Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Those were the days, eh? When high-mindedness ruled.

The point is surely that it should not be within the power of the Government to determine the rules. It is like the situation in which everybody is running a 100 metre race, but the starting gun is held by the person in charge, and sometimes he decides to shoot some of the runners instead of just starting the race.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I agree that constituents reach the point at which they feel that the Government need to change, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is often in part because constituents are desperate for the Prime Minister of the day to announce a general election? Having such certainty to a reasonable extent will therefore obviate the need for constituents to wonder, “When is the election going to happen? When is the date? It can’t happen soon enough.” That certainty will surely improve the situation.

[Chris Bryant]

Yes, of course. The hon. Lady is right in the sense that constituents will not have to worry about the date of the election. In fact, newspapers and the BBC will have to employ considerably fewer journalists, because they will know the date of the general election and actually have to obsess about something else. However, the past 50 years have shown that, for the most part, once a Parliament has run for more than four years, either the Parliament itself is so fed up with the Prime Minister that it chooses to change the Prime Minister before holding a subsequent general election, or the country is becoming pretty fed up.

Prisoners’ Right to Vote

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

So the right hon. Gentleman must know that they are not in any way connected. We could do as he suggests only if Britain were to abrogate its signature to the European convention on human rights. Is that really what he wants us to do?

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend please explain, for the edification of the House, what would happen if the Government refused to accept the findings of the European Court of Human Rights, and what would happen if we accepted the findings but refused to make any compensatory payments?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend will know that 60 years ago Britain signed up to the European convention. [Interruption.] The shadow Justice Secretary is yelling again; he clearly needs telling again, so I will tell him again. Because Britain signed up to the European convention 60 years ago, it binds us legally. The Government must act in accordance with the law, as the previous Government accepted. The danger is that compensation payments will be awarded against us to prisoners. As I said earlier, the only thing worse than giving prisoners the vote would be giving them the vote and then having to give them compensation on top of that.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Having sat here for rather a long time, I am pleased to have had the benefit of hearing the many wise heads who spoke before me. I am glad to be following the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) because I completely disagree with her. I think that the Bill is totally about democracy. I also disagree with a number of my hon. Friends on this matter. Before the general election, people in this country were clamouring for change—to be given more of a voice and more of a say in how they voted. They certainly wanted the cost of politics and the number of MPs to be reduced. I really believe that there is a democratic requirement to hold the referendum in the interests of promoting our democracy.

That is one reason why I will support the Bill. The other, which is also very much in the interests of democracy, is that we forged a coalition Government in the interests of the country. Had we not done so, we might have limped on in minority government for a few months, or, worse still, the British public might have ended up with the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) still as their Prime Minister in a Lib-Lab coalition. Those two outcomes would have been a disaster, so we had to form a coalition and the Bill was the price that we had to pay. For that reason, too, I believe that we should support the Bill.

Having said all that, when it comes to the referendum, I am a huge advocate of first past the post, and there are three key reasons for that. First, only first past the post provides a clear choice of candidate. People clearly state their preference and get no other alternative, so somebody that they might quite like or have heard of does not end up with their second or third preference vote. They end up with a single Member of Parliament to whom they can relate in their own constituency. Any other system of voting introduces an element of lottery, in which some people vote for only one candidate and some vote for five. If enough vote for five, even when they do not know their fourth, third and second choices, a candidate can be elected to Parliament whom nobody really wanted but who was the lowest common denominator. That is a disaster, and first past the post does not deliver that.

A second reason why I am a strong advocate of first past the post is that we generally end up with a strong Government with a single manifesto. We have already seen, to the cost of many of us, and will no doubt see even more in future, what the downside of coalition government is. It is surely this Bill coming before Parliament, which is the price that has had to be paid to bring together a strong and workable Government. It was not in our manifestos and the people did not vote for it. In fact, although a lot of people have said that no one cares about AV or first past the post, that is not strictly true. A long-standing Conservative party member in my constituency resigned his membership card recently, and why? Because his Conservative Government are now putting in place policies that were not in our manifesto and for which he did not vote. That is the price that we pay for coalitions, and anything other than first past the post will inevitably lead to a greater propensity to coalition Governments.

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

Does not first past the post lead to some curious results? For example, the Conservatives in Scotland got 17% of the vote but one Member of Parliament. Meanwhile, Labour secured a third of the votes in Scotland and got two thirds of the MPs. Surely that must be wrong.

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point, but we have debated the matter at length this afternoon and evening and all agreed that first past the post is not the perfect system. No system is, but nevertheless first past the post offers the chance of a clear preference. The person who is the most popular wins a seat, rather than somebody’s second or third choice or the person they hated least. That is the benefit of it. Voters get a single manifesto and can then hold their Government to account on it.

That leads me on to the third important point about first past the post, which is that we get the ability to sack a Government when they have reached the point when we no longer want them. In Germany, for example, where they have long had proportional representation, every time there is a general election they wake up with the same people involved in government, but just with the deckchairs moved around slightly. The same can happen with the alternative vote. The day after polling day in this country, we could have ended up still looking at the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. That would have been very bad for democracy, and I believe that first past the post is the right thing for this country and for our democracy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am pleased to say that my children attend a local school in Conservative-controlled Kensington and the other part of her constituency, Conservative-controlled Westminster. Of course there are good schools in London and of course progress is being made, but like any parent looking at the state of secondary education, you want to know that there are going to be really good schools, really good choice and a diversity of provision. That is what we are going to ensure and I hope that the hon. Lady will vote for it when the time comes.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Is the Prime Minister aware that I and colleagues had the privilege of a visit this week from the Royal Anglian Regiment. Will he join us in thanking them for their amazing professionalism and for the work that they do for us?

[The Prime Minister]

I will certainly do that. The regiment’s members have served in Afghanistan on a number of occasions and on one occasion I met them in Helmand province and heard them speak about some of the incredibly difficult decisions that they had to take and some of the very brave things they had done. We should recognise that we have been in Afghanistan in one form or another since 2001. Many soldiers are going back again and again. That puts pressure on them and on their families and it just means that we need to redouble everything we do to support their families and our brave servicemen and women.

G8 and G20 Summits

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is right. We are all concerned about the number of casualties in Afghanistan. He is also right in that when we look across history at fighting insurgencies, in very few of them has there ever been a complete military victory—it is a combination of what happens militarily and in the country at large and what happens in terms of some sort of reconciliation process. That is important. We are committed to the reconciliation process and would like to see it go further and faster, but as I said, it is important to maintain a distinction between Taliban linked to al-Qaeda, who would have the terrorist training camps come back and who want world terrorism, and people involved in insurgency for any number of other reasons. Yes, of course there must be a political track and of course we should develop it, but we need to differentiate the sorts of Taliban we face.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Does the Prime Minister agree that our global banking system remains incredibly risky, and that bearing in mind how long it has taken to get previous Basel agreements in place, it may be necessary to take steps to protect our particular vulnerability to the banking sector before then?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right. We are trying to put in place a system whereby banks have to ask themselves whether they have enough capital to withstand the sort of shock they suffered in 2008 and 2009. That is what needs to take place, and it is being put in place relatively quickly, but the rules need to be drawn up and agreed, and there may then be a pause before they are actually introduced, because at the moment the great risk is shrinkage of the monetary base—a shrinkage of bank lending—at this very sensitive time in our recovery.