Standing Orders (Public Business)

Tommy Sheppard Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

I would be the first to acknowledge that the decisions of this Parliament over the last two decades to devolve political power within the United Kingdom have created an anomaly in terms of the governance of England. There are many ways for that anomaly to be solved. We could have an English Parliament. We could have English legislative assemblies. We could even consider giving a quasi-legislative function to some of the existing structures of local government. They would give English people more power and more control over their own lives. These proposals do not.

These proposals are not an exercise in the decentralisation of the state and they are not an exercise in the devolution of political power. They are a political tactic by the Conservative party to try to pander to the English nationalism of the UK Independence party and to try to shore up haemorrhaging support from its right flank. I say that to the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) and his colleagues here today. I say to the English people: be very careful about what they are promising, because they are abusing your trust. They are hijacking your aspiration for their own political ends.

[Mr MacNeil]

My hon. Friend is making a fine speech and he is absolutely correct. What we are seeing here today from the Tory Benches is a grievance culture. They never hesitate to point at us and talk about a grievance culture. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is the grievance culture right in front of us?

[Tommy Sheppard]

I agree completely with my hon. Friend. The process Tories are engaged in—it is fair enough; it is a political party and I understand that—would be all well and good and just so much political banter were it not for the point that in doing so they are trying to corrupt and degenerate the procedures of this institution.

[Alberto Costa]

The hon. Gentleman—the Member for Edinburgh East—does not speak for any constituency in England. It is the people of England who voted for the Conservative party. They voted for a manifesto that clearly said English votes for English laws.

[Tommy Sheppard]

And we know that you know that we know that you never thought you would have to implement this proposal. Now you have a dilemma on your hands. Here is the nub of the problem: the Tories are trying to make this Parliament be two things. As well as being the legislator for the United Kingdom, they are trying to make it be the legislator for England. That cannot be done without creating two classes of MP.

[Martin John Docherty]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Tommy Sheppard]

I would rather press on, if my hon. Friend does not mind.

At this point in time, all MPs are equal. I can vote on everything the Leader of the House can vote on in this Chamber. If the proposals go through, from tonight onwards I will be denied the opportunity to vote on behalf of the people who elected me on matters that may affect them. That is wrong. [Interruption.] If Conservative Members do not believe it, look at proposed Standing Order No. 83N(4). It describes not just a process of creating an additional layer of consent, but a process of vetoing the opinions of some Members of this House. It says quite clearly that if the consent is not given, then the matter goes no further and the Bill “shall not pass”.

What is being described is a process that will work like this: a piece of proposed legislation will come before the House and in the middle of our proceedings there will come a point where the representatives of the people of Scotland will be asked to leave the room and take no further part in the discussion.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tommy Sheppard]

I will press on, I am afraid. I have already given way.

If, in the process of your discussion without us, you decide that the proposed legislation will not pass any further, we get no further say in the matter. That is exactly what is wrong with these proposals.

There is another point on which there has been much comment. Who decides whether a matter is of relevance to our constituents? It has been proposed that we have this invidious role for the Speaker, pushing him into what can only be a legal conundrum. I ask the Leader of the House: what happens if there is a disagreement? What happens if the people who elected me in Edinburgh believe that something is being discussed in this House that is relevant to them and they should have a right to vote on it? They will have no opportunity but to seek redress in the courts through the process of judicial review. Is that really the conundrum in which we wish to place the Speaker? I hope not.

As remarked upon, why should this apply only to Members of the House of Commons? I would love to see the House of Lords abolished, but it exists at the moment, and is it not remarkable that of all the constitutional imperfections in our system, we are discussing this one, rather than the fact that most Members of Parliament are not even elected in the first place? Conservative Members will say that those Members do not represent territorial or geographic interests. It is part of their collective self-delusion that they do. From the Marquess of Lothian to the Lords of Springburn, Bearsden and Glenscorrodale, they believe they represent the communities in which they operate, yet there is no suggestion that we limit their powers to debate and vote on legislation. Why just pick on us? The answer can only be: this is payback for the general election, when the SNP won convincingly in Scotland and the Conservative party won only 14% of the vote.

