Ministerial Statements

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

I was accusing the House of being suffused with self-serving piety and giving the hon. Gentleman a bye on the basis that his past suggests that true piety is one of his qualities.

Let me start with where I am in agreement with other Members, including my wonderful hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). Holding Government to account is one of Parliament’s primary functions, but it is not its only function. Parliament is also there to supply and support a Government.

If Parliament’s primary function is to hold Government to account, no Government in recent times have done more to strengthen the power of Parliament to do such a job. It was this Government who introduced elections by Back Benchers of Chairmen and of members of Select Committees. Previous Governments, including the one of which the hon. Member for Rhondda was a member, appointed as Chairmen people who unfortunately needed to be eased out of their ministerial berths, where they had not been a success, and to be bought off for the rest of the term of that Government. This Government have turned their back on that naked attempt to suborn Parliament and have empowered Select Committees through the introduction of direct elections by Back Benchers.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

As a member of the parliamentary Labour party, I have to correct the hon. Gentleman’s assertion. The PLP instigated a rule stating that nobody straight out of serving in government could become a Select Committee Chair. After I left government and served on the PLP, which is the equivalent of the Conservative party’s 1922 Committee, no person coming straight out of ministerial office went into a Select Committee chairmanship.

[Nick Boles]

I am happy to be corrected on that point, but I hope the hon. Lady will confirm that it was this Government who introduced the election of Select Committee members and Chairs by Back Benchers, which significantly strengthened the independence of Select Committees and their ability to hold the Executive to account.

This Government also introduced the Backbench Business Committee, and so far have allotted it about 30 days of debate in Parliament for the subjects of most interest to Back Benchers. It was also this Government who introduced the concept of e-petitions to allow the House to debate not only the subjects of most interest to Back Benchers, but those of most interest to members of the public. It is clear, therefore, that it is this Government who have done most to strengthen Parliament’s ability to hold the Executive to account.

To be fair, we must also acknowledge that Mr Speaker has done more than any recent Speaker to ensure that Parliament can fulfil its function of holding the Executive to account. No Speaker has used urgent questions more regularly to force Ministers to come and account for their decisions and to answer questions from hon. Members.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

We have had an interesting debate, which has sought to address the continuing tension between the Government's desire to get what they see as favourable coverage in the media for their announcements, and Parliament's requirement that it, and not the media, should be told first of any important new announcements, so that it may do its job in holding the Government to account. Some of the tension between the different approaches to that particular job has been expressed in the speeches that we have heard tonight, not least those by the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), who is a pro-House of Commons man to his very core and made that clear in his contribution, and the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), who is not, if I could put it that way, because he seemed to spend most of his contribution questioning whether the ministerial code should exist in its current form at all, which is probably one of the more radical suggestions in the debate.

I do not think tension between those two issues—the Government's desire to get favourable news coverage and Parliament's understandable desire to be at the centre of national debate—is anything new. Many previous Governments, of all political hues, have been found wanting when it comes to ensuring that their announcements of important policy decisions happen first in Parliament. Many right hon. and hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) in what was an extremely wise speech, have pointed out, not only in our debate today but in previous debates, that the situation has been exacerbated by the advent of 24-hour news.

We have also seen the explosion of new platforms for the dissemination of information, which simply were not envisaged when our Parliament first formulated its now rather antiquated procedures and Standing Orders. The increasingly cut-throat competition between print and broadcasting media has not been mentioned, but it is relevant to the issues that we are struggling to resolve appropriately in the Chamber. There is a battle to obtain “breaking news” first, and the cavalier approach to rules and standards of behaviour in the media, now being highlighted in evidence to the Leveson inquiry, does not provide an easy backdrop against which to expect improvements in that state of affairs. Thus the trade in exclusive first access to important Government announcements in exchange for favourable and uncritical coverage of the good bits appears to benefit Ministers and the media outlets alike. Whenever that potential exists, there will be a difficulty that we as a Parliament have to struggle with if we are going to ensure that this Chamber gets a look-in. Unfortunately, that trade is flourishing as never before.

