Information for Backbenchers on Statements

Alison Seabeck Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), who is and always has been a very assiduous Back Bencher. I am sure he can confirm to the House that he did not pre-brief the press on his speech.

We are debating an issue that is of real importance to the way in which the House, and thence our parliamentary democracy, functions. It is imperative for the debate not to be seen through the petty prism of party politics. This is not a partisan issue, and while attempts to portray it as such are understandable enough, given the general atmosphere in this place and the anger that can be generated among both MPs and our constituents when the ministerial code is broken, it would be wrong to do so.

Let me take up the theme initiated by the hon. Gentleman. A hallmark of your tenure thus far, Mr Speaker, is that you have acted to strengthen the role of the Back Bencher and have sought to reinforce the principles of the ministerial code, one of which is that important statements should be made here before they are made to the media. All too often, however, that convention is still flouted, and it is only through the granting of urgent questions that Members are able to represent their constituents’ interests in the face of an Executive who continue the age-old tradition of occasionally treating the House, and the Speaker, with discourtesy.

This is not a new problem, and I do not wish the debate to descend into a tit-for-tat event during which each side decries the other for having “started it first”. The issue has plagued the House under Governments of all colours—although I am pleased that the Liberals, who of course have not been in government until very recently, for once cannot play the “whiter than white” card. I am afraid that we are all implicated.

Announcements on the “Today” programme, to GMTV or to the newspapers are nothing new. Quite apart from the leaking of this year’s Budget, the Queen’s Speech and a raft of subsequent policies, our parliamentary history is littered with examples. In 1936—well before the 1947 leak—the Budget was leaked by Jimmy Thomas to another Conservative Member. He subsequently resigned not only his seat in the Cabinet, but his seat in the House.

[Mr Bone]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful speech. However, in that instance the Budget may not have been leaked. It is possible that there was an inadvertent interpretation of something that had been said. Even the suggestion that there had been a leak was enough for the Minister concerned to resign.

[Alison Seabeck]

Yes, indeed. It was a question of honour, and I think that we have lost a little of that.

As was mentioned by the hon. Member for Kettering, the 1947 Budget was famously leaked to the Star by the then Labour Chancellor, and the 1996 Budget somehow ended up in the hands of the Daily Mirror. As I have said, it is not a new problem; but it is a problem whose resolution is long overdue. We must take it upon ourselves, in this new Parliament, to ensure that the House is returned to the heart of substantive political life in this country.

I am not interested in the question of who has the worst track record, although it is useful to be able to draw on historical examples. I am interested in how we can bring the practice to an end. This was supposed to be the “clean slate” Parliament. A new Parliament with a large influx of new Members should have been able to start afresh. We have made many advances in the way in which we do things—I am thinking not least of the advent of a Committee devoted to Back-Bench business—but the continuation of the old way of doing things must be nipped in the bud.

The fact that Governments, Labour, Liberal and Tory, have leaked and pre-announced policy to the media in the past—advertently or inadvertently—does not give licence to the current incumbents to carry on in the same way. We are in the process of changing the balance of Parliament, so that it ceases to be a Parliament in which Back Benchers are here simply to cheer on their respective Front Benchers, and becomes one in which ministerial promotion is not seen as the sole career path, and in which Back Benchers can bring their experience to bear and ensure that their constituents’ interests are fully represented. We cannot do that if the House is not treated as the right and proper place for ministerial announcements and statements.

We all know that Ministers have a hard job to do. Working on red boxes at 2 am, as Ministers do in some of the busier Departments, is not fun, and mistakes do occur. Working in haste also leads to mistakes and poor scrutiny by Ministers of vital papers, as has happened in the last week or two. We must not mention the word “lists” too often. However, it is within the power of Ministers to prevent some of those mistakes from happening, and it is a shame—a real shame—that the Education Department’s Ministers did not check the detail of those lists more carefully. As has been pointed out, however, the Secretary of State had the good grace to apologise in person.

