Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Bryant Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The Prime Minister (Boris Johnson)
This morning I had meetings with—[Interruption.]
The Prime Minister
Thank you, Mr Speaker. This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. [Interruption.] Thank you very much. Immediately following Prime Minister’s questions, I will attend the welcome home march-in to thank all those involved in Op Pitting, our evacuation from Kabul. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
Chris Bryant
I, too, will be attending in a few minutes’ time.
Nikki’s seven-year-old son had 37 seizures a day because of a brain disease he suffered from. He has had surgery now, but it is a struggle every day to get him to stay in school. Nikki is supporting the Acquired Brain Injury Bill because she believes that the Government need a cross-departmental strategy for supporting those who have an acquired brain injury, whether that is rugby players with concussion and dementia, women who have been beaten in the head by their partners, children who have suffered from carbon monoxide poisoning, or soldiers who have been in explosions. I really hope that the Government are going to back the Acquired Brain Injury Bill, but above all we need a strategy to help 1.4 million people in this country. Will the Prime Minister give us that?
The Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Member for raising this vital issue and for his personal commitment to this cause. I can assure him that we are studying his proposed Bill and working to ensure that people do get support for the acquired brain injuries that they have received. What we can certainly pledge at this stage—I hope this will be of some use to him and the many who care about this issue in the way that he does, as I am sure Members do across the House—is that the Department of Health and Social Care will lead on the development of a cross-departmental Government strategy on acquired brain injury and other neurological conditions. I will be very happy to share details with him shortly.
Committee on Standards: Decision of the House
Chris Bryant Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Steve Barclay
As I just set out, we are committed to working on a cross-party basis and we regret that many hon. Members did not feel that they had been sufficiently consulted on the proposals last week. I simply refer to the article in The Times by the Chair of the Standards Committee, who said:
“I’m sure we need to review both the code of conduct and the way it operates.”
He went on to say that
“there are good arguments in favour of a more formal additional process, whereby a member could appeal against the sanction either to an outside body or to a sub-committee of the standards committee”.
It was to that that the debate turned last week.
Steve Barclay
I did not see that the Chair of the Standards Committee was seeking to grab my attention. We are committed to working on a cross-party basis and, with that in mind, of course I will give way to him.
Chris Bryant
I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman and acknowledge the apology that he has given on behalf of the Government. None the less, the whole of Parliament is still in a bit of a hole. We still have a motion that was carried last week, which leaves the question of Mr Paterson’s conduct hanging in the air. Earlier today, I gave a draft of a motion that, were the Government to table it tonight, could be considered by the House tomorrow. I think that it would have the support of the whole House in clearing up the fact that, as you referred to, Mr Speaker, we have not actually decided whether Mr Paterson’s behaviour was inappropriate. I think the whole House now accepts that it was. Secondly, we have created a Committee which, I think, even the right hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), who is meant to be chairing it, does not want to be on any more.
Chris Bryant
It would be quite a good idea if we could clear this up tomorrow before we go into recess. I hope the Minister will say now that he will table that motion later on today.
Steve Barclay
I have been very clear that we will listen to the House and listen to the debate. [Interruption.] Will the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) just let me address the point made by the Chair of the Committee on Standards? Mr Paterson has now resigned, so it would not be possible for the House to endorse a sanction of suspension. I simply remind the House that he has suffered a serious personal tragedy. He has now resigned. In his statement, he said that he wants to continue his politics outside public life, and we should respect that. I hope, through your office, Mr Speaker, that there will be a way for us to engage on a cross-party basis, and that is what the Government will now redouble their efforts to engage on in the days ahead.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. First, I want to congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) on securing this debate. Secondly, I want to thank all the members of the Standards Committee. As the House can tell, we do not always agree on everything in the Committee. The hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) is absolutely right to say that he has often raised process issues. I think he would also confirm that, quite often, the legal advice that is provided to the Committee by the House has disagreed with him very strongly. There are legitimate issues that we have to address, and that is why we are engaged in a code of conduct review. I take his points very seriously, and I have spoken to him many times on the phone, as he has said. He sounded a bit angrier with me in the debate just now than I think he really means. I am grateful to everyone on the Committee.
Let me start with a very simple point. I do not think we do ourselves any favours if we say that voters do not care about standards in public life. I do not know whether they care or not; I suspect that they do, but I do not know for certain and the opinion polls vary on this. We have always prided ourselves as a country on not being corrupt, unlike some other countries in the world, but that is not really the point. The question is not whether Mrs Jones at No. 32 cares about standards in Parliament; it is about whether we care about standards in public life and in Parliament. Every time we say that this does not really matter or that voters do not care about it, we give another excuse for bad behaviour.
I might also say that those of us who are MPs at any one time only hold our place here on trust. Sorry, this is going to sound a bit pious, but I think it is true none the less: we have a duty, not just to our constituents, but to the nation, and not just to this generation of voters, but to future generations of voters, to protect the reputation of Parliament rather than undermine it. Parliamentary democracy based on universal suffrage has not been around all that long; it has not even managed 100 years yet. It is a precious thing, and we need to defend it.
My second point is that independence is central to any standards system for the House. Anyone involved in a disciplinary process, either as a defendant or a complainant—we must remember that quite often there are complainants, many of whom are victims—needs to be completely assured that those involved in adjudicating the matter will always approach the decision with a fair and open mind, without fear or favour. That is what all 14 members of the Standards Committee seek to do.
That is why it is a breach of the code for any Member of the House to seek to lobby a member of the Standards Committee. We must be allowed to do our work without any interference. Sadly, as I have told you before, Mr Speaker, over the past 12 months I have been lobbied repeatedly by a significant number of hon. Members about their own or other Members’ cases. I have always sought to be polite, but extremely robust in response. I apologise if I have seemed rude, but this is an important part of maintaining the independence of the House and of the system.
The same applies to Whips. Some of my best friends are Whips—to get the confession in early—but I gently urge Whips to exercise a self-denying ordinance when it comes to Standards Committee reports, as has always been the case in every single instance in the past. Of course there are matters on which the Government have an understandable interest—matters of policy and finance—but it is inappropriate for anyone to whip House disciplinary matters. By definition, that turns our decision into a political one rather than a quasi-judicial one. Government should serve the House in standards matters, not the other way around.
The independence of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards is also vital. She must be able to get on with her work without being repeatedly attacked, briefed against, lied about, shouted at, bullied, threatened or generally undermined. I think I am quoting a former Government Chief Whip when I say that the recent campaign against her has been very unedifying. It has been worse than that—it has been cowardly and unfair.
I honestly think the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster should have apologised not just for last week, but to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. That would be the right, gentlemanly thing to do. May I, on behalf of, I think, the whole House, apologise to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards for what she has been put through in recent days?
I want to address the question of due process and ensuring a fair hearing. It is an important distinction that we on the Standards Committee are not a court of law. Indeed, there would be dangers if we were to become a court of law that we would all have to be legally represented. That might lead to a process that benefited the wealthy, who could afford lawyers, over those who could not. We are a Select Committee of the House, and sometimes we deal with matters that are really rather minor and that we would not want to bother a judge with, such as the use of parliamentary stationery.
