Oral Answers to Questions
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
My hon. Friend asks a good question. Given Labour’s record in packing the House of Lords for political advantage, it is extraordinary that Labour Members should now seek to lecture others about the reform of the other place, which they baulked at delivering when they had the opportunity to do so.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
If a party currently in government were to get annihilated at a general election, should it then keep its peers in the House of Lords, as the numbers would not then be reflective of the position in the House of Commons?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The only thing that is going to be annihilated is the argument for independence for Scotland, which is gaining no currency among the people of Scotland, because the vast majority of people in Scotland and elsewhere want to keep the United Kingdom together.
The Attorney-General
No, I am afraid that my hon. Friend is entirely mistaken on that point.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
The Electoral Commission has specifically recommended that the UK Government and the Scottish Government should agree jointly the processes that should follow either outcome of the referendum. Will the UK Government accept the Deputy First Minister’s invitation to prepare a joint submission to the European Commission setting out a transition process in the event of a yes vote? If not, why not? What are they afraid of? Or do they prefer scare stories?
The Attorney-General
The United Kingdom Government are not in the business of prejudging the outcome of the referendum.
Succession to the Crown Bill (Allocation of Time)
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Jacob Rees-Mogg
Once again, I am in agreement with the hon. Gentleman. That is why it is so important that we should have proper time for this debate and to debate the full ramifications of what the Government are trying to do. The argument that the measure has been agreed by Her Majesty’s other realms is not sufficient. It needs to have been thought through properly in one of her realms first, before we see whether the other realms will accept it. Yes, there might be a child—a happy event for Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge—and let us hope that that is the case, but there would be no harm in allowing the legislation to be dated from today, even if that birth were to take place. There is no urgency. The succession is apparently very secure: the heir apparent is a youngish man and so is his son.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that we would surely hope that no other realm would spend any less time discussing the measure than it looks like we will spend on it this afternoon?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Of course, the sovereign is also King or Queen of Scotland, which is a very important title.
I do not wish to detain the House any longer, but I think that this is a matter of fundamental importance. We are changing that part of our constitution that is most precious in a rush, as if it is anti-terrorist legislation, and we are not allowing ourselves proper time to consider all the ramifications of what is entailed by Her Majesty’s Government’s position. I therefore hope that the House will consider accepting my amendment to make some improvement to the Bill, although I fear that it still will not allow sufficient time for all one might wish to discuss.
Succession to the Crown Bill
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)
I have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Bill, has consented to place her prerogative and interest, so far as they are affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The Bill does three specific things. First, it ends the system of male-preference primogeniture so that, in the royal succession, older sisters will no longer be overtaken by their younger brothers. Secondly, it removes the law that says that anyone who marries a Roman Catholic automatically loses their place in the line, a legal barrier that applies to Catholics and only to Catholics—no other faith. Thirdly, it replaces the Royal Marriages Act 1772.
Under the 1772 Act, any descendent of George II must seek the reigning monarch’s consent before marrying, without which their marriage is void. That law, passed 240 years ago, is clearly now unworkable. George II’s descendants number in their hundreds. Many will be unaware of that arcane requirement and many will have only a tenuous link to the royal family.
The Bill proposes that the monarch need consent only to the marriages of the first six individuals in the line of succession, without which consent they would lose their place.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
I have heard what the Deputy Prime Minister has said about the previous situation, but surely the requirement of the monarch’s permission for those first six individuals is arcane in this day and age.
The Deputy Prime Minister
It is not arcane; it is a pragmatic judgment. The Bill retains the requirement for permission from the monarch for those wishing to marry who are in the immediate line of succession. It seeks to confine what had become a sprawling requirement to a much more limited and pragmatic one.
Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
The Opposition strongly support the Bill. The Labour Government, under the premiership of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), began the work on the changes that we see in it. I am pleased to say that our manifesto for the 2010 general election stated:
“Our constitutional monarchy is the source of deep pride and strength for our country…there is a case”—
I believe it to be a strong case—
“for reform of the laws concerning marriage to Roman Catholics and the primacy of male members of the Royal family.”
Those two points are at the heart of the Bill. As the Deputy Prime Minister explained, marrying a Roman Catholic will no longer prevent a person from becoming or remaining monarch, and the Bill will end discrimination in determining succession so that a younger son cannot have precedence over an elder daughter in the line of succession to the throne.
With regard to the first issue, it is surely right that the current exclusion of individuals who marry Catholics be brought to an end, especially as no other discrimination of that kind is on the statute book. The prohibition dates back to the Glorious Revolution, the 1688-89 Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement 1700. Whatever the contemporary justification for those measures, in this day and age there can be no justification for maintaining the restriction on the religion of the spouse of a person in the line of succession. Such an anachronism is an injustice and ought to have no place in a modern country with a constitutional monarchy.
We are equally committed to ending the male primogeniture rule. It cannot be justified that individuals are discriminated against because of their gender, and that basic principle of equality is firmly established in most recent legislation. Modifying the succession rule will bring the British monarchy into a position similar to that of most other European monarchies—I hope that Members will consider that to be an argument in favour of the change. Hon. Members will note that gender equality in succession laws was achieved in Sweden in 1980, the Netherlands in 1983 and Norway and Belgium in the early 1990s. It was introduced in Denmark in 2006 and is anticipated before too long in Spain. The change is in tune with enlightened attitudes in many other European countries as well as here in the United Kingdom.
As we know, there have been many calls for gender equality in the royal succession over the years. Noble Lords and hon. Members have presented numerous Bills on the subject, and I refer in particular to those tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) in 2011, and before him by a previous Member for Battersea, now Lord Dubs. The latter Bill went further than the former, but many of the sentiments in those private Members’ Bills have now found voice in this Bill. I add that there has been extensive and positive consultation on it with the Opposition as well as with interested parties.
Mr MacNeil
In the light of the hon. Gentleman’s words, perhaps he could tell us why, in 2004, when an attempt was made in the Lords to reform the succession, the Labour Government did all in their power to block it.
Wayne David
That is an interesting point, and I am sure there was a very good reason, but I do not think it is germane to our discussion today.
There has been extensive consultation on the Bill, and I note the consent of the Queen, as expressed by the Deputy Prime Minister at the start of the debate.