Back Benchers really should not have to sit by their radios every morning listening with bated breath to the “Today” programme while simultaneously channel-hopping across the various breakfast television media, simply to make certain that they know what is going on. Back Benchers ought to know that this House, and this House alone, is where statements are made, where policy will first be debated, and where their views will be heard before the media circus kicks off. The comments of the hon. Member for Kettering about the empty Press Gallery reinforce that point. If Ministers had to come to this House, those in the Press Gallery would be able to see the reaction of Back-Bench MPs and hear our constituents’ concerns being voiced directly. An empty Press Gallery is not a good sign.

[John Mann]

Does my hon. Friend agree that if this motion is passed tonight and a Minister transgresses in the near future, that would be a far greater offence than in recent years, and it would therefore require far stronger action from the House?

[Alison Seabeck]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and, if the motion is agreed to, it will be interesting to see how the Procedure Committee takes matters forward. I shall have some suggestions later in my comments as to exactly what some of the penalties might be.

[Stephen Pound]

My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) talked about sanctions, and my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) mentioned the case of J. H. Thomas. If I remember rightly, he was playing golf on the morning in question and made a joke about “Tee up”, which was interpreted to mean that there was going to be an additional duty on tea, which was correct. He was sued by the Thomas Lipton company because of the consequences for its shares. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Moor View agree that this is all about Ministers trying to control situations, and it is the control rather than the inadvertence that is the key to the issue? Does she also have sympathy for the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda that this issue should, in fact, be referred to the Standards and Privileges Committee?

[Alison Seabeck]

I thank my hon. Friend for his, as always, incredibly well-informed comments.

[Stephen Pound]

I was there at the time.

[Alison Seabeck]

You don’t look a day over 21!

I agree that the precise nature of the sanction is an issue—and I have a proposal that may be thought of as somewhat flippant. My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda is something of an expert, however, and I therefore think we should listen very carefully to what he has to say and to his proposals.

[Sir Peter Soulsby (Leicester South) (Lab)]

On the need to take this issue forward speedily and robustly, does my hon. Friend agree that it is a matter of considerable regret that the Procedure Committee has not yet been appointed, and will she join me in encouraging Members, particularly on the Opposition Benches, to make up the numbers so as to ensure that this can be dealt with properly? Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) might join us as a member of that Committee in order to ensure that it does, indeed, produce an early and robust response.

[Alison Seabeck]

I thank my hon. Friend for his remarks, and I am sure colleagues on both sides of the House will have heard what he had to say. It is to be hoped that a volunteer or two will come forward. The Committee should be set up as soon as possible, and he is right to say that it will be very difficult to proceed otherwise.

Back Benchers and the whole House ought to be the first to hear ministerial statements and policy announcements, and they should know that the only place for that will be either this place or the other place. That is a matter not only of constitutional convention and courtesy but of practicality. Members of this House should not have to be faced with phone calls from the media telling them what is going on in the outside world and asking for their views on events about which they have no knowledge. We have all experienced that and, apart from anything else, having to say, “I haven’t heard about that” is very embarrassing—nor does it give people confidence in our ability to do our job properly. That is certainly not a way to run a democracy, and I look to the Leader of the House to ensure that, in so far as his remit stretches, our democracy runs as well as it possibly can. I therefore hope he will commit to redoubling his efforts to bring Ministers to the Dispatch Box before they reach for the radio mike.

An excuse that has often been given is that the majority of the White Paper or statement was in fact revealed to the House and that only one or two of the main items have been released to the public—that is of relevance to a point made earlier about the precise wording of paragraph 9.1 of the ministerial code. That excuse is not good enough, because often the juicy bits of the White Paper or statement are leaked to the press and the House is left with the odds and sods—if I am allowed to use that term. [Interruption.] Yes, the bare bones might be a better phrase. My point is, however, that all of the contents should be saved for the Floor of the House.