I know it is in your manifesto, but just because it is in your manifesto does not make it right—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I do not wish to interrupt the eloquence of the hon. Gentleman’s flow or the flow of his eloquence, but I gently remind him that it was not in my manifesto.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tommy Sheppard]

I apologise, Mr Speaker. How should I phrase it then? The hon. Members opposite, in their collective majesty, have a manifesto commitment that they are trying to discharge, but just because it is in their manifesto does not make it right. They should be careful what they do here. They talk about us creating dissent in the UK. These proposals, if they go through, will drive a wedge between our two countries greater than any that I would drive between them.

Human Rights (Joint Committee)

Tommy Sheppard Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

I am most grateful to the hon. Lady, but here is an obvious solution: why not change the rules? Why are we bound to having parity with the unelected, absurd House down there, which represents absolutely nobody? She represents a constituency, and I represent a constituency. We represent real people and have an interest in a Committee of this place; they represent absolutely nobody. It is an absurd and ridiculous institution that should have no parity with this House.

There are 12 places on this Committee. There are six Conservative Members and four Labour Members. Who is next? There is one Liberal Democrat and one Cross Bencher. Now, we have just had an election, and the Liberal Democrats, roundly thrashed and rejected by the vast majority of the country, were left with a rump of eight MPs. Yet the Liberal Democrats have been given a place on this Committee, ahead of the third party of the United Kingdom—the Scottish National party with a 56-seat victory in the last election. How can that possibly be right?

There is even a Cross Bencher on the Joint Committee. I do not even know what Cross Benchers do. I think they are somehow supposed to be neutral or arbitrary, and are appointed on the basis of the greatness and goodness they bring, but why is a Cross Bencher ahead of directly elected Members from the third party of this House? I ask again, how can this possibly be right?

What really gets me about this affair is that this Committee is vitally important. Mr Speaker, I know that you take a keen interest in the working of the Joint Committee. It exists to scrutinise Government Bills for compatibility with human rights, to scrutinise the Government’s response to judgments on human rights and, importantly, it looks for opportunities to enhance human rights across the United Kingdom. Surely this House wants the third party of the UK to play a part in that process. I simply cannot understand why it would not want that to happen.

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend makes a good case regarding the democratic outrage that the people of Scotland will feel at being excluded from discussion of a matter about which they feel extremely strongly. Is it not also the case that the proposal takes no account of a new situation—namely, that for first time in our history, the third party in this House does not, as a matter of political principle, seek representation in the other place? That puts us at a double disadvantage when it comes to Joint Committees of both Houses.

[Pete Wishart]

That is such a good point, and I am coming on to it. I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding me that we do not take places in the House of Lords. If it is necessary to be an elected Lord to get on an important Committee of this House, where does that leave democracy in this country? How can people who have no democratic mandate—they have been elected by absolutely nobody—take precedence over elected Members of this House? We are being placed in a ridiculous and absurd situation. If the only way to get on the Committee is to take places in an unelected House of Lords, most people would regard that as an absurd situation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Patrick Grady]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. We heard the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) making a point of order earlier in the day about precisely that matter: that the House of Lords might choose to undermine or vote against the current Government’s policy. I do not know whether it was him or someone else, but it was suggested that the solution to that, rather than abolishing the House of Lords or electing Members of the House of Lords and giving it a mandate, was simply to create yet more peers to outnumber us even more. I am sure the irony was not lost on those of us who were sitting in the Royal Gallery yesterday: the question of where elected mandates come from.

As my colleagues have stated, the human rights framework is at the core of the Scotland Act 1998 and it is fundamental to the new democracy that exists north of the border. Given that the Government seem determined to undermine the Human Rights Act here in this Parliament, it is even more concerning that we are not being given a voice on the Joint Committee—they are refusing to give a voice to the third party. We have a democratic right, as democratically elected Members of this House, and a duty to look out for the human rights of our constituents. Tomorrow, the Government are going to force through Standing Orders that will further undermine our rights, and it raises the question: where is this respect agenda? Where is the respect for the decision that the people of Scotland made last year when they said to stay in the UK, for now.

[Tommy Sheppard]

Does my hon. Friend agree that another context to this debate is the recent discussion in Scotland? Scottish people who voted to remain part of the United Kingdom were given every assurance that Scotland would play a full role within that Union, but they now see not only no SNP representation, but no Scottish representation on this Joint Committee.

