Accountability and Transparency in the NHS

Debate between Bernard Jenkin and Stephen Dorrell

Thursday 14th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dorrell]

The position I take is the one set out in the Francis report, which was explicitly endorsed by Sir David Nicholson in the Select Committee inquiry to which the hon. Lady has referred. I believe that it would also be endorsed by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, but he must speak for himself. That position is that it is hard to imagine circumstances in which the use of public money in the context of a compromise agreement should be governed by a confidentiality clause. In an age when a bill from Pizza Express has to be published on the internet, decision makers should be held publicly accountable for the use of large sums of money in the context of a compromise agreement.

[Mr Jenkin]

I accept my right hon. Friend’s challenge about openness and transparency in the way the health service reacts outwardly, but that is a means to an end. There is also a lack of honesty and openness between people working in the health service, and the mistrust between levels of management and institutions inhibits the proper flow of information and the ability of people to trust each other in the context of saying what is wrong and putting it right. People in the health service dare not tell their senior management what is wrong.

[Mr Dorrell]

I have a lot of sympathy with what my hon. Friend says. The successful delivery of a culture change that supports real transparency would build on the fact that it is not only a right but an obligation for a registered doctor or nurse who sees care being provided that falls below proper standards to raise their concerns and, if no action is taken, for those concerns to be raised with the regulator. Change will be required right through the health service if that professional obligation is to be made real.

European Union Bill

Debate between Bernard Jenkin and Stephen Dorrell

Monday 24th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jenkin]

I will not give way, because my point was not designed to provoke the Opposition and I want to press on. The Opposition’s inability to answer the question of how the proposals would help to get a referendum meant that they fell into the trap that was set for them by my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood.

[Mr Dorrell]

Did not the Opposition spokesman’s responses give the game away that Labour is unwilling and resistant to the idea of promoting referendums in the context of the Bill? The purpose of both coalition parties is to open the door to consulting the people on the decisions envisaged in the Bill.

[Mr Jenkin]

I agree totally, but perhaps my right hon. Friend was a little unwise to draw more attention to himself. Perhaps he will speak later and give way generously, as the Opposition spokesman did to him. I have a few points to put to him about how enthusiastic he is about a referendum, given that he voted against the referendum on the Maastricht treaty and at that stage even opposed the principle of a referendum on the single currency. Who would take that position today?

[Mr Dorrell]

Given that it is unlikely that I shall have the opportunity to address the Committee and respond to all my hon. Friend’s questions, perhaps we shall have to defer that pleasure for another day. However, I invite him to consider the benefits of a sinner who repents.

[Mr Jenkin]

I am all for that. I remember my noble Friend, the former Member for North Shropshire, Lord Biffen—he who had whipped through and proposed the guillotine on the Single European Act—starting his speech in a debate on the Maastricht treaty by exclaiming that we all have blood on our hands. The important theme to draw from this debate is that there is unanimity about the democratic deficit at the heart of the whole process of European integration. The people have not been involved or consulted enough.

My hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) extolled the virtues of the Bill as the “Thus far and no further” Bill and the great victory for my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), who has campaigned on the matter for so many years—the Bill Cash memorial Bill. My hon. Friend seemed to be saying that the Bill would succeed in stopping the process of European integration in its tracks, even though the much-quoted Martin Howe, QC, has said that although the Bill might fix our place on the escalator, it does not stop the escalator going up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jenkin]

I will deal briefly with my hon. Friend’s amendments, which deserve consideration and which I will support if there is a vote. The original pledge was that any new treaty would get a referendum—that was what we were told at the Conservative party conference in 2009. That was going to be the real referendum lock. It seems that the proximity of office blunts the senses, and “any treaty” is now only “certain treaties”.

We are now faced with a treaty of enormous significance in the EU—the treaty for fiscal union that Monsieur Fillon came over to propose to the Prime Minister last week. We will be told that it will not affect us, because there is no transfer of competence, no change in voting rights, no imposition of obligations and all the rest, and that it is not significant, so there is no need for a referendum. I remember being told that we could ratify the Maastricht treaty because it did not really affect us as we would have an opt-out from monetary union, but look how it is affecting us. There is no such thing as “Does not affect us”. Of course, if we were not in the European Union and it went ahead with fiscal union, it would affect us, so it will be argued that we cannot object as long as we have proper opt-outs.

