Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee

Debate between Bernard Jenkin and Ronnie Cowan

Thursday 20th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jenkin]

I do. We made a specific recommendation that a new body be established to monitor cyber-activity in relation to referendums and elections. However, I emphasise that we are in a much stronger position than countries that have electronic voting or single population registers. I have confidence in our system, although we need to be more alert in order to maintain public confidence; that is the main point.

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

I am a member of the Committee, so there is plenty I could say about the report, but I will respect your wish, Mr Speaker, for us to keep comments and questions short. The most important line in the report is perhaps that there should be

“careful and restrained use of the machinery of government”—

for example, of the civil service and the purdah provisions. Will the hon. Gentleman join me in encouraging the UK Government to trust the devolved Administrations and allow them to organise and run their referendums without external interference from this place?

[Mr Jenkin]

It is a fact—I make no comment on it, as an impartial Chairman of my Committee—that referendums are constitutional matters and therefore are reserved to the United Kingdom Parliament. I recognise that there is some demand for a new referendum in Scotland, but even the Good Friday agreement says that there should not be a referendum more than once every seven years. There needs to be a respectable interval between referendums, otherwise they just become meaningless. How many times in the European Union have we seen another referendum called when the first gave the wrong result? I do not put the Scottish National party in that category, but calling referendums too often is actually a contempt for democracy.

Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee

Debate between Bernard Jenkin and Ronnie Cowan

Thursday 16th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jenkin]

I am grateful for the right hon. Lady’s kind remarks, and it is important that we make such Select Committee statements because they engage more Members in our reports. I regard our report as a serious piece of work that makes serious recommendations, and hon. and right hon. Members of all views on the original conflict can embrace it as a better way of making such decisions in government and a better way of conducting public inquiries.

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

As a member of the Select Committee, I point out that the Chilcot inquiry was about identifying mistakes that led to loss of life, military and civilian. With that in mind, it is unacceptable that the inquiry took seven years to reach a conclusion. Those mistakes could have been repeated in that timescale. However, the Committee points out:

“The Iraq Inquiry reported that the Blair Government did not expose key policy decisions to rigorous review.”

Backing that up, paragraph 63 says:

“Cabinet was…being asked to confirm the decision that the diplomatic process was at an end and that the House of Commons should be asked to endorse the use of military action to enforce Iraq’s compliance. Given the gravity of this decision, Cabinet should have been made aware of the legal uncertainties.”

I put it to the Chairman that the evidence provided to the Cabinet appears to have been designed to produce the result that the then Prime Minister was looking for.

[Mr Jenkin]

I think that is an accurate comment, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his contribution to the Committee and this report. It cuts both ways, because the Cabinet went along with being sidelined. Chilcot was clear that plenty of Cabinet Ministers were quite content to leave it to others to make the decisions when they had the right to insist on being consulted. Our report addresses how the legal advice was taken, explored and discussed by the Cabinet, and we make recommendations about that. Our proposals make clear what Cabinet Ministers are entitled to expect. It is not a favour to ask that of the Prime Minister; it is part of the proper procedure of Cabinet government. We do not have a superannuated presidency in this country. We have a constitutional Cabinet Government, which should be reinforced by these proposals.

Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee

Debate between Bernard Jenkin and Ronnie Cowan

Monday 18th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jenkin]

On the latter point, we certainly intend to give Mr Riddell an opportunity to appear before the Committee before too long to see how he is settling into his new role. We would not have agreed to his appointment unless we were convinced that he was determined to be independent, but with so many of his powers being questioned and with Ministers substantively proposing to take back control of the appointments process, how he carries out the role will be crucial. How he maintains the importance of the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments will be very interesting to observe.

We would like whatever changes are made to be made on the basis of consensus. We have picked up a certain amount of—how shall I say it?—tension between civil servants and Ministers about these appointments. There may be an opportunity to build a better understanding of both parties, so that these changes are not necessary.

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that to ensure that the best candidates are aware of these opportunities, the vacancies must be promoted far and wide? That would go some way towards ensuring that applications were received from candidates regardless of their race, creed, colour, religion, gender or even the university or school they happened to go to. It would also open up the process to people from different and varied walks of life who could bring their life experience to a different arena. Advertising a job on a specialist website and then phoning round our pals to encourage them to apply is not an effective or appropriate way to attract the strongest candidates.

At a time when the public are rightly demanding more accountability from their elected representatives, the opportunity to apply for jobs such as the Commissioner for Public Appointments should be widely publicised across a spectrum of United Kingdom society to encourage a diverse range of applicants, rather than going down the traditional route, which will reaffirm the public’s view that there is cronyism and engender disenchantment and apathy.

Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs committee

Debate between Bernard Jenkin and Ronnie Cowan

Thursday 4th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jenkin]

That last question is very interesting. There is an ongoing investigation by the official receiver, which should be able to tell us what happened to that money and if any money is due to be returned to the Government. I am not a legal expert, but I think that once the Government handed over the money, it belonged to the charity. It no longer belonged to the Government and, although the Government might be a creditor, they will probably have to queue up behind other creditors. I very much hope that the Government might accept that the employees who lost their employment very abruptly are entitled to some measure of recompense, perhaps out of those funds. The answer is that I do not know. What was evident from that programme last night was how the restructuring was resisted to the very end. I am not sure whether that was known to the Minister who signed the letter of direction.

I, too, would like to pay tribute to the staff of the Committee. They do not usually like their name up in lights—it is not the tradition of the House service—but we are very fortunate in our Committee. We have very good staff.

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

Having watched the BBC documentary last night and seen the founder of Kids Company laugh about breaking the law and be dismissive of a vast amount of UK taxpayers’ money which was handed out so freely by both Labour and Conservative Governments, it is clear that lessons have to be learned. One of the lessons that we failed to learn in the past was that brash, bright, colourful, flamboyant characters who are favoured by senior politicians should be open to the same scrutiny as the many conscientious hard-working individuals who work tirelessly for a charity with only the best of intentions. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the report should be only an opening salvo and must be followed up?

[Mr Jenkin]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his remarks. Yes, this is an opening salvo—both reports are opening salvos—about governance. The question of governance extends beyond charities to how the whole of Whitehall is governed—all the public bodies and the civil service, and how we govern the contractual exchanges between the public and the private sectors from Whitehall. Governance is not just about compliance and box-ticking. Governance is about the exercise of judgment by the people who are accountable for what occurs, and I hope that fellow Select Committee Chairs and I will pursue the matter of governance across the whole of the public sector and the parts of the private sector that are funded by the public sector.