Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Heath
My hon. Friend will not be surprised to know that I entirely agree with him on that point. The Backbench Business Committee has made a good start in ensuring that important matters are brought before the House in a timely way. My greatest regret is the fact that the previous Government took so long to accede to the very reasonable request from the Wright Committee and many Members on both sides of the House to make that happen.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I warmly congratulate the Government on introducing the Backbench Business Committee, but can the Deputy Leader of the House guarantee that in future—as there always was in the past—there will be a European affairs debate before a European Council meeting and a full statement from the Prime Minister afterwards? This week, a European Council meeting will decide things such as our relationship with Russia and whether there should be Europe-wide regulation of the financial services industry, but the House will have not a single debate on it.
Mr Heath
I can only say to the hon. Gentleman that the arrangement of statements is, of course, a matter for the Government. Other debates, as the Wright Committee clearly sets out, are a matter for the Backbench Business Committee. I am sure that his comments were heard by the Committee.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)
I welcome you back to the Chair, Ms Primarolo, and to the consideration of clause 8. I am delighted that we can continue debating amendment 127. Of course, we would not have been able to do this if the Opposition’s attempt to prevent us from doing so, when we dealt with the timetable motion yesterday, had succeeded. When I was last speaking to this group of amendments, we were having a brief exchange on the matter of Wales. I do not want to continue that exchange, because we need the opportunity to discuss the much more important issues relating to Wales and the other parts of the United Kingdom under clause 9, which I hope we will reach shortly.
I was also considering the amendments proposed by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). One of the great advantages of having an overnight break is that we can look back at the Official Report and read what the protagonists have said. I looked back through the report of the 50 minutes that the hon. Gentleman took in proposing his amendments and found that he did not, as I had suspected, mention them once during those 50 minutes. We know not from him what the content of the amendments is. So I propose to move on from the hon. Gentleman to the right hon. and hon. Members who contributed something positive to the debate.
Much of what we heard was about registration and the fact—it is a fact—that many people do not appear on the electoral register. The hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer)—I am glad to see him in his place—made clear his view on that, and said, I think, that we were moving to a system whereby 3.5 million people are not on the register. I disagree with him about that. We are not moving to a system whereby 3.5 million people are not on the register; we are already at that stage, and have been for a very long time. The disgrace is that we have been so unsuccessful in dealing with the parts of the country where registration is insufficient.
My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) set out some of the reasons why we will never achieve 100% registration, given the difficulties involved. He is absolutely right, and I do not disagree with his analysis in any way. That is why the Government are introducing proposals at least to help the process and get as many people as possible on to the register.
The difficulties that we have with the amendments fall into two groups. They would change the basis on which boundary reviews are effected, moving away from the number of registered electors to some other basis, whether an estimate of eligible electors or an estimate of population. Alternatively, they suggest that we delay the process and make it longer, by a variety of mechanisms. I do not believe that that is the right way forward. The proper course of action is to ensure that the register is as accurate as possible. As I have said, the Government are taking action to improve the registration system.
Amendment 125 would require the boundary commissions to use an estimate of eligible electors, to be provided by the Office for National Statistics. The ONS does not at present make any estimate of eligible electors. Census data are available, but a census is carried out only once a decade, does not cover eligibility to vote and may contain inaccuracies. Indeed, in evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, the secretary of the Boundary Commission for Scotland said that there would be “significant practical problems” with using population rather than registered electorate for the purposes of the boundary review. It was mentioned that the electoral register is published annually, whereas the census, which does not record whether a person is eligible to vote, is published every 10 years.
Delaying the boundary reviews would simply make the information on which they are based more inaccurate. The general election held last May was based on electoral registration data 10 years out of date. That cannot be right, and that is my difficulty with amendments 341 and 342, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland). Those amendments would not only delay the initial review, but halve the frequency of such reviews, by requiring the boundary commissions to report before 1 October 2018, instead of 2013, and every 10th year after that, instead of every fifth year. That would simply make an unacceptable situation worse.
The Government’s proposals build on the existing arrangements for boundary reviews, which have been based on the electoral register for decades. It is right that we take action in support of complete and accurate registers, and the Government are taking that action. On that basis, I urge right hon. and hon. Members not to press their amendments.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
We have had 51 speakers—or rather, 52, counting the Deputy Leader of the House, who has just spoken. Despite his rather petulant and “ad hominate” speech last night, we have none the less had a good debate. He did, however, correctly excoriate me for not fully adumbrating the amendments that we tabled. That was partly because I took 31 interventions, more than half of which were from Government Members, but perhaps it would be of assistance if I were now to explain precisely why our two amendments are important.
The Deputy Leader of the House was quite right last night to say that our two amendments, 127 and 135, which refer to different parts of the Bill, are not necessarily readily comprehensible at first sight—partly because one refers to clause 8 and the other to clause 16. Both appear at different points in the amendment paper. Consequently, Members will have to turn to pages 429 and 445 to find them.
Amendment 127 would include in clause 8 the words
“within twelve months of part 2 of the…Act…coming into force in accordance with section 16(2) thereof’.”
In other words, the Boundary Commission would produce its report within 12 months of an addition to clause 16(2), which we would insert through amendment 135, stating,
“after the referendum on the determination of powers devolved to the National Assembly for Wales under the terms of the Government of Wales Act 2006”.
The Deputy Leader of the House rightly told me off last night for not explaining precisely why we believe that that is important. As I tried to say in yesterday’s debate, historically, we have constructed Parliament in this country by determination according to the four different constituent parts of the Union. That has included the representation that each part requires in order for the Union to be solid and hold together, which is precisely what happened in the 1536 Act of Union, the 1707 Act of Union and the 1801 Act of Union. With all three, the first thing determined was how much representation there should be from Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Obviously, that was subsequently changed with the creation of the Irish Free State.
The further change to Scottish representation occurred when we introduced devolution, so, following the Scotland Act 1998, it was agreed that because a variety of powers would be given to the Scottish Parliament, it was right and proper for the number of seats that Scotland accounted for in the Westminster Parliament to be reduced.
The first referendum in Wales on devolution brought about the creation of the National Assembly for Wales, which does not have law-making powers or enjoy any powers over crime, justice or policing, so it is a somewhat different body from the Scottish Parliament. However, there is a proposition that follows on from the Wales Act 2006, and it will be tested in a referendum, which the Government have said will take place in the first quarter of next year, but for which as yet no date has been set. The Welsh Assembly Government have requested that it should be on 3 March, but the Secretary of State for Wales has not yet assented to that. We do not know whether a date has been agreed or whether the referendum will proceed. The date of 3 March may well be problematic, as—how can I put it?—it sometimes rains in Wales in March. Sometimes we have fairly excessive conditions in large parts of Wales at the beginning of March, so the date may well end up being inappropriate.
However, be that as it may, we need to be assured of what powers the Welsh Assembly will have if we are then to have a coherent Union-based understanding of how much representation there should be from Wales in the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That is why we have tabled the two amendments, and I shall press them to a Division, because I have not heard anything from the Deputy Leader of the House to alter my opinion that we should proceed on a Union-based understanding of how we create this House, not on a purely mathematically based assumption.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
Further to that point, does my hon. Friend recognise that because of the arithmetical formula, the Bill will ensure not just that boundaries will change every five years, but that the number of seats allocated to each Boundary Commission could change? The number of seats in Northern Ireland could go up in one review and down in another, and that in turn would affect the seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly, because the constituencies of the Assembly and of Parliament are absolutely coterminous. The proposal will create havoc.
Chris Bryant
The seats in the Welsh Assembly are coterminous with those for this Parliament at the moment, although there is a provision later in the Bill to change that through decoupling. That is something that we must analyse. My hon. Friend is right that there may be a change in the number of seats between each segment. If there is a boundary review every five years, there might well be a change in the number of seats, and in the end I am not sure whether that is likely to lead to a more stable constitutional settlement between the four constituent parts of the Union.
There are those who like to think that there is just the Union, not any constituent parts, and there are those who want to think that there are just the constituent parts—which should not be constituent parts but independent. However, I believe that they are constituent parts of the whole, and I say gently to Ministers that the way in which they are proceeding in relation to some parts of the Union is not likely to aid the Unionist cause. It will be detrimental.
We do not say that the provision in our amendments should be introduced solely if the referendum is successful in granting further powers to the Assembly.
Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)
To be entirely clear, is it Labour party policy that England be under-represented in this House?
Chris Bryant
No, it is not Labour party policy that anywhere be under-represented. We believe, as I said yesterday evening, that it is important to achieve greater equalisation of the number of voters in each electorate, but that should not be a purely mathematical exercise. Where there are overriding concerns, those should be brought into play. Indeed, the Government agree to some degree, because they have created a degree of exception for Northern Ireland and a completely different set of exemptions for two seats in Scotland, which, according to the Government’s interpretation of the situation—and, I presume therefore, the hon. Gentleman’s—will effectively create two rotten boroughs in Scotland. We think that if we are going to make exemptions, we should make a broader set of exemptions, rather than just those two.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
To correct not only my hon. Friend but myself, I should say that I am reliably informed that three seats are involved. There is another seat; there is a rule that applies only to that seat on geographical grounds. That does not apply in Wales, where, as I am sure my hon. Friend will agree, a seat could well stretch from one side to the other if the population density was low.
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend is right to correct me. I accept the admonition that three seats are being created in this way. I do not think it inappropriate for those seats to exist. But the logic of the Government’s argument—that there should be complete mathematical purity—leads one to suppose that they can only think that they are creating three rotten boroughs.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
I detected a form of back-pedalling in the hon. Gentleman’s answer to the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami). I assume that he is not saying that Labour’s policy is that the islands of Scotland are rotten in some way.
Chris Bryant
No. The hon. Gentleman knows that personally I have a great affection for the islands; indeed, many of my ancestors came from Lewis. But that is not the point. I am not trying to say that Scotland is in any shape rotten; I am merely trying to say that there is an illogicality in the argument that the Government are presenting. They are trying to say that we should have mathematical purity everywhere—except where we should not have it. I am trying to say that we should strive towards broad equality of representation in each of the seats. However, other considerations need to be brought to mind, and that should apply not only to the seats that I mentioned, but to some others as well.
Mr MacNeil
I want some clarification. Does the hon. Gentleman agree with the sensible exceptions that have been made for Na h-Eileanan an Iar and Orkney and Shetland? Yes or no?
Chris Bryant
Yes, I do. As the hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well, we have tabled amendments that would include his seat, but also include others. He is a sage man and I know that he would want to pursue the logic of the creation of his own seat so as to make exactly the same exemptions in some other cases where there are overriding concerns—in the Isle of Wight, for instance. That is the nature of the amendment that we have tabled elsewhere.
Naomi Long (Belfast East) (Alliance)
Could we put it this way? Given that the Government have already conceded that there are exceptions to the numerical rule, would it not be better to give the judgment to the Boundary Commission, which could not be perceived to have any vested interest? It could make the judgment on where exceptions should and should not apply, rather than the Government laying that out in the Bill.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Lady speaks with almost as much sagacity as the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil). I agree with her that there is no logic to how the exceptions have been laid out. The Boundary Commissions should be given a certain latitude while striving towards a greater equalisation of the number of electors in each constituency.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend find it surprising that the Bill comes from a party that is meant to be committed to the Union and that that party’s parliamentary colleagues will be involving themselves in the destruction of the historic Duchy of Cornwall along the same lines?
Chris Bryant
My hon. and historical Friend is absolutely right. That adds to my argument, and to arguments that I shall hope to adduce later. As I said, there need to be some exemptions where there are overriding geographical, political or cultural issues that need to be resolved.
One of the overriding political issues is the bonding together of the Union, which historically has taken into consideration the existing political structures in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. That is why we have tabled amendments 127 and 135, which would mean that the Boundary Commission would not be able to proceed until the referendum had happened in Wales. In that way, we would know that there was a settled view about what powers the National Assembly for Wales would have.
There are other amendments in this group. In particular, the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) has tabled amendments 341 and 342, either of which I would be happy to support; I very much hope that he will press one of them to a Division.