I want to make it absolutely clear, however, as Speaker’s Counsel did repeatedly as we went through both this investigation and every other investigation since I have been Chair of the Committee, that we have bent over backwards to ensure that any hon. Member gets a fair hearing. Due notice of the charges has always been ensured, as has a full opportunity to put one’s case in writing and/or in person, a chance to make arguments in defence or in mitigation and the right to appeal the commissioner’s findings to the Committee. There is a right of appeal—it is an appeal to the Committee. Every lawyer I have seen comment on our process who has read the report has said that it was an entirely fair one, and of course we have taken legal advice throughout. Let me just quote from one—
Chris Bryant
I will give way, but before I do, let me say that the hon. Gentleman made a speech last week, and he has repeated this point today, about the additional measures available to us in the Standing Orders, but he should understand that those panels are there only where there are disputed facts. In this case, there were no disputed facts at all. So the point that I suspect he is about to make is completely otiose.
Sir William Cash
First, I would refer the hon. Gentleman to appendix 2, set out before the Committee by Mr Paterson. Secondly, let me make the simple point that when the Committee in 2003, which was composed of only three Conservatives, six Labour and two Liberal Democrats, decided on the investigatory panel, this was what was said:
“The proposal for an Investigatory Panel—
which is for serious, contested cases, as this one clearly is—
“is designed to deal with cases (expected to arise only infrequently) which…meet both the following criteria:
proof of the complaint would be likely to lead to the imposition of a serious penalty on the Member; and
there appeared to be significant contested issues of fact which would not properly be decided unless the Member was given the opportunity to call witnesses and/or to cross-examine witnesses supporting the complaint.”
The hon. Gentleman obviously does not agree with me on that, but the facts speak for themselves; there are seriously contested facts and they are disputed.
Chris Bryant
I make two points. The first is that the hon. Gentleman basically just agreed with me wholeheartedly, because the whole point of these panels is that they are there only where there are disputed facts and there were no disputed facts in this case. The second point, where I would wholeheartedly agree with him, is that the facts speak for themselves—they certainly did in this case. Mr Paterson at no stage denied that he had engaged in the various different meetings with Government Ministers and officials. So I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman’s argument falls on both counts.
Let me just read the words of Thomas de la Mare, a highly respected lawyer at Blackstone Chambers, who reviewed this matter. He did not do so for the Committee; he has published this himself. He says:
“If the decision-maker has had the 17 witness statements, read them and rightly found them to be irrelevant there is no conceivable breach of natural justice in not calling them in…The idea that this pretty exhaustively conducted 2 stage case of inquiry by the commissioner and then full review by the Committee evinces a broken system or justifies the egregious step of changing the rules mid game is absurd.. All in all the Cmtee decision looks pretty bomb proof: balanced, fair once you understand how relevance of material works, carefully reasoned (and probably carefully lawyered) and the very appeal/review of the Commissioner OP”—
Owen Paterson—
“wanted. Given this what has happened next is tawdry”.
So what next? In the end, the Standards Committee exists only to serve the House and to try to protect the reputation of the House. First, we are already reviewing the code of conduct. There are perfectly legitimate arguments to be made about how we should change various different elements. MPs are now regulated by so many different bodies that it is sometimes difficult for right hon. and hon. Members to understand exactly what the rules are that affect them. I hate the idea that a right hon. or hon. Member will be tripped up by a rule that they simply did not understand through some inadvertent action. So I do want to make sure that we have greater clarity in the way that the whole of our code of conduct and guide to the rules is available to Members.
Chris Bryant
I think we gave Owen Paterson a fair hearing; in all honesty, it is very difficult to argue that we did not. I have wracked my brain as to measures that we might evince, but I am only the Chair of the Committee and want to allow the Committee to come to a view on reforms that we might suggest, although I have suggested in the newspapers over the past few days a few things that I personally would like to see.
The important point is that we are reviewing the code of conduct, as we are required to do in every Parliament. We did not manage to do it in the 2015 or 2017 Parliaments because we kept on having general elections, so it would be great if we did not have a general election for a while so that we could finish our work on the code. It is worth saying that we published the terms of reference for our code of conduct review on 22 September 2020 and have been engaged in the review since then. We took evidence from the Leader of the House earlier this year.
There is an argument for improvements to some of the process. As the hon. Member for South Leicestershire knows, I personally favour clarifying what we do about appeals. There is currently an appeal, and a Member can appeal to the Committee on any basis whatsoever, whereas if we were to have a de jure appeal instead of a de facto appeal process, we would need a set of criteria against which a Member could appeal, which might actually restrict Members’ rights of appeal rather than enhance them. That is a difficulty that we have to deal with.
There is an issue in respect of whether a Member should be able to appeal against the sanction rather than the findings, and I am quite happy to listen to what the Committee eventually decides on that, as I am sure the House will want to do as well.
Chris Bryant
I think the hon. Member came into the Chamber only recently, but if he has been present, I am happy to listen to him.
Craig Mackinlay
I have just been outside the Bar of the House.
The hon. Member is making a point about sanctions; I wonder whether this might be helpful. I am interested to hear that there is progress on a new code of conduct. If we put the specific case aside, does he appreciate that there is a world of difference between a sanction of nine days and a sanction of 11 days, for obvious reasons? Therein might be the reason for an appeal, because of the changes and outcomes that could flow from it that my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) so ably put forward.
Chris Bryant
I am not inimical to that view—there is a perfectly decent argument that perhaps there should be an appeal against sanctions—but in the Committee we try to stand by precedence, because otherwise we would be unfair. We list all the mitigating and aggravating factors in each of our reports and, at the end, come to a conclusion based on the precedents we have met. My suspicion is that any appeal body would do exactly the same, so I am not sure that it would necessarily change things, but there is an argument for bringing in such a thing. I note that the hon. Member referred to leaving this case aside, which is the most important thing for me: in the words of the Leader of the House, we cannot conflate one case with change of the system. In the end, that is the precise, polar opposite of justice: that is injustice and has brought the House into disrepute.
I have only a couple more points to make—
Mr Baron
I am grateful to the hon. Member, who is speaking with great eloquence, as usual, on this subject. I suggest to him that reform is a natural, evolving process—of course it is; no system is perfect—but, by and large, the system works quite well, so whatever the hon. Member does, will he make sure that it is transparent, as far as he is able to, and that it progresses as speedily as possible? What I take away from this debate and from last week’s vote is that the right thing to do is to let the Committee produce its recommendations and for the House to consider them in full debate.
Chris Bryant
I am grateful for that point. It is true that the right way for the House to progress, on a cross-party basis and with the advice of independent members of the public, is for us to complete our job of work, which we will have done by Christmas, I am sure, and perhaps even by the end of this month—I do not want to prejudge what the Committee will decide—and to publish that. There will then be an opportunity for the whole House to consider the matter. We would probably want then to produce a further report, which would be our final report on the draft code and its operation.
Incidentally, the current system has not been in place for very long. The mixture of the independent expert panel for ICGS cases and the Standards Committee has been in place, arguably, only since 7 January 2019 when the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) introduced really important changes to the House, which were much valued by staff and Members across the House and by the public. In fact, the independent expert panel started its work only in January of this year, There is this idea that we should suddenly tear it all up and start all over again, but if I had only one thing to say to the House, it would be: let us just slow down. Let us consider this properly in the round, taking all the different issues together.
None the less, we do still need to tidy up what happened last week. I can see a lot of Conservative Members agreeing with that. I gently say to the ministerial team here that, if we want it, there is an opportunity for us tomorrow. We have two outstanding issues: one is the creation of the Committee, which the right hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) does not want to serve on, even though he is meant to be the Chair. I certainly hope that he is better from his covid.