There is a third measure in the Bill that needs to be commented on. Although the Prime Minister did not refer to it in his statement to the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Perth on 28 October 2011, it was referred to in his invitation to the Heads of Government of the Commonwealth, and the Government have recognised the need for the change. I refer to the requirement for all the descendants of George II to seek permission from the monarch to marry. In place of that, the Bill proposes a more limited requirement for the monarch to agree to the marriages of a specific number of individuals in the line of succession. That is surely a sensible proposal.
Paul Flynn
We are tinkering with it today. It must be a matter of some concern, but we are tinkering with it. Pandora’s box is open now, and having tinkered with one part of it, we can tinker with other parts of it.
Mr MacNeil
Many Acts, including and especially the 1701 Act of Settlement, are nothing other than tinkering.
Paul Flynn
Indeed, absolutely. They were based on the prejudices of the past. To look at our history, we can go through the length of this building and see representations of royalty in portraits, coats or arms and statues—there must be at least a thousand—but where would we look to find mementos of the work of the Chartists, the Levellers or the suffragettes? There are precious few, yet they, not royalty, were the ones who contributed to the development of our democracy.
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
I rise to support this important constitutional Bill. Even though the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) and I do not agree on very much, I think we share admiration and affection for Her Majesty the Queen and what she has done for the country.
The Bill is making history in provisions that I believe are long overdue. I will speak more specifically to clause 1. In 2002, just after I finished working in the royal household, I published an article saying that the Queen Mother’s death would be a catalyst of change in the monarchy and the nation. I remember the time when people lined the streets, others queued for hours at the lying in state in Westminster Hall, many signed books of condolence and millions watched the service. Those were simple signs of deep respect, love and admiration for someone who had touched their lives. Why? The Queen Mother stood for history, service and duty; she embodied a century of experiences, inventions and discoveries, times of war and times of peace. It showed that the British people care deeply about their past, and about history and tradition. Now, 11 years later, we are considering this important change.
Why should we make this change? Partly, it is a legacy for the Queen and the Queen Mother—a legacy of respect for what they have done. Perhaps it is also to reach out to women across the nation to say how much we value women and what they do. No one can doubt the tremendous impact that the Queen has had in her 60-year reign. We need only look at last year’s diamond jubilee to see the huge public support that Her Majesty still has in this country and elsewhere. More than 15 million people in the United Kingdom watched the celebrations on their television screens and the jubilee was thought to have brought more than £1 billion to the economy. More than 2 billion people across the world—about a third of the global population—watched the most recent royal wedding. What those occasions brought to Britain was an increased sense of unity and pride in being British.
Let us not forget the Princess Royal, who has played a full part and cannot be faulted in her role as a senior member of the royal family, absolutely committed to supporting the charities and voluntary organisations she works with. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) said, even though he has concerns about this Bill, this country has had wonderful examples of Queens and we should build on that.
As for the succession to the Crown, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) talked about the Queen of England. As someone who was born in London but brought up in Scotland, I would like to remind him that Her Majesty is not just Queen of England. She is Her Majesty Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories.
Mr MacNeil
May I correct the hon. Lady? The Queen is not Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom; she is Queen Elizabeth I of the United Kingdom.
Mary Macleod
I am so glad to hear the hon. Gentleman being so supportive of Her Majesty the Queen.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod). I agree with what she said about the Queen, who is held in very high respect. I remember that, in my childhood, she was a frequent visitor to the Hebrides, which of course testifies to her good sense and to the loyalty of many in the Hebrides, including myself, to the Queen and to her ongoing reign. Long may it last.
We all agree that, while human understanding has progressed over the past 300 years, the rules governing the succession to the Crown have not kept pace with that. The present monarch is happily the Queen of 16 realms, a shared monarchy of many independent countries. The Commonwealth countries, which comprise a quarter of the nations of the Earth, maintain a looser social affiliation with the monarchy.
We should perhaps reflect on how we got to this point. The Union of the Crowns came about in 1603. Had that been the only Union that we were considering today, I would indeed be a happy Unionist, because the monarch of Scotland took the Crown off England. Many would argue from a legal perspective that that would leave Scotland the successor state, given that the monarchy follows the Stuart line, rather than the Tudor line. That is an argument for another day, however.
Wayne David
Would the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the Tudor line began with Henry VII, who was a Welshman?
Mr MacNeil
I would be happy to acknowledge that. That was probably one of the few times when the Welsh beat the Scots. They certainly will not beat them in the rugby this spring. But we digress once more.
Had Scotland maintained its political independence, we could have kept the kingdoms united, but not the Parliaments. The Act of Settlement of 1701 was disliked by many for religious reasons, but it was also the precipitator of the tawdry political Union of 1707, which, with the help of the coercive Alien Act of 1705 and in concert with straightforward bribery, brought about the union of the two Parliaments.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
At the time of the Act of Union in 1707, were not a lot of the Scottish nobles—for want of a better word—bankrupt? Some people might think that that is where the coercion came in.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman reminds me of the words of Burns. Those people were “bought and sold for English gold”. That gives me an idea about taking people back—the 150 who have a vested interest in Westminster, for example. All that Alex Salmond and the Scottish Government need to do is buy and sell them for Scottish gold. If the vested interests could be bought off in that way, we might bring about independence a bit earlier.
It was the Scottish reaction to the Act of Settlement of 1701 that led to the events that I was describing. The motivator was the desire not for a political superstate but for a unitary monarchy, and the question had to be decided before the death of Queen Anne. Fortunately, for the benefit of the House, the Scottish National party can allay the fears created by the Act of Settlement: the monarchy will continue to be shared with Scotland and England, and the need for the Acts of 1706 in England and 1707 in Scotland will disappear. We can therefore proceed to independence and dissolve the two Unions. I am sure that I am alone in this Chamber in holding that belief, but I am not alone in Scotland in so doing.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Miss Chloe Smith)
Can the hon. Gentleman confirm that he has kept the royal household informed at every stage of his plans?
Mr MacNeil
I do not have Her Majesty on my text message list, but if she wanted to drop me an e-mail, I would be happy to respond to it. However, I do know that her personal private secretary is a visitor to the Hebrides and has relatives there. The links are indeed multi-faceted, as the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth can testify. She, too, has links with the Hebrides and has worked in the royal household. As we can see, the monarchy reaches us all in many ways.
