United Kingdom Parliamentary Sovereignty Bill

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Friday 18th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

Okay.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Bone]

He wants to be on it too!

[Chris Bryant]

No, this is an application not to be on the Bill Committee. I have heard these arguments so many times that I have no desire to hear them all over again, even if it would give us an opportunity to hear the whole of the Minister’s speech on the subject. May I point out to the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) that greed is a sin? Taking so many private Members’ Bills on one day might be thought somewhat greedy.

[Mr Chope]

I have been accused of many things, but not greed. People who are frustrated legislators and willing to spend a couple of nights sleeping in the Palace of Westminster to queue up for their tickets may have the opportunity of having their Bills brought before the House. I hope that some of my other Bills on the Order Paper will be debated, not least my Local Government Ombudsman (Amendment) Bill. When I first put that title down last June, I had not anticipated that I would read in my local paper last Friday that the Hampshire county council health and safety people had interfered in the Beaulieu pancake race, so that it is now the Beaulieu pancake walk rather than race. I had not realised that my third Bill would be so relevant to a local story, but now it has a relevance above all else. I hope that we get a chance to discuss it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

I am little surprised to be called so early in the debate, not least because I have dilated on this subject on many occasions. [Hon. Members: “No!”] Protests will not put me off doing so again.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) on introducing the Bill, not only because this is such an auspicious time, given that we are now in the midst of debating the European Union Bill, which is still in the other place, but because of the continuing flow of, I have to say, clearly deliberate attempts by the coalition Government to throw doubt on the sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament, some of which have been diverted by the European Scrutiny Committee report. I am extremely glad to note that the explanatory notes to the European Union Bill have been changed, something that has not been mentioned publicly by the Government or the media. The explanatory notes on clause 18, or the so-called sovereignty clause, which we were able to demonstrate it was not, have been revised in the light of the European Scrutiny Committee report. I am glad that they have been changed to get rid of some of the Committee’s gravest objections to how the Government were seeking to apply what is known as the common law principle. I do not need to go into all the detail because we debated it at great length.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman has referred to clause 18 of the European Union Bill, the so-called sovereignty clause. He will recall that amendments not passed in this House would have gone in the direction of this Bill. Would it not be bizarre if this House were to send two Bills to the House of Lords at the same time that were mutually contradictory?

[Mr Cash]

It would be highly desirable. This Bill would in fact succeed the European Union Bill in order. We know that any Act of Parliament that is subsequent to a previous Act and is inconsistent with it, particularly in the context of sovereignty issues, overrides the previous Act. Therefore, if this Bill were enacted—if it followed the European Union Bill—it would supersede it. It would thereby also have the great advantage of overriding the manifestly absurd and, I believe, completely unlawful motion—unlawful in constitutional terms—that was passed, which said that this House did not reaffirm the sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament. When I use the word “unlawful” in this context, I simply mean that the European Union Bill is still under consideration by both Houses. I am using that expression with regard to the constitutionality of the matter, but it is a very important question and I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has raised that point, because it is important that we get it straightened out.

I come back to the explanatory notes. The report that the European Scrutiny Committee produced, which was unanimous, particularly on clause 18, was based on evidence from pretty well all the pre-eminent constitutional experts on what sovereignty meant in the context of the European Union Bill and in general. There was complete unanimity that the Bill did not contain what was on the tin, that it did not confer sovereignty and that the provision was not needed. However, read in the context of the explanatory notes, the invocation of the common law principle, which is a very profound question that has been raging in academic circles and the establishment for a long time, has the effect of reinforcing the view expressed in certain quarters, particularly in certain parts of the Supreme Court, that the sovereignty of Parliament is qualified by the ultimate authority of the courts, which is not something that the public at large would agree with, to say the least, or, for that matter, that they even knew was happening. The expression “common-law principle” has now been taken out of the explanatory notes, which is a great victory for the European Scrutiny Committee and will help substantially to alter the position in the right direction.

I am not convinced that the argument has been completely resolved, but the discussions of the kind that we are having today are helpful in further removing any doubt about the question of the sovereignty of Parliament. That is because the sovereignty of Parliament is not a purely theoretical abstraction; it is to do with the practical application of law passed in this House and in the other place for the purpose of implementing legislative proposals emanating from the Government or other sources to reflect the views of the electorate. In other words, this is essentially a democratic question.

In cases in which European Union law, European Court of Human Rights law and European convention law contradict the wishes of the electorate, it must be made clear that the sovereignty of Parliament will override such provisions in a way that ensures that the wishes of the electorate are complied with, consistently with general election and manifesto pledges, irrespective of coalition agreements, and in a manner that guarantees that the electorate’s views are not only understood but put into effect.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Cash]

That is completely right, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for not only his intervention but his notable contribution to the European Scrutiny Committee, of which he is a member.

The question of amending the Bill gives me an opportunity to set out another short clause that might be added to it.

[Chris Bryant]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Cash]

I would just like to get this out of the way, if I may, because it is quite a useful and explicit affirmation of what we could do in practice to ensure that there is no doubt about what is being done. The new clause in question could be phrased in this way: “Any Act of Parliament or legal instrument expressly stating that that Act or instrument shall be ‘notwithstanding the European Communities Act 1972’ or ‘notwithstanding the European convention on human rights and the Human Rights Act 1998’ shall be construed by the courts of the United Kingdom as having the effect of disapplying and overriding any Act or legal instrument to which it refers.” That would put the position completely on all fours with the evidence that we have received from the constitutional experts.

For many years, I have said that we need a way to get round the problem of provisions emanating from the European Communities Act 1972, and the treaties and legal instruments made under it, being inconsistent with our national interests. To achieve that—in line with cases such as Macarthys v. Smith under Lord Denning and Garland v. British Rail Engineering under Lord Diplock, which remain good law despite what the Supreme Court has said recently—we need, precedent to an Act of Parliament and in relation to European Union legislation, to use the expression “notwithstanding the European Communities Act 1972” to make it clear that we are legislating subsequent to an existing enactment and expressly inconsistently with it. That would oblige the courts to give effect to the later legislation. There are occasions when it is clear that the Government would want to do that but cannot do it, or do not want to do it, or would prefer the whole subject to go away. I am looking closely at the Minister at this point. There is nobody who wants this subject to go away more than the Prime Minister does.

It is a problem. I recognise the dilemma, and I have to say, in all fairness, that I have absolutely no doubt about the need for the remedy. I understand that there are inconveniences in having the European Union producing legislation that this country does not want, which might have been thought to be a good idea in the past. Some thought that the working time directive was a good idea, but it has turned out to have all kinds of unfortunate consequences. The same could be said of other matters such as the over-regulation of business.

When we were in opposition in 2006, I tabled an amendment to the then Government’s Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill, based on the “notwithstanding” formula, in order to improve the opportunities for British business, helping it to grow and get away from unnecessary burdens imposed by the European Union. During the afternoon that I proposed that amendment, a series of Whips’ meetings took place. The Whips came to me and said, “Bill, would you be good enough to allow us to adopt your amendment and to put in Tellers?” When the vote took place on the words

“notwithstanding the European Communities Act 1972”,

teams of the present Government walked through the Lobbies to support my amendment, which they had adopted—and six weeks later on a whipped vote in the House of Lords, they reconfirmed it. There was no doubt about the intention there. The principle is thus established by the European Scrutiny Committee report, by the evidence we received and by the conduct of the Prime Minister who was then the Leader of the Opposition.

UN Security Council Resolution (Libya)

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Friday 18th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point, and I will stress again what the International Development Secretary will be doing. Obviously, he will be looking at what has been happening on Libya’s borders—we have discussed that before—but he will also be looking at the issues within Libya itself. There is no doubt in my mind that in this situation soft power has had an enormous effect on giving people a sense that a better future is available to them and that they do not have to put up with the regimes that they have had to put up with for so long. Despite the fact that there may be difficult days ahead, as we grapple with implementing this UN Security Council resolution, we should lift our heads up and believe that there is a more hopeful future for this region and, therefore, for our world.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I am sure that the whole House will wish the Prime Minister well as he discharges his duties in relation to Libya over the coming days, because he will face many much more complex decisions than those he has already had to take and they will affect life and death in Libya. We all want to see Gaddafi gone and we want to see everybody in Benghazi protected, but is the Prime Minister anxious about Russia’s abstention? Will he make sure that cluster munitions, which are banned for British troops, will also be banned by all those others who are taking part in this, because in many cases it is the aftershock of cluster munitions that devastates the civilian population?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point about cluster munitions. We do not use those munitions and we do not believe that others should either.

On the Russian abstention, and indeed the Chinese abstention, all I would observe is that this is, in many ways, quite a welcome step forward. We are talking here about a very tough resolution on what has happened in another country where people are being brutalised. In years gone by, we might have expected to see Security Council vetoes. The fact that we have not is a very positive step forward for international law, for international right, and for the future of our world.

United Kingdom Parliamentary Sovereignty Bill

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Friday 18th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Briefly, this Bill is a melancholic throat-clearing exercise inspired by a choleric attitude towards Europe. I am sanguine that the Government will be phlegmatic, so for all the reasons I have adumbrated in every other debate on the European Union since I was first elected in 2001, I oppose.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I do not intend to withdraw the Bill—it is important to put it to the test. Constituents up and down the country will want to see whether their Conservative representatives are doing their best to try to implement the manifesto commitments on which we were elected at the general election, or whether we are prepared to allow those commitments to fall to one side because we are in a coalition. I understood that the Government were trying their hardest to implement the commitments, but from what the Minister has said, I remain to be convinced.

I am grateful to all those who have participated in the debate and those who have supported the Bill. I am particularly indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) for his great knowledge on the matter; much of the Bill’s drafting is owed to his work in the past. He mentioned Jeffrey Goldsworthy, who has written a document on parliamentary sovereignty—I say document, but it was published as part of the “Cambridge Studies in Constitutional Law”.

[Chris Bryant]

He’s written two!

[Mr Chope]

He has written more than one document. I find it odd that the Minister asserts that everything that Jeffrey Goldsworthy says on the important subject of parliamentary sovereignty is wrong, and that the Minister is right—he has many attributes, but I am not sure that he is a constitutional law expert. I would prefer to go along with Jeffrey Goldsworthy’s expertise in the absence of any other compelling legal arguments.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) for raising some interesting points, not least when he intervened when the Minister objected to clause 1. The Minister seems to be under the illusion that the courts in this country can only interpret legislation, rather than apply common law principles. My hon. Friend bowled the Minister middle stump on that.

I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) for her support. She has done the House and the people a great service in tabling a host of probing and effective written questions that have exposed the Government’s policy for what it is—the Government are far too relaxed about the further erosion of our sovereignty.

I commend the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on the brevity of his speech. There is a lot to be said for Opposition Front Benchers making similarly short speeches when they do not have any support on their own side of the House at all, as is the situation today.

The idea that the UN resolution passed last night is inconsistent with the Bill is far fetched. May I suggest a better analogy? When this country went to a war in Iraq that, arguably, was illegal under international law, we were not prosecuted by some international criminal court. However, if we went into something that was at odds with the decisions of the European Court of Justice, we would be prosecuted and taken before that Court on the continent. That is the difference.

The Minister suggests that various details of the Bill could be made clearer. One way to do so would be to ensure that clause 2 refers to clause 1. However, the essence of the Bill is in clause 1, which stands on its own, reaffirming the sovereignty of this Parliament.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The recall mechanism—as supported, I think, in the manifestos of all three parties—is for serious wrongdoing, as I explained in answer to previous questions.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I am not quite sure that that is right, is it? Did not the Liberal Democrat manifesto say that people would be given the right to sack MPs who had broken the rules? The question then is: who gets to decide who has broken the rules? If, as the right hon. Gentleman says, it is the courts, that is a fairly straightforward process. However, if it was left up to voters, might they not think that if someone promised 3,000 more police officers and then cut 10,000, or promised not to raise VAT and then put it up by 2.5%, they had broken the rules?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As I said before, wrongdoing has clearly been committed if someone is given a prison sentence, and I think that any prison sentence of any length should disqualify MPs. Otherwise, we clearly need to establish a mechanism here in the House to prove serious wrongdoing, and only once that has been established would we grant electors the right, following a petition of 10% of the electors, to trigger a by-election—[Interruption.] I think that the hon. Gentleman is asking from a sedentary position whether that mechanism should be without any kind of filtering here in the House. The honest truth is that if we did it like that, and had a sort of free-for-all, there would be a real danger of a lot of vexatious and unjustified claims being made against one Member by others.

Libya and the Middle East

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend speaks with great power. What I have said about relations with Libya is that, while of course it was right to try to bring that country in from the cold, the question is whether parameters should have been put on the relationship. I think that it is for everyone to ask what agreements they reached. I heard the head of the London School of Economics on the radio this morning trying to justify one such agreement. Let us hope that at least the money that the LSE has can be put to a good use.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Given the circumstances that the Prime Minister has described, is it not increasingly difficult to explain the behaviour of the UK Trade & Investment special trade ambassador, who is not only a very close friend of Saif Gaddafi but a close friend of the convicted Libyan gun smuggler Tarek Kaituni? Is it not time that we dispensed with the services of the Duke of York?

