Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill: Committee Stage

Afzal Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

Here we go again. Yet another debate on the Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill and yet another attempt from the Government to thwart it and stop any sort of progress. I listened carefully to the speech of the Leader of the House, and it was extraordinary. It was a sort of “Know your place, Parliament” assertion of the rights of the Crown, making the distinction somehow that this Government are not going to be accountable to Parliament in whatever this Parliament chooses to do. I have never heard a speech quite like it, and I hope that when the Leader of the House has a look at it in Hansard she will reflect on what she said. I have never known the House to be lectured in such a way about its rights and responsibilities. We are Members of Parliament, elected directly by our constituents, and we come here to make sure that their interest is properly and effectively represented. To be told just to know our place in the House and allow the Government to do whatever they want was quite disgraceful. I hope that the Leader of the House reflects on what she said today.

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that providing a money resolution does not spend the money? All it does is allow Members to discuss the Bill line by line. That is what the Government are not allowing.

[Pete Wishart]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) made that point to the Leader of the House. The money resolution does not commit the Government to anything in money terms. It allows the Bill to progress. At any point during that process the Government can come along with new clauses, and might have legitimate grounds for making sure that the Bill is delayed. I accept and respect that, but let the Bill progress for goodness’ sake.

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[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

We can all agree that boundary changes are needed. Our current boundaries are based on an electoral register that is 18 years old. There is, however, a question as to how we go about it. We have a boundary review going on at the moment, which is due to report to Parliament in September. The 2017 election gave us a minority Government who have spent the past year hobbling from week to week trying to keep themselves together. This weak Government do not have the support to win a vote in the autumn and push through controversial constitutional changes. The Tory-dominated Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee said as much in its recent report. It concluded that the Government “cannot be confident” that the House of Commons will support the implementation of the Boundary Commission’s proposals when they come before us in the autumn.

The question we are faced with now is this: do we let the Government continue in their delusion that if they put off addressing the issue until the autumn the enormous opposition to the current review will magically melt away, or do we deal with reality and put in place a realistic cross-party compromise that delivers new boundaries before the next election? My private Member’s Bill is a serious attempt at the second option, but it has been frustrated by the Government’s procedural manoeuvrings.

My Bill does three major things. First, it retains the 650 MPs we have at the moment. Secondly, it provides for boundary reviews every 10 years. Thirdly, it ensures that the 2 million people who have registered to vote since 2015 have their voices heard in the boundary review. The referendum and 2017 general election saw huge surges in voter participation, primarily among young people. I am passionate that they should be represented in the boundaries that will shape the result of future elections, but the Government are not interested in encouraging participation in our democracy. Recent voter ID pilots disenfranchised legitimate voters, many of whom already faced barriers to democratic engagement. All the while, the Government have been padding out the unelected House of Lords to avoid defeat on proposed Brexit legislation.

[Mr Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his Bill. I think it does have some good points. First, on voter ID, in my Woking constituency the turnout actually increased and we had very strict voter ID in place. Secondly, I would like to ask him a question. During all the years the Labour party was in power over the past 40 or 50 years, was there any occasion when it supported a private Member’s Bill on a constitutional or parliamentary boundary issue from a Member of the main Opposition, or, if it passed Second Reading, gave it a money resolution? Any Bill at all over the past 50 years?

[Afzal Khan]

I am not sure how relevant that is to this discussion, but I am a new Member and I do not know the whole history.

The Government are happy to increase the size of the unelected Chamber, at greater cost to the public purse, while cutting the elected side and discouraging participation in what goes on here.

On the money resolution, many people are put off getting involved in politics and Parliament because it is so difficult to understand what goes on here. The private Members’ Bill process is arguably the worst culprit. The process is clearly broken. The public were rightly outraged by how easily the upskirting Bill was blocked last week, even when it had the support of the Government. Similarly outrageous is how easily the Government can block a private Member’s Bill, even when it commands overwhelming cross-party support. Today marks 200 days since my Bill passed its Second Reading unanimously. Our Committee has so far met five times. We have had discussions about money resolutions, the financial sovereignty of the Crown, “Erskine May” and the Bishop of Chester, but we have not yet discussed a single line of the Bill.