History aside, the Bill is surely flawed. Many people have described how flawed it is. It is only a halfway house —a real dog’s breakfast of broken biscuits. It deals with succession and partially with freedom of religion, but it leaves the question of full freedom of religion untouched. It also leaves with the monarch the bizarre, arcane requirement for marital approval of six people in the line of succession. Some cultures have an adaptation of that requirement in the form of arranged marriages, but here in Westminster, we are institutionalising it.
The Bill affects other realms as well, and I wonder whether they will progress further than this Parliament and deal with this issue more fully, rather than having a halfway house, waiting for Westminster to catch up—as it inevitably will some day. They are free and independent, and by doing so they will save themselves an immense amount of time and hassle in the future, but they will also signal their fairness and egalitarianism to the wider world. Indeed, in Australia, republican zest seems to appear from time to time.
It should be noted that in 1999, the Scottish Parliament pushed for a motion for the removal of any discrimination linked to the monarchy and the repeal of the Act of Settlement. So progressive opinion—at least in Scotland—is 14-years-old before this issue has come to Westminster. While there may be a lot of huff and puff here at Westminster about allowing the monarchy to be Catholic, practically, I do not think it really matters. I do not think that the current or future royals are likely to convert to Catholicism, any more than would the King of Norway or the Queen of Denmark. The fact that a Parliament has gone to such lengths to discriminate against a certain faith group is surely odd in an international context. No doubt it will be ripe for lampooning, perhaps on Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” on CNN because it is a step back and truly bizarre. I am sure that history will judge it as bizarre, especially when we think that such contrary views existed in the Scottish Parliament 14 years ago. I am not sure whether bans on Catholics exist in Denmark and Norway—if they are so allergic to the idea—or whether bans against Protestants exist in Spain. Surely there is enough smeddum and sense in those societies to remove such proscriptions.
Equally, I hope that other monarchies do not hold the power over their relatives’ choice of spouse—a power that is rightly alien to their subjects when it comes to their nearest and dearest. When Scotland becomes independent in the next few years, we will certainly retain the monarch, as Canada, New Zealand and Australia have done, but we shall remove such infantile restrictions as we see here today. We will wait until the keystone Parliament—in a way Westminster will always be that mainly due to the residency of the monarch in close proximity to it—catches up. In the meantime, we can look forward to saying, “God save the Queen of an independent Scotland”.
Chris Bryant
Yes, but that does not change the fact that when somebody becomes monarch, they have to make an accession oath on the Church of Scotland. That is my only point. We have a suite of legislation and once we start pulling at one of the elements of it there is a danger we will unpack the whole lot.
Chris Bryant
I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman, as I have given way rather too often already.
I would quite like to change things as I think there are many different ways of being an established Church. I do not want to disestablish the Church of England, but I think that it could be established in a different way.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate. It has been a great pleasure to listen to it. I have heard some excellent speeches, made by the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), with whom I profoundly disagree, and by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), with whom, frighteningly, I find much common cause—it is as frightening for me as it is for him. I was impressed, too, by the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames), with whom I very much agree. He does not speak so much for the Conservative party as for the constitution, and we all honour him for that.
I am profoundly pleased that I have had an opportunity to speak before my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), because I suspect—I shall allow him to speak for himself—that when we hear him speak he will not prove himself to be so much a scion of high Toryism as a dangerous radical. We very much look forward to hearing what he says in the fullness of time.
I am pleased to be able to speak in the debate, because the intention of the Bill is laudable and sensible, as it will update the rules on the succession to the Crown so that they are in keeping with the modern values of our people. A monarch must reign with consent: that is the case now, and it must be the case in future. The Bill removes unnecessary discrimination, and it tidies up what we might call the sinuous tentacles of the Royal Marriages Act 1772, which is welcome. However, I should like to make a couple of points about the Bill’s provisions, which I hope my hon. Friend the Minister, in the absence of the Deputy Prime Minister, will be able to address so that I do not have to make them again in Committee.
In that positive spirit, I shall address the question of retrospection in clause 2. I am instinctively against retrospective legislation, no matter how good the intent might be. Clause 2 attempts to restore to the line of succession those people who have married Catholics down the years. I quite accept that we should remove the disqualification bar preventing people who have married Catholics from succeeding to the Crown, but in making those changes—the Earl of St Andrews, for example, and Prince Michael of Kent will be restored to the line of succession—we are changing the order of succession. Those further away than the Earl and Prince Michael are pushed further from the line of succession by the changes. If we are prepared to make changes to the order of succession by dint of restoring Catholics to that order, is it not right that we make clause 1 retrospective, so that female heirs of the Queen move up the order of succession? Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, is the only living person who would be affected, together with her heirs, so it would not be a massive change to the order of succession, but it would be a logical change and one in keeping with the retrospective nature of part of the Bill.
The second aspect that I wish to address relates to the point made by the hon. Member for Rhondda about the Royal Marriages Act 1772. I find myself, strangely enough, making common cause with him. Although I agree that we should remove the Act or change it so that there are not thousands of people to whose marriage the Queen could technically give or withhold consent, it is odd that clause 3 states that
“the 6 persons next in the line of succession to the Crown must obtain the consent of Her Majesty before marrying.”
Where did the number six come from? Why not three, five or 12? Six is not a prime number, a biblical number or a lucky number.
Mr MacNeil
The only thing that springs to mind is that if we add up the number in the Queen’s family and the number in Prince Charles’s family, we get six. That is the long and the short of it, I think.
Christopher Pincher
I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s arithmetic, flawed though it may be. Perhaps that is why he is a member of the Scottish National party. I look forward to the Minister explaining what the rationale is.
As the hon. Member for Rhondda rightly pointed out, if we put in place a rule that says that the monarch can and must give consent to the marrying of the six persons nearest in line to the throne, imagine a scenario where a monarch has three children, who each have two or three children. The monarch will soon be in the invidious position where grandchild No. 4, who is fifth in line to the throne, must seek consent of the monarch to marry, but grandchild No. 6, who is seventh in line to the throne, need not seek that consent. That does not seem fair.
Jessica Lee
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who, I am sure, agrees that there is a fine history in this country of monarchs hiding their feelings. Whatever historians may report in future, the private thoughts of the current Queen Elizabeth remain private.
Mr MacNeil
I am a bit alarmed by what the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) said about Queen Elizabeth I. Queen Elizabeth I of the United Kingdom is Queen at the moment, so I hope we do not end up in the Tower.
Jessica Lee
I know that the hon. Gentleman feels strongly about this point, which has already been raised, and believes that the current monarch is Elizabeth I. I, for one, will not enter into that debate any further.