[The Prime Minister]

I am not aware of the particular connections that the hon. Gentleman chooses to make, although I am happy to look into them. However, if we are to disqualify friends of Saif Gaddafi from public life, I think that he will be saying goodbye to one or two of his old friends.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

As I said yesterday—I know that I do not carry the whole House with this first sentence, but perhaps I will carry more of it later—I support the alternative vote and will be voting yes in the referendum. However, the way in which the Deputy Prime Minister has conducted this piece of legislation, or rather the way in which he has not conducted it, is steadily putting me off the idea. It is an enormous shame that he does not have the courage to be in the Chamber this evening even to represent his own view. I say to Liberal Democrat friends who would like this legislation to pass, that it would be a good idea to progress in a slightly different way.

There have been many misunderstandings about the nature of the threshold that Lord Rooker suggests should be introduced, which their lordships agreed to by a significant majority earlier today. Some think that the threshold would act in a way that other thresholds have acted elsewhere—in other words, that it would make it impossible for the Government then to bring forward the alternative vote. That is expressly not what it does and I am afraid that the Minister rather elided his interpretation of the Rooker amendment yesterday evening. It is absolutely clear. As Lord Rooker said in this afternoon’s debate in the other place, “I have said all along that if the turnout was less than 40%, the House could decide to implement AV and I would not argue with that.”

The simple point that we are making is that because this is not a fatal, kill-all threshold, but would mean that Parliament would have to think again, it puts the decision in the right and proper place. Everyone who supports the alternative vote has some version of a threshold in their mind, whether it is 1%, 5% or 10%.

[Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr MacNeil]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I will give way in a moment. Of course we do not expect there to be only 10% or 15% voting in elections and we do not expect that to be the threshold in elections later this year, but there will be a significant difference between the turnout in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I say to Government Members who are concerned about how English people view the way in which the House transacts its business that if the votes of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland end up effectively rigging the vote across the whole United Kingdom because they are having other, substantial, national elections on the same day, I think that will bring the decision into disrepute, and that is a problem.

[Paul Farrelly]

Just before the Minister summarily sat down, he said that if there were a clear decision, it would be wrong to thwart it in this way, but he did not define what he meant by a clear decision. Will my hon. Friend ask the Minister to give the House a definition?

[Chris Bryant]

I am afraid that I have been asking the Minister to provide clear definitions and clarity for some time but we certainly did not get much of that yesterday. My point is fairly simple. The amendment that has come from their lordships would not kill off the decision that might come through if fewer than 40% of voters voted in the referendum in May, it simply means that Parliament would have to take cognisance of the decision, so it would be an advisory referendum rather than an implementing referendum.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

Is it not the case that the amendment was originally carried by one vote in the Lords and was today carried by a majority of 62, including 27 Conservatives? Does not that show the strength of feeling in the Lords about the necessity for this modification in the Bill?

[Chris Bryant]

I believe my hon. Friend was in the Chamber yesterday when we had an interesting moment. The Minister effectively advanced his own threshold argument, which was that winning by only one vote in the House of Lords somehow did not really matter. I think their lordships listened to what he said and decided that they would introduce a threshold of their own—a 60-vote majority—which they surpassed quite easily. I am grateful to the Minister for helping us win more significantly in the House of Lords earlier today. I hope that his contribution this evening will do that again.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

One of the key arguments being made is that AV would mean that all Members of the House would have 50% of the vote, or close to it, and therefore have legitimacy. Does it not follow that if there is a miserly turnout in the referendum, it will not have legitimacy and the matter should come back to the House for us to debate whether the result should stand?

[Chris Bryant]

It is a particular irony for those who advocate the alternative vote, as I do, which in the majority of situations will mean that an MP will have secured 50% of the vote—

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I will in a moment. I am still dealing with this question. I know that the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) is going to make a silly point, and I will let him make it in a couple of moments.

It is suggested that we are advancing a system that guarantees that the vast majority of MPs will have 50% of the vote—some of us already achieve that—but then it is said that that provision should be delivered on perhaps a 30% or 35% vote.

[Sir Alan Beith]

rose—

[Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I will give way to the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) first, because he asked first.

[Sir Alan Beith]

I am grateful. If the hon. Gentleman loses the vote in the Commons tonight, does he think the unelected House is then morally entitled to defy the expressed will of this House?

[Chris Bryant]

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, I have advocated an elected House of Lords for a very long time, and that is still my position. However, many people, including himself when he was on the Opposition Benches, have argued that the sagacity and wisdom of people down the other end of the building should sometimes be listened to. Whatever system we end up with for the two Chambers, I would simply say that as in most other countries in Europe that have a parliamentary system, there will be a second Chamber with a particular concern for constitutional matters.

If the Bill had made progress as the result of pre-legislative scrutiny, with a Joint Committee considering all of its proposals, or for that matter if there had been two separate Bills, one on the AV referendum and another on parliamentary constituencies, I would agree wholeheartedly with the right hon. Gentleman. However, I believe that the Government have abused every single constitutional convention in driving the Bill forward, so I am afraid I am not with him on this occasion.

[Mr MacNeil]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

And now for the hon. Gentleman.

[Mr MacNeil]

Surely if a threshold is in place, it is an incentive not to participate. I hope that the Labour Front Benchers do not want to create such an incentive. Surely it is those who care who will vote. Those who are happy either way will probably not vote and will accept whatever those who care deliver. If the threshold that the hon. Gentleman wants were not reached, would that not invalidate both first past the post and AV, not just one of them?

[Chris Bryant]

I knew the hon. Gentleman was going to make a silly point, because he made the same silly point earlier. We have to have elections to this House, and they will either be under the first-past-the-post system or, if the referendum question is carried, under AV. I therefore do not accept his argument. I also point out to him that I believe there will be very different turnouts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland from that in England. That is why I have never supported holding the referendum on the same day as other elections there.

[Kevin Brennan]

To return to the amendment in lieu that the Minister has proposed, does my hon. Friend agree that it effectively constitutes a direct insult to the other House, first because of its puerile nature and the fact that it is totally unrelated to the amendments from the other place, and secondly because of the Minister’s cursory explanation of it, which gave the game away?

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend is, as always, spot on, and I will come to the Government amendment in lieu after I have made one significant point. Implementing referendums is fundamentally dangerous. All too often in other democracies, such referendums have been a way of circumventing the process of parliamentary democracy. That is a particularly dangerous way of doing business under coalition Governments. I do not believe that implementing referendums is a good idea, except for when there is a settled constitutional view that has been established on the basis of consensus, which is certainly not the situation with the AV referendum.

Everybody has a threshold in their own mind, but the truth is that the Government are proceeding as they are because they know perfectly well that if they were to introduce a stand-alone Bill to introduce the alternative vote, it would not be carried in the House or in the House of Lords. That is the profound danger with the way in which the Government are trying to proceed.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

I apologise that I was not here at the commencement of these proceedings—I got caught short in the gymnasium.

I put it to my hon. Friend that it scarcely lies in the mouths of the Conservatives to challenge the authority of the other place when they were happy to see that authority used to the greatest extent on these provisions just before the election when they vetoed their inclusion from the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010.

[Chris Bryant]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. In addition, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives so respect the House of Lords that they have decided to pack it with pliant Members so that they can start getting better results in votes. I praise those Members of the House of Lords, including Baroness Trumpington, who has never voted against the Conservative Whip, and who is notwithstanding a very splendid woman, who today decided to vote for the amendment in the name of Lord Rooker.

I support the alternative vote, but to me it is an even more important principle that the views of the British people, completely and definitively established, are enacted. That is why Lord Rooker’s threshold is appropriate.

Finally, the Minister’s amendment in lieu has absolutely no value. It would mean merely that the process that is already adopted by the Electoral Commission would be implemented. He knows that it is a chimera—the smile without the Cheshire cat.

[Mr Cash]

I entirely endorse the final remarks of the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)—the Government amendment in lieu is a load of rubbish.

It is important to get across what is really going on here. In the context of the referendum, the Conservative party is being led like a lamb to the slaughter. The reality is that the referendum is entirely to do with Liberal party aspirations as expressed in the coalition agreement. I have here an extract from the right hon. Member for Deauville—[Laughter.] I meant the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws), who might as well have come from Deauville. He quotes the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, the right hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne), as saying:

“Our historic mission is to create a British Liberal party whose influence will be embedded in our politics through a reformed voting system – a Liberal party capable of dealing with both other parties.”

The reality, therefore, is that what lies at the heart of this debate is not the rubbish that we have heard from the Minister on the Electoral Commission, but the glue that holds the coalition together.

I pay tribute to the noble Lord Rooker and the other Lords and Ladies who made such magnificent speeches this morning, which I had the privilege to witness. They are right that the Bill provides for a binding referendum, and that the essence of the argument is that the Bill is a constitutional issue, because it proposes to change our constitution in a fundamental way for the first time.

I believe that 40% is a reasonable test. It is accepted by all the constitutional authorities—including, ironically, Vernon Bogdanor, who was the Prime Minister’s own tutor. This threshold of 40%, which has come down to us in an amendment from the House of Lords, is reasonable and fair with respect to the electorate as a whole. We are being asked to reject that provision. I am no longer going down the route of my original proposal, which one of their Lordships referred to as “the fatal amendment”. I propose, for all the reasons that have been so ably put forward this evening, to follow what the House of Lords said.

There is no reference to thresholds in this coalition agreement—none whatever. None of the political parties expressed any genuine manifesto commitment to the alternative vote and no commitment whatever to the threshold. Given that the Bill purports to provide for a fair electoral system with preference votes, one would have thought that its proponents would at least have the decency and common sense to give the electorate a fair deal—[Interruption.] Yes, and the courage, as one of my hon. Friends says. I thought that the Liberal Democrats believed in fairness and constitutional propriety, but I was mightily mistaken.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill (Money) (No. 2)

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

As the Minister set out, this is a minor money resolution, and we do not have a major problem with it. However, perhaps I can use this opportunity to raise an issue in relation to the combination of polls—the reason we need this resolution—as it affects Scotland. As I am sure the Minister will know, electoral registration officers in Scotland have said that they will not now be able to perform the whole count for the Scottish parliamentary elections overnight. All they will do is the verification—both of the referendum, as the Bill requires, and the parliamentary elections—and then they will stop, leaving the count to take place on the Friday.

I understood from what the Minister said in previous debates that nothing would get in the way of ensuring that the count happened as soon as possible in Scotland and Wales, and in local government. Before the last general election, all parties combined to try to ensure that the overnight count happened. Disappointingly, the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland has refused to suggest any amendments to the Bill. I therefore wonder whether the Minister could assist us by saying something that might help to ensure that the election results are known in Scotland overnight.

[Mr Harper]

It might be helpful if I remind the House that, when the chief electoral officer set out her guidance about the count timing, she also set out a number of principles. One of her principles—which is also one of the Government’s principles that was shared across the House—is to ensure that the results of the elections to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly, as well as the results of the council elections, are counted and made known first. She was reassured by counting officers in Scotland and elsewhere, and on that basis, she made a determination about the time of the referendum count. I am sure that if she is given different information by those counting officers, she will want to ensure that her principle is upheld—namely, that we should still know the results of those elections before the count takes place for the referendum.

[Chris Bryant]

I am grateful to the Minister, but, unfortunately he has not yet replied to my letter of some weeks ago, so I am unable to know the full purport of what he is saying. The point is that we believe not only in the principle that the elections to elected office should be counted first, but that the counts for the elections to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly and for the local elections should happen overnight.

[Mr Harper]

The rules for the referendum are set out in the scope of the Bill, but it would not be within its scope to change the law pertaining to the counting only of the votes in the elections. The important thing that we have set out about the combination is that nothing that happens with the referendum count will change the timing of the election results. I think that there was a shared view on both sides of the House that we want to see those results counted as soon as possible, so that people will know who is running the devolved nations.

[Chris Bryant]

I am sorry, but the Minister’s reply is very disappointing. Either he does not understand the law that he himself has drafted and the statutory instruments that have gone through in relation to the combination of polls in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England, or he is being—how can I put it—somewhat obtuse. The necessity for most people is that they want to know the election results on the night. However, because of the way in which the Government are combining the polls, and because of the Bill and the statutory instruments that went through at the same time, the people of Scotland will not know their election results on the night. The Minister will have unpicked one of the elements that has been absolutely standard in British history for more than 100 years—namely, that the results are announced immediately. This does not have much to do with the money resolution, Mr Speaker, but I have made my point none the less. I think that it is a great shame that the Minister has behaved in this way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

I recognise, as do we all, I am sure, that this referendum measure is before us because of the coalition agreement. If the Conservatives had won the election outright and gained a majority, they would certainly not be putting it forward. I also accept that public expenditure should not be the dominant reason why the House should not pursue a particular course. I must say, however, that there is very little evidence of any desire in the country at large to have a referendum on what sort of system should be used for electing Members of Parliament. How many letters have we received? How many e-mails? Do people come to our surgeries and tell us that this is one of the most important, crucial issues of the day? The answer is no. [Hon. Members: “No!”] The noes are coming from the Conservative Benches, but I ask my hon. Friends: am I wrong? Is it not a known fact that there is so little interest in the matter?