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about the difficulty of getting private Members’ Bills through. I will have a private Member’s Bill on 23 November—it is No. 21 of 23, with the House set to sit for only five and a half hours. There is absolutely no chance of the Bill being debated and we will then be in a situation where it has to come back another time. Is one of the solutions to have more sitting Fridays for private Members’ Bills to allow more time for them to become law?

[Afzal Khan]

I would be quite happy if the House decided to have more Friday sittings.

I never expected to become an expert in such a narrow aspect of parliamentary procedure, but unfortunately I have spent the last few months reading up on money resolutions, rather than working towards a compromise on boundaries. I have learned that there is a clear parliamentary convention that the Government bring a money resolution after Second Reading of a private member’s Bill. In 2015, a Government Minister reaffirmed this, saying that

“once the House has given a private Member’s Bill a Second Reading, the convention is that the Government, even when they robustly oppose it, always table a money resolution”.—[Official Report, 3 November 2015; Vol. 601, c. 926.]

Since their devastating failure at the general election, the Government have gone against their words. Despite money resolutions having been tabled for many Bills further behind in the queue, none has been forthcoming for this Bill. Too weak to defeat my Bill on a vote, the Government are hiding behind procedure. With complete disregard for democracy, this minority Government are abusing their Executive power to defy the will of the House. We have had business questions, points of order, an urgent question and an emergency debate on this already. These have surprised even me by the extent of cross-party agreement. Opposition parties were united in calling on the Government to table a money resolution. Conservative Back Benchers were lining up to condemn their own Ministers.

It is a shame that we have been pushed to table this motion today. It would be much better for the Government to respect procedure, the will of the House and the will of their party, and bring forward a money resolution, but, given the Government’s continued refusal, we have been forced into this position. The Government’s time is up; we must make progress on this important Bill. To honour the conventions of the House and the will of Parliament, Members must support this motion.

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[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

It is a pleasure to close this Opposition day debate. I welcome the contributions from hon. and right hon. Members from across the House. May I take this opportunity to welcome the new hon. Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby), who I can see in her place? I hope she has enjoyed this afternoon’s debate, in the first of many weeks in which she will be participating in the House’s business. It is a pleasure to see her in her place. As a fellow by-election winner, I can sympathise with her, given her no doubt frenetic first week. I wish her every success in her work, as does the whole House.

We heard from the inimitable hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who gave us a tour of his views on many things and who likes to paint himself as a peacemaker. I for one in the Government would welcome that role from him. I look forward to spending many more pleasurable hours in his company, talking about, for example, the frameworks that we will put in place on our departure from the European Union and how they will add to the powers of the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and a future Northern Ireland Assembly.

I also welcome the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who helpfully reminded the House that the debate on the order relating to the current boundary review is but four sitting weeks away. Like him, I think that that is a reasonable period to be able to anticipate.

I thank the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan), who rightfully spoke on his Bill. May I say what a pleasure it is to spend time with him and the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) every Wednesday morning? We are endlessly entertained by the hon. Member for Glasgow East, who most recently did his best to list every single Member of the House of Lords. As you will know, Mr Speaker, it is not in order in any debate in this House simply to read out a list, so he was gently guided back towards a better form of debate.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), who reminded us that Cornwall and the issues of the Cornish must never be shared and must never be split asunder. Only a few nights ago, we had a debate I remember very clearly, relating to another part of my portfolio, on the representation of the Cornish national identity, which I look forward to reprising with him.

We heard from the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), who I cannot see in his place at this moment and from my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean). She reminded us of the height of public opinion in 2009 and 2010, which was when I entered the House, arguably as a result of the expenses scandal, in the by-election I had the great privilege to win. We also heard from the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew), who put on record some very serious points, and from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson). He was extremely helpful in enlightening the House about the rule of G.K. Chesterton.