The problem is that we are in the EU and under the European Court of Justice. We are in the decision-making institutions and in the legal jurisdiction of what will become a fiscal union. It is impossible for anyone to argue that the development of the European Union can go ahead to such an extent without affecting legal decisions in this country. Yet the Bill excludes any possibility of a referendum on an extremely significant treaty. That provision should have been in the Maastricht treaty—we all argued for that when monetary union was first discussed. We all pointed out that the no-bail-out clause was worth nothing—article 104c is emblazoned on my heart. We all argued that there could not be monetary union without fiscal union. We warned of the consequences of monetary union without fiscal union, and stressed that our opt-out was meaningless and would not protect us from the consequences of the Maastricht treaty. Now we are warning again that we should not allow the treaty to go ahead unless we get sufficient opt-outs and exemptions from the existing acquis communautaire, yet the Bill does not provide for a referendum.

[Mr Dorrell]

My hon. Friend asserted once or twice from a sedentary position during the debate that it had strayed quite widely in the context of the amendments. It is not clear to me how the French Prime Minister’s proposal for a treaty for fiscal union falls within the scope of the amendments that we are discussing.

[Mr Jenkin]

Amendment 1 would remove wriggle room for any Government by requiring a referendum on any new treaty. That was promised at the Conservative party conference, but it is not being delivered in the Bill.

I reiterate that if we want to protect ourselves from the consequences of the inclusion of fiscal union in the arrangements for the European Union, we need to separate ourselves considerably from all the other paraphernalia in which we are currently embroiled. Even the Liberal Democrats are beginning to talk about repatriation of powers on some labour market regulations, such as the working time directive. Incidentally, we were told that we had opted out of that, but it turned out that we had not—something else that we were right about when we debated the Maastricht treaty.

If we allow fiscal union to go ahead, it is inconceivable that it will not have an impact on taxation throughout the European Union. Taxation is already a shared competence. It is not difficult for the European Court of Justice to argue that, as tax union takes place in the euro area, in order to maintain a single marketplace and a level playing field—and all the jargon that is regularly used—it will enlarge the EU’s competences over taxation. That is inevitable. I am fed up with warning about what will happen and being proved right. It is time that the House acted on the warnings that it has been given for many years.

I want to consider amendment 11 and the test for significance. The amendment is in keeping with the spirit of the Bill. Its scope is narrow. Clause 2 covers “Treaties amending or replacing” the existing treaties. Clause 3 deals with amending the treaty on the functioning of the European Union. Each relies on clause 4, which provides for a whole lot of tests, including subsection (1)(i) and (j), which are subject to the significance test.

The problem with the significance test was best described by the European Scrutiny Committee. I appreciate that many of my colleagues say, “Oh well, that’s chaired by the hon. Member for Stone. What do you expect? It’s been completely hijacked by the ultra Eurosceptic extremists.” However, I invite hon. Members to consider the membership of that Committee. Its members are a pretty reasonable bunch of people. I happen to believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone is a reasonable person, too. Although some of the report was contested, paragraph 98 was supported unanimously by Labour and Liberal Democrat as well as Conservative members of the Committee. Paragraph 98 states, in bold:

“We think the possibility for successful judicial review of a ministerial decision whether a transfer of power under clause 4(1)(i) and (j) is significant will, in practice, be limited.”

That is based on evidence given to that Committee. The problem is:

“The expressions ‘if the Minister is of the opinion’ and ‘in the Minister’s opinion’ in clause 4(4) underline the subjectivity of the process and the difficulty of judicial review.”

My hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) said that somehow Mr and Mrs Citizen from Dover can toddle into the administrative court to bring an action that threatens the whole Government’s policy when the Minister has opined to the House of Commons that something is not significant enough to attract a referendum. That is absolutely bonkers. My noble Friend Lord Rees-Mogg and Mr Stuart Wheeler are hardly two typical citizens—perhaps they are my hon. Friend’s constituents—but they have both failed to attract the attention of the courts or to engage them in such fundamentally political decisions. The phrase “in the Minister’s opinion ”clearly makes the decision political. It is a political problem. The skill of amendment 11, which stands in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison), is that it brings decisions home to the House of Commons, where political decisions should be made.