I will end by quoting from what is perhaps one of the most famous and well-documented speeches made by Elizabeth I. It provides another reason to support the Bill and is a timely reminder that leadership requires determination and strength rather than on whether the sovereign is a man or a woman. When Elizabeth addressed her troops at Tilbury in 1588 in the midst of the threat from the Spanish armada, she famously said, midway through her speech:
“I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too”.
In supporting the changes to the rules on primogeniture, if there were ever words to put the case squarely that women can perform a task of great leadership and strength, they are those words.
Succession to the Crown Bill
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr MacNeil
It occurs to me that, together with the need to style Queen Elizabeth as Queen Elizabeth II, the obsession with whether or not the monarch is Catholic only really applies in England—it does not seem to apply to Wales or Scotland, and it certainly does not apply to the other realms. It is so important at the moment because the monarchy resides within England, which colours or clouds the rest of the debate. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman agrees.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
That is an interesting point. I am sure that Her Majesty’s other realms will consider whether or not the whole of clause 2 is a matter of great concern to them, because Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the other realms do not have established Churches and so need not worry whether or not the sovereign is married to a Catholic. I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point that it is essentially a matter of concern in so far as Her Majesty is the Queen of England, rather than Queen of the other territories.
My amendment is very narrow. Clause 2(2) reads as follows:
“Subsection (1) applies in relation to marriages occurring before the time of the coming into force of this section where the person concerned is alive at that time”.
Who does that mean? It could mean a person who was excluded from the succession many years ago as a result of marrying a Catholic and who happens to be alive at the time the Act comes into force. Therefore, we might find that we will need to rearrange the whole succession because the clause is not clear about who that person is. I think that the Government’s intention is that that is the person who contracted the marriage to a Catholic. To put a name to it, we are talking about someone such as His Royal Highness Prince Michael of Kent.
Mr MacNeil
Once it has been established who is first, second and third in line to the throne, the line of succession is in many ways academic. I am sure that whoever was 10th or 20th in line was not considered much in the time of Robert the Bruce, Edward I or whoever happened to be the monarch in these islands at the time. It is purely an academic matter to be discussed at many dinner tables across the land. I wonder what the hon. Gentleman’s opinion is.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
That is an interesting thought, but I think that it is important that the line of succession should be clear and in no doubt. I think that legislation relating to the succession to the Crown needs to be unambiguous and not allow potential risks to come in because of a mistake in the drafting. We want to know who our sovereign will be, to whom we owe loyalty and all such things, and that might not be possible if we do not know the line of succession.
It is also worth bearing in mind that the succession can leap about. We have been fortunate enough in recent generations to have had a very clear succession and large royal families, but we can sometimes get down to a very small number of heirs, and we see that ordinary hereditary titles can sometimes go to very remote cousins, so who is in line to the throne is very important.
Obviously, there are other amendments that I have tabled. I have concerns about the clause as a whole and whether it should stand part of the Bill—
Miss Smith
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman asked that question again because there was unfortunately little time to answer it in detail when winding up the Second Reading debate. It might be worth looking back at some precedents. The point about whether, under clause 3, the monarch would be advised by Ministers was also raised on Second Reading. I hope you will forgive me, Mr Bone, if I deal a little with clause 3 in this debate. In 1967, when there was a question about the marriage—in that case, marriage following a divorce—of a member of the royal family, the then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, devised a formula that ran along these lines: “The Cabinet has advised the Queen to give her consent and Her Majesty has signified her intention to do so.” That provides an insight into how such advice to the monarch might operate. We have had many debates, connected to this topic and more widely in the media, about advice to and from the monarch and the publication of such correspondence, and I will not stray on to that territory now. However, it should be perfectly reasonable and practical to imagine that there would be such advice to the monarch.
The hon. Gentleman asks specifically whether that would include withholding consent to marriage because the person is a Catholic. I will not answer that today because, for a range of reasons, there should be space within such advice with regard to consent. As I explained at the end of Second Reading, it is not unreasonable to have the notion of consent to marriage. After all, we are dealing with those who may become Head of State in due course, so there is a matter of public interest. I hope that that begins to provide an answer to the hon. Gentleman.
Mr MacNeil
If I recall correctly, the Minister mentioned the monarch being Protestant. Does she mean Church of England, or could the monarch be a member of any other Protestant Church?
Sir Alan Beith
I am glad to be under your chairmanship, Mr Bone, as we discuss the details of this provision. Clause 2 is an important clause, but it raises complications and difficulties, to which hon. Members of all parties have been right to draw attention in order to check whether we are getting this right and achieving the objective.
We are in a different world from that in which the legislation that the Bill will change was created. As hon. Members have said, that was a time when Catholicism represented an actual political threat to the United Kingdom, because of the behaviour of some Catholic powers in Europe. We are long past that era now—indeed, we are in an era in which Catholics and Protestants are aware that they have more things in common—some very important things in common—than they have matters of difference, and an era in which there are many mixed marriages between Catholics and Protestants. We should recognise that people find ways of accommodating and even sharing in the benefits of both approaches to the Christian faith.
A further fact that we cannot simply cast aside is that we have a long national tradition associated with a Protestant monarchy and an established Protestant Church in England—the Church of England—which has its own long and complex history, including its own Catholic elements. We have a long-established situation in Scotland, dating from the Union of the Crowns, whereby the monarch is expected to uphold the position of a national Presbyterian Church in Scotland and to conform to it and attend its services when in Scotland. Protestantism is also a resonant feature of life in Wales and Northern Ireland, as, indeed, is Catholicism in both places. All that is part of our history and we cannot throw it lightly aside.
Mr MacNeil
The right hon. Gentleman touches on the past. It strikes me that perhaps the great worry in the past was not theological as much as it was about the imperialist ambitions of neighbouring nations—France, probably, and Spain to an extent.
Sir Alan Beith
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that that is at the root of the bars and prohibitions that we are discussing now. There were of course strongly felt theological differences, and there was a time when to be a Member of this House, a person had to swear an oath against transubstantiation and the Pope’s ability to relieve them of any obligations resulting from falsely swearing such an oath. It was very stringent. Later, and rightly, it was changed.
The hon. Gentleman comes from an island with an extraordinary and honourable tradition of adherence to the Roman Catholic faith, without a break, since before the Reformation. It is an unusual part of the British Isles in that respect. Where he lives. there has always been diversity in these matters.
