Prayers

Debate between Chris Bryant and Aaron Bell

Friday 24th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the House do sit in private.

Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 163).

Question negatived.

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I hate to bring to the beginning of the day something that comes at the end of the day, but as you know my private Member’s Seizure of Russian State Assets and Support for Ukraine Bill could be up for its Second Reading later. As I understand it, the Government, although they have perhaps not made a final decision on this, are toying with objecting to the Bill; if a single person objects, it will not go forward to its Second Reading today.

Everybody knows that the whole House stands completely united behind Ukraine and is fully in support of making sure that Putin fails in his mission to seize it. I gather that the Government’s briefing to the press overnight was that they might object because it is not suitable for such a measure to be introduced in a private Member’s Bill, even though it has cross-party support, including from lots of Conservative Members and the Conservative Chairs of two prominent Select Committees.

Madam Deputy Speaker, would you clarify that the Bill is perfectly in order—otherwise it would not be on the Order Paper; that in the past many very significant issues have been introduced through private Members’ Bills, so there is nothing to preclude this being a matter for such a Bill; that if the Bill were to get Second Reading today, it could be amended many times in Committee, including by Government amendments; and furthermore, that if the Government wanted to, they could of course introduce legislation of their own? My Bill only asks the Government to introduce proposals to seize Russian assets currently frozen in British banks and give them to Ukraine.

As we just heard during prayers, the lamentation over Israel could equally easily be said of Ukraine today. We want to do everything we possibly can as fast as we possibly can to support the people of Ukraine.

Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Aaron Bell

Committee stage & 3rd reading
Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Aaron Bell]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)—the right hon. Member, I should say.

[Chris Bryant]

Just hon.

[Aaron Bell]

Not yet. I am sure it will come in time.

I will not repeat my Second Reading speech—this is the Committee stage—but I still welcome the Bill for all the reasons I gave on that day. I welcome the Government’s continued engagement with all of us who have an interest in it, in particular members of the Joint Committee on which I served with the hon. Member for Rhondda and many other Members, with whom I made friends and now sign amendments with. Perhaps the Whips will regret putting me on that Committee in the fullness of time.

I will turn to new clause 1, in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), in a little while, but first I want to discuss the overall principles relating to Dissolution. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) said on Second Reading that the right place for a proper discussion of the principles was in Committee, so I think it is probably right, with your indulgence, Ms Winterton, that we have a little discussion about them. Perhaps the Minister can reflect on them in her closing remarks, too.

We heard about Tommy Lascelles and his principles from 1950. Younger viewers will remember him from “The Crown”, played by Pip Torrens, as the private secretary to Her Majesty, but at the time he was the private secretary to His Majesty. He was talking about the principles in another closely contested election period—1950 and 1951. Those principles are relevant today, but the second one about the national economy was widely considered to have fallen into abeyance. There are other principles that we should perhaps consider. It was the opinion of the Joint Committee that the Dissolution principles document issued by the Government did not go quite far enough and did not cover other aspects of Dissolution—the calling of the new Parliament and so on. I therefore ask the Minister to comment a little on the 20 principles in our report: on the overall paramount confidence in our system, what it means to lose the confidence of the House and how to determine that, and what the Prime Minister ought to be doing in certain circumstances, whether to offer the resignation of the Government or to request a Dissolution from the monarch, and when it would be more appropriate for the Prime Minister to resign. We said that it would be more appropriate if there had recently been a general election, if there was a new Prime Minister from that Member’s party, or if it appeared that another person might command the confidence of the House—that was, of course, the third of Lascelles’s principles. The work of the Committee in putting together a more complete list of principles around confidence ought to be reflected in the debate and I ask the Minister to reflect on that in her closing remarks.

Turning briefly to new clause 1, since I am a signatory to it with my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke, I am grateful for the comments the Minister made from the Dispatch Box. I am also grateful for her engagement with those of us who signed new clause 1. I welcome the additional research we ought to see. As I said in my intervention on her earlier, the purpose of an election is not simply to have the most perfectly admirable election in the world, but to resolve things. The longer we take, the more people we can register and persuade to vote, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Chris Clarkson) said, eventually they might get bored and not vote. The point of an election is to resolve things. We want to make sure people vote—once and once only, as I said in my speech on the Elections Bill the other day—but the key purpose of an election is to let the country move on from a moment of tension, contest and electoral joust between opposing candidates in our constituencies. I do not think it serves anybody for that to go on a day longer than is truly necessary. That is why I was happy to put my name to new clause 1.