The lack of any real sanctions on Ministers when such leaks occur does not help Parliament to achieve its proper aim: to ensure that it is elected Members of the House, who are here to represent the views of their constituents, who are first to question Ministers on their policy announcements and thereby hold them directly to account. That is despite the clear instructions in paragraph 9.1 of the ministerial code 2010, which has been quoted in our debate:

“When Parliament is in session, the most important announcements of Government policy should be made in the first instance, in Parliament.”

The hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford had a separate argument that that should be expunged from the ministerial code. It is a point of view. It is not a point of view that I feel would get a majority in the House, but at least he has been open and up-front enough to advance that argument. However, I think that the vast majority of us here want, in considering these difficult issues, to find a way of making the ministerial code work properly, so that this Chamber can be what it was always meant to be: the place where the most important debates about Government direction happen.

It is clear that that statement of intent is a good thing but is far from being achieved in reality. Indeed, I think that it is flouted regularly by senior members of the Government, from the Prime Minister down. The ministerial code itself now appears to be more honoured in the breach than in the observance, as I pointed out last week on a point of order. My observation followed the systematic and premeditated leaking of every piece of good news in Thursday's autumn statement to the media in advance, usually accompanied by photo calls with Ministers in high-vis jackets.

I was unaware at the time, although we have been informed of this today, of the Humber bridge coincidence, if I may put it that way. There was an announcement of the decrease in tolls on the Humber bridge and some hon. Members, just by coincidence, happened to be available on the Humber bridge. Obviously they had no idea that the media might be on the Humber bridge with their cameras waiting for an instant reaction to something that, clearly, the Members in question had no idea was about to be announced in the autumn statement. Perhaps there are people who believe that that is indeed what happened on the day, but many of us have some suspicions that there may have been something slightly improper going on with the autumn statement. The fact that the autumn statement was in essence a mini-Budget simply made the offence all the more blatant. In my view, it showed a cynical and total contempt of this House and a complete disregard of the ministerial code itself.

While I am on that subject, another important part of the ministerial code was also ignored ahead of the Chancellor delivering his autumn statement to the House last Tuesday. That was the requirement in paragraph 9.5 that the text of the oral statement should be shown to the Opposition “shortly” before it is made. Although no precise time is specified, the paragraph requires copies of the statement and associated documents to be sent to the Chief Whip and his office 45 minutes in advance. I would like to take this opportunity to ask the Leader of the House whether he had the documentation in his office 45 minutes in advance. His answer is important because, in the event, my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor got barely 10-minutes’ notice and a heavily redacted copy of the statement. This puts all opposition parties in difficulty when trying to reply to complex announcements. Like everyone else however, my right hon. Friend had been able to piece together what all the positive Government announcements were likely to be from watching the news, but that is not what is intended by the requirements for oral statements under paragraph 9.5 of the ministerial code. I would be interested to hear what the Leader of the House has to say about that.

There have been further worrying signs of escalating ministerial disregard for Parliament. Notable among them was the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change’s astonishing discourtesy to the House two weeks ago. His intention to come to the House to make an energy statement—laudable in itself—was somehow tweeted to the world 30 minutes before his Opposition shadow was told by an environment journalist at The Guardian. An hour later the statement’s contents were leaked to the same journalist and were up on the website hours before the Secretary of State was due to deliver the statement in this place. As far as I can tell, absolutely no action has been taken by the Government to reassure us that this will not happen again, and the Secretary of State has offered neither an explanation nor an apology to the House for this strange coincidence.