[Patrick Grady]

Absolutely. I completely agree with my hon. Friend. The Labour party could nominate its Member from Scotland for the Committee—perhaps even the Liberal Democrats could do so as well. The reality is that this matter is not simply about the third party, but about a complete lack of geographical representation, and the point that my hon. Friend makes is very well made.

If the Government are serious about the respect agenda and about respecting the decisions that have been made by the people in Scotland both in the referendum last year and in the election this year, I strongly encourage them to reconsider the decision that they are making tonight, to listen to the constructive suggestions that have been made and to bring this matter back when there is a decent proposal that represents and respects the views of the people of Scotland.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

Mr Speaker, you will recall that I devoted my maiden speech to the subject of human rights. In it, I spoke of the importance with which the Scottish Government and the people of Scotland regard human rights.

Human rights are universal and they should concern us all in the United Kingdom. As has been said already, this Committee is supposed to be considering human rights in the United Kingdom, yet there is not one single Scottish MP on it. How can that be right? It is not just an issue of disrespecting the SNP as a third party in the House, but an issue of disrespect to the Scottish electorate. [Interruption.] I see Labour Members shaking their heads, and saying that they will not support us on this. I say to them: do not forget the consequences of their previous disrespect for the Scottish electorate. They heard them loud and clear on 7 May this year. The Labour party wants to make a comeback in Scotland. Not arguing for the Scottish electorate’s representatives in this House to be represented on a Committee that considers UK-wide matters is not the way to go about it.

The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) mentioned that we are shortly to be looking at the repeal of the Human Rights Act. In Scotland, the Human Rights Act is part of a larger picture, because the rights in the European convention on human rights are written into the devolution settlement by virtue of the Scotland Act 1998.

In Scotland, we have a national action plan for human rights and a UN-accredited human rights commission. There is a commitment to human rights extending beyond civil and political rights to economic, social and cultural human rights. We really do have something that we could bring to this Committee.

The potential withdrawal from the European convention on human rights is still a live issue. The Justice Secretary, when he gave evidence to the Select Committee on Justice earlier in the summer, said that he could not guarantee that we would remain within the convention. The Joint Committee will debate whether or not the United Kingdom will remain within a convention that underpins the devolution system settlement in Scotland, yet Members seem content not to have a single Scottish MP on it. That is frankly unacceptable.

During our independence referendum last year, there was great debate about human rights and a concern at that stage that if the Conservatives were to win an election in this country they intended to repeal the Human Rights Act. Those of us who voted yes wanted to write human rights into the constitution of an independent Scotland, and I know that one day that will happen, but for now we are part of the UK. Last year, during the referendum, the Prime Minister invited Scots not to leave the UK but to stay and lead the UK. How can we possibly even contribute to the UK’s debate about human rights in this House if there is not a single Scottish Member of Parliament on the Committee?

The Prime Minister has also spoken regularly of a respect agenda, but 58 out of the 59 Scottish MPs elected in May are from parties that oppose the repeal of the Human Rights Act and wish to remain in the ECHR; 56 were elected as SNP MPs. We are the third party in this House and it is unthinkable that the Liberal Democrats, when they were the third party, would have been excluded from a Committee such as this. Tomorrow, we will debate changes to Standing Orders to exclude Scottish MPs from votes in this House. Why can we not debate changing Standing Orders to include Scottish MPs on this Committee, which considers UK-wide matters?

Others have spoken of the House of Lords and there might well be Members of that House on the Committee who are Scots or who live in Scotland. They might even own an estate in Scotland that they visit for the hunting and fishing. Either way, I do not care what their background is and where they live. The point is that they are not democratically elected by the people who live in Scotland, and are therefore not accountable to the people of Scotland and they cannot speak for them. I and my SNP colleagues—and, indeed, the Labour MP, the Liberal Democrat MP, and the Tory MP who represent Scottish constituencies—speak for the people of Scotland. There is no doubt who the people of Scotland wanted to win the general election in May, however. It is almost unprecedented for a party to get 50% of the vote in our system. It is frankly an insult to the people of Scotland not to include a single Scottish MP on the Committee.

[Tommy Sheppard]

My hon. and learned Friend makes a very good point. Does she not also agree that the debate about whether this place and this Government respect the views of the people of Scotland is very much a live one? With the vow and everything else, and with good will being tested, is it not the case that the Government would be better placed trying to include the people of Scotland’s representatives in the Committee rather than excluding them if they want to reassure the Scots of their bona fides towards them?

