process, on that occasion, did take place.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
This is a matter of the gravest importance, in that the decision that we took in March 2003 resulted in the deaths of 179 British soldiers. Even now, 11 years later, we do not know the full truth of how Parliament was bribed, bullied, and bamboozled into voting—
Paul Flynn
Yes, all those words I would be happy to defend. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) think that the fact that, even now, we are being denied the—
Dr Coffey
On a point of order, Mr Weir. I am surprised that it is parliamentary to suggest that Parliament has been bribed, because that implies corruption. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman does not want to make that suggestion—that people took bribes to vote a particular way.
Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)
I think that the hon. Gentleman was making a debating point. I do not think that he was suggesting that Parliament as a whole was bribed in any way, and I do not think that that is a point of order.
Paul Flynn
I mean bribed by political favours. The full story of this is available. Is it not astonishing that on this matter—these are the most important decisions that Parliament takes—we are still to be denied the full truth of what happened? The Chilcot report will be published in expurgated form, and many of the reasons why we went to war, many of the influences, will not be included. Will not the impression left behind, if that happens, be that the Chilcot report is a cover-up by civil servants and politicians to protect their own reputations?
Mr Allen
I am probably less interested in the history of this, although we need to learn from the history and the ins and outs of what happened—all the dossiers, the weapons of mass destruction and so on. What I am interested in as a parliamentarian is that we all learn the lesson of how we can do this better. That is the main thing that my Select Committee is pursuing. There are people on my Select Committee who voted one way, people who voted the other, and people who were not even in the House at the time, but we have an interest in saying, “In the future, let there be clarity, to the degree that we can obtain it, on how we take the most important decision that any of us will ever face.” My Select Committee—
Mr Allen
I am happy to accept that as a statement of fact. It certainly was an interesting moment. The Prime Minister gave an incredibly statesmanlike response. In a short statement, he gave those of us who believe in democracy a great boost, because although some may say that there was technically a little confusion or muddle, the House had very clearly spoken, and he dealt with that excellently. Of course, that had repercussions, which thankfully mean that now, as the leader of Syria is undergoing a steady rehabilitation in the eyes of many people—it is all relative, of course—we are not enmeshed in a situation with great difficulties on all sides. Instead, we are adopting a position that is not going to replicate the awful consequences we see in Iraq on a daily basis.
There are no easy decisions in this field. Any people who pretend that everything would have been wonderful had we gone to war are people whose judgment is not of great value. Such decisions are incredibly difficult, but through the Syria vote the House indicated a way forward that the Prime Minister accepted. He made absolutely the right decision.
Paul Flynn
As the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) said, the vote on 29 August was one of immense significance. It was the first time for centuries that, a Prime Minister having come to the House of Commons to suggest that we go to war, Parliament rejected that suggestion. It is extraordinary; had that decision gone the other way, and had we found ourselves opposing Assad in Syria—although there are three sides there—we would now be on almost the same side as the ISIS rebels. Is it not crucial that we learn that if we are to go to war, we should rely not on a Prime Minister writing his page in history, full of hubris and vanity as he takes the decision, but on the good sense of 650 Members of Parliament?
Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)
Order. Before we proceed, I must say that interventions are becoming very long. I appreciate that these are complex matters, but will Members please keep their interventions short? There will be chances for you to make speeches later on.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
It is a fine example of the trials and tribulations of the job of chairing these sittings that you, Mr Weir, had to endure in silence some parts of the speech by the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope). You would have been entirely justified in breaking new ground by asking to intervene on his speech at certain points.
Paul Flynn
It must be painful for you to do that, Mr Weir. The Committee that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) chairs, brilliantly and with great wisdom, contains the entire political spectrum, from the deepest red to the densest blue. Somehow or other, the reports, with compromise and good sense from the Chairman—he acts as a peacemaker and compromise seeker—turn out to be unanimous. The Committee’s work is not on the immediate, the current or the things that are in the headlines of the day, but on issues that are of deeper importance when we take a broad look at the way things are going.
