Justice and Home Affairs Opt-out

Debate between Chris Bryant and Andrea Leadsom

Monday 7th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

That was a good joke at the end.

It seems to me that there are an awful lot of ironies in this debate. The biggest irony of the lot must be that last week the Deputy Prime Minister and the leader of the UK Independence party got themselves all in a lather about the European Union, as apparently the whole country is fixated on this issue, yet the attendance in the Chamber this afternoon is remarkably poor, considering that this is an issue that many have described as vital to British liberties and so on.

The second irony is that even as we are talking about democratic accountability, as the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) just did, the Government have tabled a motion on the Order Paper which will mean that Mr Speaker cannot call an amendment to the Queen’s Speech. The hon. Lady may want to sign an amendment to that motion later today—[Interruption.] I am sure that the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), if he has not signed it yet—[Interruption.] He has signed it.

It is an irony, is it not, Madam Deputy Speaker—I do not expect you to answer this rhetorical question—that these two things are being debated at the same time? We are condemning Europe for not being an elected organisation and for the democratic unaccountability of the Commission and all the rest of it, even though we have Members of the House of Lords who have never put themselves up for election—except when they were Members of the House of Commons, before they went down there to take the Whip. We condemn the European Union for its lack of democratic accountability, and then the processes we use in this place to debate precisely what we should do about opting in or out of the justice and home affairs segments are put forward in a way that is wholly undemocratic and are used as a means of the Government trying to mask the fact that they cannot unite those on their Benches.

There is a third great irony that I have really loved. It is fascinating to watch so many Conservative Members of Parliament holding their noses throughout their speeches on the European Union. There is a permanent state of holding one’s nose exercised by Conservative MPs around the country. I was in High Wycombe last week, and the hon. Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) held his nose magnificently throughout all the discussions of the policy on the EU. The first question was about whether there was any real chance of renegotiating the treaties with the EU, and he started off by saying, broadly speaking, “Well…um…it is…um…I support the Government’s policy—until such time as I shan’t.” As I understand it, that is basically the speech made by all the Conservatives who have spoken thus far, apart from the hon. Member for Bury North, who did not go that far. He is not even holding his nose; he is just announcing that there is a smell out there and that he does not support the direction the Government are going in.

I do not start from an ideological position on all this. It seems to me that there is a pragmatic question about whether it is in the interests of pursuing justice for the people of our country that we should associate and co-operate and to what degree we should do so with other countries in the European Union. That pragmatism must be informed by the fact that it is now far easier for people to travel abroad within the European Union. One in four Brits goes to Spain every year and one in six goes to Greece every year. The number of British people who come into contact with the criminal justice system of other countries within the European Union has therefore dramatically increased.

One statistic that is not often mentioned by Mr Farage is that the country with the largest number of its citizens living elsewhere within the European Union is not Poland, Germany or France, but the United Kingdom. Anything we can do to ensure that justice is available in other EU countries and that justice is secured for people in this country must be to their benefit.

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Gentleman must accept that that argument does not stack up. Let us look at the number of people who travel to the United States or Mexico every year. Is he seriously suggesting that there ought to be some common justice system among those states as well? He is arguing from a weak position.

[Chris Bryant]

No, I am not. The hon. Lady complained that the Government and Members of the House of Lords advanced their argument on the European arrest warrant only because it was more convenient and practical. I am trying to suggest that convenience and practicality are three quarters of the point. In the end, it is in the interests of British people.

I shall take the American point as an example. When the new extradition treaty was agreed between the UK and the United States of America, despite the fact that the American Government—the President—had negotiated the treaty, it was a significant problem that the legislature had to put it in place. We moved much more quickly in this country to ratify the treaty than the Americans, and there was a period when the provisions were not perfectly equal between the two countries and when people such as the hon. Lady who argued that there was an imbalance were right. That is no longer the case, because both countries have implemented the measure.

My point to the hon. Lady is that long before we had the European arrest warrant, a Conservative Government under Mrs Thatcher were painfully aware of the problems of not having a proper extradition system across the whole European Union, where most British people do most of their travelling. That is why we had Ronnie Biggs and many others stuck on the costa del crime in Spain. Franco would not extradite anyone.

[Chris Bryant]

I shall give way to the 16th century in a moment.

I wholly support the European arrest warrant on the same basis that Mrs Thatcher supported the European convention on extradition.

[Andrea Leadsom]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I cannot give way to the hon. Lady because I have to give way to the 16th century.

[Chris Bryant]

I realised that there might be some clever soul in the Chamber. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, but there were plenty of other British fugitives from justice who only had to go abroad to evade justice in this country, and we needed a better system of extradition to be able to get British nationals back to the UK to face justice and, for that matter, to do something similar for nationals of other countries.

I would say to Members who regularly say that this is about protecting British people from poor judicial systems in other European countries that, in the main, we bring non-UK citizens back to the UK to make sure that there is justice for families who have lost a loved one or who face some form of injustice. I wholly disagree with the ideological position adopted by some Government Members, because it is pragmatic to have a single system that works across the whole of the EU. I also think that it is a triumph that, despite the fact that the Napoleonic code and English common law are completely different systems, we can work, broadly speaking, in a united way.

[Andrea Leadsom]

My point was not that we should not be party to the European arrest warrant; nor was it about the convenience of being in or out of it. It was about the method by which we are party to it. In other words, do we do it via a bilateral treaty which, as the hon. Gentleman rightly pointed out, we have with the United States, or should we opt in to justice and home affairs, which come under the jurisdiction of the European Court and can be changed under qualified majority voting without any say-so from the House?