The hon. Gentleman made an important point in his contribution to the debate when he said that we have only just had a boundary review and we are to have another by 2013, which seems rather a fruitless exercise. He is absolutely right; it would be better if we did things on a longer time scale, and towards 2018. That point relates to his amendment 341. His amendment 342 would mean that instead of having reviews every five years, we should have them every 10 years. I say to hon. Members who are hard and fast in their view that we should have a full boundary review, every five years, on the basis of purely mathematical, arithmetical equations, that that would put every single parliamentary seat in doubt every single time. It may not be that every single one is changed every time, but a large number probably would be. The danger is that that gives rise to a conflict when an hon. Member knows the seat that they will be fighting at the next general election and they want to get in touch with the voters in that seat not as an MP but as a candidate. That is likely to lead to a considerable number of unfortunate circumstances in the way that Parliament behaves. It was difficult enough in the last general election, when the Speaker and the courts had to intervene in two cases in London where boundaries had been redrawn and MPs wished to be able to correspond not as an MP but as a candidate, and the sitting MP objected to that intervention.
Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)
Does the shadow Minister agree that over, say, a 20-year period of four Parliaments one community could find itself in four different constituencies and have four different MPs, not because an MP is deposed but because the constituency boundaries are being changed to ensure that all the arithmetical figures stack up? That breaks the strong and important link between the constituency MP and the local electorate.
Chris Bryant
Absolutely. Particularly in many rural areas where the difference between reaching the mathematical perfect number and not reaching it might be 1,500 or 3,000 votes, a medium-sized village or small town might have to be divided in half, or a river might run across the constituency and new polling districts might have to be created. A whole series of different issues might mean that the individual voter ultimately ends up being less confident about knowing who their political representative is.
The hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), who knows that I have a great respect for her—I waited until she took her seat before referring to her—made several points, one of which related to the fact that we should not be redrawing the seats for our own convenience. She is absolutely right. We should, however, ensure that the political boundaries for constituencies are for the convenience of our electors. Our electors do not think in terms of lines on a map but in terms of political communities, cultural connections and social connections, and where the roads go and do not go. If one is to bind together little bits of geography just because they sort out a perfect map according to mathematical excellence, one might assist the convenience of the Boundary Commission, but one will not necessarily assist the convenience of voters, who want to know and understand who their Member of Parliament is—and it is better that they do. I know that there are split wards, but it would be better if there were not.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend suggested that there would be changes every five years but that that might not affect every constituency. Does he agree that, for example, a constituency in the south that grew because of population changes and migration would necessarily have a nudging effect on contiguous boundaries and a domino effect all the way up the country, and that because it is likely that virtually every seat will change every five years during the 20-year period that my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) mentioned, one’s constituency might move around the country? [Interruption.]
Chris Bryant
Members on both sides are laughing because my hon. Friend has of course moved around the country himself, so I will assist by saying that I know that the people of Wales welcome him back to his home town.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that where there are significant changes in the population there will not only be effects for one constituency but potentially nudge-on effects for many others, which may move from one county council or one borough to another. In part, we have to accept this. Rhondda used to have two parliamentary seats, Rhondda East and Rhondda West, and then we moved down to one parliamentary seat because the population fell dramatically. I do not believe that the boundaries of parliamentary constituencies in Wales or anywhere else should be written in stone—of course we have to move with the population flows. However, if we move forward precisely like this, without any kind of exemption, one constituency in Wales will represent at least a third of the geographical area of Wales. That would be unacceptable. It would cover several counties, which are unitary authorities in Wales, and would include areas that are, and feel themselves to be, virtually in England, and a large part of Wales that is fiercely proud of its Welsh language heritage. That would be an inappropriate direction in which to move.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree with what the women’s institute has written? As I am sure all hon. Members know, anyone who dares to suggest that the women’s institute is party political will have their come-uppance, but it has expressed great concern about the effect that the changes will have on rural communities, because natural geographical boundaries will be cut up.
Chris Bryant
Tony Blair learned that one should not really mess with the women’s institute, and I have no intention of doing so, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right. Large parts of her constituency are very rural, and chunks of mine are semi-rural—everybody in the Rhondda lives within about 200 metres of a farm. Surely the point is that overriding concerns must be able to trump mathematical perfection, not entirely but to a degree. The Government have already accepted that in relation to three constituencies, but it should apply more widely.
My hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) has tabled amendment 38, which refers to registration. A lot of Members talked about under-registration yesterday afternoon, and the Deputy Leader of the House has just mentioned it. I am glad he accepts that some 3.5 million people are not on the register and should be. I make no pretence that we got it right when we were in government. Indeed, some of us—particularly one of my hon. Friends, who is probably about to intervene on me—quite rightly argued aggressively in the last Parliament that many people are under-represented on the register. The danger is that they will therefore be under-represented in Parliament and their concerns will not be taken on board.
Chris Ruane
My hon. Friend says that we did not do as much as we could have done, and I agree, but we did do some things in the past 13 years. In the Electoral Administration Act 2006, we examined what electoral registration officers were doing and measured them in 26 fields. That process was long and slow, but now we are beginning to examine what they achieved so that we can fine-tune the process. However, the current proposals are being rushed through.
We also listened to the then Opposition. When they wanted individual registration, we opposed it at first but then said that because of political balance we would introduce it. We said that it would happen in 2015 and that we would put measures in place to increase registration over the five years until then. All that bipartisanship has been shattered by the governing parties for party political gain and to pursue a little English coup.
The Temporary Chair (Mr Jim Hood)
Order. I think that intervention was a bit long.
Chris Bryant
But it was very good, Mr Hood, and spot on. I hope that some coalition Members accept that when we were in government, we tried to co-operate on electoral registration. When the hon. Member for Epping Forest spoke for her party on the matter, she did so very effectively and we tried to co-operate and reach agreement when we could. We agreed that we would move towards individual registration, but I am concerned that the new Government’s message about registration is, “Yes, we want everybody to register, but it doesn’t really matter if you don’t. We’re going to get rid of the fine for somebody who does not send in their form, and registering is almost entirely optional.” That is a shame, because as I tried to say in a debate that the hon. Lady secured in Westminster Hall earlier today, we sometimes take our democracy for granted all too easily.
Tristram Hunt
My hon. Friend is right to point to the Bill’s partisan nature. Did he hear anything from the Chancellor about allocating extra resources to increasing electoral registration in December, or perhaps for the wonderful democracy festival that the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) talked about?
Chris Bryant
No—I heard exactly the opposite. I think that there was a reference to a 7% cut in local authority funding every year for the next four years. My concern is that, because all too often we take democracy for granted, when local councillors have to decide whether to spend £100,000 on keeping a swimming pool open or on a really good door-to-door canvas to ensure that everybody is registered, they tend to keep the swimming pool open. Although I fully understand such decisions, which will be difficult for many councillors in the next four years, unless one values democracy and spends money on it, one does not get a proper representative democracy. That is why Labour Members believe that amendment 38 is important. Unless the Electoral Commission is satisfied that there is proper registration and that proper measures are being taken to ensure full registration of all eligible voters in this country—and for dealing with those who are on the register but should not be—the Boundary Commission should not be able to produce its report.
My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) tabled amendment 125, which refers to the census. Earlier, the Deputy Leader of the House said that he did not agree with the amendment because the census happened every 10 years, which might have led one to believe that there would not be one for 10 years, but of course, one will be held next year. The information may not be available immediately, but surely it would be bizarre if we found that the number of those eligible to vote in individual areas of the country was dramatically higher than those registered to vote, and that those areas were significantly unfairly under-represented in the House because the Government chose to proceed on only one element.
Geraint Davies
My amendment would provide for the Office for National Statistics to conduct an assessment of the number of eligible voters. It would use the register of voters alongside the census and other data sources to get the best estimate. It might not be perfect, but it would be better than the current suggestion.
Chris Bryant
Precisely. That is one of the things that the Boundary Commission should consider.
One other issue was mentioned in yesterday’s debate. I am sorry to refer to the hon. Member for Epping Forest for a third time, but she got rather cross with me in yesterday evening’s debate, so I merely wish to respond to one of her comments. She said that the point about the number of Members of Parliament in a particular area and the casework that they took on was not a matter of substance. Various hon. Friends suggested that some of those who are not eligible to vote often provide much of the casework in a constituency. Consequently, there is an argument about the role of the Member of Parliament, which should be considered before reaching the precise matter of how the boundaries are drawn. The hon. Lady said that it would be good if we reduced the number of Members of Parliament and achieved equalisation of the electorate in each constituency, and that if a problem remained with casework, we could give Members of Parliament more staff. [Interruption.] I think that the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) says, “Hear, hear” because he wants more staff to work for him.
I am concerned about the hon. Lady’s view because the role of a Member of Parliament has completely changed since the days of Stafford Cripps, and casework is an essential part of the job. Simply hiving it off to a member of staff, without the Member of Parliament’s being directly involved, distances Members of Parliament from the real life that goes on around them. Simply replacing Members of Parliament with paid staff is not the right route.
I am keen to press our amendments to a Division. I hope that hon. Members will agree that mathematical excellence is not the only way in which one should proceed towards creating new boundaries for the House of Commons, and that other considerations need to be borne in mind. I hope that I can rely on the Committee’s good sense.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Hood. I should like to press amendment 38 to a Division. What is the appropriate time to move it, if I am allowed so to do?
The Temporary Chair (Mr Jim Hood)
Now that the hon. Gentleman has given notice that he wishes to press his amendment to a Division, I will invite him formerly to move it when the Division on amendment 127 is over.
Chris Bryant
Further to that point of order, Mr Hood. Does that also apply to amendment 341 or 342?
The Temporary Chair
Yes, certainly.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 234, page 7, line 17, at end insert—
‘(5AA) The draft of an Order in Council laid under subsection (5A) above may only give effect to the recommendations contained in all four reports under subsection (1) above with modifications, where those modifications have been made with the agreement of the Boundary Commissions.’.
This amendment has been tabled in the names of members of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform. The Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), is sadly unable to be in here this afternoon and so I have undertaken to move the amendment on behalf of his Committee.
The Select Committee, as the Committee well knows, carried out a necessarily brief and swift but in-depth consideration of the Bill. In order to try to be helpful to the House and the Minister, we tabled several amendments that we believed ought to be considered and that we hope will improve the Bill. The purpose of amendment 234 is to reflect paragraph 139 of the Select Committee’s recently published report, which states that
“the power of the Executive to depart from the recommendations of an independent statutory body should have clear statutory limits to prevent abuse for partisan advantage.”
I am sure the Committee will agree that that is a matter that ought to be drawn to the attention of the Minister and of hon. Members.
I ask the Minister where the justification lies for the Government’s retaining such a wide-ranging power to depart from the Boundary Commissions’ recommendations. Although I would assert that I have every confidence—as does the Select Committee—that the current Government would always act in this matter in an honourable, straightforward and democratic way, may I nevertheless ask the Minister on behalf of the Select Committee what safeguards exist against any future Government’s misusing such a power to their partisan advantage. It would be helpful if the Minister would consider those questions, and I am sure that the Committee will be eager to know the answers.
Chris Bryant
First, let me briefly comment on the fact that before you took the Chair, Mr Hoyle, we had a former miner in the Chair and two Tellers who were also former miners, so, as the MP for the Rhondda I felt quite at home. But that has absolutely nothing to do with the amendment, I am afraid.
The amendment has been charmingly moved by the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), who is absolutely right. This is an issue that I have tried to raise on several occasions—
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)
Not so charmingly.
Chris Bryant
The Minister says that not so charmingly himself, so the favour goes back to him.
Under the clause, new subsection (5A) would read:
“As soon as may be after the submission of all four reports under subsection (1) above that are required by subsection (2) above to be submitted before a particular date, the Secretary of State shall lay before Parliament the draft of an Order in Council for giving effect, with or without modifications, to the recommendations contained in them.”