Going to war is one of our gravest responsibilities, and there have been few times in our history when Parliament has been divided on such decisions; it is normally well united, with the possible exception of the Boer war, which was rightly opposed at the time by Lloyd George and others. I believe, however, that there has never been a division in opinion in the country as there was in 2003, when at least 1 million people—some say 2 million—marched in the streets. Some 139 Labour Members, six Conservatives and virtually all the Liberal Democrats voted against that war. The nationalist parties were passionately opposed, as was public opinion, and public opinion was right. It was in advance of opinion at the top of the political tree at the time.
The decision to go to war was reported with equal enthusiasm by the leaders of both the major parties, and that is the great difficulty. There is a splendid book by David Owen that I commend to people, if they have not read it, about hubris in politics. He writes about what happens to Prime Ministers when they hear the drumbeats of war. It is their opportunity to escape from the dreary minor matters of the day and write their page in history, which is usually, sadly, a bloody page. They become different people, and we can see it. They walk in a different way. They strut and stand with a Napoleonic stance. They talk in a different way, dredging up all the Churchillian rhetoric and speaking in these great rounded phrases. It is the most exciting time of their lives. In David Owen’s view, they become at least a little mad, and their judgment is in question. That thesis is absolutely right.
By example, by convention and by the fact that MPs were allowed to vote in 2003 because the then Government were convinced as to how we would vote—we would not have been allowed otherwise—a principle has been established and cannot now be reversed. Power has moved from the exercise of the royal prerogative by the Prime Minister to a decision by the House of Commons. Thank goodness for that. As I said in an earlier intervention, it is far better to trust the wisdom of 650 Members of Parliament with differing views than the overexcited hubris of a Prime Minister, who might be motivated by vanity or seeking a place in history for himself or herself. It is a major advance.
Returning to the heroic work done at the time by my hon. Friend, it is good that we are reminded of what happened during that period. Many of us regard it as the most important vote—or votes as it turned out—that we will take part in during our political careers, even if we are here for many more years. There was huge pressure at the time to vote a certain way. The political establishment was united in going one way. The Intelligence and Security Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Defence Committee, the Government and the main Opposition were absolutely united that we had to go to war to defend ourselves against what turned out to be non-existent weapons of mass destruction that threatened to attack us within 45 minutes. We were not deciding whether there would be an Iraq war, which was going to happen anyway. Saddam was going to be deposed. We were deciding whether to collaborate with George Bush in that war. George Bush said that he did not want us and made it clear, publicly, that we were not needed, but somebody wanted to take us into war and we deserve to know the truth about what happened between the then Prime Minister and President Bush.
The reasons why we need to know are crucial. The first is for the loved ones of the 179 brave British soldiers who died in that war. They died because we in the House of Commons made a decision in March 2003. They would not have died otherwise. Many of their relatives have expressed, some of them publicly, the torment of not knowing whether those soldiers died in vain. They deserve some closure for their grief. That is why every word and syllable of the letters should be published.
The second reason is our soldiers. They are entitled to know that when Parliament decides to order them into battle and to put their lives at risk that that decision has been made on the basis of the most rigorous examination of the evidence and not on untruths or politicians’ vanity. The other people who need to know are the hon. Members of this House. Unless we can discover what happened in 2003, are we in a position to judge new wars now?
However, there was a worse decision than the one in 2003 and it was made without a vote in the House. In 2006, we moved into Helmand province on the basis of a claim that we were going to clear up the opium trade and to perform a bit of reconstruction and with the hope that not a shot would be fired and that we would be out in three years. There was a debate about that in this room, during which one Member said that it would be like the charge of the Light Brigade and would stir up a hornets’ nest. This time it was:
Bush to the right of them,
Blair to the left of them,
Holler’d and thunder’d,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die,
Into the valley of Death,
Into the mouth of Helmand,
Drove the five thousand.
The number of soldiers killed in combat in 2006 before we went into Helmand was two. The number now is 463, which is three times the number who died in the charge of the Light Brigade. We should look not only at declarations of war, but at what happens when we escalate wars. If we had had a vote on going into Afghanistan, it would have been supported by perhaps 95% of Members, but it was the escalation that did the great harm. We must take that into account when we look to war.