I must also say, however—and I know that at some stage this evening we shall debate the Lords amendment concerning the nature of the threshold—that, like others who have spoken, I see little justification for spending what will be a very large amount of money on a referendum on the system for electing Members of Parliament at a time when we are constantly told that we must be careful with our public money, when allowances and benefits are being taken away from people, and when, in my view and, I believe, that of most Members, there is little public wish for such a referendum.

Question put and agreed to.

PARLIAMENTARY VOTING SYSTEM AND CONSTITUENCIES BILL

(PROGRAMME) (No. 5)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),

That the following provisions shall apply to the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill for the purpose of supplementing the Order of 6 September 2010 (Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill (Programme)):

Consideration of Lords Amendments

1. Proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion four hours after their commencement at this day’s sitting.

2. The proceedings shall be taken in the order shown in the first column of the following Table and shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the times shown in the second column.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I gather that the Division bell did not go off in the Jubilee Room just now, and that some Members were not able to vote because they did not realise that the Division was happening

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I will ask Attendants to check the Division bells in the Jubilee Room. If they continue not to work, we will ensure that the Attendants call Divisions in the Jubilee Room separately, and I will clearly make allowances for that when I call for the Doors to be locked.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I am happy to take interventions, but let me at least answer the right hon. Gentleman first. Then, of course, I will take the hon. Gentleman’s point.

On the right hon. Gentleman’s point about Wales, he is quite right that Wales’s share of the House of Commons will fall from 6% to 5%, but we debated the issue in this House, the other place debated the representation of Wales, and both Houses decided that the current over-representation of Wales is not acceptable. All parts of the United Kingdom should be treated equally—

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Apart from the Isle of Wight.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

In response to that debate, which—from memory—was about whether to include in the Bill a power to direct those counting the votes, I said that that would be out of scope and I confirmed that that was the case. If the hon. Gentleman is right in what he says about some returning officers in Scotland, there is nothing in the Bill that has caused them to take that decision. It is a decision that they have taken of their own volition. Some returning officers in Scotland have confirmed that they will count overnight and that there is no problem in doing so. Some returning officers have said that they do not propose to do so, but that is nothing to do with the combination of the polls. It is to do with their judgment about how they want to conduct the count.

As I was saying, similar provision about the combination of polls and postal votes has been made for those registered for other forms of absent vote. I believe that the raft of changes made to the Bill, which the Government have accepted, demonstrate that we have been willing to listen and engage constructively with both Houses of Parliament and to agree to all the proposed changes to our proposals that we believe were merited.

[Chris Bryant]

I am afraid I completely disagree with the Minister’s interpretation of events over the past few months. I wholeheartedly congratulate their lordships on the process they have engaged in, and I make no apologies for the fact that Labour MPs have been holding the Government to account in this House, or for the fact that in the House of Lords there are people who were elected previously and who are able to bring a degree of expertise to the debates when discussing elections.

I note that yesterday Sky News was reporting that the Prime Minister, David Cameron, would take revenge on Labour peers. Bring it on. In legislation on the reform of the national health service, the reform of schools and public services that everybody depends on, Labour peers down the other end will do as robust a job as they have done on the Bill. If there was anything that showed that the Government have not been acting entirely in good faith, it is today’s programme motion, which allows only four hours for 104 amendments to be considered, including the time taken for votes.

I am not sure that my interpretation of what has happened is the same as the Government’s. I say to all hon. Members in all seriousness that I fear that many Members who end up voting for the Bill will regret the day that they did so. The Government have bulldozed their way through every convention so far, ludicrously combining two pieces of legislation that should never have been in one Bill—only because that was a way of keeping the coalition together—pushing forward with no pre-legislative scrutiny of a measure that had no electoral mandate, curtailing debate in this House, for the first time ever threatening the guillotine in the House of Lords, then packing the Lords with pliant new Conservative and Lib Dem Members every day and suspending all the normal rules in the House of Lords.

We will rue the way in which the Bill was pushed through and the legislation itself, because we are not legislating on the basis of long-term democratic health for this country, or on the basis of sound principle, but solely so as to meet the partisan needs of the coalition.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman seems to be suffering from a certain amount of amnesia. When his party was in office in the previous Parliament, there was guillotining all over the place.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman sometimes suffers from amnesia himself. I was talking about guillotines in the Lords. It has been a fundamental principle of the constitutional settlement in this country that the House of Lords is a self-governing House and never has a programme motion.

When there was a Labour Government of just one political party, we never had a majority in the House of Lords. By virtue of how the Government are progressing at the moment, with a large number of new peers being appointed—117 since the general election—they are approaching the point at which they will have an absolutely majority in this House and the other House.

[Mr Harper]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I am not going to give way to the Minister on that point, because I know what he is going to say—that it will not give the Government a majority. However, the coalition’s statement says that they intend to keep on appointing Members of the House of Lords until the percentage share of the vote in the general election is matched there. That will give a majority to the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. If the Minister wants to intervene now, I am happy to give way.

[Mr Harper]

I want to make it clear that we have appointed a number of peers, but that a number of them in the resignation honours list of the former Prime Minister were, of course, Labour peers. Even with the new peers who have been appointed, the coalition Government have 40% of peers, well away from a majority.

[Chris Bryant]

The Minister knows perfectly well that the Government are getting very close to the stage at which they will end up having an absolute majority in both Houses. The vast majority of peers who take part in the daily business of the House and vote with the most regularity are those who take a party Whip. Among those, there is already a majority for the governing coalition. The Labour party never had that when in government. My main point is that we have to have some brake on the Government, especially if we go forward and have an elected second Chamber. Otherwise, government becomes autocracy.

Lords amendment 104, so the Minister would have us think, effectively introduces a real opportunity for local people to have their say on proposals from the Boundary Commission. It was a Government amendment tabled in the Lords, but it was introduced in a way that was not quite as the Minister suggests. In fact, Lord Falconer had tabled an amendment and was prepared to waive it because the Government said that they would return on Report with a full process that would embody the ideas behind public inquiries. In fact, Lord Wallace of Tankerness said specifically that

“the Government’s position has been that we are open to considering reasonable improvements to the process, provided that they do not compromise the fundamental principles of the Bill, and that still remains our position.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 26 January 2011; Vol. 724, c. 1069-1070.]

I do not know what fundamental principles of the Bill might mean that local people cannot have an effective voice, but that is what we have ended up with.

Let us be absolutely clear that what the Government propose does not meet the objections made by the Cross Benchers, Labour peers or many others who believe that local people should be able to have a proportionate say after the Boundary Commission has made proposals. For a start, the inquiries will not be local. There will be five at most across the whole of Wales and five in each region. I look forward to going to one of the five in the south-west, covering an enormous region with wide diversity. Each hearing will probably cover about 10 constituencies. I say to the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton), who spoke earlier about Cornwall, that I do not think there is a chance in hell of local people in Cornwall having their views heard properly in the process. In addition, because of how the Bill is constructed, it will be impossible for the Boundary Commission to do anything about it even if it says that Cornwall should not be split up. The principle of the Bill to which the Minister is so adherent in some parts of the country, but not in all, is that the size of parliamentary constituencies should be equalised—too aggressively, I believe.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman define “local people”? Is he talking about unelected local people, local councillors or everybody?

[Chris Bryant]

I mean all those. There is an important distinction, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), who is not in his place, said earlier, was discussed in the evidence that was given to the Select Committee last week. Political parties have their views to express—in the past, some have employed a barrister to express it for them, and that is perfectly legitimate. Sometimes, local councils want to take a view because they have a role in electoral registration and so on, but often local people in a small village, such as Much Marcle or Midsomer—if anyone is still alive in Midsomer—who are independent of any political affiliation, want their voice to be heard. They want to say, “No, frankly, we in Acton Burnell don’t”—or do—“want to be in Shrewsbury constituency.” We need a process whereby the people of Acton Burnell, where Parliament was held at Michaelmas in 1283, can express their view, and that will be impossible if there are only five hearings across the whole region. There will not be a hearing for each constituency. It is not each constituency that will be considered right or wrong. That is one of the problems.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

The hon. Gentleman is being cynical. If the people of Acton Burnell, who are in my constituency, wish to remain there, they can feed that information through to me and I will put that view at the public meeting.

[Chris Bryant]

I am impressed by the hon. Gentleman and I am sure that all views expressed by anybody in his constituency should undoubtedly, at all times, be expressed solely through him. However, there is another version of democracy, whereby sometimes people disagree with their local Member of Parliament and might want to adopt a different position.

[Mr Winnick]

The Minister said that public inquiries are discredited—we obviously disagree with that. However, is not it interesting that in previous Parliaments, we heard no such condemnation of public inquiries from the Conservatives, whether in government or in opposition? It is the first time that that has happened.

[Chris Bryant]

Much as I would love to agree with my hon. Friend, I recall previous comments: when people lost the argument at a public inquiry, they tended to hold forth against them; when they won the argument at a public inquiry, they tended to support them. However, in many cases, the Boundary Commission’s original proposals were overturned through public inquiries because of the voices of local people, such as the people of Acton Burnell, of Much Marcle and so on. Sometimes it happened because of the intervention of political parties. None the less, the end result has been constituency boundaries that, in the main, are accepted by the people who are represented.

[Paul Murphy]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case for boundary inquiries. My constituency was preserved 27 years ago by a long public inquiry. However, I am not sure whether the Minister grasped my earlier point. In Wales, there will be a 25% reduction in the number of seats—I was not arguing about the principle, but making the point that the disruption to the political and constitutional landscape in Wales is hugely greater than in other parts of the country. We should therefore have more public hearings in lieu of the public inquiries.

[Chris Bryant]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. In addition, there are some specific concerns. For example, it is possible that, as a result of the boundary changes, we would end up with no single constituency in Wales with a Welsh-speaking majority. That is not of particular concern to my constituents in the Rhondda, but it is of concern to the British Parliament that that voice could be lost.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

One of the reasons for my losing faith in the old system of public inquiries is that, for all the arguments that the Conservative party presented for a fairer distribution of constituencies, we finished up with a manifestly unfair distribution. We need a speedier system, which can use fresher and more up-to-date data to deliver a fairer distribution of constituencies. That should happen.

[Chris Bryant]

It might be that the Conservative party lost because it did not advance good arguments, which goes back to my earlier point.

[Mrs Eleanor Laing]

(Epping Forest) (Con): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

If the hon. Lady does not mind, I ought to make a little progress.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman just said something that simply is not true. He said that no one will weigh up the arguments that are put at the public hearing, but that will happen. The boundary commissioners will look at the oral evidence and the written representations, weigh them up and make a judgment. Mr Speaker is of course the ex-officio chair, but the deputy chairman of the commissions is a High Court judge—someone who is legally qualified and perfectly able to chair a process that makes such decisions.

[Chris Bryant]

Lord Pannick made similar points to the ones I just made. He said:

“It is absolutely inevitable that the introduction of such a procedure will exacerbate rather than diminish the sense of grievance that has led people to make representations in the first place.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 8 February 2011; Vol. 725, c. 143.]

People’s sense of grievance will be exacerbated because they will make their arguments not to an independent person who weighs them up and submits a report to Boundary Commission, but third hand to the Boundary Commission, which, as the Minister says, will then make the decision. That will lead to a greater sense of grievance about the structure of parliamentary constituencies. I say this to Government Members: every single one of you will go through that process, and you will rue the day if you do not change the proposed system.

[Mrs Laing]

I am sure the hon. Gentleman realises that his answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) exactly explains why the old system was dominated by clever lawyers and barristers, and clever political argument, and why it must be changed—it had nothing to do with local people. The hon. Gentleman just admitted as much.

The hon. Gentleman’s point on judicial review is a strong one. Does he agree that judicial review, and therefore delay and uncertainty, will be stopped if the Bill is certain and precise? That is why we cannot allow, for example, Lords amendment 19, which mentions circumstances of “an exceptionally compelling nature”. That is imprecise, but it is our duty to produce precise legislation, and thereby to obviate the necessity for judicial review.

[Chris Bryant]

Large parts of the Bill are not sufficiently precise, and the Opposition have tabled amendments to improve the quality of the legislation. The hon. Lady is a member of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, but I am not sure whether she heard Professor Johnston’s evidence last week—[Interruption.] I see that she is brandishing a document, like Excalibur. My reading of his evidence is that he felt that, in certain situations, the Acton Burnells of this world could effect change. We want that to be possible under the new system. We want the people of Cornwall, if they want to, to say categorically, “We do not want to cross the Tamar in the creation of a constituency.” However, there is no provision in the Government’s Bill, either for that voice to be heard effectively and transmitted to the Boundary Commission, or for the commission to act upon it. The commission can do absolutely nothing to act upon it because it is bound by the 5% rule, which is why I hope that the hon. Lady will support the 7.5% rule. If she has a way of improving the provision so that it is more precise, I would be delighted to sit down with her later and draft a new version.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

Is not the problem with the process that, in principle, after the public hearing, the High Court judge chairing the original boundary commission is effectively the appeal judge to his own decision? I cannot think of any other process in administrative or public law in such an unsatisfactory situation.

