Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill (Third sitting)

Cat Smith Excerpts

Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 16th May 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

As one of the new intake of MPs in 2017, I am still getting to grips with how decisions are made and how futile the attempts of Back Benchers to get things done can be. I was told that Back Benchers could get something to become law by promoting a private Member’s Bill. Getting a First Reading is hard enough, but it is not insurmountable. Getting a Second Reading is nigh on impossible, because unless one is lucky enough to get into the top 20 in the private Member’s Bill draw, one is unlikely to get sufficient time to debate the issue. Even if sufficient time is granted, at least 100 MPs have to be present on one of the 13 allotted Fridays and then a majority of those voting have to vote for the Bill. To get to a Second Reading is a tall order.

At present there are 58 private Members’ Bills scheduled for the next sitting Friday on 15 June; 25 for Friday 6 July; 23 for Friday 26 October; and 18 for Friday 23 November. That is a total of 103 private Member’s Bills, the vast majority of which will never get a Second Reading, due to the lack of parliamentary time. When a private Member’s Bill does get through its Second Reading with a majority in the House on a Friday, surely the Government should respect the will of Parliament and grant a money resolution to allow the Bill to progress.

Earlier this morning, I looked up “money resolutions” on the Parliament website, which defines it as follows:

“A Money resolution must be agreed to by the House of Commons if a new Bill proposes spending public money on something that hasn’t previously been authorised by an Act of Parliament.

Money resolutions, like Ways and Means resolutions, are normally put to the House for agreement immediately after the Bill has passed its Second reading in the Commons.”

I ask hon. Members to note the word “immediately”.

The Bill passed its Second Reading on 1 December 2017. Five and a half months have passed and the Government are undemocratically disrespecting the will of Parliament, trying to smother this Bill by not granting a money resolution. This is a flagrant abuse of the customs and practices of this Parliament, as the hon. Member for Glasgow East has said. It is an attack on the processes of parliamentary democracy and on the few chances that Back Benchers have to influence and make changes. Parliament is not just the Government. The Government need to think very carefully about their disrespect for parliamentary democracy. Back Benchers need to be heard and respected.

[Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)]

I want to put on the record that the contents of the Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton have yet to be discussed in Committee because of the Government’s failure to table a money resolution. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, they have had five and half months to do so and give us the opportunity to discuss the Bill.

The content of the Bill gained wide consensus across the House five and half months ago, passing its Second Reading by 229 votes to 44. I have previously raised this point: this is about the will of Parliament. A lot has happened since the 2018 boundary review, which the Bill seeks to replace. The 2018 review started before we even had the EU referendum, and the number of people on the electoral roll has increased significantly.

The current boundary review, which will come back to the House in October, uses the figures from December 2015, when there were 44.7 million people, compared with the 46.8 million people recorded this year. Those are 2 million people whose voices will not be heard in the current proposed boundary review but which could be heard if my hon. Friend’s Bill had a money resolution. We could then discuss the Bill and gain cross-party consensus, because there is huge will across the House to do so.

We want an accurate electoral roll to decide the boundaries for this House. That is incredibly important post the Brexit referendum, which means we will lose Members of the European Parliament. The idea of losing them at the same time as we lose 50 MPs, while maintaining the size of the Government payroll, is a slap in the face to democracy. It hands more power to Government and less power to the people, which is the exact opposite of the wide consensus of what Brexit was about in the first place. We want an accurate electoral roll to draw our boundaries.

We also want power to be given to Parliament. By not tabling a money resolution, the Government have shown contempt and denied us the opportunity to debate the Bill. They have not respected the, to be frank, limited powers of Back Benchers to introduce legislation. I hope the Minister will be able to offer us more today than she managed at our previous sitting.

[The Chair]

Does the Minister wish to respond?