So the Boundary Commission will bring forth its report, there will be no public inquiry and the Minister will then bring forward the boundaries with or without modifications. It is the phrase “with or without modifications” that I have difficulty with, and clearly the Select Committee does too.
The hon. Lady mentioned that her Committee had to do its business very swiftly. Indeed, I think it had only five days in which to undertake a whole inquiry. That is one reason why I believe the Bill is being taken through with undue haste. A substantial number of amendments have been tabled and will be considered on Monday, but we already know that some of them are inaccurate and will be modified when the Government bring forward territorial statutory instruments in relation to Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. I very much hope that the Minister will enlighten us as to whether those statutory instruments will be subject to the affirmative or negative procedure. [Interruption.] That is not what will happen on Monday because the measures are not going to be debated next Monday at all, contrary to what the Deputy Leader of the House has just said from a sedentary position.
The Government believe that we should retain in present legislation the phrase “with or without modifications”. That is a pretty broad power.
Mr Syms
With previous boundary reviews, there have sometimes been attempts at judicial review of elements of what the Boundary Commission has done. Most of them have been rejected, but we have to consider that that is a possibility and that minor modification might be required—or does the hon. Gentleman think that will not happen?
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about the due process that needs to be gone through. I believe that we need a due process in relation to the Boundary Commission, because it might proceed incorrectly according to the rules that are laid down for it, it might proceed in a partisan manner or it might not consider all the factors that need to be considered. That is why we have heretofore always had a system of public inquiry, and not just written reports being sent in. That is essential for there to be utter confidence in the process that the commission goes through. He is absolutely right that there is also, sometimes, a process of judicial review. I suspect that if the Government push through the Bill in the partisan way that they are doing, without any provision for public inquiry, the likelihood of a judicial review being sought in many constituencies in the land will be very high indeed.
The hon. Gentleman might say that that is a good reason why the Minister needs even more power to draw constituency boundaries as he thinks fit. Unless the Government can be shifted from this view—whether that happens in this House or in the other House—we shall almost inexorably end up with no due process, other than the recourse that people might have to the courts.
The Minister will probably tell us that the Government need this power because apostrophes and commas are sometimes put in the wrong place and there are inadvertent errors. That is why the amendment, which was tabled by several members of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, is perfect: it simply says that the Minister, if he or she wishes to make any modification, must return to the Boundary Commission and ask, “Are you okay with this amendment?” If Ministers were in a conciliatory, cross-party mood, they would accept the amendment.
I fully understand that the precise wording they propose is that of the current legislation. That is fine when due process can go on after the boundary commissions have done their work—for example, public inquiries, where the public can have their say on the boundary commissions’ proposals. Where that does not happen—that is the intention of the Bill, although it is something that we shall return to later—it is important that there is a bind on Ministers, so that they are not entirely free to dream up any kind of modification that they might want; otherwise, strictly speaking in law, I guess that Ministers would be perfectly at liberty, if they felt that the boundary commission had got something slightly wrong and representations were made to Ministers, to make such modifications as they thought fit.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
I do not know whether my hon. Friend is familiar with the situation in the United States, where there is no boundary commission and state legislators draw up in a partisan, political way each state’s congressional districts. Does he agree that we are starting down a slippery slope and that we will end up with a partisan political set of redistricting—to use the American phrase—if the boundary commission’s authority is not protected?
Chris Bryant
That will happen not just if we do not have the boundary commission’s public inquiry process, but if this element of the Bill remains without the amendment. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In the United States of America, because there is a redrawing each time, there are many instances where the incumbents effectively draw boundaries to protect themselves. Therefore, two Hispanic communities that might be thought to vote Democrat could be linked, because boundaries must be contiguous, by a single side of a road, thus creating bizarrely shaped constituencies. That is why, as I am sure hon. Members know, one of the congressional districts in Massachusetts that was drawn up by Governor Elbridge Gerry in the 19th century was shaped like a salamander—hence the term “gerrymander”. In fact, it looked more like an eagle than a salamander.
This provision, as constructed in the Bill, will specifically allow Ministers to gerrymander. It is entirely partisan. It will allow Ministers—indeed, it encourages them—to be partisan. [Interruption.] The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), says from a sedentary position what I have already said. He says, “We aren’t changing anything.” He says, as I have said, that the provision is in the existing legislation—it is—but if he would just listen to the end of the paragraph, he would understand and learn that, in fact, the difference between the legislation that he is advancing and the existing legislation is that he will allow no due process. There will be no public inquiries. Consequently, I do not think that the electorate will have confidence in the way the commission draws up boundaries and, thereafter, in the way that Ministers are allowed by their legislation to make such modifications as they see fit.
The Minister may be able to satisfy my concerns by saying that there is legal provision to prevent a member of the Government from doing anything that the Boundary Commission disagrees with, but I do not think he will be able to, because I cannot see where the Bill or any Act makes such a provision. That is why we wholeheartedly support the amendment presented by the hon. Member for Epping Forest. We believe intrinsically that it is one of the most important amendments to the Bill, and I do not know whether she intends to press it to a Division, but if she does not we certainly shall.
Mr Heath
These are minor amendments to clarify the position on ministerial responsibilities in relation to the constituencies provisions of the Bill. Responsibility for elections law, including parliamentary constituencies, is now exercisable by the Lord President and the Secretary of State, as my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister, as Lord President of the Council, now has responsibility for political and constitutional reform. That was effected by the Lord President of the Council Order 2010, which provides that functions under various Acts, including the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986, are exercisable concurrently by the Lord President and the Secretary of State. In the case of that Act, “the Secretary of State” includes the Secretaries of State for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, who retain functions relating to boundary commissions in their parts of the United Kingdom.
The order states that references to the 1986 Act include references to it as amended by any enactment already made but not yet in force. It is arguable that that implies that such a reference does not include a reference to that Act as amended by a subsequent enactment. The amendment therefore provides that the reference to the 1986 Act in the order is to be read as a reference to the Act as amended by the Bill.
Amendments 163 to 167 are to clause 11 on the relationship between the changes to parliamentary constituencies and the constituencies of the National Assembly for Wales. They make similar changes to those in the Lord President of the Council Order 2010, so that the clause refers to both the Secretary of State and the Lord President of the Council, and not just to the Secretary of State. That is done in the same way as in part 1 of the Bill, which provides that the Minister means the Lord President or the Secretary of State. I hope that that is perfectly clear to the Committee.
Chris Bryant
These amendments seem perfectly sensible and we have no problem with them. We hope that they will go forward immediately.
Amendment 162 agreed to.
Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 68), That the clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill.
The Chairman of Ways and Means
I welcome your opinion, but you cannot discuss amendments that have not been selected.
Clause 9
Number and distribution of seats
Chris Bryant
I beg to move amendment 364, page 7, leave out lines 27 and 28 and insert—
‘UK Electoral quota
1 The UK Electoral Quota shall be defined as the total electorate of the United Kingdom on the designated enumeration day divided by 650.’.
The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 41, page 7, line 28, leave out ‘600’ and insert
‘gradually reduced to 600 in accordance with the terms of rule 1A.
1A (1) In each periodic report submitted by a Boundary Commission under section 3(2), the overall number of constituencies in each part of the United Kingdom shall be no more than in the previous report.
(2) The Boundary Commissions shall meet at the outset of each periodic review to determine the overall number of constituencies in the United Kingdom, and the number to be allocated to each of the four parts of the United Kingdom by each Commission, in accordance with rule 8.
(3) The Boundary Commissions shall ensure that the overall number of constituencies in the United Kingdom is reduced in each succeeding periodic report to no more than 600 by 2029 in their fourth/fifth periodic reports.’.
Amendment 67, page 7, line 28, leave out ‘600’ and insert ‘585’.
Amendment 74, page 7, line 28, leave out ‘600’ and insert ‘500’.
Amendment 227, page 7, line 28, leave out ‘600’ and insert—
‘no fewer than 588 and no more than 612’.
Amendment 259, page 7, line 28, leave out ‘600’ and insert ‘650’.
Amendment 42, page 7, leave out lines 35 to 37 and insert—
‘U/T where U is the electorate of the United Kingdom minus the electorate of the constituencies mentioned in rule 6 and T is the overall number of constituencies in the United Kingdom determined by the Boundary Commissions under rule 1A above.’.
Amendment 68, page 7, line 35, leave out ‘U/598’ and insert ‘U/583’.
Amendment 75, page 7, line 35, leave out ‘U/598’ and insert ‘U/498’.
Amendment 260, page 7, line 35, leave out ‘U/598’ and insert ‘U/648’.
Amendment 228, page 9, line 40, at end insert—
‘Variation in number of constituencies
8A (8) A Boundary Commission shall have power to recommend that the number of constituencies in the relevant part of the United Kingdom should be greater or smaller than the number determined in accordance with the allocation method set out in rule 8.
(9) The number so recommended must be no less than 98 per cent. and no more than 102 per cent. of the number so determined.’.
Chris Bryant
Amendment 364 would replace the first subsection of clause 9, which states that the number of constituencies in the United Kingdom shall be 600, with the proposal:
“The UK Electoral Quota shall be defined as the total electorate of the United Kingdom on the designated enumeration day divided by 650.”
I am sure that all hon. Members will note that 650 is the present number of Members of Parliament, as opposed to the 600 that the Bill proposes. I am opposed for a series of reasons to the Government’s proposal to change the number of seats and to fix it at 600. First, they are rigging the number of seats. The 600 seats figure did not appear in any party’s manifesto. The Liberal Democrats mentioned 500 MPs in their manifesto, while the Conservatives had a manifesto commitment to reduce the number of seats by 10%, which would have taken the number down to 585. Neither of those figures is in front of us. Why might that possibly be? If those two parties were doing a deal, it would be reasonable to assume that we would end somewhere between the 500 seats mentioned in one manifesto and the 585 mentioned in the other. In fact, they have gone for a completely new figure, which seems to have been plucked out of the air.
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman accept the possibility that the compromise arrived at might not have been one between us and the Liberals, but among us, the Liberals and the Labour minority that wanted 650 seats?
Chris Bryant
Well, I would have been absolutely delighted if any process of consultation with Labour Members had taken place on the issue of the size of Parliament. Such a process has always taken place in the past and if it had done so this time, I would have ardently supported the Bill. However, absolutely no consultation has taken place. The number has not been plucked out of the air—it is a partisan number, arrived at solely to rig the electorate so that the Government will win general elections in the future.
Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
Does the shadow Minister have any evidence whatever to back up his allegation?
Chris Bryant
All the hon. Gentleman need do is look at the figures produced by many bodies, which make it abundantly clear.
Tristram Hunt
Given that this is indeed a partisan figure plucked out of the air, which appeared in neither of the governing parties’ manifestos, does my hon. Friend think that the Salisbury convention will apply in the other place? This provision has not been mandated by the people, so, under the Salisbury principle, it should not necessarily pass through the other place.
Chris Bryant
I hope that the House of Lords will look at this sort of measure. Historically, it has always looked at measures coming from the House of Commons, where the Government enjoy a majority by definition. Where the Lords have thought that legislation was calculated for partisan advantage, they have sought to look at it very closely. On many occasions in the past they have sought to change such legislation and make the House of Commons think again. As to the Salisbury convention, one problem is that it is difficult for the Lords to work out what counts as having been in a manifesto, given that two of them are now relevant. However, the number of seats specified in the clause did not appear in either manifesto, so this does present a problem.
There is a further problem. In recent years, it has been unusual for the Government to enjoy a majority in both this House and the other place. By virtue of the fact that there are now two parties in government, there should ostensibly be a majority in the House of Lords. I am very confident, however, about their lordships’ capacity for independence of mind, regardless of the whipping arrangements.
The other reason why I believe the system is being rigged, which is why I am opposed to the reduction from 650 to 600 seats, is on account of the double whammy that will apply to some parts of the United Kingdom. I am sorry if hon. Members feel I talk too much about Wales—I was about to say that I make no apology for saying that, but I have already apologised. My point is that Wales faces a double whammy. If the number of parliamentary seats had to be reduced, I would have thought that no single part of the country—particularly a constituent element of the Union—should be so disproportionately affected in one fell swoop. Reducing the number of parliamentary seats in Wales by 25%, while no other part of the United Kingdom is to suffer such an immediate cut, will be detrimental to the relationship between Wales and the rest of the United Kingdom and will merely inflame the thoughts of nationalism that already exist in Wales.
Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)
Did not the last Labour Government reduce the number of seats in Scotland, while making no changes anywhere else in the United Kingdom?
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that the number of seats in Scotland was reduced as a result of lengthy consultation there, not just of political parties but of the whole of society. There was a long convention that lasted for several years before the 1997 general election, which led to the Scotland Act 1998, the referendum, the creation of the Scottish Parliament—of which we are very proud—and, in exchange for that, a reduction in the number of seats in Scotland. The hon. Gentleman has just voted against a measure that would have prevented the Boundary Commission from reporting until after a referendum had been held in Wales on the powers that should be available to the Welsh Assembly. There is an inconsistency in what he is arguing.
Ms Louise Bagshawe (Corby) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman speaks of inconsistency. Is it not ironic that he should use the word “disproportionate” to describe what would happen in Wales as a result of the Bill, given that what would actually happen is that proportionate weight would be given to Welsh votes, as to the votes of any other electors in United Kingdom?
Chris Bryant
As I tried to argue earlier and will argue again, that simply is not the way in which, historically, we have put together the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I think that that is an important principle. If one is a Unionist—
Chris Bryant
Just one moment.
I know that the constituency of the hon. Member for Corby (Ms Bagshawe) contains many people with Scottish ancestry, but I do not think that she is entirely versed in the dangers of nationalism that exist in Scotland and Wales. I merely say to her, in a gentle way, that if she really wants to maintain the strength of the Union, we ought to proceed differently.
Mr Mark Field
I agree with what the shadow Minister is trying to achieve, and, if the Committee divides on the amendment, I shall vote against the reduction. However, for two reasons, I am not sure that he is making a terribly good case.
We have discussed what happened in Scotland in 2005. There was not a great Unionist upsurge there when there was a 20% reduction in the number of seats specifically in Scotland and in no other part of the United Kingdom. Does the hon. Gentleman not recognise that his is not a terribly strong argument?
The Welsh position has been maintained since we drew up the constituencies. There were 38 protected constituencies there until 1983, and 40 thereafter. The position of Wales has been protected, and it is massively over-represented. That is the reason for the move to equalise the size of electorates, which I also fully support.
Chris Bryant
This is what I meant by the double- whammy element. Wales is caught both by the equalisation of the number of seats—we are not debating that now, but we will when we deal with the next set of amendments—and by the reduction in the number of seats. The net effect for Wales is that the number of seats will be cut by a quarter.
That presents some specific problems for Wales. It has already proved impossible for the present Government to ensure that the Secretary of State for Wales represents a Welsh seat—although I admit that she is Welsh—and it will become increasingly difficult to do so in the future. Because Wales, unlike Scotland, has never had a separate legal system, the Welsh Affairs Committee has to do a large amount of work, and that will continue. I think that it will be difficult to meet those needs with only 30 seats.
I am not arguing for the status quo in the number of Welsh seats. I am merely trying to present an argument, and I am sorry that it does not appeal to the hon. Gentleman. I hope that further elements of my speech will appeal to him more.
Mrs Laing
No one is a more ardent Unionist than I am, and I fully understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying about Wales, but he must look at the arithmetic, which is inescapable. There will be a larger reduction in the number of seats in Wales than, proportionately, in the rest of the United Kingdom because, at present, the people of Wales are over-represented in the House, as well as having a devolved Assembly, or Parliament, of their own. The hon. Gentleman cannot argue that it is right for the people of Wales to have smaller constituencies and more Members of Parliament in the House of Commons than the people of most of England and Scotland. That simply does not make sense.
Chris Bryant
As the hon. Lady knows, there are differences between Wales and Scotland: Scotland has a Parliament which also has powers over crime and justice, which Wales does not have; Scotland has a completely different legal system, which Wales does not have; and it raises taxes, which Wales cannot do. It is a very different system, therefore.
Let me reiterate yet again that I am not saying that we want to hold to the status quo, but I think there will be a danger for the Unionist argument in Wales if we move forward in one fell swoop from having 40 seats to there being only 29 or 30. That would create problems for the future. Let me also say that I hope that Welsh Members work sufficiently hard that they provide value for the House, even though the hon. Lady thinks there are too many of us.
Phil Wilson
The Deputy Prime Minister keeps going on about this being the greatest constitutional reform legislation since 1832. The 1832 Act went on to equalise the size of constituencies but left the number of constituencies at 658; it did not reduce them at all. I believe the current Government want to reduce the number of seats in order to gerrymander the whole electoral system so that we do not have a Labour Government in the future.
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, except in one respect: the 1832 Act did not equalise the seats at all. In 1867, there was a discussion about equalising seats but that was decided against. The argument that was used then, and which has been used consistently in the past, is that it is more important for Members to represent communities than it is for there to be precisely numerically equal seats. Obviously that was, in part, because of the nature of the franchise at the time.
Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
I am listening carefully to the case that the hon. Gentleman is making. He seems to be saying that he is quite prepared to see the number of seats reduced from 40. Will the hon. Gentleman give us some idea as to what figure he is prepared to see, therefore? It would be interesting to know exactly what figure the Opposition have in mind.
Chris Bryant
Several amendments in the next group refer to how one might make provision specifically for Wales, but there are other places we would like to make provision for, such as Cornwall and the Isle of Wight, rather than just the three areas the Bill covers. At present, however, I am specifically addressing the proposal to reduce the total number of seats from 650 to 600.
Chris Bryant
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, but I hope shortly to be able to come on to some of the arguments that he likes more than those I am addressing at present.
Mr Field
Given that the hon. Gentleman’s concern is that this move would lead to an increase in Welsh nationalism, will he reflect on the fact that, prior to 1997, the rationale for having a Scottish Parliament was that that would somehow snuff out Scottish nationalism? The idea was not that there should be an Administration run by Scottish nationalists within eight years of the setting up of the Scottish Parliament. Therefore, the notion that not reducing the number of seats will be in the interests of those who do not want to see an increase in nationalism has not been borne out by the facts.
Chris Bryant
That was never my argument in favour of devolution in Scotland or Wales. My argument in favour of devolution was simply that it is better to devolve responsibility for issues that most directly affect people to the people who are most directly affected. That is why I thought it was right to establish the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. I very much hope we will be snuffing out nationalism in Scotland come next May however, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman agrees with me on that.
There is one other reason why I think the diminution in the number of seats from 650 to 600 is a mistake, which is to do with the number of Ministers. At present, the law allows that there should be 95 Ministers, paid or unpaid, sitting in the House of Commons, and if there are any more, they are barred from sitting in the Commons. That is an important principle. The Executive, who—unusually compared with other such systems around the world—exclusively sit in Parliament, should be limited, as should the Prime Minister’s patronage. If we reduce the number of seats from 650 to 600 and do not change the number of Ministers, the proportion of Parliament—the legislature—that represents the Executive will grow.
I hope that we will be moving in the opposite direction, although part of me is being somewhat hypocritical because I was an unpaid Minister for a while when I held the post that the Deputy Leader of the House now holds. The advent of so many unpaid Ministers is a shame and the number of Parliamentary Private Secretaries has also increased dramatically in recent years. Prime Ministers have sought to find other ways of extending patronage by making people vice-chair of a committee or by all sorts of other means. That is wrong, because we should be limiting the power of patronage within the legislature, so that the legislature can do a better job—I argued that when Labour was in government and I am arguing it now. That is why reducing the number of seats from 650 to 600 without reducing the number of Ministers is a mistake.
John Mann
Have we not now reached the crucial, salient point, which is that even in recent times Parliament has set not an absolute number, but a target—I believe that the last one was 613—for the Boundary Commission, so that an independent boundary commission, taking into account other criteria, can then set the boundaries? Is not the fundamental difference that this rather irregular Bill attempts to create an arbitrary number without building in that flexibility for an independent body to set this coherently?
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This approach runs against the grain of how we have always done things in this House; the proposition has always been that representation in the British Parliament should be based on the communities that exist. There has been a recognition, first, that the shires needed representation. Irrespective of whether they were large or small, the shires always had exactly the same number of seats—at first they had two, then four for a while, then two again and briefly three. It was then said that towns had to be represented and the row was then about which towns genuinely represented communities. The big change in the 1832 Act was that this House said that we could not have rotten boroughs where, to all intents and purposes, there were no electors and the seat was granted by the landlord to whomever he thought fit, and instead we had to ensure that where there were genuine communities, they should have representation, with large communities having two seats and smaller communities having one.
In addition, specifically at the moments of union, this House decided that the communities involved needed representation. So under the Act of Union in 1536, when Wales was brought in, 44 Members of Parliament were allowed for Wales—it took them six years to get here, but they were here by 1542. After the Union with England Act 1707, Scotland had 45 Members—that was increased to 53 by the 1832 Act. Following the Act of Union (Ireland) 1800, Ireland had 100 Members, a number that subsequently increased to 105, reduced to 103 and was reformed again in the 20th century with the creation of the Irish Free State.
It is also important that we do not fix the number at 600 because of the way in which the Government have crafted their Bill. It rightly allows a certain flexibility, because the electorate of any constituency may be between 95% and 105% of the aimed-at electorate across the country.
Now, let us leave aside the question of whether it is right or wrong to be precise in one’s mathematics and whether a further provision should allow the Boundary Commission to say that where there is an overriding further concern, such as a geographical, cultural or political concern, further leniency or flexibility should be allowed. What happens if the Boundary Commission, when it starts its process in the south of England and works up through the country or, in the case of Wales, starts in the south and goes north—or starts in the north and goes south—decides that the first 20 constituencies are best representing 95% of the quota? Does it then have to start filling in some 105% of that quota? The danger is that it will end up having to start all over again. Every time there is a new Boundary Commission, it will have to start all over again, because there will be knock-on effects from one constituency to another.
That is why I think it is wrong to fix the number at 600. If hon. Members think there should be a precise equation between the electorate in constituencies, it would be better to say that every constituency should be roughly 75,000 electors, give or take 5% or 10%. The Boundary Commission could then conclude how many seats there should be as a result of that to meet the two requirements—first, getting close to the 75,000 and, secondly, any other overriding concerns.
Tristram Hunt
Does not the figure of 600 point to the fundamental problem with the Bill, which is that it is spatchcocked with the demand for the referendum on the one hand and the reduction in the number of seats on the other? That means that no thought has been given to the role and function of a Member of Parliament, what we want from Members of Parliament and how many should fulfil that function. Instead, this has all been pooled together and pulled out of the air and that is why the Government are going to have problems.
Chris Bryant
I very much agree. One subject that I want to mention is precisely what the job of a Member of Parliament is in the modern era. That has obviously changed in the past 50 years and I pay tribute to the Liberal Democrats, because the kind of pavement politics that they advocated strongly—through which they won a number of seats in the ’80s and ’90s—is one thing that has changed the nature of an MP’s job today. My hon. Friend is right, and I do not think that there has been any consideration of that matter at all.
Susan Elan Jones
I welcome what my hon. Friend said about the balance between the Executive and the legislature. Judging from some of the nodding of heads, other Members did too. However, does he agree with the Deputy Prime Minister, who said to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in July:
“I think we have executive dominance; we have one of the most executive-led forms of government anywhere in the western world”?
I am not sure whether Nick agrees with Nick now, but does my hon. Friend?
Chris Bryant
Yes, that is true because of the structure we have in this country. Sometimes Members talk of checks and balances, which is really an import from the American system where the constitution was expressly written so as to have checks and balances. Incidentally, one of those checks and balances in the American system was that each state should have two Senators regardless of the number of people living in it. For instance, Rhode Island is tiny compared with California, which is larger economically, politically and in every other sense than a large number of countries in the world, but the two states only get two Senators in the Senate. In the British system, we do not have quite the same checks and balances—particularly if the House of Lords is dominated by a coalition in which two parties manage effectively to have control of both Houses, of the Executive and of the legislature.