Chris Bryant
Secondly, of course, we all accept that Mr Paterson has left the House; he is no longer a Member. We cannot impose a sanction on him, as you said yourself, Mr Speaker, but, unfortunately, the House took a view on the report last week, which was basically to suspend it in mid-air. The motion, I suggest, would be a very simple one that we could consider tomorrow. It will be in all of our interests—the whole of the House —to get this sorted tomorrow. It would say that notwithstanding the practice of this House relating to questions already decided in the same Session, this House, first, rescinds the resolution and order of 3 November 2021 relating to the third report of the Committee on Standards (HC 797) and the appointment of a new Select Committee; secondly, approves the third report of the Committee on Standards; and, thirdly, notes that Mr Owen Paterson has been disqualified as a Member of this House. I think that would be in the best interests of the whole of the House, and then we could move forward.
One final point: we really struggled to create the ICGS and the independent expert panel. The right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire did a magnificent piece of work in trying to get cross-party support for all of that. We promised that the standards system would be independent, because that was the guarantor for the staff who felt that they had been bullied or sexually harassed. We cannot do anything that undermines that. Independence, fairness and justice should be the bywords not just of the Standards Committee, but of the whole of the House.
Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)
First, I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) on securing this important debate. I have been a Member of the House for only six and a half years. I do not have an in-built affection for this place, its traditions or anything to do with it, but I do have an in-built sense of justice, fairness and how things should be done correctly.
It was an appalling day in the House last week and, unfortunately, I was acting Chief Whip of my party. I had to handle what was happening with the old boys’ network in this place and try to think on my feet—I do not think I acquitted myself terribly well. I do not want to go on about everything that has already been mentioned, but I have to say that one of my children was present in this House when the expenses scandal was on. I never thought I would be standing here speaking in any case, but certainly not about corruption, the old boys’ network and double dealing. I find it appalling.
What I have found even more appalling since last Wednesday is the attack on the commissioner for standards. It is absolutely egregious. Now, “egregious” was the word used of Owen Paterson, the former MP, because of what he did. It pains me that I am seen as a Member of this place when people think it is right to ride roughshod over the rules, to take part in bringing this place into disrepute and then to have their Government say, “Right, everybody on our Benches, vote for a new commission that we will make up and run.” That is not how any Parliament should be run. I find the Leader of the House to be a polite, affable gentleman, but I think he is squirming in his place today. He brought forward the motion last week, and he should be standing answering questions about why he did that and why it was in such ridiculous terms.
I said at the start I have been here only six and a half years. I do not want to be here much longer; I want to move to an independent Scotland. This kind of behaviour is not allowed in the Scottish Parliament. I do not want—[Interruption.] I do not want people in Scotland to think that because I am a Member of this Parliament, I would back such things.
Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts). The former Member for North Shropshire, the right hon. Owen Paterson, served his constituency for 24 years and held some of the highest offices in Government. By any standards, what happened to him is a tragedy: he lost his career but, much worse, he lost his wife in the most distressing circumstances. On a human level, there cannot be a Member of this House who does not feel at least some degree of sympathy for him.
I have heard the proposal of the Chair of the Committee on Standards on how to deal with Mr Paterson’s case, but in reality, the specific issue of his personal conduct is closed as a consequence of his resignation last week. However, his case has highlighted issues that deserve the continued attention of this House. In retrospect, everyone agrees that it was wrong of the Government to conflate the specific issue of Owen Paterson’s conduct with the important wider issue of the regulation and enforcement of standards in this House, and I was glad to see the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster issuing what I thought was a very full apology for that.
What the case has thrown into focus are questions of natural justice that are not adequately addressed in Standing Orders Nos. 149 and 150. For example, Mr Paterson wanted to call no fewer than 17 witnesses to give evidence in support of his case, and he was not afforded the opportunity to do so. My hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) has expressed his concerns on the issue of natural justice. For my own part, I find it hard to see how the denial of a right to call witnesses and for those witnesses to be examined and cross-examined—a right that is taken for granted in civil and criminal proceedings in this country—can be compatible with natural justice.
Chris Bryant
I do want to correct this point. We did hear the witnesses in writing. Their witness statements are all available online. We considered the matter. As happens in every single court in the land, we considered the matter, as judges would and as many tribunals would.
I would just say to the right hon. Member that he voted for a motion that, I am afraid, did not close the matter on Mr Paterson. It left it completely and utterly open—deliberately so—and, indeed, Mr Paterson still asserts that he is innocent and that, if he were a Member, he would do the whole thing all over again, so I am afraid we will have to tidy this up.
Mr Jones
I hear what the Chairman of the Committee has to say, but, frankly, it is one thing to read written evidence, and it is another thing for that evidence to be tested in examination and cross-examination, and that was not allowed.
Furthermore, there is no provision for an independent appeals process under Standing Order No 150. I do not believe that that can be right either. Provision should be made for a proper appeals procedure under the Standing Order No. 150 process, as indeed there is under the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme, where an appeal panel is chaired by a High Court judge.
There should also be greater legal input into the entire process. Standing Order No. 150 does provide for the establishment of an investigatory panel, with a legally qualified assessor and counsel, but only at the behest of either the commissioner herself or the Committee. That, of course, was not done in Mr Paterson’s case. Indeed, ever since the procedure was first put in place, no such panel has ever been established. That is a matter of regret because the legal assessor has a duty under Standing Order No. 150(10) to
“report to the Committee…his opinion as to the extent to which its proceedings have been consistent with the principles of natural justice”.
That is the only occasion in which the words “natural justice” appear anywhere in Standing Orders Nos. 149 and 150, which, I suggest, is also a matter that needs to be rectified.
In the debate last week, the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), whom I am delighted to see in his place, made the important point that, while he was sympathetic to the proposition that the rules do need reform, this could only be done with consensus. I believe that Mr Paterson’s case, despite its wholly regrettable outcome and, frankly, the way it was handled last week, has highlighted deficiencies in the process that do need to be addressed by the House. I very much hope that, now that the sting caused by the conflation of the individual case with the wider issue of the need for reform has been removed, the House can proceed on the basis of consensus and seek to make improvements to a system that, whatever the rights and wrongs of the Paterson case, is so clearly in need of reform.
G20 and COP26 World Leaders Summit
Chris Bryant Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend knows a great deal about this issue, and he is right to draw attention to article 6 and the carbon credit issue. That is something on which our negotiators will be working flat out until the final hour of COP.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
One of the terrible effects of climate change is felt in south Wales valleys seats, where extreme weather conditions and heavy rain have destabilised some of the disused coal tips. People live in terror of another Aberfan, and I know the Prime Minister shares that fear. The majority of the dangerous tips are in my local authority area. I just wonder whether he would be prepared to meet me, the leader of the local council and the other Members from Rhondda Cynon Taf, specifically to discuss how we can make sure that all those tips are safe. I really do ask him for that meeting.
The Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Gentleman. He has raised this issue with me several times. I will see what I can do to oblige him. This is something that I do want to try to fix, but it is primarily something that the Welsh Government should be addressing themselves. I will talk to the Welsh Government and come back to him.
Speaker's Statement
Chris Bryant Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I am grateful to you for breaking the rules occasionally, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I want to add one adjective to the list that has been provided, and that is the word magnanimous. I think you could see, in every single moment of any engagement that you ever had with James, even if you were completely and utterly disagreeing with every single word in his sentence, paragraph or speech, that there was magnanimity in the way in which he dealt with you and in the way he dealt with everybody in this House. I can imagine it was exactly the same in his constituency.