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend makes a perfect point. He is absolutely right. Someone cannot be judge, jury and appeal judge of their own decision. The danger is that people will go to court to try to resolve the problem. That is inevitable. All the Cross-Bench lawyers who spoke in the Lords debate made that precise point. That is why we have tabled an amendment to a Lords amendment—I hope that we can divide the House on it, unless the Government are minded to accept it—that would make it clear that public inquiries are intended not just to allow somebody to make a representation, but to effect change if necessary.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I will not, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind, because we are on a time-limited debate and I have already given way to him once. He knows that I nearly always give way to everybody.

We have also tabled amendments to Lords amendment 27, which would allow for the creation of a committee after the next general election in June 2015 to consider the effects of the reduction of seats from 650 to 600. It is our fundamental assertion that it would make far more logical sense first to consider the role of MPs, what their job is and therefore how many MPs we need, and then to draw up the boundaries, rather than the other way around. That is why we have tabled amendments to that effect. As we have suggested many times before—Conservative Members have said this as well—there is no electoral mandate for the reduction from 650 to 600. There is no logic behind it and no Minister has ever been able to come up with a reason that figure has been chosen, other than, we suspect, the fact that if we went down to the original Conservative manifesto proposition of 585, we would lose another wodge of Liberal Democrat seats, and consequently—[Interruption.] I merely suggest to hon. Members that they might choose to table amendments to take us down to 585. However, we do not accept the way in which the motion has been advanced.

I want to refer briefly to two other issues. One is the matter to which the Minister referred in his swift run-through of minor amendments made: the issue of postal voters which was raised when we discussed the matter in Committee of the whole House. If someone is registered for a postal vote for an election in Scotland, England, Wales or Northern Ireland, will they automatically get a postal vote for the referendum? As I understand it, that is now to happen—[Interruption.] Actually, I know because I read the Electoral Commission’s report on it. Some people are concerned that others will by dint of that receive two postal votes for the referendum, because some people are registered in two places, including many MPs, who might be registered at their flat in London as well as in their constituency. They might be registered in both of those for postal votes and might then get two referendum ballot papers. That is obviously an issue that needs to be addressed. It was discussed in Committee.

[Mr Harper]

That is no different from the existing system, in which those on two electoral registers might get two ballot papers, but it is very clear—Members of Parliament will be as aware of this as anyone else—that voting twice in the referendum would be a criminal offence, as would voting twice in a general election, and I am sure that no Member of this House would want to do such a thing.

[Chris Bryant]

The Minister is being querulous. I was not suggesting that anybody wanted to do that, but there are some unscrupulous people out there who are not Members of this House who might want to do such a thing. The danger is that we will open ourselves up to an element of fraud.

My final point is about Lords amendment 18, tabled by Lord Tyler, which adds a criterion that the Boundary Commission can look at when considering the new boundaries that it draws up, namely the boundaries of existing constituencies. I am sure that all hon. Members think it a sensible idea for the boundaries of existing constituencies to be borne in mind when drawing up new constituency boundaries. I am delighted that on that, if nothing else, we agree with the Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I think the difference is the strength of view in the other place on the matter. [Interruption.] That view was also consistent and cross party. The Labour Lords who voted in the Division in the other place all supported Lord Fowler’s amendment. It is therefore extraordinary that Labour Members are making so much noise now. The Government have acknowledged the debate at the other end of the corridor. Given my hon. Friend’s previous comments about their lordships, I would have thought that he saw more strength in the case. On the basis of the arguments that I have set out, I hope that that case will be supported.

[Chris Bryant]

I am sorry, but I think that that was the shabbiest speech I have heard from a Conservative Member. The Parliamentary Secretary appeared to suggest that Labour Members are now arguing against what we supported in the House of Lords. We support what was carried in the House of Lords: we would prefer the amendment that was carried there to be accepted here. It is absolutely shoddy that the Government, to give themselves an extra parliamentary seat, will provide for two seats for the Isle of Wight. It is not so much a gerrymander as a ferrymander.

As the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) effectively said, the Parliamentary Secretary has driven a coach and horses through his own argument. His argument so far has been that there must be equalisation at all costs. It has been, “Don’t recognise local ties, county boundaries or ward boundaries.” He tries to insist on mathematical perfection, but when it comes to this one place, there must be an exception.

We agree that there should be exceptions. We believe that there should be some other exceptions, too. The argument that the Parliamentary Secretary makes could and should apply to Cornwall, Somerset and all the counties—and, indeed, ward boundaries. We should recognise more exceptions.

[Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)]

I wish that the hon. Gentleman could have presented that argument precisely and briefly when the Bill was previously in the House, then perhaps we could all have had the chance to debate the subject at an earlier stage. However, does he agree that the debate about Cornwall in another place focused on cultural issues rather than geographical considerations? Sadly, the Government’s approach does not address those factors.

[Chris Bryant]

Absolutely. Some specific geographical issues need to be borne in mind. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will hate any reference to my constituency, but a former Member of Parliament for the Rhondda, Alec Jones, was once presented with a suggestion that the Cynon valley should be included in the Rhondda constituency, even though for much of the year it is almost impossible to get from one to the other. Alec Jones wisely said, “Bloody hell, somebody’s got hold of a flat map.” Those are precisely the sort of arrangements that we will end up with.

[Stephen Williams]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I will not, because the hon. Gentleman voted for the programme motion. There is a short time left and we ought to hear from the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner), who should be the only hon. Member for the Isle of Wight.

The argument that has been adduced in favour of the Isle of Wight should surely apply to Anglesey, too. There is no argument against that—except for the fact that it is represented by a Labour Member, and happens to be in Wales.

There is an additional problem with the Government amendments. Because they are trying to force two parliamentary seats on the Isle of Wight—I suspect that that does not reflect the view of the people of the Isle of Wight; they think that it should be separate from Hampshire, but they have not argued for two seats—it will be difficult to draw the boundary. We are more likely to end up with one constituency of 60,000 or 65,000 and one of 30,000 or 35,000 than an exact divide.

[Mark Reckless]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

No, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, too, voted for the programme motion, so I shall not give way.

Someone of cynical mind could look at the list of parliamentary constituencies for which exceptions are being made and draw conclusions: one, by virtue of 13,000 sq km, to the Liberal Democrats; one, for Orkney and Shetland, to the Liberal Democrats, one, for Na h-Eileanan an Iar, to the nationalists—at the moment, but I hope for not much longer—and two for the Isle of Wight. Some have suggested that that means two Tory seats in the Isle of Wight. It may be one Tory and one Liberal Democrat: perhaps that is the rescue seat for the Deputy Prime Minister come the next general election.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I had a speech prepared to deliver today, but I do not think that I shall need it; I am using another.

Let us go over what happened. When I first heard of the proposals, I got together with the County Press, the island’s weekly paper, and Isle of Wight Radio, our local radio station, to see how “we” could fight “them”. It was energising to do that. We all met representatives from the island’s Labour party and Liberal Democrats—and, of course, the Conservatives—as well as the chamber of commerce, and the One Wight campaign was formed.

We appointed a non-political spokesman, Richard Priest, who has done an admirable job of fronting the campaign.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

We have already discussed what constitutes the appropriate level of turnout, and the issue arises constantly when elections are held. However, when a general election produces a Government who may make significant changes, we do not say that a Member of Parliament has not been elected because the turnout was low. Indeed, when we debated the issue on another occasion, it was observed that a fair number of Members of Parliament would not be here if that had been the test. That is not the way in which we make judgments in this country.

My hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest said that, as the Electoral Commission had pointed out, leaving the provisions in the Bill risked rendering the outcome of the referendum unclear both in law and on the ground. We think that the public should make the decision, and that the referendum should be binding and not subject to the turnout threshold. Our colleagues in the other place debated this proposal with their usual consideration and care, but, having done so, voted for it by the slimmest of margins—a majority of one. Having considered both the practical difficulties and the issues of principle, I believe that the arguments for overturning the decision in the other place are compelling. I ask the House to oppose both these amendments and the consequential amendment proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone.

[Chris Bryant]

The Minister’s last few words were something of a giveaway. He suddenly introduced a threshold of his own: a special threshold for votes in the House of Lords, which must secure a bigger majority than one for the Government to take them seriously. That is an interesting innovation.

I will vote yes in the referendum in May, although I hear what is said by the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), and I pay tribute to him. I recognise that the first occasion on which the House of Commons sat on its own was in his constituency, but that was only because it had been summoned to Shrewsbury first to see the hanging, drawing and quartering of the Welsh prince Dafydd ap Gruffudd—and that really was a shame.

I will support the alternative vote, which is why, in Committee, I strongly opposed what I considered to be wrecking amendments in respect of thresholds. However, I believe that this is an exceptional referendum for two reasons. First, unlike the vast majority of referendums that have been held in this country and many others, it will not just advise, but will implement legislation. That means that, if there is a yes vote, we will not have a second opportunity to consider all the elements of how the alternative vote will be implemented.

Secondly, as we have asserted from the outset, we do not believe that this referendum should be combined with elections in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and with local elections, because that will produce very different turnouts in different parts of the United Kingdom. There might well be deep resentment in one part of the United Kingdom because another part, on a very different turnout, had ended up with a different result.

[Stephen Williams]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I am happy to give way to the hon. Gentleman, although there is very little time and he voted for the programme motion.

[Stephen Williams]

No threshold was involved in the referendum to create the National Assembly for Wales in the summer of 1997. The area represented by the hon. Gentleman, Rhondda Cynon Taf, voted yes in that referendum. Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that the votes of his own constituents should have been invalidated because the turnout was not above 40%?

[Chris Bryant]

No, I am not saying that at all, but that referendum was not an implementing referendum; nor was it held at the same time as other elections. That is a completely different matter therefore, and I think we behaved entirely properly in introducing our legislation for Wales. Incidentally, in the 3 March referendum I shall also be voting in favour.

[Mr MacNeil]

Is the hon. Gentleman really saying, “These are my principles on referendums, but I don’t like them so I’ve got some other ones”? He says one thing on the one hand, and another thing on the other. There is no consistency at all from those on the Labour Front Bench.

[Chris Bryant]

No, that is not true. [Interruption.] Yes, it is interesting to hear an argument for consistency from a Scottish nationalist. That is almost as interesting as hearing that argument from a Liberal Democrat. [Interruption.] I note that the hon. Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) was already laughing before I said that.

The Minister cited me, and claimed that I was going to say all sorts of things. Actually, in Committee in this Chamber I said that

“there is no fixed determined policy that we are completely and utterly in all cases implacably opposed to thresholds. Nor, for that matter, is there a belief that we ardently should have thresholds.”—[Official Report, 2 November 2010; Vol. 517, c. 847.]

My point is that there are times when thresholds might be suitable, and there are times when thresholds will not be suitable. Indeed, the Minister quoted a bit of my speech, but I went on to say that

“I fully understand that there are others who say that because of the way in which the Government are pushing forward with this legislation and because it is an implementing referendum, a threshold would be appropriate.”—[Official Report, 2 November 2010; Vol. 517, c. 849.]

[Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)]

I ask the hon. Gentleman to cast his mind back to 1979, when we had a Scottish referendum under the 40% turnout rule. A majority voted yes, the whole issue festered for 18 years, and when the Labour party came back to power and it had another referendum, it rightly learned the lessons of the past and did not have a 40% threshold. Will he please learn the lesson of the past?

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. That was why I was opposed to the versions of thresholds that were brought forward in Committee. There were two different versions. One was that it was necessary to get 25% of the electorate to vote yes, as well as more people voting yes than voting no. The other was a 40% threshold. If neither of those two conditions were reached, the result was to be an automatic no and we were to stick with first past the post.

That is not what this amendment’s threshold would do. This is a very different referendum, and consequently needs a very different style of threshold. All this threshold would do is say that Parliament ought to have a second thought. It would say that if we do not get up to 40%—if, for instance, the turnout in England is 15% or 20 %, whereas in Scotland and Wales it is closer to 43%, 44% or 45%—there ought to be a moment when Parliament thinks again about the implementing process in going forward.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman is a distinguished constitutionalist, and I wonder whether he thinks that in the context of referendums being used more frequently, and for deciding on European matters and constitutional issues, it would be a good idea to settle on a threshold for all referendums, so that people knew where they stood.

[Chris Bryant]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, I am very grateful to be called distinguished about anything, but I do not think he would carry the House on that point. I am not a fan of referendums generally at all, because I think the whole point of parliamentary democracy is that Members are elected to take decisions, provide leadership and represent the people in our constituencies. I think that is the best way of advancing policy. However, where there are referendums, I think it is better if they are advisory ones rather than implementing ones. That is the point I would make about the whole referendum issue before us.