I listened to the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators. I understand that there are complications with going back to the status quo ante of 17 days as things stand, but I reflect on what my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker) said. Rather than saying it cannot be done with the rules as they are, we should look at which rules we could change to get back to the status quo ante. The Bill takes us back to the status quo ante in so many ways and I welcome that, but the real key is to get everything back to how it was before. I remember, as a teenager, watching elections that were short, sharp and got the job done. It did not work for us in 1997 when I was a teenager, but it got the job done and let the country move on. That is what we should have with our elections. They should not be dragged out for months. For the reasons I have given and for the candidates too, we should look at ways to make them shorter, notwithstanding the arguments that have been made by the administrators.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Aaron Bell

Wednesday 16th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I know that the hon. Member has spoken a bit. I would normally give way, but I am not going to on this occasion.

There would be a better process available. We have been waiting for a very long time for the shared prosperity fund structure to be announced. That should have been here long before we got to this point. I have a terrible feeling that what the Government will introduce is something that will either try to bypass the Welsh Government or the Scottish Government, or will try to set up a competition between different local authorities. I do not think that that will mean that the money goes where it is most needed and where it can be most effective. I urge the Government to think hard about introducing a shared prosperity fund and the outline of that as soon as possible.

Of course, money should be spent in relation to need—it is a very old principle for all of us Opposition Members: from each according to his ability, to each according to his or her need—and that is all I really want. I am never going to say no to money for the Rhondda. I will constantly ask for it and I am very hopeful that the Minister, when she answers, is going to say, “Yes, Chris—or yes, Dame Rosie, Chris can have his money for the flooding, the tips and the youth service.” Incidentally, as chair of the Rhondda arts festival in Treorchy, RAFT, I declare my interest—I have no financial interest; I am not remunerated for it. We would also quite like some money for that as well.

[Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and I thank him for his courtesy in rejecting an intervention and giving me and the people of Newcastle-under-Lyme a few moments at the end of this debate.

This debate is focused on part 6 and I believe that the commitments that we are making demonstrate the seriousness of the Government’s intent to deliver on the promises of the Vote Leave campaign. We will match what happened with the EU structural funds in each home nation through the new UK shared prosperity fund, and we will continue to co-operate across the UK to overcome coronavirus together. Coronavirus has demonstrated the true value of the Union, with the devolved Governments working together with Westminster to help people and businesses through the pandemic. The Bill will facilitate more of that joint working to the benefit of everyone across the UK.

We have heard a lot today and yesterday about power grabs. If there is a power grab, it is from Brussels, because having won our independence referendum, we are quite rightly restoring the powers that used to reside in this place. The UK’s internal market is centuries old and has never needed to be recognised in statute in this way before. However, that is necessary now to provide legal certainty to businesses and consumers across all four home nations as we exit the internal market of the EU.

This Bill and these clauses are needed to protect jobs and prosperity across the United Kingdom and to prevent new burdens and new barriers restricting the historical unfettered right to trade. In fact, it is SNP Members who are trying to grab more and new powers for the Scottish Government through these amendments. At the time of the Scotland Act 1998, which created the Scottish Parliament, it was never envisaged that the devolved Assemblies would be endowed with the powers that they now seek. All the talk we have heard of the Sewel convention and the rest of it is, therefore, anachronistic, because the convention was after the fact of our being in the internal market. We are restoring the situation that existed prior to the EU. These powers were never promised to Scotland at the time, and we have heard many arguments about that this evening. I understand why they seek these powers—they know they are a necessary part of independence—but I remind them that the Scottish people have already had their say on that. Indeed, I think that this is once again an attempt by the SNP, regrettably, to disrupt the Bills that seek to legislate in the national interest and make this debate about independence, which is a pity.

To wrap up, I will quote my right hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb), who spoke earlier: when did devolution become about stopping this place from acting in the best interests of the whole UK? This is the right place. Westminster has Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish representation in it. This is the right forum for these discussions and these issues. I commend these clauses to the House and urge hon. Members to reject the Opposition amendments this evening.