I will let the House in on a secret, which is that there is something of a cancer survivors club here. I always hoped that James would always be in that club. He was magnificent with me when I had my cancer a few years ago, and I know that many others had exactly the same experience. Cancer is a bugger: you think it has gone away and then it comes back. You had no idea that it was there and suddenly find that you have stage 3 or stage 4 cancer. That is particularly true, as the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) said, in relation to lung cancer. You think to yourself, “Why didn’t I spot it earlier?” So it is not just sadness and fear that you and your family are surrounded with; it is anger, guilt and all sorts of complicated feelings. I am sure that for many of those in the House who have had cancer there will be a sense of guilt that some of us are still here and James is not.
What does that leave us with? A simple feeling that we must—we must—devote ourselves, especially after this year of covid, to making sure that early detection is possible for everybody and for all the different cancers, and there are so many different kinds. It would be helpful if Mr Speaker could circulate the details of the memorial website so that we might all be able to contribute and a bit more money goes back into cancer care. We need to get a lot of the cancer trials back up and running. We need to make sure that people are not frightened of going to the doctor, that they get seen and that all the backlog is dealt with.
My final thought is this. I do not know whether Members have ever read Thomas Hardy’s book “The Woodlanders”, but at the end Giles Winterborne has died, and the woman who has always loved him addresses him directly and says:
“I never can forget’ee; for you was a good man, and did good things!”
Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Bryant Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
I am sure that my hon. Friend speaks for millions and millions of people up and down this country who abhor the fur trade and do not want to wear fur. Obviously, we have banned fur farming in this country for a long time, and we are going to look at what we can do, working with the fur sector, to prevent fur from being imported into Britain.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The Prime Minister
First, I want to say how sad I am to hear about the hon. Gentleman’s constituent Lynda. I think her experiences have been shared by literally millions of people in this country during the pandemic, because they have not been willing or able to get the oncology treatment that they need because of the pressure of covid on the system. The system is now coming back, trying to help everybody as fast as possible to fix the backlogs. So yes, it is necessary to hire more nurses and doctors, and there about 10,000 more nurses now and about 6,000 more doctors—
The Prime Minister
The hon. Gentleman is totally right in what he says about radiologists and pathologists, but may I respectfully say to him that that must be done by means of the big powerful package that we put forward last week to raise the funding necessary? I believe his party should have supported that and it is incredible that it did not.
Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill
Chris Bryant ExcerptsMonday 13th September 2021
(2 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill 2021-22 View all Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill 2021-22 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 13 September 2021 - large print - (13 Sep 2021)
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
But it is not actually five years; it is five years and a bit, is it not? As the Septennial Act 1716 did, it goes from the date of the first sitting of the new Parliament. It means that, if we stick with this, we will have the longest period from election to election of any democracy in the world. Would it not be better for the period from election to election to be at most five years?
Chloe Smith
The hon. Gentleman pre-empts my remarks in respect of his amendment, which I will endeavour to come to after I have worked through all the clauses.
The scheme that we are proposing is the right one and I will come in a moment to why I think that that is the case when compared with other technical methods of achieving a five-year term that the hon. Gentleman is thinking of. This clause provides for a maximum parliamentary term of five years from the date that Parliament first met, so we measure five years from the date of first meeting to the Dissolution of Parliament, and that is the Government’s proposition. We think that that provides the right balance of stability, flexibility and accountability that is entailed in returning to the arrangements that allow for a general election earlier than that. On that basis, I recommend that clause 4 stand part of the Bill.
I shall speak very briefly to clause 5. It introduces the schedule to the Bill, which makes provision for the consequential amendments that are needed to ensure that other legislation operates effectively once the 2011 Act has been repealed and we return to the status quo ante. The consequential amendments primarily reverse or alter legislative amendments made by the 2011 Act. They remove references to the Act in legislation and ensure that, after the repeal of the 2011 Act, other legislation that links to it still works. For example, in repealing the 2011 Act, they reflect the fact that there will no longer be fixed-term Parliaments, so the concept of an early general election would no longer exist in law.
Clause 5 also provides that the repeal of the 2011 Act by clause 1 does not affect the amendments and repeals made by the schedule to that Act. This ensures that essential provisions are not lost. It allows us to modify changes made by the 2011 Act and ensure the smooth running of elections by retaining sensible improvements made by that Act or subsequent to that Act. I know that those are some topics that we will come back to a little later as we progress through our debate this evening.
The schedule also makes a small number of minor changes to ensure the smooth running of elections. In short, this clause is necessary to ensure that electoral law and other related parts of the statute book continue to function smoothly. As such, I recommend that clause 5 stand part of the Bill.
Clause 6 is the one that we all know and love that deals with extent, early commencement and short title. It confirms that the territorial extent of the Bill is the United Kingdom, except for a very small number of amendments in the schedule where the extent is more limited. The clause ensures that the Bill has an early commencement, meaning that it comes into force on the day on which it receives Royal Assent, and it provides that the short title of the Bill will be the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2021.
That gives me an opportunity to explain that the Government have agreed with the recommendation of the Joint Committee that a Bill of constitutional significance that seeks to put in place arrangements that deliver legal, constitutional and political certainty around the process of dissolving one Parliament and calling another should be titled accordingly. The short title now reflects the purpose of the Bill and will help to ensure that it is clearly understood and that successive Parliaments are able to discern the intended effect of the legislation. I therefore propose that this clause stand part of the Bill. Mr Evans, would you like me also to make a remark about the schedule and then turn to the amendments?
Chris Bryant
All right then, if it is the simplest way of doing it, what is the last date that the next general election can be held if all this is carried as the Minister says?
Chloe Smith
With respect, that is not the right quiz question—the right quiz question is whether, under the hon. Gentleman’s amendment, the period would be five years plus 25 days. That would, I believe, arise from his amendment, because he is not counting the length of the election campaign, whereas our provision is five years from first sitting to last sitting, so we are trying to measure the life of a Parliament. I am not trying to engage in maths problems; I simply think that this is the most sensible way to measure it, and I hope hon. Members might agree. [Interruption.] I am really not going to engage in maths questions beyond that. We need a clear and easily understood scheme. I think we are all agreed that it ought to be five years, and we are dealing with how to achieve that. The Government’s proposition is that it should be, as I say, from five years after Parliament has first met. That is important.
Let me turn to the pair of amendments that relate to the shortening of the election timetable: new clause 1 in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) and amendment 3 in the name of the hon. Member for Rhondda. I am absolutely sure that there will be some very strong arguments put in this area. To try to help the Committee, I will set out why we have our current timetable and then seek to address what I would anticipate to be some of the core arguments that right hon. and hon. Members will raise.
The current timetable was introduced in 2013 through the Electoral Administration Act 2006, which absorbed fundamental shifts brought about through having postal votes on demand and individual electoral registration. As I have explained, the Bill seeks to return us to the status quo ante while retaining sensible changes that have been made since 2011 to enable the smooth running of elections, which are, in my view, of benefit to voters. The current timetable is one of those changes. It provides a balance between allowing sufficient time to run the polls effectively and for the public to be well informed, while not preventing Parliament from avoiding sitting for any longer than is necessary, which is a very important consideration.
On the requirements for running polls effectively, the 25 days working days are necessary to deliver elections, which are now often more complex than at any other point in our history, for reasons, as I mentioned, to do with postal voting on demand, but also online individual electoral registration. That was a fundamental constitutional change that enabled increasingly higher numbers of last-minute applications. To illustrate that, at the most recent general election almost 660,000 applications were made on the last day possible. Before 2000, as I said, there was no postal voting on demand, and it has since grown in numbers to represent nearly 20% of registered electors. Both things increased the complexity and demands of an election timetable.