The extraordinary events of 29 August 2013 have changed Parliament for the better and represent a change of view in that no longer do we have absolute trust in the claims of Prime Ministers in such situations. History will tell us the real tale of what happened during that week, but there was unanimity among the leaders of the three main political parties at the beginning of the week that we needed to go into Syria. Soundings were taken, meetings were held by the political parties and different views were expressed, all of which meant that a majority could not be obtained in the House. Part of the reason was the collapse of faith in the decisions taken on Iraq and possibly on Helmand. The House made terrible blunders. MPs made those blunders and 620 soldiers died as a result.
We must have the courage to face the truth and to decide our future. We are still obsessed—it happens at the top of all parties—with punching above our weight as a nation, but doing so militarily means that we spend outside of our interests and we die beyond our responsibilities. We would be greatly helped as a nation and our soldiers would be well served were we to accept our position in the world. We are not the masters of the universe or the leaders of empires, as we were in the past. We should escape from the idea that every crisis in the world is Britain’s crisis when it often is not. Our involvement in such crises leads to intense problems and enormous costs and, in future, we must look to the decision on Helmand.
The report, “Parliament’s role in conflict decisions: a way forward”, cannot be expurgated in the same way as the Chilcot report. John Major, the former Prime Minister, has said that if the full truth is denied, the whole issue will continue to fester and doubts will persist. A Minister recently told the Public Administration Committee that Chilcot did not report to Ministers, but he reports to the Prime Minister. Changes can be made. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee offers this report to confirm the improvements that have taken place and to ensure that decisions on warfare are not made by a tiny clique at the top of the tree. Looking at the first world war, errors were made and the reasons for getting involved were extraordinarily trivial, resulting in a tremendous number of casualties. The Committee has served us well and we will serve our nation well if we look at Parliament’s role in warfare and strengthen it to the benefit of all.
Oral Answers to Questions
Paul Flynn Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
I note that the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) is sitting in a diagonally opposite position to his usual preferred berth.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
T14. It is difficult to hit a moving target, Mr Speaker. There are enormous variations in the numbers registered by electoral registration officers: the best figure is in north Wales, where up to 97% of eligible voters are registered, but it is clear that some areas are not doing the same job. What will the Deputy Prime Minister do to encourage these English laggards to catch up with the splendid example set by Wales?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Of course, we need to see the highest rates of registration possible. That is why, as we move towards individual voter registration, there will be several opportunities to transfer people automatically on to the new register and to make sure that there are door-to-door visits by electoral registration officers to give people the opportunity to register properly. I believe we are putting in place all the belt-and-braces measures we can to make sure that registration levels increase.
Oral Answers to Questions
Paul Flynn Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Hurd
Those are not of course the only traditions that the left has abandoned over the years; it is very hard to see what is left. I am very proud that Government Members are leading the work to encourage more mutualisation, particularly in relation to encouraging people to spin out the services they currently offer inside the public sector, and to offer them and improve them as public sector mutuals.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
2. What his policy is on the outsourcing of civil service jobs.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
In common with the previous Government, which the hon. Gentleman supported from time to time, the current Government do not have a dogmatic view on outsourcing, either in favour of it or against it.
Paul Flynn
For the past 10 years, shared services has been one of the major job successes in providing more than 1,000 decent jobs in my constituency, at great value to the taxpayer. Why is the Minister trying to wreck a winning team?
Mr Maude
We are actually seeking to build on what is good. It is now 10 years since Sir Peter Gershon, under the previous Government, proposed a fast move towards genuinely shared services. That did not happen for eight years. Since 2012, we have made significant progress in genuinely creating a handful of shared service centres for Government. They are building on the shared service centre in Swansea and others. If we create genuinely successful, highly efficient organisations there, they have every opportunity of winning other business and therefore of creating new jobs and new prosperity in those areas.