As the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) set out in his speech moving the motion, and as was also pointed out by the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), the Chair of the Procedure Committee—which has done an extremely good job—the Procedure Committee produced its February 2011 report on ministerial statements at the request of this House, which is an unusual way of doing things. That followed the first ever debate initiated by the Backbench Business Committee, which took place last July. At that time, the Leader of the House supported the Procedure Committee’s inquiry into how Parliament’s understandable determination not to be the last to know about ministerial intentions could be translated into a workable system that would improve the current sorry state of affairs. In that first debate, the Leader of the House said:

“We devalue ourselves if the news is being made elsewhere. We therefore risk losing our position as the centre of British national debate. That is surely why the principle that we are debating today is important…We are elected here to scrutinise the Executive and to hold Ministers to account on behalf of our constituents. It is therefore crucial that Ministers explain and justify their policies in the Chamber in the first instance.”—[Official Report, 20 July 2010; Vol. 514, c. 263.]

That provides the most eloquent response to the comments of the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford.

We had to wait until May for the Government’s response. When it finally arrived, it was disappointingly dismissive—as the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire hinted—and since then an uneasy stand-off between the Executive and the House of Commons has prevailed. No action on the recommendations in the report has been taken. In his speech, the right hon. Gentleman described the Government response as “highly unsatisfactory”, and I agree.

Throughout this period, there have been ongoing briefings and announcements of Government policy to the media rather than Parliament. The large number of urgent questions that Mr Speaker has seen fit to grant during this time is a good measure of the extent of the Government’s current disregard for the rules on ministerial statements. Never have the high ideals proclaimed by a new Government at the beginning of a Parliament so swiftly turned to dust. Their laudable early determination to put Parliament back at the centre of national debate has been throttled by the cynical opportunism of myriad SpAds—special advisers—and spin doctors. Their headline-chasing, public relations-fixated masters have meanwhile been busy driving a coach and horses through the ministerial code. So much for hoping that the Government would be capable of resisting the temptation to trade with the media in early announcements to the detriment of Parliament’s right to know first. So much for hoping that the Government would be content to allow the recommendations in the Procedure Committee’s report to be put into effect, or at least that some progress might be made on this issue.

What is to be done? It appears that the Backbench Business Committee has grown impatient waiting for the Government to deal with the recommendations in the report on ministerial statements, and I cannot say I blame it. It has decided to try to force the issue, and the motion before us seeks to put into effect just one of the recommendations contained in its report: the recommendation specifying a new procedure for complaining to the Speaker about a breach of the protocol that statements should be made first to Parliament. It would allow the Speaker to judge whether a minor, or more serious, breach had occurred. It would empower him to take appropriate steps in the event of minor breaches, and to refer more serious cases to the Standards and Privileges Committee for further investigation. In essence, this gives the Speaker—and therefore, by definition, this House—the power to begin to enforce the protocols that exist to guide Ministers’ conduct on announcements. Perhaps this is the only way progress can now be made, given that the Government’s enthusiasm for making improvements in this area seems to have evaporated completely.

In the Government’s response to the report, on the suggestion that the Speaker should be empowered to enforce the protocol, they consider that an adequate range of “sanctions” for such misbehaviour by Ministers is already available. In what is one of the weakest sections of their response, the Government list the granting of an urgent question, an investigation by the relevant Select Committee, or raising the breach at business questions or Prime Minister’s questions as adequate sanctions to prevent ministerial disregard for the rules. I have raised various breaches of the protocol either as points of order or in business questions during my short time as shadow Leader of the House, and I cannot say that I have seen Ministers either worried or apologetic about any breach. A complacent smirk seems to be the most usual response. The Government’s claim that adequate sanctions already exist cannot be true, or there would have been evidence that ministerial behaviour had changed and that Parliament was being bypassed in favour of announcement by media on fewer occasions. If anything, the opposite is true.

Given the Government’s obvious reluctance to embrace the recommendations in the Procedure Committee report and the evidence of ongoing and serious breaches of the protocol about Ministers making important statements to Parliament first, the Opposition will vote for this motion tonight. I also want further consideration to be given to how other recommendations in the report can be put into action in the future, and I look forward to working with Members on both sides of the House to ensure that we can take these important matters forward to a sensible conclusion.