The amendments refer to weekends and bank holidays in the election period. Local authority electoral services teams who do this work are already often working weekends and overtime to make elections work successfully. I also note that elections do not just rely on local authorities and their staff; there is a significant commercial element to their delivery through many suppliers, including, but not limited to, the software for maintaining the registers, and the printing and postage of paperwork such as the poll cards, ballot papers and postal votes. There is very little room for error on all that. Creating and maintaining the capacity to deliver it can be extremely challenging, especially at short notice. Weekends and bank holidays are not necessarily in our gift.
Alec Shelbrooke
I will not debate the points of politics with the hon. Lady. On her comments about using Parliament for Dissolution, we have had all of that. There are probably few Members of the public watching us in the Chamber tonight, but they certainly watched what happened in 2019. Surely when we have a Chamber in stalemate, the Government should be able to resign. She will recall how her then leader stood on Parliament Square to say that the Government should resign but then came in here and stopped them from resigning, which was incredible. Surely when Parliament is deadlocked, as it was then, the Government should be able to resign and that should just happen, not be stopped by Parliament.
Cat Smith
I agree with the heckling from my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda. I think the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) is quite wrong and that the public are watching the debate with deep fascination. He underestimates the passion for constitutional legislation in this place. The point is that the new clause would remove the possibility of the courts being involved, and I think there is consensus across the Committee that that would be desirable. It strikes me that new clause 2 would be the most straightforward and easy way to do that. Of course, we know fine well that if the Government of the day can carry the House—in most cases, they can—there would be no issue in having a Dissolution. It would also avoid dragging the monarch into politics and remove the governing party’s electoral advantage. The new clause therefore strengthens the Bill, so I support it.
I turn to amendments 1 to 3 and new clause 1 on the length of an election campaign. It is impossible to look at the Bill without considering how it would move us to a position in which pretty much all elections will be unscheduled. I say “unscheduled” rather than “snap” because I recognise that an election period is very long; it certainly does not feel very snappy for candidates, voters or anyone campaigning. Unscheduled elections cause a problem for our electoral administrators. From having spoken to many of them and heard representations from the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators, it is clear that many close misses happen on the timetable, and a reduction of the timetable alongside the Bill, which could lead to more unscheduled elections, risks the public’s confidence in our democratic elections. For that reason, although it would be desirable to have shorter elections, I cannot support those amendments.
The Bill is not in a vacuum—we also have the Elections Bill and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill before the House—and taken together, it is clearly part of a political power grab with a movement of power away from Parliament. It is a movement away from 650 Members to the hands of one man or woman who is Prime Minister, who will decide when the starting gun will be fired on an election. The Bill is, frankly, an overreaction to and misunderstanding of the causes of the gridlock in the 2019 Parliament. The principle of fixed terms is not wrong, although the Fixed-term Parliaments Act was clearly flawed. Prorogation should be in the hands of Parliament, not the Executive.
Mrs Miller
If I could finish this point, I will then allow the hon. Member to intervene.
Another of the pieces of legislation deployed under the coalition Government was the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013, section 14 of which extends the timetable of a general election from 17 to 25 working days. That neatly carves out bank holidays, weekends, high days and holidays, and anything else that might get in the way, when in fact all of us sitting here know that once the starting gun is fired, everybody—just everybody—is working their socks off in electoral offices up and down the country to make sure that we deliver the election on time. The provision is just not truthful, and it needs to be a better reflection of what goes on.
Chris Bryant
I think, therefore, that if the Bill goes through as the Government intend and we do not have the right hon. Member’s new clause or any other amendment, the last date that the next general election can be held is 23 January 2025. Is that her understanding?
Mrs Miller
Oh, the hon. Gentleman is getting me into the maths quiz with which he tried to tempt the Minister. I will leave the Government to decide that, because it is more in the Minister’s bailiwick than mine.
Sir Geoffrey Cox
It is stand part that I am addressing, Mr Evans.
This Bill should warmly commend itself to those on both sides of the Committee. My only caution—my only plea—is: let this not be the last word we say upon the British constitution.
Chris Bryant
It is a delight to follow that Third Reading speech.
I have enjoyed today, not least because it is such a delight to be vindicated. I feel as if I have been saying the same things for 20 years. Some of what the Minister said today, if we put the word “not” in, was what she said 10 years ago, which is kind of entertaining but rather irritating.
I am not going to speak at length, but we have to go back to fundamental principles when we are talking about the constitution. I like Parliament sitting. It is good for Governments to face the scrutiny of the Commons elected. Long interruptions are a bad thing. We take a long time to get a Parliament going after a general election, and now, with a long general election, as the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) referred to, it can be several months that parliamentary scrutiny is effectively out of action, before Select Committees are fully set up and all the rest of it.
The Executive and the Parliament need to be in balance with one other. There is a real danger that we are moving in the direction of what I call an over-mighty Executive. The Leader of the House in particular has what I call a high theological understanding of government—the Government are always right, by definition. In our system, the Government have considerable power. That is why some have called it an elected dictatorship.
The constitution should always stand the test of time and the test of bad actors. We always presume we will have a good monarch. We have had bad monarchs in the past. We presume we will always have an honourable and good Prime Minister. We might have a bad Prime Minister, who might choose to—[Interruption.] I am being ironic here. We might have a Prime Minister who deliberately chose to subvert the constitution and use it to subvert democracy.
Aaron Bell
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)—the right hon. Member, I should say.
Aaron Bell
Not yet. I am sure it will come in time.
I will not repeat my Second Reading speech—this is the Committee stage—but I still welcome the Bill for all the reasons I gave on that day. I welcome the Government’s continued engagement with all of us who have an interest in it, in particular members of the Joint Committee on which I served with the hon. Member for Rhondda and many other Members, with whom I made friends and now sign amendments with. Perhaps the Whips will regret putting me on that Committee in the fullness of time.
I will turn to new clause 1, in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), in a little while, but first I want to discuss the overall principles relating to Dissolution. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) said on Second Reading that the right place for a proper discussion of the principles was in Committee, so I think it is probably right, with your indulgence, Ms Winterton, that we have a little discussion about them. Perhaps the Minister can reflect on them in her closing remarks, too.
We heard about Tommy Lascelles and his principles from 1950. Younger viewers will remember him from “The Crown”, played by Pip Torrens, as the private secretary to Her Majesty, but at the time he was the private secretary to His Majesty. He was talking about the principles in another closely contested election period—1950 and 1951. Those principles are relevant today, but the second one about the national economy was widely considered to have fallen into abeyance. There are other principles that we should perhaps consider. It was the opinion of the Joint Committee that the Dissolution principles document issued by the Government did not go quite far enough and did not cover other aspects of Dissolution—the calling of the new Parliament and so on. I therefore ask the Minister to comment a little on the 20 principles in our report: on the overall paramount confidence in our system, what it means to lose the confidence of the House and how to determine that, and what the Prime Minister ought to be doing in certain circumstances, whether to offer the resignation of the Government or to request a Dissolution from the monarch, and when it would be more appropriate for the Prime Minister to resign. We said that it would be more appropriate if there had recently been a general election, if there was a new Prime Minister from that Member’s party, or if it appeared that another person might command the confidence of the House—that was, of course, the third of Lascelles’s principles. The work of the Committee in putting together a more complete list of principles around confidence ought to be reflected in the debate and I ask the Minister to reflect on that in her closing remarks.