Let me add to this list the comments of the hon. Member for Glasgow East, who I have already mentioned, and the hon. Member for Stone, who reminded us of what it means to fulfil constituency duties in a considerably larger geographical constituency than many of the rest of us. I thank the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), who put some issues on the record with passion. I admire and respect that passion, and I am glad she came here today to do that.

Let me address some of the issues raised in the debate before returning to the motion. A number of points were made about the procedures of the House for private Members’ Bills. I will not go into that in detail, because it is not my place to do so. It is a matter of procedure. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House made a few remarks about that earlier on, but I think it is a matter for another day.

Remarks were made about reform of the House of Lords. The hon. Members for Glasgow East and for Stroud and I, with others, had a debate on this matter only yesterday in Westminster Hall—what a long time ago that already seems. In that debate, I had cause to remind Members, and I will do so again now, that the size of the House of Lords is smaller than when the current Prime Minister took office. To all those hon. Members who have said that the House of Lords has grown, I say in fact it has not; it has become smaller.

[Afzal Khan]

What is the Conservative party’s position in relation to the upper House? Why are you stuffing it with the unelected when you are trying to cut the elected?

[Mr Speaker]

I have not been stuffing the upper House for anybody. I am not doing that. The Government can answer for their own position, of course.

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[Chloe Smith]

I welcome the opportunity to add to this discussion, but the question of whether we can learn from the mechanisms of other Parliaments and Governments might have to be a debate for another day.

The mechanisms of this Parliament are that a Committee requires a money resolution to go through the substance of a Bill. If a Committee is allowed to consider the substance of a Bill in the absence of such a resolution, the Crown, through its Ministers, loses its important constitutional right to define the purposes for which that money is required. That is not just about being able to make progress; it is not just about saying, “Don’t worry about the money. It’ll come later”; as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House set out earlier, to do this to a Committee would strip it of the ability to consider matters properly. As she set out, without such a resolution, a Committee would just be aimlessly wandering through a Bill with or without amendments but not properly guided by a money resolution. At best, it would be theoretical, at worst farcical, and that is not what our constituents expect of us.

The motion questions the role of the Executive—that is regardless of what party is in power. The fundamentals of any Government are that they take decisions and are accountable for them—to taxpayers where it is about how public money is spent. That is what it means to be a responsible Government. From what I see on the Order Paper today, I do not think the Opposition believe in responsible government; they believe in political points scoring. The House runs on its conventions and the assurance that centuries-old practice and procedure is there to protect the rights of all parliamentarians. The Government respect those rights of the House, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House set out earlier. To undermine that for party political reasons by tabling such a motion compromises the idea of the Opposition ever being a responsible Government. The Government are elected by the people and have the right and duty to initiate financial proceedings in the interests of the taxpayer.

As my right hon. Friend made absolutely clear at the start of the debate, the motion has nothing to do with the private Member’s Bill of the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton. I am sorry about that. I am sorry that he has come here today, as he does every Wednesday morning, to talk about a Bill for which the House has not granted him financial authority. I am sorry about that because he is a lovely man—we get on well on Wednesday mornings—and clearly has the support of his friends around him in the Chamber, but I am afraid that his party is letting him down with the motion on the Order Paper tonight. They are suggesting a huge move in the procedures of the House, all hung around his Bill. His Bill has merits, and those could be discussed, but there is not the time to do so.

[Afzal Khan]

I thank the Minister for her kind words. For me, this is not the fault of the Labour party. Every week for five weeks we have come here, only for nothing to be done. Not a single word in the Bill has been dealt with. That is the issue. That is where time is being wasted.

[Chloe Smith]

If that is the issue, the hon. Gentleman should have had a word with his Front-Bench team about laying a better Opposition day motion. This motion did not allow him to have those issues out today, although many hon. Members have enjoyed going through related subjects.