Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Debate between Charles Walker and Jack Straw

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Straw]

Of course I accept that the public are concerned, but from my long experience they have a clear view of how to balance the interests of liberty and their own personal security—that is what this is about, not the security of the state—and they implicitly acknowledge that, although the systems that we have built up during the past 30 years may not be perfect, they do provide that balance. They provide a level of control over Ministers and the intelligence, security and police services, which is pretty unparalleled in most other countries.

Let us consider the abuses that take place in Europe. I think of what has happened in France in recent years, where one Minister intercepted the telephone calls of another Minister—all kinds of abuses by Ministers and the judiciary. That has never happened here and it could never happen here under our system—[Interruption.] Yes, it used to happen. It is right that trade unions were wire-tapped. Many others, thousands of people, were subject to intrusive surveillance. I know that to be the case because an officer of the Security Service told me that and showed me my file. I know that to be the case in respect of my family as well. But that was under a system where there was no statutory regulation whatsoever of telephone intercept, or data retention, which was available then, and when the very existence of the security and intelligence agencies was itself denied. That has rightly changed to take account of our duties and public concerns. It is not perfect, but we are much closer to a system that properly balances those things.

I hope that the Committee will not accept, for the reasons I have suggested, what my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East suggests, which will lead to a truncated, abbreviated review that will not work, and that instead we will have the longer review, proposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn, and sober consideration of a new Act to replace this one and RIPA before the end of 2016.

[Mr Charles Walker]

I rise to support amendment 2, tabled by the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson). This really is a ridiculous way to transact legislation in this place—to sit here and listen to a lot of nonsense from some quite respectable people. The idea that we should put something so important and worth while through in a day just takes the biscuit.

I am sure that there is a huge amount of worthy content in the Bill, and I am sure that it is extraordinarily important that business is transacted as quickly as possible, but we have a duty of scrutiny and reflection in this Chamber. We represent 65 million people. This is not simply a rubber-stamping process. The idea that doing this in a day is somehow no worse than revisiting it in December just does not hold water. That argument will have no resonance out there with our electorate.

There is a slight undertone in the debate that those in the Chamber who express concern about the way business is being done today are somehow complicit in putting the nation’s safety at risk. That really is the last hiding place of scoundrels. I do not mean that anyone in this place starts from that basis, but we have a moral duty here to scrutinise legislation. I totally and honestly agree with the hon. Member for West Bromwich East that we need to revisit this sooner, rather than later.

Private Members’ Bills

Debate between Charles Walker and Jack Straw

Monday 2nd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. There is much to commend the current ballot system, but it is incumbent on the Committee to put a series of proposals before the House so that it can come to its own view, because the House is populated by extremely wise people who have a lot of knowledge and wisdom to impart in this area. It will be for the House to reflect on what it wishes to do.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

I have been able to read the Procedure Committee’s report since it was issued this morning, and I greatly welcome it. Were it to be implemented, it would result in a sea change in the attitude of Members on both sides of the House to private Members’ legislation, and their behaviour would change as a consequence. However, achieving such a change in behaviour is not so much about the method of selecting the Bills in the first place as about providing, through timetabling, a process by which decisions can be made. At the moment, any Bill that is even remotely contentious ends up being kicked into touch as a result of the activities of the Whips. This creates a dishonesty that verges on farce, and leads to institutional disingenuity by those in the Whips Office—of all persuasions—and therefore by Government Departments. I also very much welcome the Committee’s proposal for the Government to have to state their attitude to a Bill on First Reading. The Leader of the House suggested in his evidence to the Committee that the Government spent a great deal of time forming a view of such Bills. If that is the case, things have obviously changed since 2010. Also, we must be able to come to conclusions on Bills, whether on a Friday or on any other day.

[Mr Walker]

The right hon. Gentleman has made some useful observations. In preparation for this afternoon’s debate, I wrote a very long, tedious and laborious speech, but I do not think that I shall have time to make it. Instead, I shall demonstrate the clear thinking of the moderately informed by answering each of the points that he has just raised.