Turning briefly to new clause 1, since I am a signatory to it with my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke, I am grateful for the comments the Minister made from the Dispatch Box. I am also grateful for her engagement with those of us who signed new clause 1. I welcome the additional research we ought to see. As I said in my intervention on her earlier, the purpose of an election is not simply to have the most perfectly admirable election in the world, but to resolve things. The longer we take, the more people we can register and persuade to vote, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson) said, eventually they might get bored and not vote. The point of an election is to resolve things. We want to make sure people vote—once and once only, as I said in my speech on the Elections Bill the other day—but the key purpose of an election is to let the country move on from a moment of tension, contest and electoral joust between opposing candidates in our constituencies. I do not think it serves anybody for that to go on a day longer than is truly necessary. That is why I was happy to put my name to new clause 1.
I listened to the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators. I understand that there are complications with going back to the status quo ante of 17 days as things stand, but I reflect on what my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker) said. Rather than saying it cannot be done with the rules as they are, we should look at which rules we could change to get back to the status quo ante. The Bill takes us back to the status quo ante in so many ways and I welcome that, but the real key is to get everything back to how it was before. I remember, as a teenager, watching elections that were short, sharp and got the job done. It did not work for us in 1997 when I was a teenager, but it got the job done and let the country move on. That is what we should have with our elections. They should not be dragged out for months. For the reasons I have given and for the candidates too, we should look at ways to make them shorter, notwithstanding the arguments that have been made by the administrators.
Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill (Instruction)
Chris Bryant Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That it be an Instruction to the Committee on the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill, That the Committee have leave to make provision relating to the prorogation of Parliament.
Normally an instruction motion of this kind is tabled by the Government themselves when they decide that a Bill they have introduced does not quite stretch far enough to allow it to include some things that they would like to debate. The reason I tabled it—I hope the Government think it is always good to debate all these matters and would therefore want the motion to be carried, which would enable us to debate the matter of Prorogation in Committee—is that the 2019 Prorogation was perhaps the biggest constitutional crisis we have had in the past 20 to 25 years. I see the former Attorney General, the right hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Sir Geoffrey Cox), is in his place. I think he as scars on his back from that period. [Interruption.] No, he never has scars on his back. Maybe they are on his front instead. The point is simple: the nation felt at odds with itself in part because of a phenomenal constitutional row between the courts and Parliament about the nature of Prorogation.
To remind the House what happened, on 28 August 2019, the Prime Minister secured a prorogation proclamation from the Queen proroguing Parliament from 9 September to 14 October, a longer Prorogation than there had been for more than 150 years. Normally they last for just six days; this would have been for 34 days. The subsequent (R) Miller v. The Prime Minister and Cherry v. Advocate General for Scotland case ended up in the Supreme Court, which decided unanimously on 24 September that the Prorogation was justiciable and unlawful.
When Parliament returned, never having been prorogued, the Prorogation ceremony was expunged from the Journal of the House of Commons. I think that was the first time the Journal had been altered since 1621, when the King was so angry with the House for having debated the matter of his son’s potential marriage that he ordered the Clerk of the House to bring the Journal to him and tore out the offending page. So I think that 1621 and 2019 are the two times that the Journal has been disturbed in that way. Business continued as if the ceremony had never happened.
The Prime Minister—this is important to my argument—then argued to the court in 2019 that Prorogation was analogous to Dissolution. At the time, of course, Dissolution was not a prerogative power because of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. None the less, the Prime Minister argued in court that the courts should not interfere in the matter because Prorogation was a prerogative power and should not therefore be justiciable. I think it is bizarre if the Government now want to say that they do not think that Prorogation is analogous to Dissolution and that it should not be debated today.
Incidentally, we also learned from the papers that the Prime Minister gave to the Court—I think under some duress—back in 2019 that he considered the September sittings of Parliament merely to be a
“a rigmarole…to show…MPs are earning their crust”.
So at least all the hon. Members who are here today are earning their crust, by the Prime Minister’s definition.
The Court found, first, that the issue of the Prorogation itself was justiciable because it is not a proceeding in Parliament. The Prime Minister and the Government had tried to argue that it was a proceeding in Parliament and, consequently, under article 9 of the Bill of Rights and the equivalent legislation in the Scottish Parliament, it could not be considered by a court. However, the Supreme Court decided, in paragraph 68:
“The prorogation itself takes place in the House of Lords and in the presence of Members of both Houses. But it cannot sensibly be described as a ‘proceeding in Parliament’. It is not a decision of either House of Parliament. Quite the contrary: it is something which is imposed upon them from outside. It is not something upon which the Members of Parliament can speak or vote.”
This, to me, is the absolutely key point: it is not something upon which Members of either House can speak or vote. That is why I have tabled an amendment that can only be considered during the Committee stage of the Bill if this motion is agreed, which would allow a vote in the House of Commons before Prorogation could proceed. Why that is important is that, quite rightly, lots of Members have wanted to say that the courts should not be interfering in politics. The best way of making sure that they cannot interfere in Prorogation is to introduce—[Interruption.] I can see that the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) is being very pregnant; I will take his intervention in a moment. The best way to make sure that no court could consider the matter of Prorogation is to make it a proceeding in Parliament, and the best way to make it a proceeding in Parliament is to allow a vote. The only way we can allow a vote is if we allow this motion to go through, and then we can debate it in the Bill Committee.
Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is extremely kind in giving way, although perhaps not quite accurate in describing my condition. On the question of Prorogation, would he mind turning his thoughts briefly to whether that was contained or referenced in the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 and how that Act relates to this Bill?
Chris Bryant
I am not sure that that is entirely relevant. Every time we introduce new legislation we choose to start, as it were, from scratch. It is true that this Bill repeals the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. I think the hon. Gentleman voted for that Act.
Chris Bryant
No, he did not—[Interruption.] He was still at school? I think that is a bit unfair on the hon. Gentleman. The point is that this was a major constitutional battle in 2019 and it would be odd of us not to consider it at all when we are dealing with these matters, which the Prime Minister himself declared were analogous.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman will know that many Government Members had serious concerns about Prorogation at the time of which he speaks, but does he not accept that we are now back in what we could describe as more normal times? That procedure, Prorogation, had never given this House any problems before and is unlikely ever to do so again.
Chris Bryant
Well now, for a start, I am not very keen on the concept of “normal” at all. I have tried to avoid that as much as I can in my 59 years. More importantly, I am not sure that we are living in normal times.
Are there ever normal times in political debate? Surely that is the whole point of constitutional settlements. We do them oddly in this country, because we do not have a written constitution, as the hon. Gentleman knows; we have bits and pieces of the constitution written in lots of different statutes. The danger of proceeding by statute law is that the constitution becomes a constant plaything of the Government of the day. I would always want our constitutional settlement to last at least a generation, if not several, but my anxiety is that we are fiddling with just one part of the equation, not all of it.
Some have argued, as the Government did before the Supreme Court, that a prerogative power is by definition limitless. That flies in the face of history. Successive cases across the centuries, starting in 1611, have proved that every prerogative power has to have a limit. Otherwise, Parliament would never sit; the Government could, in theory, say, “Right—we are going to use our prerogative power of Prorogation just to make Parliament never sit.” That was one of the key things that the Supreme Court found.