[Joanna Cherry]

I could not agree more. As I said earlier, the Prime Minister has spoken often of a respect agenda and we were told during the referendum campaign that we are an equal partner in this Union. Where is the evidence of that when not a single Scottish MP is on a Committee that considers one of the most important issues before Parliament this Session?

English Votes for English Laws

Tommy Sheppard Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

First, I want to deal with one or two absurd concepts that have been put forward, and I am going to speak quite bluntly in this debate because I think an enormous amount of fog has been generated and people are swirling around inside the fog without facing up to the realities of what we are talking about.

The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) and others—including Nicola Sturgeon only yesterday—have repeatedly said, “We don’t want two classes of Members of Parliament and two classes of citizens.” That is complete and total rubbish. There is no such thing as two classes of Members of Parliament. A devolution Act was passed in 1998, in which I took a very active part, and it contained a whole series of devolved functions, some of which have not even been mentioned in this debate because everyone just talks about health and education. There is a whole list of those functions, and then there are the reserved matters.

This is an over-simplified debate. The UK Parliament with the agreement—not the connivance, but the agreement—of Scottish Members of Parliament who were in this House, who were Labour Members at the time, came to an arrangement that was part of an Act passed by the United Kingdom Parliament as part of the United Kingdom Union, and it did not create two classes. It has got within it two separate functions. Any extended powers under the deal made at the time of the Scottish referendum will extend them by agreement. I personally think some of them go way beyond what was necessary, but that is another story. It is clear, however, that when somebody goes into an MSP’s surgery in Edinburgh in relation to a matter that has been devolved to the Scottish Parliament, they expect to get answers and action in respect of those devolved functions. They certainly do not expect the same in respect of what are clearly English matters, however, and vice versa.

As I said to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire, the Scottish people would be outraged if we went up to Scotland and camped outside the Parliament there and said, “We insist that we come along and legislate on matters that have been devolved to Scotland.” They would think that was an outrage and I would agree with them, but that is exactly what SNP Members are attempting to do with respect to us. We in the United Kingdom have an absolute right, as a result of an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament to which Scottish MPs at the time were not complicit but were in complete agreement, that there would be devolved functions. The SNP simply cannot have its cake and eat it.

There is another factor. We are paying for a lot of this—let us be blunt about it. [Interruption.] Oh yes we are. The Barnett formula, which many of us will go along with—[Interruption.] Listen to me carefully: the Barnett formula, which many of us—I am not saying everybody—will go along with, is why, as things currently stand, every single person in Scotland gets £1,600 more than people in England and Wales. Even Lord Barnett—who, sadly, died the other day—said the whole thing needed to be completely revised.

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

I think the hon. Gentleman might be somewhat confused. Does he not understand that there is a difference between devolving the authority to legislate to a different body, such as the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly, and trying to change this Parliament so that it could fulfil a similar function? If he was talking about devolving powers over English laws to a different body, say an English Parliament, we would have no objection to that. Instead, he is trying to turn this Chamber into two things: a United Kingdom Parliament and an English Parliament. That is a shoddy compromise that will make us second-class Members of this House.

[Sir William Cash]

May I speak quite bluntly? As it happens, I have great affection for Members of the Scottish National party. They know what they are fighting for and what they want, and it is called independence. Let us not be fooled, however. The hon. Gentleman has put his finger on it. The plain fact is that SNP Members do not like being outvoted in the United Kingdom Parliament. That is what this boils down to.

The hon. Gentleman has touched on what “devolution” actually means. He may or may not agree with this, but the greatest constitutional experts, Bradley and Ewing, define it as follows:

“Devolution is not a term of art in constitutional law. Unlike federalism,”—

on which the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire constantly harps—

“the nature of devolution within the United Kingdom depends not on a written constitution, but on the legislation authorising the devolution and on the practice that develops on the use of the new structure for decision-making.”

They go on to say that

“devolution has been defined as involving ‘the delegation of central government powers without the relinquishment of sovereignty’”.

That is what the greatest experts say. If SNP Members go off and speak to their constitutional law experts in Scotland, they will find that they do not disagree. Mr Ewing comes from Scotland anyway.