I do praise some of the things that the Government have done since they took office, such as setting up the Backbench Business Committee. I hope that the whole of business could be handed over to a business committee, because I think that the role of the legislature needs to be reinforced so that the Executive is held better to account.
Various arguments have been advanced for cutting the number of MPs from 650 to 600, one of which makes international comparisons. I have heard the Deputy Prime Minister use that argument several times but it is completely fallacious. It is wrong to compare the British Parliament with the Spanish Parliament, for example, because the vast majority of Spain’s Ministers do not sit in the Spanish Parliament. The Executive are not created out of the Parliament. Similarly, in other countries—the United States being the most obvious example—the Executive do not spring from the legislature, so there are not 95 people who automatically have a second job as a Minister or a Parliamentary Private Secretary. That comparison is therefore inappropriate.
If we are to make any kind of comparison, we must bear in mind differences in the level of devolution or federalisation from one country to another. Comparing the United Kingdom with Germany, for example, is inappropriate because the Länder has far more significant powers than any local authority in England and more powers than the Welsh Assembly.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the checks is for the Government to allow ample time for all clauses in a Bill to be discussed? They have clearly done that on this occasion, but we will not get to relevant Welsh issues because he has spent the past half hour speaking.
Chris Bryant
Bearing in mind what the hon. Gentleman used to say when he was in opposition, I should have thought that he would support the scrutiny of legislation—and one has to talk to scrutinise legislation. No, we have not had enough time to scrutinise the Bill because there are four clauses and some schedules on which we have not had any debate at all. In addition, the Government have tabled 100 pages of amendments that we are going to debate on Monday, which means that we will not be able to debate issues such as the one that he is interested in—cutting the number of Ministers. I shall not take any lectures from him on how long one should speak in the House or on how much scrutiny there should be.
Chris Bryant
The Minister has clearly lost his marbles—it was because it did not give us enough time. The way in which the Government have behaved over this Bill has been an absolute shoddy mistake. They have consistently refused to provide enough time for us to debate the issues. [Interruption.] No, we did not vote against more time—we voted against the programme motion and we will continue to vote against such programme motions because we want to be able to do this job properly.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, given the lack of pre-legislative scrutiny and the lack of cross-party consensus or discussions that are usual with this type of Bill, it is even more important to have the necessary debates and to spend time on the Bill at this stage? I am sure that the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) would be arguing for that if he were in opposition.
Chris Bryant
There has been absolutely no pre-legislative scrutiny. This has not been adumbrated in anybody’s manifesto and it has not been available for anybody to consider in public. There has been no public consultation and no consultation between political parties. Of course, therefore, there should be provision for each clause to be considered for at least one day on the Floor of the House, as this is a major constitutional Bill. I am sorry if Government Members are arguing the exact opposite of what they used to, but my point remains—international comparisons are inappropriate.
The Deputy Prime Minister has also sought to suggest that we have far too many Members of Parliament because other countries have far fewer, but the local population per elected member at local authority level in other countries is very different: in France it is 118 and in Germany it is 350, whereas in the United Kingdom it is 2,603. We have to look at the whole set of elected officials if we are to have a real impression of whether we have too many or too few Members of Parliament. I suspect that most voters in this country quite like having a local Member of Parliament who sits in the House. Of course, if one asks the public, particularly if one does so via the Daily Express or the Daily Mail, “Are there too many Members of Parliament?” they will all answer, “Yes,” but if one asks them, “Should your town not have a Member of Parliament?” or, “Should your town be combined with another town?” they would probably answer, “No, I would prefer to have a local constituency Member of Parliament whose name I know, who is accessible and whose constituency surgery I can get to.”
Glyn Davies
As someone who is fairly new to the House and who is listening to the hon. Gentleman and trying to understand exactly what the Opposition want, I should like to ask him a question. He suggests that there should be a day’s debate on every clause. The last clause simply deals with the short title. Is he suggesting that there should be a day’s debate on the short title?
Chris Bryant
No. I think that that is a slightly facetious point, but we should have a day to debate a clause that will reduce the number of Members of Parliament from 650 to 600, and rejig the boundaries in a way completely different from anything in the past, without any public consultation, without the proposal appearing in any public manifesto, and without any consultation across the parties. None the less, the hon. Gentleman makes an absolutely fair point: some clauses do not need a whole day’s debate.
David T. C. Davies
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way, although I do not want to extend the debate for too long. He must know perfectly well that two manifestos said that the number of MPs would be reduced and that the reduction now proposed is a much smaller one, which should be something that he could support.
Chris Bryant
No. I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman was present at the beginning of my comments—he was doubtless opposing the Government’s measures on S4C—but as I now apparently have to rehearse the argument for him, I can tell him that I was making the point that the number has been arrived at for entirely partisan reasons. It is not the number that was in the Liberal Democrat manifesto, nor the one that was in the Conservative manifesto.
Chris Bryant
Yes, it is higher than both those figures, because it manages to reach a level that hits the number of Labour seats but not the number of Liberal Democrat seats. That is why the number has been chosen, and that is why I oppose it.
Dr John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
I want to calm things down a bit, and take the hon. Gentleman back to the technical point that he made before. He asked what would happen if the Boundary Commission dealt with a whole pile of seats first, got to about 95% and was perfectly satisfied, and then found, because it had to stick to the number 600, that it got into real difficulty and did some very odd things later on. If that was an issue for the Boundary Commission, we might think that some advice would have been given on it. Has he asked the Boundary Commission what its advice is on that point?
Chris Bryant
The Boundary Commission will do what it is told to do. If the law of the land changes, the Boundary Commission’s powers and duties are determined by that legislation and it will do what it is required to do.
Chris Bryant
No, I am not saying that the task is insuperable. Of course it would be possible to draw up the constituencies in the way proposed, but why should one constituency then end up with 95% of the average electorate and another with 105%? [Interruption.] The Deputy Leader of the House keeps on referring to the Rhondda. He obviously has some desire either to do down the people of the Rhondda or to visit the Rhondda, but I am not extending an invitation to him.
Mr Heath
I wonder why the hon. Gentleman believes that the difference between 95% and 105% is a gross intrusion, yet that the difference between my constituency with its 82,000 possible voters, and his constituency with its 52,000, is perfectly all right and needs to be preserved.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman should not misrepresent what I have said. He knows perfectly well that I have never said that there should be a divergence between his constituency with 82,000 possible voters, and mine with 51,000. I am wholeheartedly in favour of greater equalisation. I have argued that for a long time, and the Labour party and its predecessors, going way back to the Chartists in the 1840s, argued for greater equalisation of seat sizes. But if we are to move towards equalisation do we add, on top of that, the idea of a fixed number of seats? That is what I am querying.
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
I have listened to the hon. Gentleman’s argument against 600 seats, but I do not think that I understand his argument for 650 seats, other than that it would give the Labour party an advantage. Is that a partisan argument?
Chris Bryant
Actually, staying at 650 gives the Conservative party more of an advantage.
I was about to argue that we should not cut the number of seats. I would prefer a situation in which we did not fix the total at any particular number: that is why we have framed our amendment as we have. In addition, it is important not to cut the number of Members.
Tristram Hunt
Is not the solution, as the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee has heard, to discuss what the nature of a Member is, to seek an optimum number of Members and then to introduce a rolling programme that moves towards that number, rather than an overnight slashing from 650 to 600 for nakedly partisan reasons?
Chris Bryant
That is wholly my view. That solution gets around the problems, to which I have referred, for the parts of the Union that are more dramatically affected than others, and it would be entirely in keeping with the tradition of this House, which is that we proceed by evolution rather than revolution.
I could understand the argument for reducing the number of seats from 650 to 600 if over the past 50 years the number of seats had dramatically increased in relation to the electorate. In actual fact, however, the number of seats has grown by 3% and the number of voters has increased by 25%, so if hon. Members were being honest they would say, “As we agree that the number of seats should go with the number of voters, we should argue for more seats, rather than fewer.”
In addition, the job has completely and utterly changed over the past few years. In a previous debate, for which not all hon. Members were present, the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) referred to casework, which is a concept in modern politics—
Chris Bryant
Indeed. As my hon. Friend says, she referred to it as social work.
I have always believed that the job of a modern Member is very different from that of somebody 40 or even 30 years ago. For a start, the advent of 24-hour news, e-mails, which arrive at 3 o’clock in the morning, mobile telephony and all the rest of it has meant that the electorate expect us to be available far more and to return their phone calls, messages, e-mails and letters far more frequently.
The number of letters on a policy issue that a Member would have received in the 1960s in any one week would have been fewer than 10. Today, I guess that most Members receive in excess of 250 letters a week on policy issues or on an individual casework issue. If we want fewer Members, but our answer to that is to give them more members of staff, thereby increasing their expenses, we will actually deracinate Members from the communities that they serve. We will make them less accessible to voters, and that is why I believe it is wrong to cut the number of Members.
The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. The hon. Gentleman is making an intervention, not a speech, and I think that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has got the gist of the point.
The Second Deputy Chairman
I do not need to be picked up on that. I am not commenting at all on whether interventions are good or not; I simply point out that the convention of the House is that they should be relatively brief. That is all.
The Second Deputy Chairman
Frankly, that is not a point of order. The programme motion has been agreed by the House and Members are proceeding through the Bill, discussing what they consider to be important. As long as they remain in order, they can do so. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is grateful for having put his point on the record. Perhaps we can now return to amendment 364.
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) made a good point about how seats might be doled out in the different parts of the Union. It is interesting to analyse what might happen to Sheffield: it would be quite difficult to construct a Liberal Democrat seat for Sheffield, Hallam that would survive—so there is a silver lining somewhere in the legislation.
Some communities will end up without their own representation if we cut the number of seats from 650 to 600 and insist on mathematical perfection. That is a problem.
Chris Bryant
Who knows what ambitions the Deputy Prime Minister has? Perhaps he will be looking not for a Liberal Democrat seat but for another kind of seat, come the next general election.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw excoriated me for having only 250 pieces of communication. I meant 250 letters a week; the letter, of course, is almost something from the past these days. The vast majority of the correspondence from my constituency comes in the form of a telephone call, text message, Facebook message or through some other means.
Most members of the public expect a reply from the MP, not from some flunky or somebody working in the office for free. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) is picking me up on the word “flunky”. There are no flunkies working in my office—nor, for that matter, do I ever use staff who have offered to work for free. It is one of the shames of this Parliament that so many MPs should have to survive on the free staffing provided by interns. We ought to be moving towards having paid staff.
Another argument that I would adduce in favour of not cutting the numbers from 650 to 600 is that over the past 50 years Parliament has become more and more the place where career politicians intend to come, stay and make their livelihood. Many people have a much more diverse history than just having worked as a special adviser or for a political party before coming here. The hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) is a former GP; in fact, I think that she still serves as one. As we know, the hon. Member for Corby (Ms Bagshawe) is an author—and, of course, a former member of the Labour party. She has a diverse career behind her.
Chris Bryant
I am not sure whether the hon. Lady is referring to her literature or her former party membership.
This Parliament has survived because of some of the mavericks and eccentrics, and the diversity of Members that it has managed to bring in here. If we reduce the numbers from 650 to 600, it will be the mavericks and the independents who will be disappearing and we will have more of the party political placepeople. That is a problem. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge) is saying, rather unkindly, that I am such a placeman. [Interruption.] The Minister is trying to help by asking me what I think I am. I do not think that this clause is where we go into what I think I am: the meaning of life would be a bit too complicated, and it would go a little wide of the debate, Ms Primarolo.
Roger Williams
If an electorate of 85,000 is reduced to 75,000, how does that make it more difficult for a constituent to contact his MP? Surely every MP should be equally available to their constituents.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman represents an area in Wales part of which, I guess, may end up in a constituency that is very large.