I think this is a special referendum and I therefore think it needs a special threshold. That is precisely what Lord Rooker’s amendment provides for, which is why we will be supporting it tonight.

[Stephen Williams]

I will be as brief as possible, as I know that many Members want to speak.

My basic point is that we have many elections in this country where we do not require a threshold in order to give legitimacy to the result. We know that this referendum is very likely to be taking place on the same day as elections to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and local government, and because of the historical pattern of those elections we also know there is likely to be a low turnout in them. In 2009, only two of the 23 wards that elected councillors in the city of Bristol had a turnout of more than 50% and only six had a turnout of more than 40%, and 15 had turnout percentages in the 30s or 20s, yet we do not say that the councillors elected to represent Bristol were not legitimate. We know that turnout usually dips in the year after a general election, and the turnouts in 1998 were even lower. In May 1998, I was last elected as a member of Bristol city council, in Cabot ward, on a turnout of 18%, although I received more than 53% of the vote. Nobody said that I was not fairly elected to represent the electors of that ward.

Legislation (Territorial Extent) Bill

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Friday 11th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

As a new Member, I drew No. 7 in the private Members’ Bill ballot. Some might think that it is great foolhardiness to have chosen to raise the knotty constitutional issue of the West Lothian question in the House today, but it is with a great sense of privilege and trepidation that I today present a Bill that is designed to be extremely helpful to you, Mr Speaker, if you were ever asked to certify whether a particular piece of legislation applied to a particular part of the United Kingdom.

Mr Speaker, you will be very aware that the question of Members voting on issues that do not affect their own constituencies has vexed many minds much more learned than mine for well over a century.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Why on earth would Mr Speaker be asked to adjudicate on whether something applied somewhere or did not?

[Harriett Baldwin]

That is an extremely important question. Mr Speaker has the ability, under Standing Order No. 97, to certify whether a particular piece of legislation applies only to Scotland. He already has the powers, and it will be extremely interesting today, during the debate on this legislation, to discuss whether those powers ought to be extended to further parts of the United Kingdom.

The West Lothian question has vexed constitutional experts since the time of Gladstone, who first perceived the difficulties when Irish Home Rule was being discussed. At various times in the last century, the topic has been raised in the Chamber and in the other place, but it has always been parked in the car park for questions that are too difficult to resolve under our unwritten constitution.

However, the following question is often raised with me by residents of my constituency, which I like to think represents the heart of middle England. How can it be right for it to be possible for potentially decisive pieces of legislation to be voted on in this place by, and carried by a majority of, Members of Parliament who are not legislating on behalf of their own constituents? That is not a question that we can carry on parking in that car park for ever. It is my intention with this Bill to edge the West Lothian question slightly closer to the car park exit.

The Conservative party manifesto, on which I stood, said:

“Labour have refused to address the so-called ‘West Lothian Question’: the unfair situation of Scottish MPs voting on matters which are devolved. A Conservative government will introduce new rules so that legislation referring specifically to England, or to England and Wales, cannot be enacted without the consent of MPs representing constituencies of those countries.”

Of course, the Conservative party did not win an overall majority, but in the coalition programme for government, the section on political reform states:

“We will establish a commission to consider the ‘West Lothian question’.”

On 26 October last year, I asked the Deputy Prime Minister in this Chamber when the commission would be established, and I was told that it would be established by the end of 2010. However, it became apparent on the final sitting day of 2010 that the commission had not been established, and I again put the question to my hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb), the Minister on duty, who said that

“the Government will make an announcement on the commission in the new year. I am happy to confirm that we do indeed mean 2011. That is very much part of our programme for next year.”—[Official Report, 21 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 1338.]

If nothing else, given the fragile life chances of private Members’ Bills, I am pleased to use today’s debate to encourage the Government to advance their own business.

Over the last decade, devolution to Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, which I wholeheartedly support, has meant that more and more legislation coming before the House affects different constituent parts of the United Kingdom in different ways. For example, at the moment the Health and Social Care Bill will apply essentially to England.

[Chris Bryant]

Essentially, but not exclusively.

[Harriett Baldwin]

The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely important point about how difficult it is these days to identify which parts of the United Kingdom Bills will apply to, a problem that this Bill is intended to address. The hon. Gentleman will clearly support it.

[Harriett Baldwin]

My hon. Friend asks an important question, pointing out that devolution is an ongoing process. Indeed, the referendum in Wales on 3 March and the Scotland Bill will potentially change the decision-making process in this Chamber, so it is all the more important that the Bill is carried today.

[Chris Bryant]

Will the hon. Lady tell us whether she voted on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, which contains many provisions that will apply solely to Wales?

[Harriett Baldwin]

The hon. Gentleman is making extremely important points about how legislation currently before the House can mix up different issues and have different impacts on different parts of the United Kingdom. My Bill would make things clearer, with the result that parliamentary draftsmen would automatically start to make it clearer and much more distinct which parts of the United Kingdom Bills apply to. In addition, the Bill would allow legislation to continue to apply to different parts of the United Kingdom—all it says is, “Let’s state that on the face of the Bill.” Why should we not do that?

--- Later in debate ---

[Harriett Baldwin]

I thank my hon. Friend for adding those supportive words from her constituents. I am sure that many hon. Members have had the issue raised with them from time to time.

As I mentioned, the question has been looked at by many heads wiser than mine over the years, and I have benefited from extensive analysis from history of what has not worked. Therefore, I have avoided in the Bill any sense that I want to create two categories of MP at Westminster, which is where the private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter)—the House of Commons (Participation) Bill—ran into difficulty in the previous Parliament. Parliamentary privilege, which is MPs’ ability to speak out or vote on any issue, is at the heart of our Parliament.

I am a passionate supporter of the Union, and do not want to undermine it in any way with the Bill. My grandmother, of whom I have fond memories, was called Flora McLean McLeod Morison. She was born in Dunbar to a general practitioner who came from the Isle of Mull, so I am a flesh-and-blood embodiment of the Union myself. It is because I believe that not resolving this question would cause long-term harm to the Union that I urge the Government to support the Bill.

What I found most helpful in preparing the Bill was the Conservative party’s democracy taskforce, chaired by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), who prepared a pamphlet called “Answering the Question”. The Leader of the House, who was in the Chamber earlier, and my hon. Friends the Members for Chichester (Mr Tyrie) and for South Thanet (Laura Sandys) were also on the taskforce, so we are talking about some impressive brainpower. The taskforce’s report looked at five main options for addressing the West Lothian question.

The first option is the one that the previous Government took for the last decade, which essentially was to do nothing. That approach was best summarised by Lord Irvine’s argument—that the best way to answer the West Lothian question was to stop asking it.

[Chris Bryant]

I think I saw a little partisanness sweep across the hon. Lady’s eyes. To say that it is only the Government of the last 10 years who have done nothing about the issue is to ignore the last seven centuries, when no Government did anything about it.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I fully accept that the issue has been out there and unsolved for at least 100 years. However, I think that it was a deliberate strategy by the previous Government, as evidenced by Lord Irvine’s statement. The do-nothing approach risks causing the same English alienation that Scottish devolution was designed to address for Scotland.

A second approach to address the issue is through under-representation at Westminster for the parts of the UK that have their own Parliament, which is often known as the Stormont solution. During most of the 20th century there was a Northern Ireland Parliament at Stormont, and Northern Ireland sent only 11 Members of Parliament to Westminster when its population would have justified 17. That is another possible approach, but I do not think it is the right one. Also, it is completely at odds with the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, which brings a welcome equalisation of constituency sizes.

A third option that people have mentioned is an English Parliament. There is a campaign group for this solution, but that approach leads to a plethora of questions. Would it require separate elections or a separate building? Would we have a First Minister for England? What if the First Minister for England was different from the Prime Minister? That solution would also be extremely expensive, and I do not think that the mood in the country is in favour of an additional layer of politicians. That approach could also lead to the formal break-up of the United Kingdom, so I have completely rejected it. A fourth approach, which, to be fair to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), was the one initially taken by the previous Government, is devolution to regional government, giving the English regions more constitutional power. However, that was rejected decisively in the 2004 referendum in the north-east.

A fifth option, which has been on the table for some time, is something called English votes for English laws. Unfortunately, however, that would create two categories of MPs, leaving the Executive powerless to win votes on important public service issues. That was the approach taken by my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset in his private Member’s Bill, and was also the approach outlined in the 2001 and 2005 Conservative manifestos.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) on what she has said today. This is an historic moment. West Worcestershire has taken up the cudgels on the West Lothian question, and I very much welcome her comments. I have taken an interest in these issues for a long time. I first entered the House in 1974, and when Margaret Thatcher became leader of our party, she was kind enough to appoint me as a junior spokesman on devolution. I have therefore had to take some views on these matters. I am now the Member for Kensington, but my primary home remains in Scotland, outside Edinburgh in East Lothian. Later, I will offer what might immodestly be referred to as an East Lothian answer to the West Lothian question.

I have no doubt that the consequences of devolution represent unfinished business. Over the past 12 years, we have witnessed the single biggest constitutional change in the United Kingdom since the Act of Union in 1707—

[Chris Bryant]

What about 1801?

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

It was far more important than what happened in 1801, which turned out to be a blip in the constitutional history of the UK. What we are seeing now is a permanent change. It has not destroyed the United Kingdom, but it has undoubtedly created a new kind of United Kingdom. That has constitutional implications, as well as implications for fairness. I suspect that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) would suggest that, since Stormont, we have lived with the fact of Members from Northern Ireland being able to vote on all the measures in this House despite the fact that their own constituencies might not be affected by them. There is a de minimis issue that we can sometimes live with, but we now have something quite different, particularly if the Welsh approve an extension of the legislative powers of their Assembly in their referendum.

We will have a situation in which not 11 but approximately 100 Members of this House from three of the four constituent parts of the United Kingdom will be able to vote on issues that do not affect their own constituents. There will be only one part of the UK that does not have that right. Rather curiously, having dominated the United Kingdom, by numbers, since the Act of Union in 1707, England will become the one part of the UK whose elected representatives do not, by themselves, have the final say on matters that affect purely their constituents. That will no longer be the case for Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, but paradoxically it will have become so for England. Talking about 100 Members, rather than 11, is not a minimal side issue; it goes to the very heart not only of constitutional propriety but of fairness. My remarks today will be about fairness rather than constitutions, because that is the fundamental principle of our political system, and the implications of these arrangements are significant.

We must not get this out of proportion, however. I do not believe that it is right to imply that, as a consequence of devolution, this place has effectively become an English Chamber because the Scots, the Welsh and the Northern Irish have very little continuing involvement here as a result of the big areas that have been devolved to their own Parliaments in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. That is a gross exaggeration. If we look at the whole scope of government, we see that the UK Government and Parliament still have either sole or predominant responsibility for massive swaths of policy. The most important issues facing any Government are those of taxation. At this moment, virtually all tax powers reside with the United Kingdom Parliament, and all Members of Parliament from every part of the kingdom have an equal interest in and responsibility for those matters. The largest budget of the British Government is the social security budget, and that is a United Kingdom budget. It does not differentiate in any material way between north and south of the border.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

Yes, that is indeed one approach. We are always reminding ourselves that this country has a sovereign Parliament. The idea that a sovereign Parliament cannot determine that certain classes of legislation will not go through unless there is a double majority of the kind that I have described is absurd. Of course it can do that if it wishes; it is entirely within its power. It is simply a political judgment as to whether that is the right way forward.

I shall not speak for much longer, but I want to address one fundamental challenge that will be made—it has already been made—to any of the solutions that have been described. I have no doubt that the hon. Member for Rhondda will raise this suggestion. It is constantly said that the problem with all these approaches is that if a Government were denied the use of all the votes of their supporters that would usually give them a majority, the whole business of government would become unworkable and the Government would be unable to get their programme through, which would create some sort of constitutional crisis. To be fair, that argument is not made only by Labour Members. Mr Vernon Bogdanor, for example, who we are often told is a great constitutional expert, has constantly opined that that is a fundamental flaw in any such approach. Although I can understand why the Labour party adopts that view, because there is a political interest in putting forward such an argument, I find it very difficult to understand why such a learned gentleman has come to this conclusion—and I hope that he reads this speech.

[Chris Bryant]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman might like to know that Mr Bogdanor was the tutor of the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper).

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

I have no doubt that he was. Eric Anderson was the headmaster who taught Tony Blair, but I do not think that either could be held responsible for the other; each must come to their own judgments on these matters.