Shared Services Connected Ltd
Paul Flynn Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
The Minister for Civil Society (Mr Nick Hurd)
It is a great pleasure, Mr Owen, to serve under your chairmanship, I think for the first time. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on securing the debate and on the sincerity with which he has presented his arguments on behalf of concerned constituents. I totally understand where that comes from; if I were in his shoes, I would probably utter similar sentiments.
The hon. Gentleman endeared himself to me by opening with a quote from the Prime Minister. Of course, the Prime Minister was right in saying that jobs are coming back. I do not have the statistics for Sheffield, Newport or other constituencies represented on the Opposition Benches, but it is undeniable that since the 2010 election, more than 1 million private sector jobs have been created in this country. We have record numbers of people in work.
Paul Flynn
On a point of order, Mr Owen. Is it in order for a Minister to cast a slur over a Member by claiming that he was not present at the beginning of a debate without giving that Member an opportunity to explain that he was at a Select Committee meeting and that, had he left, it would not have been quorate?
Albert Owen (in the Chair)
The hon. Gentleman has been in Parliament an awfully long time and he knows that that is not a point of order for the Chair. It is up to the Minister whether he gives way to any Member in the Chamber. The Minister indicated that he would not give way to the hon. Gentleman, but he has since done so to other Members.
Oral Answers to Questions
Paul Flynn Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
9. What recent discussions he has had with the First Minister of Wales on maximising tourism opportunities in south-East Wales.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Stephen Crabb)
The Secretary of State has had a number of discussions with the First Minister, in particular on the opportunities that hosting the NATO summit will bring.
Paul Flynn
Newport’s magnificent Tredegar House trebled its numbers of visitors last year, and visitors to the city’s Roman baths, amphitheatre and museum are at a record high. What will the Minister do to encourage more people to have the unique, enjoyable experience of a visit to Newport?
Stephen Crabb
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is clear that hosting the NATO summit is a huge opportunity to showcase the best of Wales, and particularly south-east Wales. I am delighted to tell the hon. Gentleman that my colleagues in the Wales Offices have recently visited both those tourist attractions and are well aware of the opportunities they afford for visitors to the summit.
Oral Answers to Questions
Paul Flynn Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Greg Clark
I do support that. It is very important that small businesses should have access to good internet connections. It is right to point out that even in our big cities and urban areas where connections are available, they are not comprehensive enough: about 5% of premises in urban areas cannot be connected to a high-speed connection. That is a very important feature to be corrected and I hope the local growth deal will do so.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)
As Deputy Prime Minister, I support the Prime Minister on a full range of Government policy and initiatives. Within Government, I take special responsibility for this Government’s programme of political and constitutional reform.
Paul Flynn
When he was a senior tax civil servant, Mr Dave Hartnett met the head of Deloitte 48 times, including one meeting in which he reduced the tax liability of one of its clients from £6 billion to £1.25 billion. The Public Administration Committee issued a report about the revolving door and its dangers 20 months ago. Why have the Government not replied?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Of course the Government will reply to the report, but, much more importantly, in Budget after Budget and autumn statement after autumn statement, we have taken steps to close the huge loopholes in our tax system that we inherited from the Labour party. We have recouped billions of pounds into the Treasury’s coffers that otherwise would have gone walkabout because of such large-scale tax avoidance and, indeed, illegal tax evasion.
The Attorney-General
As my hon. Friend is aware, and as the Prime Minister made clear at the G7 summit, the United Kingdom Government will, along with its partners, look at a range of sanctions and responses, depending on how the crisis unfolds and whether the Russian Government seek to de-escalate it. The best answer I can give is that nothing is ruled out at all.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
4. What plans he has to reduce the running costs of the Law Officers’ departments.
The Solicitor-General (Oliver Heald)
Over the next two financial years, the total expenditure of the Law Officers’ departments will be reduced through measures such as shared legal services, reduction in non-front-line staff, increased digitalisation, rationalisation of estates and more efficient court listing practices.
Paul Flynn
How much is the Department spending to contest freedom of information and court decisions, in order to suppress information to the public? The claim has been made that information is available that would show that an important person is unfit to do his future job. Should we not allow the lobbying letters of Prince Charles to be made public?