Chris Bryant
That did not make it better, and it was larger in an era when the expectations of a Member of Parliament to be present and available were much reduced. There was a time when MPs, when they visited their constituencies—once a year—were greeted with a brass band. That is not true today. [Interruption.] It is certainly not true for me, and I can see that it is not true for anybody else either.
Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)
I have read the hon. Gentleman’s book, and I think that he is referring to Stafford Cripps, who was greeted by a brass band when he arrived at Bristol Temple Meads. The Member who currently represents Bristol Temple Meads is certainly not greeted in that way.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman is right: I am referring to Stafford Cripps. The book is not one that is available in all good bookshops, but there is a copy in the Library should any hon. Member wish to read it.
I want to end with the words of Jim Callaghan, a former Prime Minister and a Member who represented south Wales:
“Constituencies are not merely areas bounded by a line on a map; they are living communities with a unity, a history and a personality of their own.”—[Official Report, 19 June 1969; Vol. 785, c. 742.]
That has always been how we have done things in this House and in this country, and I believe that it is how we should continue to do them in future. That is why I have moved this amendment, and why I hope that we will not reduce the number of seats from 650 to a fixed number of 600.
Mr Mark Field
I must confess that I totally accept the need to equalise electorates, which is why I have tabled amendments in a later group, which I suspect we will not get to, suggesting that we leave out of the Bill the gerrymandering—there is no other word to use—of three Scottish seats. That has occurred through a limit of 13,000 sq km being plucked out of the sky to allow Ross, Skye and Lochaber, and probably also Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, to be seen as exceptional. If we equalise constituencies it could be regrettable for such communities, but we want electorates of a similar size.
In fairness to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), I think that equal constituencies will mean that we divide the country up into 10 or 15 different areas, from which we can draw up the 600 seats, rather than suddenly realising when we get to the middle of Scotland that we are 10 or 15 seats short. I fully accept the need to equalise electorates, and it is greatly to be regretted that we are not doing that for all seats. It seems that a rather grubby little compromise has been put in place. In the modern, technological era, I disagree with the idea that the Western Isles and Orkney and Shetland, the two smallest seats in the UK, should be protected. Orkney and Shetland was part of the Wick Burghs constituency at one time during the last century, and the Western Isles were part of the Ross and Cromarty and Inverness-shire constituencies. It is a bogus argument that those constituencies somehow have great historical relevance.
Austin Mitchell
That is absolutely right and I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend. The real problem with the British constitution is that we do not have one. The constitution in this country is what the Government can get away with. If they can get away with clause 9, which weakens democracy and the Commons and strengthens the Executive, they can get away with more or less anything, with the willing concurrence of the supine Liberals, who are supporting a measure that will weaken them—hopefully—for their own execution.
There is no mystique to how I arrived at the figure of 650 for amendment 259. I just put it in. That is the number of MPs now and the Commons will function efficiently with it. There used to be 700 MPs in the 19th century when the Irish were here. They had to fit in a Chamber the size of this one, which seats about 420—fortunately, most of them did not come—but 650 is a good working total, which is why I chose it.
The consequence of having 600 MPs, as proposed in clause 9, is that the redistribution will be more brutal and more massive. It will be a blitzkrieg of a redistribution, but there will be no democratic controls on it. The scale of the redistribution is determined by the size of the House.
Chris Bryant
I just wanted to correct a fact that my hon. Friend gave. He said that there were 700 Members in the 19th century owing to the Irish, but in fact, the only time that there were more than 700 Members was from 1918 to 1922. That redistribution was brought about by the Liberals.
Austin Mitchell
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. I took history at university, but my thesis was on the Whig party in opposition from 1812 to 1830, which was very good preparation for being in the Labour party in the 1980s and 1990s. I did not get as far as the Irish settlement of 1922, and I always regret that. I shall go to him for some tutorials. He is obviously better informed than I am.
I arrived at the figure of 650 because that seems to work well, and I do not want a reduction. As my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) pointed out, a reduction in the number of MPs and a smaller House will make the Executive proportionately stronger. I would like to see some proposals from the Government to reduce the number of Executive appointments. There are more than 100, which means that they have a huge bought vote in the House to overrule the wishes of the Members. I want Members to be stronger and the Executive to be weaker, but this measure will have the opposite effect.
Austin Mitchell
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. There has been a lot of damaging criticism and abuse of MPs as a result of the revelations in The Daily Telegraph last year, and some of that was, frankly, scandalous. It has lowered us in the public’s estimation, but people still turn to us. They need us for all the problems that they come up against. We are the defenders of last resort. We are the ombudsmen for our constituents.
Chris Bryant
But is it not also true that, especially for some of the most vulnerable people in some of the most vulnerable communities, we are the only advocates they can afford, whether we are advocating their cause here or, for example, at their bank? We represent them in all kinds of circumstances that no one would have conceived of as part of the job 50 years ago.
Chris Bryant
In that case, will the hon. Lady explain why somebody might have said this at the Oxfordshire boundary inquiry in 2003:
“Somebody might take the view that…there are already too many Members of Parliament at Westminster. They may take the view, depending on what happens in the European constitution, that Westminster has less to do, with less MPs – I certainly hope that is not the case”?
That was the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron).
Mrs Laing
I am sure that my right hon. Friend meant what he said. I do not disagree with him—what he said is fine. The hon. Gentleman is forgetting that we are talking about an evolving political situation and an evolving world. As other hon. Members have said, the whole situation is evolving, which is why it is time for the House to look at itself, count its numbers and consider what is right.
The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) and I had an exchange yesterday on alphabetical preferences on ballot papers, which is relevant to the proposal for 600 MPs. I am no longer concerned about alphabetical preferences. Since yesterday, when he said that he could call himself A1 Austin and I could call myself Mrs Aardvark, I am pleased to tell him that I have received, by e-mail, a proposal of marriage from a Mr Aaron Aardvark. I had to decline that kind proposal because I could not possibly involve the poor gentleman in the expense of marrying me in order to improve my electoral prospects. That would be gerrymandering and manipulation of the system beyond the call of duty. However, it was a helpful discussion.
The real principle before us this evening is one vote, one value. That is what democracy is all about. Every Member who is elected to this House should be elected by an equal number of voters, at least potentially—[Interruption.] Of course we have a tolerance level of 5%.
Mr Syms
Most Parliaments set their own size—that is part of most constitutions—but two that do not are the UK Parliament and the Bundestag in Germany. The reason the Bundestag does not do so is that it has a list system to compensate the first-past-the-post Members, and when the German electoral commission looks at the arithmetic division of the proportional votes, to ensure that they are proportionate, it can adjust the size of the Bundestag, sometimes by up to a dozen seats. However, the history of this country is that, by and large, we have allowed the Boundary Commission to go out and draw up the boundaries, and then to come back with numbers. However, what happens is that there is creep. Every time we have a boundary commission, the numbers go up. [Interruption.] No, they do, with one exception, which is when the numbers for Scotland are reduced. On the whole, however, the numbers creep up. Therefore, with this Bill, we are being asked to give guidance to the Boundary Commission, so that it can go away and then come back with a report.
Chris Bryant
How can the hon. Gentleman explain, then, the fact that there were 659 MPs in the previous Parliament, while there are 650 in this Parliament? What he is saying is patently untrue.
Mr Syms
It is; it happened because of the Scottish reduction. The reality is that we need to build a slight reduction into the system, otherwise we will have a constant creep-up of the numbers. Is it very much more difficult to represent 76,000 electors than it is to represent 69,000? I do not think that it is terribly difficult—we have the staff and the commitment to do it. All that we are talking about is drawing up fair boundaries, with a modest reduction in the House, which is not going to make a major difference to most people in this House, except in Wales.
The problem with Wales is over-representation. There have been changes in Northern Ireland, where the number of seats was increased because the constituencies were very large, as well as in Scotland and England; Wales is the one part of the Union that is out of line. I understand the pain and difficulty that the proposals will cause in Wales, because there will be quite a radical change there, but throughout most of the UK, it will be a very modest change indeed.
Mr Syms
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. For historic reasons, it will depend on where any such changes might be made. This is one of the arguments that he will be able to put to the Boundary Commission when it brings forward its proposals—[Interruption.] Yes, he will; people will still have the capacity to make representations to the commission on the reports on the constituencies.
Chris Bryant
I am sorry, but the hon. Gentleman is wrong. People will be able to make representations only in writing, and they will not know what representations other people have made. They will not be able to inform their arguments through debate. Consequently, we shall not have the fullness of the public inquiry process that we have at the moment. With such radical changes being proposed for the whole of the country, surely it would make sense to maintain public inquiries.
Mr Syms
I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. The system that is being brought in will provide for a 12-week period in which people will be allowed to make representations—[Interruption.] Twelve weeks is a long time. If there is real concern about crossing a county boundary, I am sure that parish councils, local authorities, MPs and councillors will be able to make full representations in that time, and that the Boundary Commission will be able to hear them and come to a decision.
Mr Heath
It is difficult to maintain a process based on the equalisation of seats, and then to sustain the case that an island, which I accept has very particular characteristics of its own and is very large, but which, unlike Orkney and Shetland and Na h-Eileanan an Iar, is within near reach of mainland Britain, should be treated as an exception. However, the hon. Gentleman will continue to make that case, and I understand exactly why he wishes to do so. I know that he speaks for many of his constituents, although not all, and I am sure that he accepts that some of his constituents feel very strongly that the Isle of Wight has natural economic links with areas of mainland Hampshire, and that a parliamentary linkage could be of benefit. But of course, he represents 100,000 electors, and does so very well—
Mr Heath
I am addressing the Chair, and the Chair is seated at the Table, not on the Opposition Benches.
As I say, the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) needs to continue to press his case. We shall listen to the arguments that he makes, but we shall also try to maintain the principle of a common—[Interruption]
The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. If hon. Members can be quieter, the entire Committee will be able to hear what Mr Heath is saying, so please calm down. We have only another 11 minutes left, as hon. Members know, before we need to move on.
Points of Order
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Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the Deputy Leader of the House for what he said. I am trying to wrap it up, but of course we must hear from Chris Bryant.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I think the Deputy Leader of the House is somewhat mistaken in his interpretation of what happened yesterday evening. I think there was a clear desire by many hon. Members not just to debate the particular issue of thresholds but actually to debate clause 6, which has not been debated at all in any shape or form in this House. [Interruption.] The Parliamentary Secretary is saying from a sedentary position that I was wasting time. I profoundly object to the fact that when we choose to scrutinise his legislation, he is calling into question my good faith.
The truth of the matter is that the Government did not provide enough time for the debate. In addition, the Deputy Leader of the House last night, when he suggested to me that he was bringing forward this new motion, said that it was because all the rest of the stuff that we were going to debate tomorrow was a pile of dross and did not need very much analysis. I hope that there will be a process of ensuring that the House of Lords is made fully aware of the fact that today’s programme motion makes absolutely no difference to whether or not yesterday we had any opportunity to consider the three clauses and three schedules that were before the House.
Mr Speaker
I certainly cannot go into all of that. Suffice it to say that I think the point that the hon. Gentleman has just made constitutes a self-fulfilling prophecy; in so far as he is concerned that the other place should be aware of his interpretation of last night’s events, he has made it aware of his interpretation by what he has just said. It is on the record and I am sure it will be studied carefully there and elsewhere.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) for giving me notice of his point of order. It is not for me to rule on what has happened in Committee of the Whole House. On the wider issue he raises, it is not unprecedented—the hon. Gentleman has been a Member of the House since 1984, so he will testify to the truth of this—for a Minister to move a Back-Bench amendment, even if he or she does not wish to vote for it. As the First Deputy Chairman said last night:
“What the Government propose is orderly under Standing Order No. 83D(2)”—[Official Report, 18 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 767.],
although it is, as some hon. Members have observed—including, today, the hon. Gentleman—somewhat unusual. I am sure that hon. Members will also have noted the opportunities open to them, as has been remarked, on Report. Members present will certainly have noted what the Deputy Leader of the House has just said.
I hope that is helpful; I am not keen to take, and indeed I am keen not to take, further points of order on that matter, but I think we have a point of order from Mr. Andrew Rosindell.