First, in my view and the view of most members of the Committee, timetabling is an outstanding idea. We have come up with a number of suggestions to facilitate its introduction, in which either some or all of the private Members’ Bills drawn in the ballot would be timetabled. They would get a vote at the end of the Second Reading debate, and there would be a facility on Report to table a timetable motion that could be debated for 45 minutes and voted on if the House so wished.

The House really needs to give serious consideration to our suggestions on timetabling. It is incumbent on every colleague here to ensure that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and others spend more time with their constituents on Fridays. As much as I enjoy listening to my hon. Friend on Fridays, I believe that on occasions his time on those days could be better spent in his constituency, where he would be welcomed with open arms. I know that you will be concerned about my mentioning my hon. Friend in this way, Mr Speaker, but I spoke to him in the Tea Room this morning and he told me, in his rounded Yorkshire vowels, that he thought the report was a load of rubbish and “cobblers”. However, we need to ensure that colleagues have an incentive to turn up on Fridays, whether they are for or against a particular Bill, and that they at least have a chance to make their views heard. If a Bill has a timetable motion, one can then impose time limits on speeches.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Charles Walker and Jack Straw

Monday 6th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Straw]

No. If I may, I shall make some progress.

We left the Conservative laws in place. To deal with the point raised by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster, we never sought, and would never have sought, to change the laws relating to boundaries without broad cross-party agreement. The insinuation that we somehow contrived to secure a large gap between the average size of Labour seats and Conservative seats is wholly ill-founded. Six of 10 of the largest constituencies are now Labour, and only three of the 10 smallest are. As I say, we would have been happy to discuss with the Deputy Prime Minister sensible and fair ways of speeding up the timetable for drawing boundaries, just as we did in 1992. Unfortunately, he has put political self-interest way ahead of democratic principles. That is especially evident in his proposals to reduce the size of this House to 600 Members.

The justification for that proposal, which we heard yet again today, is that the House is allegedly too large. That claim does not withstand examination. Our ratio of elected parliamentary representatives per head of population is roughly the same as that in France and Italy; the ratio is much smaller for other EU partners such as Ireland, Sweden, Greece and Poland. Of course, our House is larger than theirs because the population is greater here, and we are not a federal state. That said, we have only 20 more Members than the Bundestag in Germany.

In any event, a more sensible basis on which to decide is to ask what level of representation is right for the United Kingdom, and to examine how the electorate and the House of Commons have changed over time. If the number of Members of Parliament had grown out of all proportion to the size of the electorate, there would clearly be a problem, but that is not the case. Today, there are 650 Members, an increase of less than 4% in 60 years. Over the same period, the electorate have grown by 25%, and the work load of Members on both sides of the House has increased exponentially; that is both the work that arises from constituents, and the work that arises from responsibilities in the House.

Perhaps that is why, in 2003, the man who today is Prime Minister argued to preserve the boundaries of his west Oxfordshire seat and made a strong plea for the size of the House of Commons to stay as it was. The right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron), now the Prime Minister, said in his oral evidence to an independent local public inquiry, which existed then and existed under us, but which will no longer exist:

“Somebody might take the view that at 659 there are already too many Members of Parliament at Westminster. They may take the view . . . that Westminster has less to do, with less MPs—I certainly hope that is not the case.”

I quote from the Boundary Commission for England: Transcript of Oxfordshire Boundary Inquiry, 2003.

The Deputy Prime Minister—this was another error by him—said that the number of Members in the House had crept inexorably up. That is not the case. If he had bothered to examine the House of Commons Library research note on the Bill, he would have seen that on the back. The numbers went up to 659 under the Conservatives. They were put at 659 in 1992. They were at 659 in the 1997 election. They are now down to 650. Of course we would have been happy to discuss sensible and agreed reductions in the total size, as indeed we did when we were in office.

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

Is it not the case that we have 650 Members of Parliament because we draw the Executive from Parliament? At any given time there are at least 300 Members of Parliament serving in the Executive or the shadow Executive. That leaves only 350 Members of Parliament to hold the Government to account.

[Mr Straw]

I had not thought of that before, but I commend the strength of that point. It is why the banal comparisons that the Deputy Prime Minister makes are so false.