My anxiety is that if the Supreme Court has already determined, and it is settled law, that Prorogation is a justiciable matter, it will be justiciable again unless we introduce statute law to change it.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent and very interesting speech. One of the crucial issues is that we normally know that Prorogation is coming—it is generally known around here when it is likely to happen—but in his example it happened at the dead of night and it was very difficult to get information about it. He will know that, on a rumour, I phoned Buckingham Palace that very night to try to establish whether the Privy Council would be meeting the next day, as I had been told, in Scotland with Her Majesty. I discovered that the Leader of the House and others were quite likely to be on their way up to Balmoral; cameras were then sent to catch them at airports in the act of entering Scotland. It was done in a completely innovative way, and a future Government might decide to conduct themselves in exactly the same way.
Chris Bryant
The point is that other people might choose to bring other cases to the courts on the matter, unless Parliament chooses to discuss it and legislate on it. I would have thought it entirely in the Government’s interest to allow the debate later today and to come to a resolution on the matter.
Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)
I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman is correct that if new clause 3—his amendment to allow a vote on Prorogation—were agreed to, it would render Prorogation non-justiciable in future, and that that is the intention. However, may I ask a more prosaic question? If the motion that he is now moving to allow debate on the amendment is passed, will it not render the programme for the rest of the day null and void, as we will have something brand new and rather substantial to consider?
Chris Bryant
No, I do not think that that is right, but if the House decided not to consider the matter, the courts could in future legitimately decide that Parliament had decided that Prorogation is justiciable. That is the problem for the Government.
Joanna Cherry
One of the most notable things after the outcome of the case was that the Prime Minister did not express any remorse for having unlawfully prorogued Parliament, so I would not be so confident that he would not try it again. What initially worried me slightly about the hon. Gentleman’s new clause was that the current Prime Minister, with his huge majority, could seek to prorogue Parliament for a dubious purpose. However, I note that the hon. Gentleman has put in a requirement that it cannot be for more than 10 days. Of course, what was so objectionable about the last Prorogation was that it was so lengthy and came at a time when Parliament had very important matters to debate, so I presume that the hon. Gentleman put that in to guard against the possibility of the current Prime Minister using the rather large majority that he has, at least in England, to force through another dubious Prorogation.
Chris Bryant
The hon. and learned Lady—who was, of course, the Cherry on the top of the icing in this case; it must have been one of her bigger successes in terms of parliamentary democracy—has read my mind better than I know it myself.
All that we have to bear in mind is what the Supreme Court said in its judgment on what the limit on the power to prorogue would be:
“A decision to prorogue Parliament (or to advise the monarch to prorogue Parliament) will be unlawful if the prorogation has the effect of frustrating or preventing, without reasonable justification, the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions as a legislature and as the body responsible for the supervision of the executive. In such a situation the court will intervene if the effect is sufficiently serious to justify such an exceptional course.”
So everyone who votes against my motion, or against my new clause later if we are able to reach it, will be saying, basically, “Yes, courts, carry on. That is exactly what you should do. You should consider these matters. You should decide at every Prorogation whether the Government are acting lawfully or not.”
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman. Does he share my concern at the fact that the Government Benches are filling up so rapidly, which suggests that many Members may be intending to vote against the motion? Perhaps if he takes a few more interventions it will give Members who want to vote in favour of his motion, so that we can actually have this debate, a bit more time in which to do so. It would be very ironic if the Government started quashing debate at this stage, not even allowing a debate to happen.
Chris Bryant
I have to say that in my 20 years in this House, I have quite often known Governments to quash debate. [Interruption.] The Government Deputy Chief Whip is pointing at me in a rather vulgar and insinuating way—and I can see through that mask! However, there is a serious point here. I am not going to go on for much longer, Madam Deputy Speaker, you will be glad to know—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] You see, Madam Deputy Speaker: I know how to unite the Chamber.
Why does Prorogation matter? Although people—not hon. Members, but many others—often confuse it with a recess or an Adjournment, they are completely and utterly different. Prorogation suspends all business. It means that the Government are allowed to put again a question on a motion that has already been decided during that Session, and secure a different outcome if that is what they are trying to do. We know that that was one of the reasons why the 2019 Prorogation happened.
Prorogation suspends all questions. Any written questions that have not yet been answered have to be tabled again. Normally, for four weeks beforehand Ministers do not bother to reply, because they know that Members will have to submit the questions all over again.
Prorogation means that no Select Committee or other Committee of the House can meet or take evidence. That, incidentally, must surely be something we should be able to change. It means that the Parliament Act can be engaged. Of course that is what the Labour Government did in the 1945 to 1950 Parliament—to get through legislation under the 1911 Act. Unlike a recess, which is voted on, Prorogation is not voted on, but the Government still have all the power over it, because just as with a recess, only a Government Minister can table a motion or, indeed, table an amendment. No other Member is allowed to table an amendment to a Government motion for a recess.
So many different elements of the way we do our business which guarantee Back Benchers and Opposition Members an opportunity to engage in and initiate legislative processes are entirely reliant on Standing Orders. When the Government decide to suspend a Session, that starts the clock all over again, but it means that they are entirely in control of how many private Members’ days, Backbench days or Opposition days are provided. We know from our experience last week that the Government can suddenly pull an Opposition day because they do not want a vote on, for instance, universal credit and the cut of £20.
Joanna Cherry
I thought that the hon. Gentleman was getting towards the end, so I wanted to ask him to clarify something. Did I understand him correctly to say that if those on the Government Benches vote against his having the opportunity to put forward the new clause, they will be voting in favour of continued judicial scrutiny of Prorogations? Does that not rather go against the normal pattern on the Conservative Benches, which is to vote against judicial scrutiny in this Parliament? I doff my cap to the hon. Gentleman for being so smart!
Chris Bryant
I would not bother with that.
The hon. and learned Lady is absolutely right. This is the irony—or the hypocrisy—of the Government’s position. [Interruption.] I said “of the Government’s position”; I am being very careful.
I find it incomprehensible that the Government would not want to proceed in the direction of my new clause. It is the simplest way of making sure that Prorogation is a proceeding in Parliament, and there would be no need for the ouster clause in the Bill, which many people have suggested to us is unlikely to work and is a nugatory piece of legislation.
We should also bear in mind that the Commonwealth has shown us plenty of examples of Prorogation being fiercely contested. In Australia in 1975, the Governor-General, John Kerr, removed the Labor Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, and then prorogued Parliament before the House of Representatives, which was controlled by the Labor party, could pass a motion of no confidence in Malcolm Fraser. That was a deliberate use of the Prorogation process to prevent proper scrutiny. In Canada in 2008, the Conservative Prime Minister of a minority Government, Stephen Harper, ordered a Prorogation to avoid a no confidence motion in himself—yet another example of the use of a process which I think is a means of trying to prevent proper parliamentary scrutiny.
One of the ironies of the situation that we have in the British constitution is that if the Bill goes forward as the Government plan and without the measure relating to Prorogation, there will be no real requirement that Parliament should ever sit. The Meeting of Parliament Act 1694 says that we should have Parliaments every three years; that is all that we would be relying on as a legislative means. It is true that the Bill of Rights requires taxation to be subject to Parliament’s sitting, and also requires that a standing Army must be endorsed every five years. However, the Supreme Court made the very good point that these practical considerations are scant reassurance, because Parliament could just sit very briefly to deal with those matters.