I come to the central point about the accusation that government would become unworkable. It is not just my view, my opinion or my theory that that is nonsense. We know from our own history that it is a ludicrous argument; it is exactly what happens every time we have a hung Parliament. When there is such a Parliament, as there was between 1974 and 1979, there will be many occasions when Governments cannot get their legislation through. It does not necessarily mean the collapse of the Government unless it is on some fundamental issue of confidence. What happens is that Governments either have to withdraw the proposal or discuss it with their opponents and table amendments to make it more acceptable. That is also exactly what happens between the House of Commons and the House of Lords from time to time. It is what happens in the United States all the time. The current President of the US does not have a majority in Congress, so he can never be certain of getting any legislation through. The argument that a British Government would somehow find themselves in an unworkable and unacceptable situation because not all but some of their English-only legislation was so controversial that a majority of English Members could not be persuaded to vote for it and that that would create chaos in the workings of government is manifestly ludicrous. That argument cannot be put forward in any credible way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I welcome the contribution of the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), who has not been in the House long and yet already has managed to grasp firmly with both hands the nettle of one of the more complicated constitutional matters that has faced the country, I would say, for considerably longer than she suggested. It achieved a name, and once something has a name it achieves greater prominence—because of Irish Home Rule. However, when we first started binding together the different bits of the Union, there were profound discussions about how many Members of Parliament of both Houses should be from each of the constituent parts. To all intents and purposes, that was a very similar debate.

I was with the hon. Lady for part of her contribution, but then she took us to the Welsh Grand Committee. Anyone who suggests that that is an answer to anything, I am afraid, has completely lost me. My experience of the Welsh grandstanding Committee is that, for the most part, it is not as useful as it might seem to those who do not have to attend it.

[Harriett Baldwin]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept, however, that the Bill stops well short of such Committees, and would be a simple and innocuous piece of legislation that he could wholeheartedly support?

[Chris Bryant]

Was it Socrates—I cannot remember—who said that a small book was always a bad book? Sometimes a simple and innocuous-looking piece of legislation can do the most pernicious damage. I will come on to whether I think it is innocuous later.

It is always great to hear the right hon. and learned—and gallant, and doubtless many other things besides—[Laughter.] Other words, which he might not like so much, are coming to mind now. It is always difficult not to think of the right hon. and learned Member for East Lothian—sorry, for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind)—as a Scottish MP, and I suppose that in many regards he still is, but he is a Scottish MP for an English seat. Several hon. Members think that I am an English Member for a Welsh seat, but I am thoroughly Welsh, and Jeremy Paxman had to apologise when he maintained, in his latest book, that I was not.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is right to maintain that Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish Members of Parliament have no diminished role just because of devolution. In many debates, they bring a specific interest and point of view that adds to the whole equation. The hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen), who has departed the scene, said that Wales and Scotland MPs must, by definition, have less casework, which is certainly not my experience. If anything, many constituents, in the process of trying to achieve redress for their individual concern, try to play the Assembly Member off against the Member of Parliament. As the Welsh Assembly also has regional Members, my experience is that those from other political parties who failed to be elected in constituencies end up trying to play a semi-constituency role. Often, that leads to a considerable enhancement of the amount of work done. I make no complaint about that, but I think that those who assume, from their English seat, that a Welsh Assembly and a Scottish Parliament result in Welsh and Scottish MPs having less casework, are wrong.

There are many different kinds of casework. There is casework such as a miners compensation scheme, with which thousands of people want help going through the legal process. Then there is casework such as, “I think it’s an absolute outrage that you ever thought of voting for this piece of legislation.” I get very little of the latter and a lot of the former. In different constituencies around the land, some Members have a lot of immigration cases. I have had only about three immigration cases during my time as a Member of Parliament. Casework varies between constituencies, and it is not appropriate to legislate directly in relation to that.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

Is the hon. Gentleman seriously suggesting that, with constituencies in Scotland and Wales having significantly smaller electorates than those in England, list system Members, devolved Parliament Members and MPs, such MPs have the same work loads as English constituency Members? If so, does he have any academic evidence to support that, because I am quite sceptical?

[Chris Bryant]

I think “Sceptical” might be the hon. Gentleman’s middle name. I see he is smiling—I have managed to get a smile out of him; that must be a first. He is now trying not to smile. Now he is laughing.

The only point I would make to the hon. Gentleman is that there is no academic evidence, and probably never will be. All that we have is anecdotal evidence. I merely offer my own evidence—I have not seen my work load diminish compared with that of my predecessor, who did not have a Welsh Assembly to contend with. The hon. Gentleman is right that a constituency with a smaller number of people might mean that the Member concerned has fewer people contacting them, but it might also mean that access to the Member for constituents is more difficult and that it involves considerable travelling around the constituency. Anyway, that is a matter for a different debate.

The right hon. and learned Member for Kensington referred to the issue of whether there should be an English Parliament. He is right to argue that there is a danger that we would end up with two Governments. Who would take possession of Downing street? Presumably, we would have a set of English Ministers, in addition to British Ministers, and so on. I am not sure that is the direction in which British voters want to go. The hon. Member for West Worcestershire referred to the fact that on the one occasion when we had a referendum on whether there should be devolved responsibilities within the English regions, people decided, largely because they did not want more politicians, not to go down that route.

In parenthesis, let me say briefly that I hear regularly, not from the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington but from others, that this is the mother of Parliaments. I again say that John Bright meant that England was the mother of Parliaments and that it was a very difficult and complicated birth. The effortless English superiority that sometimes arises in these debates is unfortunate.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman referred to Wales, and I was reminded of a story, which may not be apocryphal, of Charlotte Church singing before George W. Bush when he was President—a meeting of two great minds, obviously.

When Charlotte Church was introduced to the President, he asked, “Where are you from?” She said, “Wales.” He asked, “What state is that in?” , and she said “Terrible.” Discussions about issues such as this are not always informed by great intelligence.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman mentioned the possibility of an English Grand Committee. It has been suggested in the past that such a Committee should sit in the Chamber, because it would obviously have a significant number of members. During the last Parliament we discussed the possibility of regional Grand Committees and arguments were presented both for and against the idea, but it has fallen by the wayside.

I am not convinced by the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s argument in favour of a requirement for a double majority. Neither House has ever operated a system of secondary mandates.

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

So what?

[Chris Bryant]

It is true that innovation is sometimes a good thing, but I think that it would lead to confusion in this instance.

I am afraid that I am going to disappoint the right hon. and learned Gentleman now. He expected me to argue that a Government who lost a piece of legislation would fall, but I am not going to argue that at all. In fact, the danger is that as we move towards an elected second Chamber—and over the past few weeks we have seen both sides of the second Chamber behaving almost exactly like an elected Chamber—we will reach a point at which there will be absolutely no check on the power of the Executive. There will be no check by virtue of the time that the second Chamber can take to delay legislation, and no check in this House because, by definition, the Government have a majority. We may have to address that problem through the way in which we interpret the Standing Orders of the House.

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

The hon. Gentleman has been kind enough to say that he does not think that a double-majority requirement would create an unworkable situation for the Government. The only argument—in fact, it is not even an argument, but just a word—that he has used to indicate his reason for opposing such a requirement is that it would cause “confusion”. What does he mean by that?

[Chris Bryant]

I shall deal later with an issue that relates directly to the point of the Bill, and I think that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will then understand why I believe there is a problem. [Interruption.] He is now confused, but I hope that I shall be able to rescue him from his confusion in a moment or two.

As I said to the hon. Member for West Worcestershire, this is an age-old issue. There is a meretricious argument, which the hon. Lady steered away from today—although she dangled it in front of us a little bit—that it is patently absurd for Members whose constituents will not be affected by an individual piece of legislation to be able to vote on it. That is, at any rate, a paraphrase of something that she said. My response is “All that glisters is not gold.”

If we decide that Members can vote only on matters that affect their constituents directly—or even indirectly, I suppose—we end up with the question of who runs the country. At any one moment, on any one piece of legislation, there is uncertainty, and in the case of Finance Bills in particular there is a real problem. The issue is not just what the Government propose, but what Members can or cannot amend. Some money Bills have effect only in England, but the danger is that a money Bill could be amended in a way that caused it to have an implication elsewhere.

[Harriett Baldwin]

Can the hon. Gentleman give me an example of a money Bill that might affect only England? I am not sure that my research has identified one.

[Chris Bryant]

There are money Bills attached to many pieces of legislation. There will be money Bills in relation to the education Bill and the national health service Bill, for instance. However, I think that the hon. Lady is referring to Finance Bills. It is true that the vast majority of Finance Bills have implications throughout the United Kingdom, although obviously there will be modifications in relation to Scotland if the Scotland Bill is passed. Elements of a future Finance Bill would not apply in Scotland. Indeed, elements of a Finance Bill today already do not apply in Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales.

My second point is that it is phenomenally difficult to be clear about what constitutes the territorial extent not just of a particular piece of legislation, but of its transition through the House. It would seem on the face of it that, for instance, the Bill that became the Health Act 2006 was purely an England Bill. Most people would consider that to be the case. The Bill made provision in relation to smoke-free premises, the purpose being to ban smoking in public places in England. On 14 February 2006 the House debated new clause 5, which replaced the original clause 3. It provided that

“The appropriate national authority may make regulations providing for specified descriptions of premises, or specified areas within specified descriptions of premises, not to be smoke-free”.

It then listed a series of places that might be exempted. Subsection (5), for example, stated:

“If both a club premises certificate and a premises licence authorising the consumption of alcohol on the premises have effect in respect of any premises, those premises are to be treated for the purposes of this section as if only the premises licence had effect”.

[Andrea Leadsom]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

I will, but I shall want to return to my specific argument.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. Given that the whole purpose of the Bill is to make clearer in legislation exactly what different legislative proposals relate to in terms of the geographical area of the United Kingdom, surely his argument is one in favour of the Bill.

[Chris Bryant]

No, it is an argument against it. I remember clearly the rows that took place in both the Chamber and the Clerk’s Office about whether the way in which the amendments to a health Bill were being selected would mean that Wales was or was not covered. Because most Members wanted to remove the provision that would allow the Secretary of State to exempt private members’ clubs in England, they actually removed the provision that allowed an exemption for private members’ clubs in Wales. It may well be that the Welsh Assembly would have wanted to do that itself anyway, but it had no choice. It could not make such a provision. I can tell the hon. Lady that that row was quite vociferous.

My point is this: I do not think it is possible to be clear. The original legislation might be clear, but people might want to amend it, and why should they not be able to do so? If the parliamentary draftspeople say, “This Bill will cover only England”, the number of Bills going through the House will have to be doubled, if not trebled, because there will have to be a separate Wales Bill and a separate Scotland Bill.

[Harriett Baldwin]

With the greatest respect, surely in such circumstances it would be necessary only to say, “This Bill applies to all three areas.” My Bill provides for flexibility in order to avoid precisely the kind of row that the hon. Gentleman has described.

[Chris Bryant]

But who gets to decide the interpretation of what applies and what does not apply? That is the problem. A series of issues arises. A decision is made by parliamentary draftspeople, or Clerks, or the Speaker. That would bring them into the debate, which would be a mistake.

I want to give the reason why I think the Bill is being introduced. Although it is fascinating to know the territorial extent of any Bill or clause, the only purpose of knowing that must surely be, as the hon. Lady said, to ensure that Members of the House vote only on legislation that directly affects them. That is a misguided intention. In practice, that would mean that we ended up with more Bills, and Second and Third Readings and Committee stages. If we decide that English MPs can vote only on English legislation, who will vote on Welsh clauses? Just Welsh MPs? Would only Welsh MPs be able to attend the Committee to take the Bill through? I think that we have never had a Welsh Secretary of State for Wales under a Conservative Government, although I may be wrong. We would have to allow the Minister to sit on the Committee but they would not be able to vote on their own legislation, which seems patently absurd.

[Harriett Baldwin]

With respect, the hon. Gentleman is missing the whole point. Obviously, legislation will have different effects in different parts of the UK. That will be spelt out in the legislation. All the issues that he is raising are complete red herrings that the Bill would address.

[Chris Bryant]

No, I honestly think that the hon. Lady is completely naive in relation to this matter. She said at the beginning of her speech that she thought that it was a fundamental principle that MPs should be able to vote only on those things that affect their constituents. That is the only purpose of having such a provision in any legislation. If she introduces a piece of legislation or a Standing Order—I will come to parliamentary privilege in a moment—that would require MPs not to vote on a piece of legislation, or that would shame people into not voting on a piece of legislation, she will create a real problem. If we assert that only English MPs can take part in the proceedings on English legislation, table amendments, amend Bills, seek to speak and vote on that legislation—that is where her Bill is driving us—there will be a problem for English legislation, not least because large numbers of Scottish and Welsh MPs have been English Ministers dealing with largely English matters. There are and have been Scottish and Welsh Ministers in, for example, the Department of Health and the Department for Education who have largely dealt with matters that refer only to England.

[Andrea Leadsom]

People in the country do not want to see Scottish MPs voting as Ministers on English-only legislation. Surely the hon. Gentleman can see that there is a fairness issue. It is surely not a bad thing if people might be shamed into feeling that they cannot represent English-only issues if they are a Scottish MP, and by the way, the Bill is not proposing that.

[Chris Bryant]

I think that the hon. Lady has just let the cat out of the bag. That is the whole point of her argument, is it not? There is no other reason to introduce such as measure. The only reason is to shame people. That is what the hon. Lady wants to do. I think that she is effectively saying that she does not want me as a Welsh MP to vote on anything that she believes to be an English-only matter. Is that what she believes?