The Solicitor-General
The hon. Gentleman raises a case that involves issues of constitutional significance, including upholding Parliament’s intentions for the freedom of information regime and the Government’s ability to protect information in the public interest. It is important that the Government continue to fight the case in question. To protect public funds, if we are successful at the next stage of the legal proceedings, we would expect The Guardian to meet our legal costs in full.
Tributes to Tony Benn
Paul Flynn Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
It was a heart-sinking moment when Tony announced that he was leaving the Commons, but he did not retire from his convictions—that is not part of the Benn DNA.
We are right to see Tony as somebody who did not allow himself to be tyrannised by the traditions of this House. This morning is a unique occasion in many ways. Thanks to you, Mr Speaker, we are allowed to express, as every human community wants to do, our regret, admiration and gratitude. In the past, there was just a bald announcement when we lost a Member or a former Member; there was no chance to pay the sort of marvellous tributes that have been paid this morning.
I want to make one point, which is about the contribution that Tony made to trying to change the face of this place, including the way it looks. Aneurin Bevan gave this advice to working class MPs who came here: “When you walk down the corridors of power, you are walking in the dust of history, but it is not your history; it is not the history of your class or your people.”
Against all the rules, Tony fixed up a plaque to Emily Wilding Davison. No one allowed him to do it. He went around with his screwdriver and installed a plaque that he had made himself in a much sought-after spot in the House where people like to go. He did the same for other celebrated people. He spoke too of the many who not only were not friends of democracy but who actually obstructed the democratic process but who are recorded and celebrated in statues and other works of art throughout the House.
Some time ago, when a new name was sought for St Stephen’s tower, Big Ben, some people suggested that we should call it the Chartist tower, or the Suffragette tower, or, even better, Big Benn. Alas, we did not.
I rejoice in Tony Benn’s final book. We remember that lovely evening in your house, Mr Speaker, when we heard him speak about “A Blaze of Autumn Sunshine”, which was an inspired title. The book was lovingly edited by Ruth Winstone and is a story about the purgatory of the human condition. It is a story about this House, written in a manner superior to any other—yes, the dark side, the malice and the treachery are there, but those long pages also express the nobility of the political vocation that we all have. That is something that we should bear in mind.
He had a marvellous career. It is with great sadness, but also celebration and gratitude, that we say: “Farewell, Tony—orator, teacher, friend, inspirer. Rest in peace, comrade.”
Oral Answers to Questions
Paul Flynn Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
8. What discussions he has had with the First Minister on increasing tourism opportunities in Newport in the light of the NATO summit in Celtic Manor in 2014.
The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr David Jones)
Hosting the NATO summit in Newport later this year allows us to showcase Wales on a global stage, and I—and the First Minister, I am sure—will do everything possible to ensure that Wales capitalises on the tourism opportunities it should bring.
Paul Flynn
The delegates will be guests in what is probably the best hotel in Britain, the Celtic Manor. Will they have the chance to visit the other major attractions of Newport—the Roman remains at Caerleon, the magnificent transporter bridge and the splendid Tredegar house—so that they can have a rich and unforgettable experience in Newport?
Commonwealth Meeting and the Philippines
Paul Flynn Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The Department for International Development and the Secretary of State have done a superb job—in marshalling resources in response to the crisis, in working with the Ministry of Defence to get HMS Daring and then HMS Illustrious alongside, in generating income and money to go directly to the appeal, and in making sure that we work with our partners to do that. There are now two teams out there to assist with the Foreign Office effort, and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has just told me that some of our experts on victim identification will be part of an Interpol team that will be there soon as well.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
The Prime Minister’s call for an inquiry into the terrible events in Sri Lanka would carry a great deal more weight if he had not obstructed the report on the Iraq war. The Chilcot inquiry demanded papers to reach a conclusion on why, 10 years ago, the House made a decision to join Bush’s war in Iraq, with the loss of 179 British lives.
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman is on a different ski slope altogether today.