In short, Madam Deputy Speaker—or “in long”, actually—my point is simple: the best way to ensure that Prorogation is not abused by the Executive, and to ensure that the courts do not interfere in political processes that should remain within the political sphere, is to ensure that there is a vote in Parliament before Prorogation. The only way we can have that vote in Parliament before Prorogation is to debate it later today, and the only way we can do that is to vote in favour of my motion of instruction.
Chris Bryant
Thank you. The question then is: if not now, when? That has still not been answered. If we are not to debate the matter today, I presume that the Government still believe that Prorogation should not be justiciable, so when are we going to discuss legislative measures to deal with Prorogation?
Chris Bryant
I am sorry not for the tone but for the content of what the Minister said, not least because she is the only person who can grant additional time for debate. I cannot do it. I note that she has not provided any—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. I am going to pause the hon. Gentleman for a moment. Once again, because of the screen that is in the way, I could not see the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) on the Opposition Front Bench. If she wishes to comment on these matters, it is better that she does so before the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) concludes.
Chris Bryant
Now for the second part. The Minister is also wrong to suggest that somebody else should be devising time for us to debate, on a legislative measure, the issue of Prorogation. In all honesty, the only people who can do that are Government Ministers. It would be entirely inappropriate for such legislation to come from the Back Benches or in a private Member’s Bill.
It is important that we discuss these matters. We not only had a constitutional crisis in 2019; we had one in 2010, too, which led to the coalition Government. We had not had a coalition Government for a long time, and the truth is that in politics everything that everybody thinks can never happen nearly always does end up happening in some shape or form. That is what constitutions should be ready for. The Minister says she could not imagine a Government would ever do a whole series of different things, including allowing a lengthy Prorogation. Well, there was one. It was in 2019 and it was led by the present Prime Minister, who wanted to prorogue Parliament for 34 days for illegal parliamentary reasons. That is why we got into that pickle in 2019.
Question put.
Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Bryant Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
Order. Can I just say that there is some disappointment that we did not get through the list? I appeal to the party leaders to see whether we can speed up so that we can hear from those Members who might otherwise miss out.
Mr Speaker
No. Points of order do not come now, they normally come after the urgent question. You know that better than anybody. You are the expert. You are Mr Protocol. You know better than me.
Afghanistan
Chris Bryant Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
Yes. I had the opportunity to thank the troops the other day, but I want to thank everybody who has been involved: Border Force officials and everybody in the councils who has been on the frontline dealing with this crisis. They have done it with exceptional humanity and compassion.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I have sent 143 cases of Afghans who are connected to my constituency to the Foreign Secretary, the Defence Secretary and the Home Secretary—all three of them, because there are three different channels. May I urge the Prime Minister to reflect on the idea, suggested by countless colleagues on the Opposition Benches, that there should be a single triage point, a single person who deals with all these cases? Since I sent in those names, one has been shot, one has been raped and one has been tortured. People are desperate to try to get the best result for these people. I am sure that Ministers want to help, but at the moment it feels as if the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.
The Prime Minister
I am sure that the whole House sympathises very much with what has happened to those individuals in Afghanistan that the hon. Gentleman describes. We are doing our level best to help people as fast as we can. I want the Government to focus on helping people with a single point of contact. That is why the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) is the person in question.
Afghanistan
Chris Bryant Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
That is why it is so important that we maintain a presence at Kabul airport and that is why we have been getting the message out that we want people to come through. As I said earlier, it is important for everybody to understand that in the days that we have ahead of us, which may be short, at the moment this is an environment in which the Taliban are permitting this evacuation to take place. These are interpreters, they are locally engaged staff and others who have risked their lives supporting our military efforts and seeking to secure new freedoms for their country. We are proud to bring these brave Afghans to our shores and we continue to appeal for more to come forward.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The Home Secretary announced this morning that the UK will take 20,000 refugees from Afghanistan but that only 5,000 will be able to come this year. What are the 15,000 meant to do? Hang around and wait to be executed?
The Prime Minister
That is the 5,000 on whom—we are spending £200 million to bring a further 5,000 on top; I think it will be 10,000 altogether that we bring in under the ARAP and other programmes. We will increase that number over the coming years to 20,000, as I said, but the bulk of the effort of this country will be directed and should be directed at supporting people in Afghanistan and in the region to prevent a worse humanitarian crisis. I tell the House that in that conviction I am supported very strongly both by President Macron of France and Chancellor Merkel of Germany.
We are also doing everything possible to accelerate the visas for the—[Interruption.]
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
If I am honest, I feel ashamed today—more ashamed than I can remember in any foreign policy debate in my 20 years in this House. We have seen the most sudden and catastrophic collapse of a foreign and military policy objective of this United Kingdom since Suez, and arguably further back than that. We have managed to humiliate ourselves. We have shamed our politics and our way of doing business. We have trailed the British flag and, frankly, our own honour in the dirt and the mud. Global Britain has been exposed as a meaningless slogan—a boast without a strategy behind it.
I am ashamed, too, by how we have treated many of our armed forces over these 20 years. It is shocking to me that there are still soldiers who were diagnosed with PTSD when they actually had a brain injury due to an explosion. We are one of the few countries that still does not test any of our armed forces automatically after an explosion for a brain injury, and that may be one of the reasons why many of them later suffer from dementia and depression.
I am ashamed that we never said to the United States of America last year or this year, “Hang on. Stop, think, wait, and put in place a proper plan before you go ahead with this.” I am ashamed that our silence basically endorsed Trump’s plan last year and that our silence now, apart from one notable exception in the form of the Secretary of State for Defence, has effectively enabled Biden to get away with some of the most shameful comments ever from an American President. We should never be just a sidekick to the United States of America in our foreign policy or military policy.
I am fearful, of course, for the women and children, but also, particularly out of a personal interest, for the gay men in Afghanistan. It has not exactly been a walk in the park for them over the past 20 years, but now they know that they will be exterminated. Sharia judges are already saying what they will do. There are two ways of dealing with a homosexual man in Afghanistan: one is stoning, and the other is putting them behind a wall that is then toppled on top of them and kills them.
I am fearful for the children who will grow up in violence or in a refugee camp, fearful for all the thousands who will do whatever they possibly can to get to a place of safety, and fearful that we will not have a proper programme in place in this country to greet people and that some of them will end up going to jail because we are introducing laws that will make things even more difficult for them. To be honest, I am angry with the Government. I am angry in particular with the Prime Minister. I just do not think that he has paid enough attention to this issue. I do not think that he was courageous enough in what he said to the American President either last year or this year, and he should be ashamed of himself.
Dominic Raab
May I make a little progress and then I will come back to the hon. Gentleman?
I thought that the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis)—I do not know whether he is back in the Chamber—spoke particularly powerfully about the need for a concerted international response. The right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) gave voice to a veteran in her constituency, Jack Cummings, and spoke about the sacrifices that were made by so many on the battlefield.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) also made a very powerful speech in which he made the point that how we leave is as important, if not more important, than the question of withdrawal itself. I can tell him, because he asked a specific question, that we tested the approach very rigorously with our US allies when they consulted us. The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) also gave witness to the many terrified Afghans who now face the threat and risk that come with Taliban control.
Chris Bryant
Lots of my constituents have got in touch today to say that the thing that they are most anxious about—many Members reflected this during the debate—is those people who are terrified in Afghanistan today and want to get out. We want to help many of them to get out of Afghanistan but, for some reason, we are saying that we will take 20,000 over several years, but only 5,000 this year. If the Government could simply say that whoever manages to get here this year, we will take this year, that would be a significant advance.
Dominic Raab
I will come on to address that matter, but I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman makes.
My right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) gave a courageous speech.