Mr MacNeil
The right hon. Gentleman mentions the geography and history of my constituency, and he is correct that the island that I happen to be from has that Catholic tradition associated with it. The recent census showed that the southern part of the Hebrides had the most Catholic areas in Scotland, but also that the most Protestant areas in Scotland were in my constituency, in Lewis, Harris and North Uist in the northern isles. It is interesting to note that there has never been any religious tension between the two at all.
Sir Alan Beith
The two versions of Christianity live side by side remarkably happily in the Western Isles.
The purpose of the Bill is not to change the Protestant succession, as the Minister has made clear. If it were, we would have to spend a lot longer on it considering many more detailed and complicated clauses, and there would be many more concerns to deal with. Nor will it disestablish the Church of England—it retains the monarch’s position as Supreme Governor of the Church of England—or change the situation in Scotland, where the monarch will continue to be expected to be a loyal supporter of the Church of Scotland and its work, as the Queen notably is, while having good relations with the other religious communities in Scotland.
The problem that arises is the one that I refer to as the early age problem. A decision to bring up a child of such a marriage as a Roman Catholic, whether taken entirely voluntarily or under the provisions of some Roman Catholic law, would result in that child being debarred from taking up the Crown unless they renounced the faith in which they had been brought up. That is perfectly possible, as was mentioned earlier, but it is quite a limitation to place upon a child.
Mark Durkan
I want to take up the Minister’s point that this clause removes a line of discrimination from law. That is clearly what it does—up to a point. It removes a blatant bit of sectarian discrimination that would prevent somebody from remaining in the line of succession if they married a Roman Catholic. However, as we have heard, it still requires us all to subscribe to the notion that the Crown must remain Protestant and that somebody can only be Head of State in the United Kingdom on the basis of one particular faith. That is a sectarian provision.
Mr MacNeil
For clarity, it is more than the Crown must remain Protestant; the Crown must remain Church of England. If we are talking about the personality of the monarch’s faith, surely when the monarch crosses a border or moves across the sea, his or her religion does not change.
Mark Durkan
Well in some respects, as I understand from the current debate, the sovereign’s religion does change when they cross a border. The Church with which they are deemed to be in communion changes when the sovereign crosses the border from the Church of England to the Church of Scotland, not the Episcopal Church in Scotland. That is just from listening to this debate. We are getting into areas that I know little about and do not particularly want to know a lot about. Some of this debate reminds me of the old advert for Baxters soup: “The difference is in the thickness.”
Yes, obviously there is an emphasis on communion with the Church of England because of the role of the Crown and the governorship of that Church, but there is also the Protestant line of succession, as the Minister has said.
Mr MacNeil
I will try not to be too thick about this. Given what the hon. Gentleman has said, would he be happier if the terms were “must be Church of England” rather than “cannot be a Catholic”? To put a political dimension on the matter, as a Scottish nationalist and a monarchist, I would be quite happy to share a monarchy with England if the monarch had to be Church of England. That would be no problem for me.
Leveson Inquiry
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(11 years, 12 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
I do not accept the underlying premise that all this can be settled by courts and the criminal justice system. Kate and Gerry McCann had their privacy abused and were subject to the most shocking and vile accusations, which they could not have possibly remedied through the law. The hon. Gentleman should read Gerry McCann’s evidence if he really thinks it is undemocratic or illiberal to suggest that maybe we should set up a system that can help people such as them. Gerry McCann went to the Press Complaints Commission and was basically told, “Sorry, there is nothing we can do.” Surely, one would have to have a heart of stone not to accept that there is something seriously, seriously wrong when there is nothing that helps Kate and Gerry McCann. I strongly refute the hon. Gentleman’s idea that it is illiberal and undemocratic to help them.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Given what the Deputy Prime Minister has said and what the Leader of the Opposition said earlier, the Prime Minister now seems to have become a marginal figure on this issue. Therefore, will the Deputy Prime Minister work with the Leader of the Opposition, the First Minister of Scotland and the Taoiseach na hEireann, Enda Kenny, to find, where possible, common ground in this free movement area of the UK and Ireland in press regulation?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The Prime Minister has initiated the cross-party talks. They will happen shortly and I hope that, with good will, we can make progress. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Irish model. There are similarities between the Irish model and what Lord Justice Leveson is suggesting. They are not identical by any stretch of the imagination. In many ways, the Irish model is a much more direct form of the statutory establishment of a regulator than the indirect verification of a self-established regulator set up by the press. There is an important qualitative difference between the two, although, as I said earlier, it is remarkable that a number of British newspapers operate, as far as I can make out, relatively comfortably under the more exacting—dare it say slightly more illiberal?—system that exists across the Irish sea.
Oral Answers to Questions
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(12 years ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
Yes, and that is why it is right that the Treasury and the Chancellor have been so assiduous in providing additional resources to ensure that the teams in Whitehall—Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and others—who crack down on tax avoidance are able to do so. The figures that we hope to be able to recoup in tax paid, which would otherwise have been avoided, are truly eye-watering. Billions and billions of pounds of tax will come into the vaults of the Exchequer which otherwise would have gone walkabout.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Q7. The newly published world prosperity index shows our Nordic neighbours, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, holding the top three spots. In the last quarter, the oil fund of our neighbour Norway grew by $29.3 billion to an eye-watering $660 billion—equivalent to £5,000 for each Norwegian family. Will the Deputy Prime Minister take this opportunity to congratulate the Norwegians on their society and their enviable prosperity?
The Deputy Prime Minister
The Scottish National party’s arc of prosperity keeps changing. Last time I looked, it included Iceland, but now it does not. What will the hon. Gentleman do next? Pick out Malaysia or Indonesia? Try and be a bit more consistent, please!
House of Lords Reform Bill
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
With the greatest respect to the hon. Lady, I feel slightly as though we are looking at the matter from opposite ends of the telescope. The problem has arisen because of the refusal of her colleagues and others to will the means to deliver something to which she is committed, under not only the coalition agreement but successive Conservative manifestos. I have been looking at the long pedigree of commitments in favour of an elected element in the House of Lords in Conservative party manifestos going back to 2001. Interestingly, the 2005 Conservative manifesto states that
“proper reform of the House of Lords has been repeatedly promised but never delivered.”
