Parliament as a Workplace

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Lord Cryer

Thursday 13th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

First, I ought to mention that when I applied to speak in this debate, I told Mr Speaker that I might have to leave the debate slightly early, and I apologised for that—ironically, for family reasons.

I want to speak mainly about the accessibility part of this debate, but I will mention one or two other things briefly. When the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) mentioned that there are no ethnic minority portraits in the Palace, she said somebody would stand up and correct her, and that is what I am going to do. I have seen one, and that is Shapurji Saklatvala, who was the MP for Battersea North a long time ago, before the war. He is one, but what about David Pitt or Learie Constantine, who were both Members of the House of Lords? I have seen no illustrations of them. In particular, Learie Constantine was a giant of 20th-century politics. His actions led to the first Race Relations Act in the 1960s, among many other things, and he was the first non-white peer to be appointed, again in the 1960s. There is no recognition of Learie Constantine or, for that matter, of David Pitt, who equally made a great contribution.

I want to mention one other thing before I move on to accessibility. To this day, it is more difficult for women to be MPs, particularly if they are travelling from a long way away from Parliament. I can remember one example. I will not name this particular individual because she is a friend of mine, and I have not warned her that I was going to mention it. When I was first elected in 1997, I remember one of the many women elected in that intake, who was a terrific MP and a great speaker. If anybody in this Chamber saw her speak, they would have thought that woman was going places—that she was going to be in a future Cabinet, or whatever. She had small children and a constituency about 100 miles from Parliament, and within weeks she said to me, “I’m going to do one term, and then I’m off. I just cannot juggle everything I’ve got to do with the hours.” Some things have improved, but many of them still have a long way to go.

[Mr Sheerman]

My hon. Friend, because of his family history, knows about this subject better than almost anybody I know. I was a friend of his father and I am still a friend of his mother, who had adjoining constituencies to mine. He will know, because he has that dual perspective, how different it is being a Member of Parliament with a constituency in, say, Yorkshire—a long way away—and being a London MP. If we are going to modernise this House, we have to balance the two very carefully indeed.

[John Cryer]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I think things have changed to a large extent. He mentioned my dad, who was an MP here in the 1970s, when there were all-night sittings. From 1974 to 1979, just on our side of the House, we lost 17 MPs in five years from heart attacks, strokes, haemorrhages and all the rest of it. Things have changed, but as I have said, they still have a long way to go.

Lobbying

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Lord Cryer

Tuesday 25th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

I echo earlier comments made about lobbying. I have always supported a lobbying Bill to create a register of lobbyists in a transparent and properly regulated way, but I have no objection to lobbying per se. It is part of everyday life—or it should be if we are doing our jobs properly. We get lobbied on a weekly basis, on all sorts of issues, by church groups, mosques, gurdwaras, temples, community groups and all sorts of individuals. A woman came to see me a couple of weeks ago and said, “You are opposed to the sell-off of the Royal Mail, aren’t you?” When I said that I was, she said, “Well, on that basis you should also be opposed to gay marriage.” I did not quite follow the logic of that argument either, but she had the right to lobby me, and she did so, albeit in a novel way.

What worries me is when large concentrations of unaccountable wealth and power are brought to bear in the lobbying industry. Funnily enough, Jonathan Aitken said something similar when he was an MP and large business consortiums were lobbying for the contract to build the Channel tunnel. At that time lobbying was in full swing, and he—surprisingly in the light of subsequent events—said:

“What worries me most is that usually lobbying is genuine in the sense that it stems from little interest groups and concerned citizens. Here we see the Panzer divisions of big business, their heavy artillery and tanks trampling over all the small people’s interests which I want to see better defended.”

Most of us would probably want to see those interests better defended and certainly the Prime Minister seemed to want to see that three years ago when he said that lobbying would be the “next big scandal” to hit British politics. Lobbying has been the perennial scandal in British politics within living memory and probably before that, too.