[Andrea Leadsom]

Is the hon. Gentleman asking me or my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin)?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

Sorry, I am slightly cross-eyed. I meant the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom).

[Andrea Leadsom]

This is obviously my hon. Friend’s Bill. She is not proposing any such legislation. She is merely proposing to clarify the territorial extent of any Bill that goes through the House. For my own part, in direct answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question, I think that it is unfair to you, as a Welsh Member representing Welsh interests, voting on English-only interests, or indeed being a Minister for English-only interests. That is my personal opinion and I would not like you to attribute that to my hon. Friend whose Bill this is. She is not making that proposal.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I gently point out that I have been accused of many things but not of being a Welsh Member?

[Chris Bryant]

Although I am sure that you would not mind, Mr Speaker. It is not a libel. It is not like being called an English Member when you are not an English Member. [Hon. Members: “Oh.”] We lost badly in the rugby last week so we are still somewhat wounded on these matters.

I recognise that the hon. Member for West Worcestershire has dressed her Bill up so that it does not look like it is moving in that direction, but many Members might only support the Bill because they want it to move in that direction. As I said earlier, I understand that some people are concerned about the issue in the country. However, I cannot think of a single Parliament in the world, including Spain and many other countries—this is not the only argument that I would use in relation to this—where there is asymmetric devolution and MPs cannot vote on every piece of legislation that is brought before them. As the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington said, to go down that route is a nationalist argument—not as in British nationalist, but as in Welsh, Scottish or Irish nationalist—and will unpick the Union in the end. Therefore, if the hon. Member for West Worcestershire really believes in the Union, it is a bit difficult to advance that argument.

[Harriett Baldwin]

As I said earlier, it is because of that belief that it is important that we have clarity in our legislation about which parts of the UK it affects. Is the hon. Gentleman arguing that we have to just continue to park the issue and not address it, thus undermining the Union?

[Chris Bryant]

I would like to see the issue addressed in different ways—as it has been addressed in other countries. For example, the role of the second Chamber needs to be looked at. It has been embarrassing that the vast majority of people who have been appointed to the second Chamber in the past few years have been from London and the south-east of England. That is almost inevitable when we have an appointments system. I would prefer to move to an elected system, where we had more people representing the whole of the UK. It might be possible to devise a better answer to the West Lothian question through reform of the second Chamber on an elected basis.

However, as the hon. Lady has said, the whole business of parliamentary privilege comes into play. It has been a fundamental assumption from when the first commoners were allowed to attend parliamentary proceedings under Simon de Montfort in 1258 that grievances that they presented on behalf of the people should be able to be presented without any difference between one and the other Members.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I thought that going back to the 13th century might stimulate the hon. Gentleman.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The right of shires to send people for address of grievance pre-dates Simon de Montfort. It is the boroughs that came in at that point.

[Chris Bryant]

Simon de Montfort invited four knights from each of the shires and six from Yorkshire in 1258 to present in Parliament their grievances on behalf of others. We do not know that all the knights attended. Of the ones who did attend, we only know that because they presented expenses and had them paid, so this problem has been with us since Mauge Vavasour had his payments made in Michaelmas 1258. It was a significant moment. The burgesses obviously arrived after 1258, though earlier in the 13th century there were occasions when some burgesses from the Cinque ports were invited, and some from those cities where there were a large number of Jewish residents were brought to Parliament to debate specific issues.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The knights of the shires came much earlier than that—they come from the reign of Richard I. That is attested thoroughly.

[Chris Bryant]

Well, not all 37 shires had representation, and they certainly did not have that as of right. I am perfectly happy to debate this at another time, but for now Mr Speaker has got that slightly fascinated but also slightly irritated face on.

It would be very dangerous to dismantle the fundamental principle of the equality of all Members of this House. That is why I think that, in the end, the direction of travel the hon. Member for West Worcestershire is moving in with this Bill is an unfortunate one.

[Harriett Baldwin]

Let me reiterate once again that none of the concerns the hon. Gentleman is raising apply to the Bill.

[Chris Bryant]

As I have said, legislation is about not just what it does, but the declaratory effect that it has. The hon. Lady referred to the intended consequences of her Bill, but it would also have unintended consequences. As her colleague, the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire, has already in effect told us, press releases will be sent out the moment the Bill comes into force condemning some Members for taking part in debates and votes on matters that the Bill declares as being for England only. I presume that there would also be condemnation of English MPs taking part in debates and votes on legislation that applies only to Wales. If we are going to reduce the number of Members of Parliament for Wales to 30, it will be difficult to take such legislation through effectively if there are not enough Back Benchers to be able to make proper informed decisions about the measures under discussion. The direction of travel the hon. Member for West Worcestershire is taking us down is unfortunate.

I also think there will be unfortunate direct consequences, in that the number of Bills will increase, which will make things more difficult for us, and the number of clauses will also increase. We will end up with worse legislation because, as the hon. Lady has said, draftsmen will be required to try to provide absolute clarity that measures apply specifically to England, for example, or to Wales alone.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

That was going to be my last sentence, but I will allow the hon. Gentleman to intervene.

[Damian Hinds]

Have any of these adverse effects arisen as a result of the current statement of territorial extent?

[Chris Bryant]

Which specific declaration is the hon. Gentleman referring to?

[Damian Hinds]

I do not know what the hon. Gentleman means by “declaration” as I am relatively new to all this, but Bills currently have a statement of territorial extent, yet I am not aware of certain Members being shamed into not commenting on them.

[Chris Bryant]

Such declarations do not specify whether a Bill is exclusively English, Welsh or Northern Irish, or applies to all four territories or just two—or whatever. There has not been a problem thus far, and that is why I do not think there is any reason to make changes through legislation. I am even more sceptical about this Bill than the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) normally is about everything. If it proceeds to Second Reading, we will want to scrutinise and amend it robustly. As other Members have revealed, there are major problems with these measures that the hon. Member for West Worcestershire has not considered.

--- Later in debate ---

[Iain Stewart]

My hon. Friend raises an intriguing possibility. I hope that the commission does report, but we cannot move to a new arrangement without the agreement of those in the existing system; that is part of our process of constitutional evolution. I hope that we do get that commission and I gently encourage my Front-Bench colleagues to speed it up, because I will wholeheartedly support it.

I wish to discuss an intriguing point made by a former Secretary of State for Scotland in the previous Government, Helen Liddell. It relates to a separate issue but it makes the argument well. When we were debating whether the United Kingdom should join the euro, the then Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), set out five tests by which we should judge whether it was appropriate for the United Kingdom to do so. She made the point that a sixth test should form part of the overall considerations, which was the opportunity cost of not joining: was there a cost to the United Kingdom of not joining the euro? Similarly, we should consider the opportunity cost of not addressing the West Lothian question because if it is left unchecked at some point it will come back to undermine the Union. As a Unionist, that is the last thing that I want. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) was correct to say that this is an evolutionary process. I did not have the benefit of being tutored by Professor Bogdanor, but I was always taught by the equally eminent Professor Michael Rush at the university of Exeter that the British constitution is a product of evolution, not revolution. We should proceed on that basis, but that should not preclude us from turning our minds to this issue.

Theoretically, there are three perfect solutions to the West Lothian question, although I believe that we should reject them because they have other consequences that are either impractical or undesirable. The first option is that the Union ends, which is the wish of the Scottish National party, whose Members are clearly here in excessive number to debate this matter. They do have a perfect option, because under their solution the number of Scottish Members in this House would be zero and the West Lothian question would therefore not arise. However, for all sorts of economic, cultural and social reasons, I do not wish the Union to end.

The second option is to go back to the arrangement that was in place before we had the Scottish Parliament, either by abolishing that Parliament or by following the intriguing suggestion made by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) that Members of this House who represent Scottish constituencies should then form the Scottish Parliament and on certain days—for example, Wednesdays and Thursdays—only English Members would debate in this place. I fear that that is not a practical option at the moment. There is certainly no appetite in Scotland for reversing the Scottish Parliament, and as it was set up by a referendum it can be undone only by a referendum. That may become an option at some point, but I do not see it as a viable option now. Nevertheless, the suggestion would provide a neat solution to the West Lothian question.

The third option is to move to a fully federal United Kingdom, with one United Kingdom Parliament legislating on the big national issues—the economy, international affairs, defence and so on—and the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, Northern Ireland Assembly and a body for England then dealing, on an equal basis, with the issues affecting those areas. Such a system works perfectly well in Germany, Australia, Canada and many other countries, but the problem would be how to solve the “English question” in a federal situation.

One option would be to have a separate English Parliament with the same powers as the Scottish Parliament. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington said, and as others have argued, the difficulty with that is that England would represent more than 80% of the population and more than 80% of the gross domestic product in one unit. I cannot think of a stable modern democracy with an advanced economy where there is such an overwhelming dominant part in a federation. Any other country with a federal system contains two or more big states that balance each other out. For example, Canada contains Ontario and Quebec, and Germany contains Bavaria and North Rhine-Westphalia. If England were to be a separate entity in a federal system, the arrangement would have too much of an imbalance.

The other option would be to atomise England into regions—for example, the north-east, the south-west, Greater London and so on. There may be various permutations, but there is simply no appetite in England for that, even in the part of England where there was, allegedly, the highest demand for a regional government—the north-east. When people there were given the option of a regional government a few years ago, they overwhelmingly rejected it. In addition, we would face enormous difficulty in dividing England up. Our debates on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill have included an argument about a cross-border constituency involving Cornwall and Devon. Goodness knows what would happen if we tried to draw a boundary involving Gloucestershire, Cornwall, Dorset and other areas to constitute “the south-west of England”. I simply do not believe that federalism is a viable option in this country.

All that brings us to an imperfect answer, as we are not going to create a perfect solution to the West Lothian question unless we go down one of those three avenues. The Bill is a helpful first step in paving the way to finding that answer. I have looked at all the options over many years, although not for as long as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington. I have ruled out some and I do take seriously the comment made by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) that we would encounter difficulties if we started excluding Members from voting on particular bits of legislation. I strongly hold the view that every Member in this House is equal and when we start tinkering with that, we enter dangerous waters.

I do believe, however, that there is a solution and I am happy to endorse the one proposed by my right hon. and learned Friend: some form of a double majority. In such a system no Member would be excluded from participating in a debate or voting on a particular Bill or part of a Bill, but there should then be a requirement that if that Bill applied wholly or exclusively to one part of the United Kingdom, an additional majority would be required among Members from that area.

[Chris Bryant]

But is the difficulty not that, for the most part, Governments introduce legislation in our system and a Government who were nervous about their majority would simply ensure that Bills contained separate clauses relating to Wales, to Northern Ireland and to Scotland, so we would not be any further forward?

[Iain Stewart]

I would answer that by saying that a Government who do not command the majority in all parts of the kingdom should approach with caution legislating against the will of a part where they do not command a majority. For example, one of the main arguments for devolution was that this place would legislate against the wishes of Scotland, if the Government did not command a majority in Scotland. If the Government do not command a majority, they should approach with care legislating for the whole kingdom, if that does not command support across the board.

[Chris Bryant]

One should assume that Governments will be unscrupulous. Hon. Members are always scrupulous, but Governments, in their corporate management of taking business through the House, might be unscrupulous. There is the myth that the previous Labour Government did not have a majority in England, but they had the majority of seats in England. I say gently to the hon. Gentleman that the Bill will not solve the problem.

[Iain Stewart]

I will not comment on the previous Government’s approach to legislation.

[Chris Bryant]

It is the same now.

[Iain Stewart]

I beg to differ.

As I have said, there is an opportunity cost to not addressing the issue. My contention is that doing nothing carries a greater price than doing something, which is why I strongly welcome the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Bridgen]

The previous Government may well have had the majority of seats in England, but they did not have the majority of the votes.

[Chris Bryant]

Yes, they did.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Once again, the hon. Gentleman comments from a sedentary position. The previous Government did not have the majority of the votes in England. I am a Unionist, and I wholeheartedly support the Union. The biggest risk posed by not addressing the West Lothian question is that the dissatisfaction of English voters, rather than the dissatisfaction of Scottish or Welsh electors, will force the Union apart.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Surely this is all about fairness for constituents who have a Member of Parliament. It is also about a Member of Parliament’s right to represent their constituents.

I agree with the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) that it will be difficult to sort out the problem. As we have heard, the problem goes all the way back to Simon de Montfort. Equally, we must remember the problems with the Irish Home Rule Bills in the late 19th century, which were solved—kind of. We had Stormont until 1972, which I can recall operating when I was a soldier.

The issue will become increasingly important as power, particularly the power to raise taxes, is dissipated down. As I understand it, the Scottish Parliament might be able to raise 2p in the pound on income tax. Is that correct? I think that it is. The Scotland Bill may allow more discretion on that. When one starts talking about money as well as issues such as health, education and prisons, there is a big difference. It is important that we find a way ahead, but it will not be easy.