That sounds more like a prediction than anything else.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
This latest episode of omnishambles shows the public that Westminster is unreformable. Twentieth-century democracy has patently failed. Does the Deputy Prime Minister understand that this is yet another example of why, in the 21st century, Scotland would be better off making all its own decisions with independence rather than continuing under the cronyism in the House of Lords?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that one of the virtues of a reformed House of Lords would have been a voice in the second Chamber for the Scottish people as well as for the English and Welsh people and for all the nations and regions of the United Kingdom; we have spoken about that before. At the moment, that second Chamber has a very high preponderance of people from the south-east of England. There is chronic under-representation, not only from Scotland but from Wales and the north of England. That would all have been balanced by reform. I do not think that that point argues in favour of ripping up the United Kingdom altogether, but it does argue in favour of pushing for reform once again in the future.
House of Lords Reform Bill
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Sir Malcolm Rifkind
Yes, but what worries me is the prospect of ending up with a party list system which, as we know from the experience of the European Parliament, has no legitimacy with the electorate, is not regarded as a way of electing people to represent their interests, and has been entirely discredited, regardless of the view one takes of the European Union as a whole. For that system of all systems to be chosen for the purpose of deciding membership of the upper House is totally incomprehensible to me, never mind entirely regrettable.
I say specifically to the Deputy Prime Minister, because clearly it is his party that is behind the Bill, and perhaps the only party that would care much if the Bill never saw the light of day, that if he wants to eliminate the defect he rightly referred to of the continuing presence of hereditary peers in the House of Lords, that can be done very easily by means of a simple legislative measure. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to get rid of the extraordinary nonsense that we have almost 1,000 peers, that can be done by a compulsory retirement age. If he wants an opportunity to deal with the other anomalies in the House of Lords, he does not need to go down this road. The only argument for going down this road is if he believes in a democratic upper House which, by its very nature, will then share primacy with this House of Commons. Let him, if he wants that, admit that, rather than try to conceal that fact behind words that do not carry conviction.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind
I take no pleasure in not being able to support the Government and the coalition, in which I am a very strong believer, but it would be unworthy of anyone to argue that a constitutional measure which will have a profound impact on the well-being of this country and of our political system should in any way be influenced by its impact, if it were to be defeated, on other legislative proposals.
I have not voted against my party on a three-line Whip for a very long time. I last did so in the 1970s. I do not know what effect it will have this time on my future ministerial career. All I can say is that the last time I did it, in the 1970s, two years later Margaret Thatcher appointed me to her Government. So my right hon. and hon. Friends should be of good heart and vote as they believe, and that means voting against the Bill and against the programme motion.
Alan Johnson
It is a shame that that was said by a Government Member, but the hon. Gentleman makes a fundamental point about why Labour Members have sought reform—originally abolition, but then reform—of the other place. To me, I am afraid, it represents institutionalised snobbery.
I do not agree with Walter Bagehot’s comment that the cure for admiring the House of Lords is to go and look at it, but neither do I agree with the constant stream of self-regard that comes from those on the other side of Central Lobby about how it is the greatest, most expert revising chamber ever to be devised in the world. They have certainly been very expert at preserving the status quo. I am quite prepared to listen to and debate the very strong arguments for the status quo made by Members who, despite manifesto commitments, are perfectly entitled to come here and make that case. Incidentally, that is not the view of my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett), who believes in a unicameral system. However, the consensus that we have been inching towards says that the status quo is indefensible in a modern, 21st century democracy, and that view is reflected in the proposals in the Bill.
Mr MacNeil
Does the right hon. Gentleman ever feel that some of those voices arguing for the status quo are perhaps looking to their own jobs at some time in the future?
Alan Johnson
The hon. Gentleman tried to intervene on the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), and now he has got his intervention on the record.
The first question is, “Do we need to reform the House of Lords?”, and the answer is, “Of course we do.” The second question is, “Are these the right reforms?” I think that they broadly are. I say that not because they are Clegg’s reforms, but because they are Cook’s reforms. One of my great heroes is the late, great Robin Cook. There was no greater parliamentarian and no greater defender of this place. As Leader of the House, he sent us through the voting Lobbies seven times. We voted against every option, from a fully elected to a fully appointed House of Lords. The option that nearly got through—it failed by only three votes—was an 80-20 split. Incidentally, the other place voted almost unanimously for a wholly appointed second Chamber.
After that, Robin Cook worked with the current Foreign Secretary, the current Leader of the House, the current Lord Chancellor and another great Labour parliamentarian, Tony Wright, the former Member for Cannock Chase, to develop the argument with the “Breaking the Deadlock” proposals of 2005. Those proposals are very similar to this Bill, and to various other attempts, such as that of the Public Accounts Committee and the White Paper published by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) in 2008. The Labour Cabinet agreed to that paper, which incidentally involved a 50-50 split between elected and appointed Members.
In the end, Labour proposed a 100% elected House in the 2010 manifesto. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) knows, because he was a member of the Cabinet at the time, we knew that we might have to concede an 80-20 split because anyone who is serious about pursuing House of Lords reform does not want to take on the disestablishment of the Church of England at the same time, because that is a recipe for permanent procrastination.
“Breaking the Deadlock” said that there should be single terms covering three election periods, as did the royal commission under Wakeham in the late ’90s and as have various other documents. It said that Members would be elected by proportional representation, as did our election manifesto in 2010. The reason for that is to keep the primacy of the Commons. When a large proportion of the second Chamber is elected, we need to ensure that they do not seek ministerial office, that they are not after a career and that they will not be difficult with elected local MPs and seek to replace them. That is why everybody who has looked at this matter in any depth has come to the conclusion that there should be long, single terms with no further right to stand again.
All of the current proposals are right. I should probably say that they are nearly right before I get into trouble with the Whips—there are obviously some improvements that can be made in Committee. However, to get a consensus and to take advantage of what is an unprecedented opportunity to do something about this issue, as the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross said, I believe that a referendum of the British people is needed. I ask those on the Treasury Bench to consider that. To have legitimacy, the proposals have to be approved by the public. We can then ensure that they are implemented in full.
Mrs Laing
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Joint Committee took evidence from the Australian Parliament, and Members ought to look at that evidence and pay heed to Australia before giving away our primacy.
The most worrying thing of all is that as the primacy of the House of Commons is challenged, the unique link of accountability between the elector and his or her representative in Parliament—their Member of this House —will be undermined, so Parliament’s very accountability will be undermined as well.