The Prime Minister’s reference to lobbying was three years ago and since then we have seen two private Members’ Bills. One was in my name, and I offered it to the Leader of the House as a Government Bill, but he was a bit shy about taking it on. The other was in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty). We also saw a Government consultation followed by countless commitments from various Ministers that a Bill would be produced, as we are always told, “in the near future.” Last year, the then Parliamentary Secretary, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), promised a Bill before he was moved in the reshuffle. His successor, the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith), is on the Treasury Bench and has, I believe, promised a Bill twice on the Floor of the House—but there is still no Bill.

The Prime Minister has repeatedly promised a Bill in Prime Minister’s questions over the past three years and after the last lobbying scandal a few weeks ago, the Deputy Prime Minister promised what he called “head to toe” political reform, including a register of lobbyists. That was on 3 June. I have no idea what he meant by that, but I suspect that he did not have much more of an idea what he meant either—he never normally does.

We still have no Bill, yet the scandals come regularly and frequently. Only last year, the treasurer of the Tory party, Peter Cruddas—we will all remember this—had to resign after promising access to the Prime Minister for a fee of £250,000. Months before that, Tim Collins, a not particularly lamented Member of this House, promised access to just about everybody and anybody in the Government.

We can go back before that. I have mentioned lobbying scandals in living memory, but probably the doyenne of political lobbyists from the 1930s and 1940s up until the 1970s was Commander Christopher Powell. His name is probably not familiar now, but years ago he was very well known and for a number of years he had an office in the House of Commons. It sounds extraordinary today that a political lobbyist who represented all sorts of clients should have an office in this place, but he did for quite a long time.

Members might remember the scandals attached to Ian Greer in the 1980s, which eventually made the front pages of just about the entire national press as well as the broadcast media in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Let us be balanced: there was also the cash for access scandal that involved Derek Draper, another person who is not particularly lamented by Opposition Members—at least, I hope he is not. I can say that with some passion, having dealt with him years ago.

As I said earlier, I by no means condemn the political lobbying industry. In fact, I suspect that most lobbyists do a decent job, do it honestly and are perfectly prepared to be transparent about it, but there is always the temptation to cross certain lines unless accountability and transparency are built into the system.

[Mr Sheerman]

Speaker after speaker has talked about the importance of openness, transparency and accountability. I absolutely agree with that, but does my hon. Friend agree that we should also allow the little person, not just the well-heeled and well-suited person, to lobby? Lobbying should be open to everyone; the problem is that too often those who can afford to pay a lot of money can lobby more effectively.

[John Cryer]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question, but I think I covered that at the beginning of my speech. Most of us these days hold regular advice surgeries—for me, and, probably, for most right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House such surgeries are a weekly business.

The days when MPs never went near their constituencies and did not regard themselves as constituency Members are long gone. There was once a national MP for Blackpool called Walter de Frece who, despite the fact that he was the Member for Blackpool, never went near the place. In fact, he could not find it on a map. He struggled to find Britain on a map, because he lived in Monte Carlo. He came to Britain twice a year for the Budget debate and for Ascot, yet he was elected for years and years and was regarded as a successful constituency MP. While he was here, he would get a pile of House of Commons notepaper and sign the bottom, and then his secretary would fill in the rest. It sounds extraordinary, but because he managed to reply to a few letters—this shows how things have changed—he was regarded as a particularly brilliant constituency MP. Nowadays, that has changed beyond all recognition—not even in the safest seat could an MP from any party get away with such behaviour.

Let me return to the demands that I think the register should place on lobbyists. The criterion that it should only cover third-party lobbyists is unfair on the third-party lobbying industry. In-house lobbyists—that covers all sorts of organisations and companies—should be forced to provide information, which, as I said when I intervened on the Leader of the House, should include financial information. Big companies, wealthy organisations and even wealthy individuals can spend millions on lobbying, and that sort of information should be available.