Business of the House
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Sir George Young
The hon. Gentleman’s question is tied up with the CSR and the resources that will be available to the Secretary of State for Transport. However, I will convey to the Department his strong bid for continuing investment in light rail in Nottingham.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
May we have a debate on Foreign Office finances before the comprehensive spending review is announced? In June the Foreign Secretary announced that there would be £55 million of Foreign Office cuts in the current financial year, and in a written ministerial statement he set out where £18 million of those cuts would be found. However, he has not told us the rest of the story. Will the BBC World Service be cut in the current financial year? Will the British Council be cut in the current financial year? Or—as has been suggested—has the Foreign Office budget received a £37 million bung from the Department for International Development, which would directly contradict what the Leader of the House said earlier about the DIFD budget being protected?
Sir George Young
The hon. Gentleman says that we have not told the rest of the story. The people who did not tell the rest of the story were Labour Members, who went into the last election committed to a reduction of some 20% in public expenditure, while giving no indication whatsoever of where those cuts would come from. Until there is some honesty from Labour Members about how they would have confronted the legacy that they have left us, they will have absolutely no credibility on the issue.
Queen’s Speech (Date)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I shall let the Leader of the House into a secret: when we were in government, we did not introduce perfect legislation all the time. Just about the only thing that managed to make us drop particular bits of Bills or individual clauses or bring in and support amendments was the fact that we might lose the whole Bill because the end of the Session was coming along. In all honesty, I think that although it might be absolutely right to have proper annual Sessions when we go over to a fixed-term Parliament, having one two-year Session is a problem and he ought to reconsider.
Sir George Young
I am grateful for the admission at the beginning of the hon. Gentleman’s remarks that the last Government did not get everything right. One mistake we are determined not to make is that of giving inadequate time to the House of Commons to debate serious Bills. We are proposing more days in the current Session in order to give longer time for the consideration of the Bills that we have introduced. He also totally overlooked the provision, which all Governments have if they find that they are reaching the problems that he has just outlined, of carrying over Bills.
Privilege
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That the matter of hacking of honourable and right honourable Members’ mobile phones be referred to the Committee on Standards and Privileges.
The vast majority of those who had their phones hacked were not MPs, but of necessity this motion deals solely with the hacking of MPs’ phones. That is not because we are in any sense more important than anyone else—it is a scandal that the royal princes, footballers, actors and, in many cases, ordinary members of the public had their phone messages intercepted and interfered with. While I passionately believe in the freedom of the press, and agree that investigative journalism is an important and proud tradition in this country, illegal hacking, suborning police officers and obtaining information by illegal means do not enhance our democracy. In fact, they undermine it.
This motion is exclusively about this House because I contend that it is a contempt of Parliament and a severe breach of parliamentary privilege to intercept the mobile phone messages of elected Members, to tap their phones, to bug their conversations, to intercept their e-mails or to seek to do so.
There are those who would want to play this down. People have said to me, “After all, what’s the fuss about a few phone messages?” I ask hon. Members what the last phone message was that they had left on their answer phone. It might have been a soppy, sentimental message from their wife or partner, but it might have been something far more significant. It might have been a Minister ringing about a piece of legislation—in parliamentary language, a proceeding in Parliament. It might have been the Home Secretary or the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland ringing about a highly sensitive matter and leaving a message. Or it might have been a constituent ringing their elected Member of Parliament, leaving a message and asking them to return a call about something that was highly confidential to them.
The House has rightly been very angry in the past when it has been felt that the right of an MP to speak without let, hindrance or interception, which stems in essence from the Bill of Rights 1689, has been violated. It took action on several occasions in the 18th century, on many occasions in the 19th century and on more than 15 occasions in the 20th century. It is for that reason that we have a secure doctrine—the Wilson doctrine—that MPs will not be bugged by the security services, and I am sure that were there any information that MPs had been bugged by the security services, many hon. Members would be on their feet to condemn it.
The reason this reference is necessary now is simple. The Culture, Media and Sport Committee, which is admirably chaired by the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale)—he should probably be the right hon. Member for Maldon, and for all I know he might be the right hon. Member—produced an excellent report on the wider issue. Since then, however, there has been new information. First, several MPs, including myself, have contacted the Met and have discovered that we were the subjects of Glenn Mulcaire’s investigations. In the words of the Metropolitan police, we were persons of interest to Mr Mulcaire. I am sorry to say that in very few, if any, of those cases have the police pursued any lines of investigation.
Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)
I commend the hon. Gentleman on bringing this debate forward and on seeking to have the matter referred to the Standards and Privileges Committee. Is he aware that the Information Commissioner published a report, “What Price Privacy Now?”, in December 2006, in which he unveiled the solid evidence that illegal information had been supplied to 305 named journalists working for a variety of newspapers, and does he agree that, if the Press Complaints Commission had any gumption or mettle, and was capable of investigating this sort of issue, we would not need to refer this matter to the Select Committee? Indeed, the Information Commissioner said that
“the Press Complaints Commission (and its associated Code of Practice Committee of Editors) should take a much stronger line to tackle any involvement by the press in the illegal trade in personal information”.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman is right. If hon. Members have not had an opportunity to read the Information Commissioner’s report, I urge them to do so. It is quite astounding. It lists the number of transactions positively identified: the Daily Mail, 952; the Sunday People, 802; the Daily Mirror, 681; The Mail on Sunday, 266; the News of the World, 182; and so on. It is an absolutely devastating report, and my concern is that the PCC has done nothing, and hardly anyone else has done anything. It is time that the House took responsibility for what areas we can.
The House has rightly been angered about this issue. The Culture, Media and Sport Committee produced a report, but there is more information. I suspect that, so far, we have seen only the tip of the iceberg in relation to right hon. and hon. Members, and that the hacking extended not just to Liberal Democrat and Labour MPs but to a large number of Conservative Members. I urge every right hon. and hon. Member who has any suspicion that they might have been a person of interest to Mr Mulcaire, which probably includes the vast majority of us, to write to the Met asking whether they were included, because Assistant Commissioner Yates made it clear the other day, in evidence to another Select Committee, that he has not been notifying Members. We have to do the work ourselves.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Standards and Privileges Committee should look in particular at why the police did not approach Members named in the information they had in order to acquire more evidence from those Members, who were unaware—and still are unaware, in many cases—that their names were on the list? Is that not a hugely important issue that the Committee should investigate?
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend is right. If somebody went to the police and alleged that somebody was stalking them, and the police visited the stalker’s house and found not only photographs of, and personal details about, the person who made the allegation, but photographs of another 20 people, I presume and hope that the police would go to those other 20 people and inform them that their personal situation had been compromised and that they had been the subjects of that person’s activities. The police should have engaged in precisely the same duty of care towards not just right hon. and hon. Members, but any member of the public who had been the subject of Mr Mulcaire’s attention.
There is a second piece of new information. Two former members of staff at the News of the World have said that the hacking was far more extensive than so far revealed. Indeed, today, Paul McMullan, a former features executive and member of the News of the World’s investigations team, has said that he personally commissioned several hundred illegal acts, and that the use of illegal techniques at the newspaper was absolutely no secret.
Thirdly, although it has been stated that the case was an isolated bad apple, the Information Commissioner, as the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) has mentioned, has suggested that the unlawful trade in confidential personal information is extensive across the media, citing more than 1,000 transactions positively identified by a large number of newspapers. Looking through the list, it seems that the only newspaper that is not included is the Rhondda Leader.
Why refer the matter to the Standards and Privileges Committee? First, because it is the senior Committee of the House. Secondly, because, by referring it to the Committee, it will have the support and full authority of the whole House—nobody can gainsay it. When the matter of the arrest of the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) was referred to a specially created committee of privileges, that committee resolved that such an instance should be referred not to a special committee, but to the Standards and Privileges Committee.
Chris Bryant
I see that the right hon. and learned Gentleman who chaired that committee is nodding his assent.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
I welcome the Speaker’s decision, in the best traditions of the House, to allow this debate, so that all Members of the House can defend the rights of all Members to carry out their duties without having their phones hacked into. Does my hon. Friend share my hope that there will be full co-operation from Downing street, not least because the lesson of Watergate is that the cover-up is worse than the crime?
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend is right. One of the reasons for referring the matter to the Standards and Privileges Committee is that it carries the authority of the whole House, and I hope that that would mean that every right hon. and hon. Member, including those at Downing street, would want to co-operate.
Chris Bryant
I see the Leader of the House nodding his assent. I am sure that it would be true.
I urge the Committee to use all the powers at its disposal, including the power to summon any person it wishes and to require them to attend, because some people refused to attend the previous inquiry held by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. If necessary, it should issue warrants to require witnesses to attend, and if they still refuse, it should use the offices of the Serjeant at Arms. Likewise, it should be free to use its power to require a witness to answer a question under pain of admonishment by the House. We should not accept it when witnesses simply refuse to give a straight answer to a straight question. That should not be standard practice, which it is becoming. The House should become far more carnivorous.
Given that some of the issues we are dealing with are matters of privacy, and we would not want to invade the privacy of those who have already had their phones hacked, the Committee should feel free to take some of its evidence in private if necessary. It should not shy away from recommending motions to the House enforcing its decisions, if it feels it appropriate to do so. Those decisions could include barring a person or persons from the precinct of Parliament, withdrawing a pass from any pass holder or a group of pass holders, or calling somebody to the Bar of the House for admonishment by the House.
It is for the Committee to decide precisely how it conducts its inquiry. Indeed, it should be free to decide the timing of its inquiry and report, how best it interacts with other Select Committees and, importantly, how best it avoids conflicting with any ongoing police investigation. I hope that there is an ongoing police investigation, because from what I have heard so far from the police, I have no confidence that there is a full police investigation into every avenue, searching for evidence. I would particularly abhor the fact that the police seem to have developed a new theology, whereby it is for the victim to discover and provide the evidence, rather than for the police to engage in an investigation to find it.
I suggest that the Committee might look at the following areas. How many MPs, including Ministers, Opposition spokespeople and Back Benchers of all parties, were the subject of investigation by Glenn Mulcaire—or, in the police’s words, a “person of interest” to Mr Mulcaire? Did they include serving Government Members or people who are now in senior Government positions? Was the hacking limited to the News of the World or did it include other newspapers? Were the security services notified of the hacking of Ministers’ and others’ phones? Are there any further security measures that this House should take to protect Members’ correspondence? Did the Met fully perform its duty of care towards the House by contacting all Members whose names and phone numbers were included in the material secured when it raided Mr Mulcaire’s offices?
Have any witnesses who have already given evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on the matter lied to the House? Should the interception or attempted interception of right hon. and hon. Members’ phone messages or e-mails be considered an explicit breach of privilege? Should the House adopt a new resolution defining privilege in the modern era to include modern technology? Should the law be changed to strengthen further the provisions against the hacking of the phones of MPs and members of the public? What action should be taken by the House against those who have lied to it, breached its privilege or shown contempt to it?
I hope that Members in all parts of the House will support the motion. This issue is not about one man or the one hon. Member whose case has already been to court. It is, however, about what kind of investigative journalism we want in this country—searching, yes; critical, caustic, aggressive and cynical, maybe; but not illegal. It is about whether this House will be supine when its Members’ phones are hacked, or whether it will take action when the democratic rights of MPs to do their job without illegal let, hindrance or interception has been traduced. We have taken action before as a House; we should take action today.
Summer Adjournment
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
It is a great shame that the hon. Member for Southend West (Mr Amess) is not in his place, as I would like to correct something he said earlier. He referred to a much-quoted sentence when he said that this Parliament was the “mother of all Parliaments”. In fact, this was originally said by the Liberal John Bright, but when he said it, he was not referring to this Parliament as being the mother of all Parliaments, but saying that England was the mother of Parliament. He, like many Liberals, was wrong as well, because the longest-standing Parliament was not this country’s, but the Icelandic Althingi, which first sat in 929. We should at times be a bit more careful about our history.