The main argument against amendment 11 is that judicial review is superior to the Government’s obtaining the consent of the House of Commons. We do not like rule by judges or judicial supremacy. We prefer democracy, which commends the proposal. The second argument against amendment 11 is even more bizarre.

European Union Bill

Debate between Bernard Jenkin and Stephen Dorrell

Tuesday 7th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dorrell]

Orange. The right hon. Gentleman is quite right. We regard all those developments as steps in the right direction, but, although there is a chain of causality back to the European Union, it is a relatively modest one.

I shall try to make the case for the Bill, which should be supported, in considerably more modest—one might even say, more sceptical—terms, because people who claim for themselves the title of sceptic in the European debate often desert the basic principle of scepticism, which is to stand back from the argument and seek to assess it more coolly than sometimes is the case.

I have drawn attention to the argument from the hon. Member for Rhondda in support of the EU and our membership of it, but those who argue the case against it, and increasingly explicitly argue that we should leave it, tend to express the argument in terms of irreversible shifts of power and use the word “permanent”.

I again am a sceptic, however, because history teaches us that no human institution is permanent and there are no irreversible shifts of power. There is only a tide of human events, and the case for the European Union, which I am happy and, indeed, keen to make, is the pragmatic case whereby, in the world of 2010, the European Union, which is a dramatically different institution from that set up by the treaty of Rome in 1958, should be supported not because it is perfect, when it plainly is not, but because it serves a purpose. Imperfect as the EU is, it is part of the arrangements for the governance of Europe, and on balance it contributes more good than it inflicts harm. In human affairs, that seems to me justification enough for the institution to continue to exist.

It is often said of the European Union that there is no European demos. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary used to make that case when he argued for a more sceptical approach to the development of European institutions. It has become increasingly obvious that there is no such thing as a European demos, but the EU, as it has evolved since 1958 and partly because it now has so many more members, is increasingly obviously an intergovernmental organisation, which most people in the House and, indeed, among our constituents accept as a fact of life, not something that should be particularly resisted.

[Mr Jenkin]

Where is the evidence that the European Commission or the European Court of Justice accept that the EU is an increasingly intergovernmental organisation? I put it to my right hon. Friend that, actually, they insist on quite the reverse.

[Mr Dorrell]

They may have ambitions, and people within those organisations plainly do have ambitions, but that is exactly what the Bill seeks to address. It introduces not an irreversible, immovable, permanent safeguard that can never be overcome, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) said, a further inhibition on the development of competence within the European Union, which I would have thought my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) welcomed. Again, it is a modest step. My hon. Friend the Member for Stone dismissed it as a mouse of a Bill, but even if it is a mouse it can be a mouse on the right side of the scales, and that seems to be the case for it.

The Bill is right in principle and in practice. It is right in principle, because I do not agree with the arguments against referendums in principle when the question at stake is how the country is run. I agree with one of the points that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) made, when he said that part of the problem in terms of public acceptance of the European case is the perception—indeed, the reality—that competence has passed to the EU without the scrutiny that our constituents want to see. That is a correct statement of historical fact, so, in order to rebalance the argument, it is a step in the right direction and a correct principle that any further accretion of power to the European institutions should be subject to a referendum block, the terms of which are set out in the Bill. The hon. Member for Ilford South argued that a Bill introduces the opportunity for judges to interpret it—well, yes; that is the nature of an Act of Parliament. If we pass an Act of Parliament, that creates a statute, which is interpreted in the courts. There are no Acts of Parliament of which that is not true.

Against the background of what has happened in the European argument over 40 years, the Bill introduces the correct principle that further accretion of competence to the European institutions should be subject to a referendum. That is right in principle. I also think that it is right in practice, for the important reason that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary set out in his speech and which was impliedly accepted in the speeches made by both the shadow Foreign Secretary and, ironically, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham. What matters in the European argument now is the use of these competences and how this increasingly intergovernmental organisation reacts to the pressures of events.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham pressed the point that there are some fundamental threats to our economic development, tied up in particular in the current pressures on the euro. I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend about the dangers that arise as a result of those developments. The case that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary was making for the Bill is that it is a modest step to disarm the constitutional argument about how we are run, in order to focus the debate on where it properly needs to be—on how those competences are used by the European institutions and how that impacts on our way of life.