Quite apart from the fact that there is no reasonable question to which the right answer is 450 extra elected politicians, having a second House of Commons at the other end of the corridor will not increase the chances of holding the Government to account. It will do exactly the opposite. A clash between the two Houses and a squabble over when and whether the Parliament Acts could be used will lead to a challenge in the courts, and I for one do not want vital political issues to be decided not by Parliament but by the judiciary. Our electors expect us to take responsibility, and they expect the buck to stop with us, their MPs. We ought to fight to preserve that.
I turn to the matter of consultation. The subject of Lords reform may have been talked about for 100 years, but we are not considering it in a proper, wider context. Reform of one part of Parliament is reform of Parliament as a whole, but we have been able to consider only the narrow proposals that the Deputy Prime Minister has put forward. I sat on the Joint Committee for eight months, and we recommended a constitutional convention so that the subject could be properly examined in context. The Government have ignored that recommendation, and now we face the possibility that we might not even be able to examine the Bill fully here in the House of Commons because of a narrow programme motion. At the same time, the Government are afraid of a referendum. They are afraid to ask the people. No constitutional convention, no referendum, no proper scrutiny in the House of Commons—that is not democracy.
Mr MacNeil
May I do a cursory self-interest check? Will the hon. Lady rule herself out now of ever taking a seat in an unreformed second Chamber?
Mrs Laing
No, I will not rule that out—not that I ever expect to be offered a seat, and certainly not by my hon. Friends on the Front Bench. I am probably not the most popular Smartie in the tube today, but I do not care about that: I am here to do my duty for democracy.
The Bill ignores the will of the people. Only one year ago, we had an expensive nationwide referendum in which the people overwhelmingly rejected a proportional representation voting system. The Deputy Prime Minister now ignores the will of the people. PR for this House was rejected, so he says, “Let’s introduce it for the other place.” What contempt! What duplicity! Why does he do it? The answer to that non-rhetorical question is that a proportional election system will give the Liberal Democrats a permanent hold on the balance of power in the second Chamber. That is not democracy; it is blatant party political advantage. It is short term and small-minded, and I certainly cannot vote for it.
There is very much more to say on this subject, and I hope the House votes to give all the time necessary for proper scrutiny of such fundamental parliamentary reform.
Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), who, if the proposals are passed, would end up being represented by the same regional list of senators as myself in Dudley—although how anyone could represent effectively both a rural community such as Hereford and a former industrial centre such as the black country is something we might ponder during the course of this debate.
I have always believed that the House of Lords should be reformed. It is clearly too big; it is indefensible that hereditary peers remain; and it is completely wrong that Members can fail to turn up for years and retain their membership, when they would be booted off a local authority if they failed to attend for six months. That said, however, there are major problems with the Government’s proposals.
First, the lesson of Scottish and Welsh devolution is that constitutional reform cannot be undertaken piecemeal. Those changes, which I supported, resulted in imbalances between Scotland and Wales and England and its regions, which have still not been resolved. The lesson is that a comprehensive and coherent view is needed of the relationship between the individual and the state, and of what powers should be exercised at national, regional and community level, before constitutional reform is undertaken.
Mr MacNeil
Are not the hysterics we are hearing in the House today reminiscent of the hysterics heard in 1979 about a Scottish Assembly, and in 1997 about a Scottish Parliament? There are hysterics only within these four walls, but when these things actually happen, the sky does not fall in.
Ian Austin
As I said, I supported the proposals for devolution, but I think the previous Government made a mistake in not undertaking them as part of a far-reaching, comprehensive and coherent view about the arrangements for governing Britain as a whole. Reform of the House of Lords needs to be properly thought through as part of a wider package of constitutional reforms to deal with the regional and national imbalances that are the result of stalled devolution.
For example, a renewed approach to regional government is needed. It is ironic that the Bill proposes that Members be elected from the English regions, which the Government have been doing all they can to abolish in all other respects. They claimed that the regions did not exist when they abolished the regional development agencies, regional spatial planning and all the rest. We have regional government in this country in the NHS, the police, planning, transport policy, housing and regeneration, but they are run by faceless civil servants in England, and by politicians in London, Scotland and Wales. I would prefer to have proper regional government and proper regional accountability for those powers and then to establish a revising second Chamber drawn from the regional assemblies.
The Government are proposing far-reaching reforms, which have huge implications for the way the country is run, and are doing so without a referendum. We had to have referendums for voting systems, for Scottish and Welsh devolution, for a regional assembly in the north-east and for directly elected mayors in some quite small cities, but the people of Britain will have no say in huge changes to their Parliament.
The central question is whether the House of Lords should be elected. I do not think it is possible to defend, as a point of principle, appointments and patronage. I am a democrat and I am in favour of devolving power to the people. That is one of the reasons I became interested in politics and got involved: I wanted to ensure that ordinary people have as much power as possible over the way the decisions that affect them in their daily lives are taken. Clearly, the current system is one of appointment, not election, but what we have to decide is whether the changes that the Government propose are appropriate and will do the job.
First, whatever the Government say, having an elected House of Lords will inevitably change the relationship between the two Houses. That is bound to happen. The Bill promises that this House will retain primacy, but simply asserting that and ensuring that it happens in practice are very different. It is not credible to say that nothing will change, when it is inevitable that people who have been elected will claim a democratic mandate and assert their authority. Secondly, there is no question but that elected Members of the second House will claim democratic legitimacy in our constituencies. That is bound to happen. In this debate and during the detailed scrutiny of the Bill that follows it, I want to see how the Government and this House will deal with those huge questions.
There are other issues we have to deal with. It is pretty clear that 400 new senators will bring huge additional costs. They will immediately demand the same level of resources, staff and offices and all the rest as we have, even though they will have no real constituency. Of those 400, the west midlands will have about 35 representatives elected from a regional list. Voters will have very little idea who they are voting for. I spent the weekend asking people in Dudley if they could name their MEPs. Michael Cashman and the other six west midlands MEPs do a good job, but the current system ensures that almost no one knows who their MEPs are. I take more than a passing interest in politics and I struggle to name all seven of them off the top of my head.
What I do know is that the introduction of a regional list system for those elections has resulted, to our great shame, in Britain being represented in the European Parliament, for the first time, by people standing for a racist and fascist party. It is pretty clear to me that if we go ahead with a similar system for a second Chamber, all sorts of cranks and extremists will get elected.