That brings me to the first issue I want to raise, which relates to the pernicious and now-published Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. It is pernicious because, for a start, it shackles together two issues that have no proper right to be in the same Bill. If they have to be in the same Bill, they should be in the other published Bill that provides for fixed-term Parliaments; it would then be a general constitutional reform Bill. Indeed, elements of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill presume that the other Bill is going to be carried, so there is an argument for putting all three issues together, but not just two.
The Bill is also pernicious because it will increase the power of patronage in this House. Cutting the number of seats from 650 to 600 without cutting the number of Ministers will increase the role that patronage plays in this House. I note in passing that the Liberals have decided to add yet more patronage by creating these rather strange Liberal Whips. The tentacles of patronage needed to keep this coalition together are, as I say, pernicious.
The most pernicious element of all relates to the process that the Bill presumes will happen. Accordingly, the Boundary Commissions will draw up reports for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England. They will send them to the Secretary of State who will then— I am not joking, but the legislation might be—
“lay…before Parliament…the draft of an Order in Council for giving effect with or without modifications”
to the recommendations. In other words, the Secretary of State can draw up precisely what the constituency boundaries look like and this House will not be able to amend it because it will be an Order in Council. All we could do is vote for or against it. That is indeed pernicious.
The Deputy Prime Minister has referred on television and radio to the coalition introducing the best reforms since the Great Reform Act of 1832. This is not a great reform Bill: it is a great patronage Bill; it is a great gerrymandering Bill; it is a great partisan shenanigans Bill—and it is also, incidentally, the great rotten boroughs for Liberals in Scotland Bill. In case anyone is not certain, I am wholly opposed to it.
The second issue I want to discuss is S4C, although I understand that this may not be a matter of scintillating interest to everyone in the House. We heard over the weekend that the Government are going to cut the funding for S4C by 6% every year for the next four years. This has not, of course, been announced to the House, but I understand that S4C has been told about it. The funding of S4C is laid down in statute. In order to change its funding—I think it would be a big mistake to take £24 million out of the Welsh broadcasting economy—the Government would introduce primary legislation, unless they are doing some kind of dodgy deal in the background which they are not prepared to tell us about in the House.
I urge the Deputy Leader of the House to reply to each of the issues that I am raising, or to ensure that Ministers do so. I believe that, as we move into a fully digital era, the existence of S4C is all the more important for my constituents. It enables them to see Welsh coverage on television, not only in the Welsh language but, increasingly, in the English language.
I also urge the Deputy Leader of the House to consider the issue of the funding of the BBC. Many people in this country believe that the BBC is one of the greatest institutions that Britain has ever given to our society and to the world. We all have our complaints about individual journalists—about their being biased, or not biased—but the honest truth is that around the world, the BBC and the World Service are well respected and admired. Let me say to the Government that anyone in any other country would be astounded at the thought that we would cut the funding of the BBC by any significant amount.
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend is making an extremely good speech. I particularly approve of his comments about the BBC. Does he agree that the BBC could provide a service for my constituents in Harrow by investigating the circumstances in which ColArt, which runs a factory in my constituency employing some 200 people, wants to shift manufacturing operations from Wealdstone to France, thus putting at risk the jobs of many of my constituents? Is that not a subject that the BBC could usefully investigate?
Chris Bryant
I congratulate my hon. Friend on the phenomenal sagacity and dexterity that he has just shown. Obviously there should be at least an investigative programme by the likes of “Panorama”—if it has any time to spare between investigations of the shenanigans in the Liberal party.
The serious point I am making is that cutting the BBC licence fee has absolutely nothing to do with cutting the deficit, and that, through its investment in all the creative industries, the BBC plays a vital role in many other parts of our British national identity.
That brings me to my next point. One of our actions as a Government of which I am particularly proud was our introduction of the artist’s resale right in the United Kingdom, which has benefited 1,827 artists—although it may be a bit more since this morning. Ten million pounds have gone to those artists. It is mostly the smaller names rather than the very famous people who are receiving the money, but an investment is also being made in the important artistic community in this country. The British art market put out a rumour that our action would destroy it, but in fact the market has risen by roughly 23% year on year since 2003. I urge the Government to ensure that the right applies not only to living artists but to the estates and families of artists who have died, because they are often the people who maintain the heritage of those artists.
Finally, I want to raise another issue relating to south Wales. The defence training academy at St Athan will dramatically improve the quality of training that we give our armed forces. It will provide between 5,000 and 6,000 jobs in south Wales, and should therefore be seen not as an optional add-on, but as essential to our defence of the realm.
Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Heath
I know that a number of hon. Members share the hon. Gentleman’s view. Ironically, perhaps, the concerns about early-day motions are expressed in early-day motion 432, which sets out a similar view to his. The problem is that many of our constituents are led to believe by campaigning organisations that EDMs have an efficacy well beyond what we in the House know to be the case. The matter will have to be considered by the House authorities and Committees, but he makes an important point.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Early-day motions are an important way for the House, and particularly Back Benchers, to show interest, concern and dedication to a particular cause. I urge the hon. Gentleman not to make it more difficult for Members to sign early-day motions—I know that there are difficulties deciding which to sign and which not to sign—but to make it easier. Currently, we can table a question online, but we cannot add our name to an early-day motion online. Surely that facility could be introduced.
Mr Heath
In the past financial year, a total of 2,531 EDMs were tabled, with 120,158 names added. Clearly, the obstacles are not insuperable, but the hon. Gentleman raises an important point, which he has raised with me previously and which I have taken up with the House authorities. I hope that we will soon make progress on the matter.
Sir Stuart Bell
That is an interesting point. In 2007 the Procedure Committee said there should be no electronic tabling of EDMs without stronger authentication than that in place for questions.
Sir Stuart Bell
My hon. Friend asks why. The Procedure Committee said there should not be such electronic tabling unless
“significantly stronger authentication than is currently required for parliamentary questions can be guaranteed”.
The Procedure Committee went on to say that it cannot therefore
“recommend the introduction of e-tabling for EDMs.”
I am happy to answer the hon. Gentleman’s question, and my hon. Friend’s question from a sedentary position.
Information for Backbenchers on Statements
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Hollobone
I am grateful for your ruling, Mr Speaker. Should there be any members of the Press Gallery up there this evening, they should be commended on turning up, although as you know, the reputations of lots of members of the Press Gallery precedes them, whether they are here or not.
If you will forgive me, Mr Speaker, I got stuck in 1947, with the resignation of the then Chancellor of the Exchequer. However, to move on from that, the Library has produced some valuable intelligence on the issue of ministerial statements not being made correctly. I understand that in the 27 years since 1983, there have been 44 incidents on the Floor of the House when the Speaker or a Deputy Speaker has had to make a ruling about the pre-release of information. Indeed, I fully expect the total figure to be somewhat higher. We are therefore talking about a regular occurrence, and it is clearly difficult for any Government, of whatever colour, to get things right. That is why we now have an opportunity, with this new politics, to try to ensure that we have a protocol in place that everyone can understand and which it is far more difficult to fall foul of.
Even though the Backbench Business Committee is a new innovation, the issue of ministerial statements going wrong has been discussed on the Floor of the House and by Select Committees before. In February 2001, the Public Administration Committee conducted an inquiry into the ministerial code. Its findings make for interesting reading, so perhaps I could indulge the House for a moment by reading them:
“There is one respect in which the accountability requirements of Ministers in relation to Parliament have been weakened over the lifetime of the Ministerial Code. This concerns policy announcements to Parliament. The 1949 version of the Code provided that: ‘When Parliament is in session, important announcements of Government policy should be made, in the first instance, in Parliament.’ However, in…1997…the formulation has become: ‘When Parliament is in session, Ministers will want to bear in mind the desire of Parliament that the most important announcements of Government policy should be made, in the first instance, to Parliament.’ This represents a reduction in parliamentary accountability. We recommend that when the Ministerial Code is next revised the spirit of the original wording should be restored in respect of announcements of important Government policy.”
Basically, the Government of the day, having been ticked off, accepted that recommendation. However, my contention—and that of the Backbench Business Committee—is that despite being corrected by the Public Administration Committee in 2001, the procedure is still not clear enough to the Government of the day.
I have to say that I am extremely disappointed that the new coalition Government have got off to a bad start on the release of policy information to this House—I should also say that I would have said that whichever Government were now in power. The coalition Government got off to a bad start with the Queen’s Speech, which is an extremely poor place to get off to a bad start. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) raised the matter in the House on a point of order on 25 May, when he said to you, Mr Speaker:
“You rightly used to excoriate Labour Ministers if ever we made announcements before making them to this House, so will you make sure that that lot over there do not announce things to the press—as they have done, day in, day out over the past 10 days—without first bringing them before this House?”
You, Sir, then said:
“This gives me the opportunity to say at the start of this new Parliament that I shall continue to expect, as I said two days after first being elected Speaker last June, that ‘Ministers ought to make key statements to the House before they are made elsewhere’… If they do otherwise, I—and, I am sure, the House—will expect to hear explanations and apologies as necessary.”—[Official Report, 25 May 2010; Vol. 510, c. 53.]
You have been as good as your word, Mr Speaker. The Backbench Business Committee—and, I hope, the whole House tonight—will praise you for that, because you insisted that Ministers who have not complied come to the Chamber to apologise to the House. [Interruption.] Yes, and rightly so. Why? Because we are, rightly or wrongly, elected by our constituents to be their representatives in this national Parliament; and if a Minister is deliberately or inadvertently releasing information before telling the people’s representatives, they should be called to this House to apologise. To the credit of the Ministers involved, even though they made a mistake with the pre-release of information, they have had the good grace to come here and apologise—and I now make a partisan point—unlike Ministers in the last Government, who never did so.
It is wholly appropriate for the Opposition of the day to hold Ministers to account for the release of information. That is part of the job of Opposition. However, that is also the job of all Back Benchers, whatever party we represent, and it is no use Government Members not being prepared to criticise Government Ministers because we are supposed to be on the same side. We have to think wider than that if we are to fulfil our proper roles as Back Benchers. We must have the guts to stand up and say to Ministers on our own side, if necessary, that this is not right and not the way to treat the House of Commons of the UK. We should encourage Ministers to take a professional pride in releasing information only to this House in the first instance.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is making a very sensible speech, and I look forward to his promotion to the Conservative Front Bench in the very near future. Is not the problem the fact that there is not really any sanction? The worst possible sanction is that Mr Speaker says, “You have got to come and make an apology”, at the end of which not much happens. Would it not be better if we had a proper system of sanctions so that Ministers could, if they broke this code, be referred to the Committee on Standards and Privileges?
Mr Hollobone
The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent contribution, and I hope the Procedure Committee will take it into account. I am sure he would want to put the point that he just raised to that Committee.
Business of the House
Chris Bryant Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Sir George Young
I am not sure that it is fair to describe it as a mix-up. The Deputy Prime Minister has been giving evidence all morning to a Select Committee, and I am sure that there was an opportunity to raise this issue. When the AV and boundaries legislation comes before the House, there will be ample opportunity to explore these issues in more depth.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The Government have said that they want to raise 20% of the money to cut the deficit from tax rises and 80% from budget cuts. The Leader of the House has announced that on Monday at 10 pm without any debate we will agree all outstanding estimates, which is how we decide how much money we will give to each Department. If four times as much money is to come from cuts as from tax rises, will he ensure that we have four times as much time to debate those cuts, and on amendable motions? The experience of the last two weeks has shown that when cuts are pushed through with more haste than is strictly speaking necessary, the House does not carry the nation with it. Also, which estimates are yet outstanding and to be agreed on Monday?
Sir George Young
If the hon. Gentleman looks at Standing Order No. 55, he will see that that is the procedure under which we deal with all outstanding estimates. I agree entirely that the House should have adequate opportunity to question the Government on spending decisions. We have the Treasury Committee, the departmental Select Committees and debates on the Budget. We may also have debates on any public expenditure decisions that are taken. If the hon. Gentleman has better ways to hold the Government to account on financial measures, I would be interested to hear from him. In the past, we may not have spent enough time looking at such issues; perhaps we should refocus on them