I have had a few tangles with the Table Office, when I used what I thought were plain words in a question. I have had to go there several times after my homework was sent back, but I am sure that the clever people in the Table Office can design a form of words that will help. Surely it should be possible to identify whether a Bill concerns England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

[Chris Bryant]

That has not always been my experience of the Table Office, which is often directional and forceful in saying that one cannot table a particular question in, for example, Welsh questions. In such cases, it is often drawn into rows.

Earlier, I suggested that Labour won more votes than the Conservatives in the 2005 election. Actually, we were 70,000 votes short but 92 seats ahead.

[Bob Stewart]

I thank my hon. Friend—well, not my friend, but he could be, if he is nicer. I thank the hon. Gentleman.

It will become increasingly important that we address this problem. I am sure now, too, that that problem will be helped by some sort of solution, such as that suggested by my right hon., learned and former Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), who is not in his position, but whom I shall make it up with. Before you were here, Madam Deputy Speaker, I called him “old friend”, and he said, “Not as old as you.” [Interruption.] I am so sorry; I am getting into more trouble now. Forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was referring to my right hon., learned and somewhat gallant Friend the Member for Kensington, who produced an elegant solution that would not be a big problem to sort out: the double vote, which my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), who shares the same name as me and who must be slightly Scottish, as I am, suggested that he endorsed as well.

[Chris Bryant]

I keep on thinking up more reasons why I dislike that double mandate, so I will suggest another one: one of the reasons why, traditionally, we have granted that a Bill should be given a Second Reading is so that it can be amended. Quite often, hon. Members will allow a debate on Second Reading to proceed because they want to amend something. That is the danger. Many hon. Members might want to amend a Bill to include Welsh or Scottish provisions, but they might have been prohibited from taking part in the debate on Second Reading, and that rather conflicts with the whole purpose of such a debate.

[Bob Stewart]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for, once again, being so perceptive as to pick a few little holes. I accept that this is not an easy problem; there is no easy fix. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) is suggesting a gradual, slow change, which I support. But I also support the idea that, when the commission sits this year, as we learn, it considers a solution. I prefer evolution, rather than revolution. I would prefer that we start to address this problem, and I am attracted to the idea presented by my new friend, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, who has departed for a coffee. I endorse in the meantime my hon. Friend’s Bill.

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) on presenting the Bill. The contributions so far have shown

“what a tangled web we weave”.

I support devolution as far as it has gone, but I am a great supporter of the Union. That is why my hon. Friend has done a service by promoting further debate.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman started the quotation but did not finish it:

“Oh! what a tangled web we weave

When first we practice to deceive”.

I am sure that he is not suggesting that the Bill is deceiving.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point, but I was rather hoping she would not, because there is a desperate tendency on Fridays towards motherhood-and-apple-pie Bills that say nothing very much about anything in particular. If her Bill is that type of Bill, what on earth are we doing discussing it? If it just says that the Minister, out of the kindness of his heart, will say a few words about where an Act applies, it is completely and utterly pointless, and the House should not discuss things that are pointless. We do that on Fridays, and Madam Deputy Speaker is amazingly patient in listening to some of these discussions.

My hon. Friend’s Bill has to be an important stepping-stone in answering the West Lothian question, or it is nothing. I give her credit for having the courage to begin to address that question, rather than just detaining us here when we could be doing work in our constituency on a Friday. I hope that she will not try to hide behind the minutiae of the Bill instead of looking at the bigger picture, because that bigger picture is crucial.

My hon. Friend is right to put pressure on the Government to come up with a solution that can be debated in Government time. In that respect, the Bill is really noble, because the Government do have to think about the issue. It is unfair on the British—the English; I apologise for using those two words synonymously, as I know the English do a great deal.

[Chris Bryant]

And the French.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The French?

[Chris Bryant]

The French very regularly confuse “anglais” with “britannique”.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that illuminating point. I always thought that the auld Alliance meant that they were rather keen on the Scots, but that may be a slight diversion.

What ought the Government to do and to think about as they approach a solution to the West Lothian question? They have to think about the practicalities. We have had learned discussion already today about how difficult it would be to have an English Parliament, because one would then have an English Government, and that would be simply too big. That is the problem that Balfour identified when first discussing Home Rule. He asked what we do about England, when we have Ireland, Scotland and Wales as nations. Do we chop England up, or simply have it swamping the whole new system that is being established? If there is an English Prime Minister and a UK Prime Minister, who does the President of the United States visit when he comes? He sees the English Prime Minister, because the UK Prime Minister would have peripheral powers. He might have a slightly better house, but that would be the extent of it. There is not an easy solution to the English Parliament issue.

There is then the question of English votes on English issues, but the more one discusses that superficially hugely attractive option, the more one discovers that it does not work, because there would be two tiers of MPs, and a Whitehall Government that could not get a major part of its legislation through and would therefore begin to fail. One would then begin to try to chop up the procedures, so that the Government could decide which MPs debated which bits of legislation, but that would not work either, for reasons that we have discussed. There was mention of the Welsh Grand Committee and how little that was able to succeed in doing; and when the Conservatives were last in government, they thought that a sop to devolution would be to have a Scottish Grand Committee. The fact is that the governing party has to be able to get its parliamentary business through. Whatever schemes it sets up will not work if that fundamental principle is not followed, and will be changed to the extent that they cannot be used.

So what do I suggest that the Government do? That is the nub of it. We will have an election at some point in which the Conservatives have a clear majority in England but are not the major part of the governing group. At that point, there will be squeals of anguish from the English electorate, and the Conservative party will use that all it can for political advantage. We will find that the Union comes under fundamental attack. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) that any attack on the Union is likely to come not from the Scottish nationalists but from English nationalists, fed up with the way that they are being treated.

I would like the Government to consider the proposal that we heard earlier about allowing the two Parliaments and the one Assembly to come together to some extent, but I accept that that is difficult: As a result of how they were set up, it would be problematic to change them at this stage, but it may be that something could be done along those lines. Alternatively, the thing will simply have to be done in the best form of British fudge—that is, Labour Members, when in government, will have to be enormously responsible and self-denying about what they do in England, and conventions will have to become very important in our constitutional settlement. If it becomes a convention, but is not formalised, that English representation will have a majority, or will at least accept a veto on extremely controversial measures, that may be a fudge that would work.

It is interesting and worth noting that on both big constitutional issues—reform of the House of Lords and the West Lothian question—after 100 years of the best brains trying to find a solution, no obvious solution has come up. With every solution that does come up, after one has thought about it for a week or two, one sees any number of holes in it. I therefore see absolutely no reason to oppose the Bill when we come to vote on it. There is nothing objectionable in it, and my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire has been very sensible to ensure that that is the case. It is good to push the Government, but I would not hold my breath—I do not think that I can breathe in for the next 100 years —waiting for a solution to this almost intractable problem. However, we have to recognise that, as my hon. Friend says, the English may get deeply fed up with the current situation, and when they do, that is when the Union will be most at risk. That is, I think, what most Government Members, and at least one Member on the Opposition side of the Chamber—the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley)—would be extremely keen to avoid.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Paisley]

I do not think that the view is necessarily commonly held, but we should caution ourselves. When we speak in this place on behalf of the Union and such points are made—not in jest, but seriously—that seriously undermines the standing of the House and its Members. That is not what we should be about. We should bear that in mind.

[Chris Bryant]

Has the hon. Gentleman had the following experience, as I have had in the past couple of weeks? As a Welsh Member of Parliament, I have had a lot of e-mails and correspondence from my constituents on the issue of selling off forests. That does not apply in Wales, but the issue is deeply felt by many in my constituency.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

That is an interesting question. This is one of the key differences—not the only one—between me and the Prime Minister. He got a first, but I only got a 2:1, which probably explains why he is the Prime Minister and I am just the Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington made several good points. Despite the attempts by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) to put my right hon. and learned Friend’s name forward to serve on the commission that we will set up, I noted carefully that he declined the opportunity, saying that he would be happy to give evidence to it.

[Chris Bryant]

I hope that I am not breaking a private confidence when I say that Vernon Bogdanor told me that he thought that the Minister, when he was his student, was very clever and bright and clearly destined for greater things, but that it was a shame that he had fallen among thieves of late.

[Mr Harper]

I have just looked at the expression on you face, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I think that I am going to be generous and describe the hon. Gentleman’s use of the word “thieves” as an attempt at humour. I do not think that it was a very successful attempt, but this is perhaps the best way to get him out of the difficulty that he might otherwise have got himself into.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

In view of what I think the hon. Member for Rhondda was saying about the way in which the Committee had behaved from time to time, I think he was making it clear that he felt it was a Welsh grandstanding Committee. I think that it is helpful to get that point on to the record.

[Chris Bryant]

Well, this is a grand debate, isn’t it? The truth is that, all too often, the Welsh Grand Committee has been a pretty futile body. It is all the more futile when the Government give it matters to discuss that its members do not want to discuss, and when those decisions are made only by the Government and not by the Committee’s members.

[Mr Harper]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that clarification. It comes back to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset that the Bill does nothing harmful, but nor does it take us much further forward. I start from the position, as do the Government, that we should not legislate for unnecessary matters that do not add anything.

[Chris Bryant]

A clear example is to be found in the explanatory notes to the next Bill that we will consider. In relation to the territorial extent and application, the notes state:

“The Bill extends to (that is, forms part of the law of) England and Wales. The terms of clause 1, however, mean that it will only take effect within England.”

Often, there is not the clarity that an ordinary person might want and seek, even when we put something on the face of a Bill.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point about the fact that, even when something is required, it is not always executed brilliantly. Even if the requirements in the Cabinet Office guidance on drafting legislation were put into statute, that would not necessarily mean that they would be better executed than they are currently.

In practice, the financial aspects of the Bill would also have little consequence, because the present arrangements already require all new UK-wide legislation to specify the financial impact and to be drafted within a Department’s existing funding plans. Therefore, no new Barnett financial consequentials would arise, as a matter of course. Bills that deal with reserved matters have no Barnett consequentials attached and do not have significant impact on different Administrations.

In relation to how legislation is drafted, the Bill does not take us much further forward. Effectively, it puts into statutory form what the Government currently intend and do, thus losing a little flexibility. However, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset put his finger on it when he observed that the West Lothian question is complicated. While the Bill may lead us to a potential solution, it may not be the one that the commission comes up with.

Finally, let me do what I was invited to do by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), and remind the House that the Government have made a commitment to set up a commission to examine the West Lothian question. Although the coalition parties approach the issue from different angles, they have made a common commitment to resolve the question. In the Conservative party manifesto, we promised to

“introduce new rules so that legislation referring specifically to England, or to England and Wales, cannot be enacted without the consent of MPs representing constituencies of those countries.”

The Liberal Democrats’ manifesto said that they would

“Address the status of England within a federal Britain, through the Constitutional Convention set up to draft a written constitution for the UK as a whole.”

Although the coalition parties came up with very different solutions to the West Lothian question, both parties consider it important to attempt to answer it, and neither party believes that it is possible to answer it by ceasing to ask it. We consider it a serious question that will be best tackled when we can tackle it in a calm and reasonable manner rather than waiting for a crisis.

I can confirm that we will set up the commission this year, as, indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire established through her perceptive questioning. We had hoped to make announcements to the House at an earlier stage, but I look forward to making them in the not-too-distant future, and the commission will then be able to consider the ideas that have been advanced today. Hon. Members have effectively made bids to participate, either as members of the commission or in giving evidence to it. I hope that it will arrive at solutions that we can subsequently debate.

I urge my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire to withdraw her Bill, to participate in the commission in whatever way proves appropriate, and to continue to take part in this important debate. The Government are keen to answer the question and deal with this important matter, but I am not sure that my hon. Friend’s Bill provides the right way of going about it, and I think it right to test the opinion of the House.

EU Council and North Africa

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

It is for Ministers to explain what they said and what they did not say. Clearly, they can rely on what is in the report about not being contradicted, but I think they have to look—and I hope they will do it fairly—and ask themselves, “Given that I was receiving memos about a game plan of facilitating contact and given that I was signing off those memos, shouldn’t I have really said to the House of Commons and elsewhere that it was not just that we didn’t want this man to die in a Scottish jail but that we were working actively with the Libyans to try to secure his release?” I think they should have said something more along those lines. I have genuinely tried to approach this by asking what is fair in terms of what we should have been told when those questions were asked.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I do not think that trade should ever be the sole determinant when it comes to our foreign policy, which is why I hope to persuade the Prime Minister to adopt more of his muscular liberalism, to coin a phrase, in relation to the Russian Federation. Sergei Magnitsky was tortured and murdered in a Russian jail when he was working for a British company in Russia. The United States Congress is now considering banning from the USA anyone who was involved either in the corruption he uncovered or in his torture and murder. Will the Prime Minister consider doing the same here and will he make sure that those views are expressed to Foreign Minister Lavrov when he visits next week?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point and I am glad that the phrase “muscular liberalism” is catching on. That is exactly the approach we have taken with Russia and we do raise questions such as those that the hon. Gentleman asked when we hold meetings with President Medvedev, as I have done, or with Foreign Minister Lavrov, as my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has done, and we will go on raising those issues. Some countries have not taken that approach, but we think it is the right approach.