The idea of people being elected for a 15-year non-renewable term is appalling. One of the reasons that politicians work hard, particularly in marginal constituencies, is that we have to answer for our views and actions at the ballot box. The proposed system, which prevents people from being held to account for their actions by seeking re-election, appears to be based on the most appalling elitist view that listening to the public and taking their views into account is a bad thing.
Although I am in favour of democracy and elections, I shall be following this debate and the subsequent scrutiny of the Bill and amendments with great interest, to see whether the concerns I have expressed today can be dealt with.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
The House of Lords has more than 800 Members, and that is far too many; it has Members who are there simply because of who their fathers were; and in this Parliament it has had so many Liberal Democrats from Wales appointed to it that it sometimes seems there is none left to populate the Assembly. The House of Lords therefore needs reform, and for that reason I will vote to support the Bill’s Second Reading tomorrow. If there is no reform with this Bill, there will be no reform in this Parliament.
I will vote against the Government’s programme motion, however, because the time that it allocates is wholly inadequate. This Bill is so important to all aspects of our parliamentary system that it must be considered in its entirety, and all Members who have views that they want to express should be permitted to do so.
I specifically asked the Whips to maintain strong opposition to any programme motion for this Bill primarily because of the Government’s appalling behaviour in respect of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011. By their deeds shall ye know them. I spent a great deal of time in this Chamber waiting to speak on the aspects of that legislation which affected our constitution, and on the relationship between Wales and the United Kingdom, but, in the words of the great Diana Ross, “I’m still waiting”, and I have no doubt that if this programme motion is passed I will have no opportunity to make my views known on the profound inadequacies of this Bill.
My fundamental view is that it makes no sense to undertake such a profound review of the second Chamber without taking into account the massive constitutional change of devolution. It is high time that we approached constitutional reform in a holistic way. Every change to a part of our constitution affects the whole, and we currently have more inquiries and commissions on different aspects of our constitution than I can ever recall. We should scrap the lot and undertake a single constitutional review, looking at the procedures of the House of Commons, the House of Lords and the devolved authorities, with the aim of arriving at a single, settled constitution.
If there is one lesson to be learned from devolution, it is that it opens a Pandora’s box of proposals to change the powers of the body it has created: the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the London Assembly all pressed to change their powers immediately upon being provided with them. I have no doubt that any change to the second Chamber will lead to exactly the same process, unless it is accompanied by a constitution defining its powers. That is a massive flaw in the Bill.
Mr MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman says that the Scottish Parliament looked for a change of powers immediately upon its creation, but that is not true. In its first eight years it was run by an unambitious Labour-Liberal Democrat Government and did not look for any change to its powers. It is only now, with an ambitious Scottish National party Government looking for further powers, that that is happening.
Ian Lucas
That statement is simply untrue. There was further devolution to the Scottish Parliament and to the National Assembly for Wales, and it happened throughout the course of devolution’s development in the United Kingdom.
There are further flaws in the Bill which we need to discuss. Creating separate types of Member of the second Chamber is wrong: having elected Members, appointed Members and bishops will create confusion and undermine the democratic principle. Having bishops as Members is wrong, too. Giving precedence to Church of England clerics is an extraordinary thing to do, and it is even more inexplicable on this very day, when the Church of England has decided not to appoint women bishops. Is not having such a clause in the Bill a breach of the European convention on human rights? Will the Minister give a specific response on that point?
As my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) said, little consideration has been given to the proportion of elected Members allocated to each part of the United Kingdom. It appears to have been done on a purely mathematical basis that takes no account of the different nations within the UK. That point was well made by Dr Paul Behrens of the university of Leicester, who refers to the very different approaches taken in the United States and German constitutions.
The use of the 15-year term that many Members have mentioned is appalling, and I am amazed that it has survived from the draft Bill. I have not spoken to anyone who supports it, and I was astonished to hear one or two Members do so even though they are in a tiny minority. It is a recipe for the creation of isolated, narcissistic Members of a second Chamber who will have no connection whatever to the real world.
Those are just a few of my concerns on the specifics of the Bill; I have many more and I am sure that more will occur to me as we discuss the matter. I have no doubt that further issues will arise when the Bill is considered in detail, because it is a bad, bad Bill—badly drafted, badly drawn and based on a compromise that is not working. My concern is that proper consideration will not take place because of the inadequacy of the time that is allocated. The result will be a very bad Bill going to the Lords, where it will no doubt be scrutinised at greater length, and the reputation of the House of Commons will be diminished still further.
Dan Byles (North Warwickshire) (Con)
It is an honour and a privilege to speak in a debate of such fundamental importance. We have heard some truly fascinating speeches from Members on both sides of the House. I personally take the view that the weight of argument is firmly on the side of those who do not support the Bill, but we have heard some interesting speeches across the board. It is a particular honour to sit next to my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray), who made what must have been a particularly difficult speech.
The economy is struggling, the eurozone is tanking, the banks are in crisis, and Syria is burning. Our constituents must be blinking in bewilderment at the time, effort and political energy being expended—
Mr MacNeil
Has the hon. Gentleman made many speeches in this House on those subjects, or is he just here to talk about House of Lords reform?
Dan Byles
If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I am here today to speak about this extremely important issue, but I speak regularly in this Chamber about key events and intervene in others. I am not one of those Members who chalks up short speeches on TheyWorkForYou and then judges themselves by the number of speeches they have made rather than their quality.
As I said, our constituents are blinking in bewilderment at the amount of time we are spending discussing this issue, but discuss it we must—[Interruption.]
Oral Answers to Questions
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
We will, of course, publish the financial implications. The hon. Lady is right to highlight an issue that has not been given sufficient attention—how unsustainable the status quo is. Are people really comfortable with a second Chamber that will soon be composed of 1,000 or more members, in which more than 70% are there through nothing more than political patronage and in which they receive £300 tax-free just for turning up?
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Given that the House of Lords is often seen as a lifeboat for ailing political careers, so that there are vested interests in this place that are very much against reform, will the Deputy Prime Minister lead by example and guarantee that, in the event of his attempts at reform being unsuccessful, he will not take up a seat in the Lords?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I certainly hope that my reform proposals will be successful.
Party Funding
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
The revelations that Peter Cruddas and the Prime Minister have spoken about Scotland and its referendum in rude and pejorative terms mean that Westminster can have no part in Scotland’s referendum, but does the Minister agree that if any law has been broken it is a matter not for politicians but for the police?