[Mr Bone]

The hon. Lady has got to the crux of the issue. The Minister wants to leak the juicy bits to the media because it will get a favourable press. If he does not do that, the media might write about the bits he does not want to be discussed.

[Alison Seabeck]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and I concur with that view. I do not imagine that any member of the Treasury-Bench team will be willing to defend the practice of pre-announcing policies or leaks to the media. If any of them are, however, then I am ready to give way and hear the rationale, but if they cannot defend the practice then they should not practise it.

Under a Labour Government, we had the release of difficult news under cover of a smokescreen of even worse news—“A good day to bury bad news” was a term used. However, that term was used by a special adviser, and although what she did was not technically out of order, she at least left her job as a consequence. Ministers need to learn some lessons from that.

[John Mann]

My hon. Friend has brought up a critical change that has taken place with complicity on both sides of the House, which is that the majority of special advisers appear, in fact, to be media advisers and press officers who advise on nothing special other than how to manage news. Is this not a problem that has now become deeply embedded in our politics, and which we could look at addressing?

[Alison Seabeck]

Yes, it is a problem, and strangely enough it is at its worst at the beginning of a new Government. When our party was elected to government in 1997, we had a lot of very good advisers who had been extraordinarily good in opposition at spinning stories out and making sure that shadow Ministers got their stories in the press. However, working with the civil service and Parliament in government involves a completely different mindset. We have to treat the two phases quite differently. A special adviser just chatting away to a media person and trying to get the nub of a story out—or spinning it out—from a Government position can have the sort of effect that we have seen, and which we are all here in the Chamber now objecting about, when a story appears in the press in advance of being announced in the House.

[John Mann]

Taking the Department for Transport, or whatever it might be called these days, as an example, is not the point that the concept of a special adviser suggests someone who is highly specialist and gives advice on transport, not somebody who is highly specialist and gives advice on news management? Even if Ministers are held to greater account by the House, it is that feature of special advisers that is so embedded in our system, as is the concept of their spinning to the media. After all, that is precisely what these people are paid to do.

[Alison Seabeck]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. To be fair to special advisers and to Ministers who employ them, they are not all of that ilk; there are within government, as there certainly were within our Government, very specialist people in the particular spheres in which they work.

Unfortunately, despite the risk of being chastised by you, Mr Speaker, and your predecessors, it has been difficult to bring both the current Government and the previous one to heel on some of these issues. Although apologies have been made, sanctions should be considered. I hope that the Chairman of the Procedure Committee is listening to these comments, which I am sure will be reinforced later in the debate. What is an appropriate punishment for Ministers? Perhaps we should make them deliver the apology on their knees at the Bar of the House.

I shall stop being frivolous, because this is a serious issue and one on which the Government were elected. All parties stood for cleaning up Parliament, modernising this House and listening to Back-Bench MPs, and the Government were elected on that. It might therefore be appropriate for the Procedure Committee to consider insisting that the Prime Minister come to the House to apologise in person every time one of his Ministers pre-announces something. The thought of a Prime Minister having to come to the Dispatch Box on a regular basis to apologise for the actions of members of his team would help to focus minds. Such an approach would make him force his Front Benchers to behave, because that would not be good for his business or for his image.

[Barry Gardiner]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, given the extent of leaks from both parties when they have been in government, the fact that the leaks have continued signals either that the Prime Minister does not have authority over his Cabinet or that he refuses to implement that authority?

[Alison Seabeck]

I agree with my hon. Friend.

The motion states that we need a “protocol” that Ministers will abide by and, as Back Benchers, we should expect that to happen. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) says, it has to have teeth. There will be an expectation that the Procedure Committee will take this forward and we will expect serious proposals to be made. If they are not, we should revisit this issue because it is incredibly serious. We have heard all the talk about new politics, but I think we should have some action. Let us see Ministers acknowledge the respect with which this House ought to be treated and see an end to policy announcements in the breakfast media.