[Chris Bryant]

I understand the point that the hon. Lady makes, but the problem for her argument is that that option is not available. For that matter, why would we want to say that members of the European Union, which includes two members of the Commonwealth, can all sit around a table and discuss the European arrest warrant, but we will only be able to sign up to it on a bilateral basis? That makes no sense and it is not a system that other members of the European Union will sign up to.

There is a further point, which is my concern about the process that the Government have adopted: we may get to December and not have any new agreed system in place. I know many members of the European Commission want a new system. Some countries in Europe are so profoundly irritated by the way the United Kingdom has been playing its hand over the past few years and are so concerned about the long-term direction of Conservative members of the Government in particular that they would quite like to punish Britain. I fear that we will not have the opt-ins in place by the time the opt-outs have come into force, and as the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) said, we may well have a substantial period when there is nothing in place. That could raise very significant legal issues about how we would subsequently resolve that, and it would also put us in the difficult and embarrassing position of having to say to our citizens, “We’re sorry. We are not able to extradite back to this country because we opted out and we have not managed to get the opt-in back in place.”

Multiannual Financial Framework

Debate between Chris Bryant and Andrea Leadsom

Wednesday 31st October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

As you know, Mr Speaker, I love apologising to Government Members, and I apologise to the Minister. The point I am making is a serious one, however. He referred to some of the small-ticket items in the EU budget, but the big-ticket item is the common agricultural policy. If we do not address that issue in this next round, we will manifestly have failed to deal with the gaping moral and ethical hole at the centre of the European Union.

[Andrea Leadsom]

rose—

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[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Lady praises me far too much. I was Minister for Europe for about 2.5 seconds. In those 2.5 seconds, however, the one thing that I argued aggressively with my socialist friends and with my European People’s party friends—with whom her party used to be friends—was that the next multiannual round had to be lower than before and should not have an inflationary increase. I am afraid that the hon. Lady is pitching at the wrong person in this particular round.

I believe that there is a role for the EU budget and it should relate to growth, research and development. There are some things where we can do more together as a continent and add value. Unfortunately, however, those are not the issues that grab the attention of the French, the Germans, the Italians and the Spaniards. That is why we have to, and have always had to, build alliances with other countries, particularly the smaller countries.

[Andrea Leadsom]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I saw the hon. Lady attempting to intervene earlier. I will give way to her, but then no more.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am grateful. Does the hon. Gentleman agree, then, that in order to be able to negotiate successfully on the big-ticket items as he says, we need a sound basis on which to go forward? Supporting an amendment that would simply trash all negotiations with other EU members, such as calling for a cut that is nigh on impossible, would not be the way to progress any decent negotiation on structural reform in the future.

[Chris Bryant]

To be honest, I do not agree with the hon. Lady. If I take her back to the last debate I had with her on this issue, I do not think that that is the position she was advocating then. In her heart of hearts, she would prefer Parliament to give a strong single voice today, so that the Government have a negotiating position whereby they can go to Brussels, Strasbourg or wherever and say, “Look, we have the whole of Parliament behind us saying, ‘We’ve got to cut’.” That is why I hope she will vote for the amendment today.

I know that some hon. Members do not like structural funds at all—perhaps this was the issue that the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards), who has already left the Chamber, wanted to raise—but I believe structural funds have a role to play in trying to make the whole European Union far more competitive in the world economy. That is certainly true for places like the valleys in south Wales. Sometimes the money is not particularly well spent, but if we did not have structural funds and cohesion funds, the danger is that each individual country would end up abusing state aid to protect specific businesses in their own country, thereby undermining countries like our own that choose not to go down that route.

I ask Government Members this: how could we possibly go back to our constituents and say to teachers, fire officers, police officers and all the rest, “We want to give more money to the European Union, but you’ve got to live with a pay freeze, and you’ve got to live with less money, with 19% cuts year on year to local authority funding for the building of hospitals, homes and so forth.”? I just do not see how I could possibly argue that.

EU-UK Relationship (Reform)

Debate between Chris Bryant and Andrea Leadsom

Tuesday 18th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[Andrea Leadsom]

That is absolutely not my understanding, but that is not a discussion for now, so we will have to park that.

The Green Paper was published in June and the Fresh Start project is now moving to phase 2, which is to suggest a manifesto for change by Christmas. I am delighted that 10 Conservative colleagues have each agreed to chair a policy area in which they have a particular expertise, and they will look to get buy-in from other colleagues to achieve a consensus on what specific reforms we will recommend that the Government pursue. By Christmas, we will end up with a specific manifesto for reform, which will be a shopping list of things that Britain would like to see changed.

One of the Government’s biggest challenges is the fact that FCO officials wring their hands when we talk about a shopping list of reform proposals.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

No they do not.

[Andrea Leadsom]

Yes they do. I have had several conversations with FCO officials who say that people can negotiate on only one or two points at a time. That is the way in which EU Commissioners and European parliamentarians squash the genuine national interests of one member state. They say, “You can talk only about the rebate, or only about 0% increase in the budget. You cannot talk about all the other issues that you want to include in your shopping list.” That will be the biggest challenge to any reform.

Finance (No. 4) Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Andrea Leadsom

Wednesday 18th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I had not intended to speak in this debate, but the previous—[Interruption.] I am grateful for all the waves from Government Members. The contribution of the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) has prompted me to speak, however.

First, I want to talk about what my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) referred to as the constitutional shenanigans. For many centuries, it has been a convention in this House that only a Minister of the Crown can lay a charge or an amendment to a Finance Bill that increases or changes a charge and thereby adds a duty to the people of this country, but that is a mistake. The myth that we have a Budget needs to be exploded, too. We do not have a Budget. What we have is a speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, followed by a Finance Bill and some Ways and Means resolutions. In addition, we have a separate process whereby Supply is granted. That system does not result in our properly evaluating whether we are raising money properly and fairly and whether we are spending it properly. I know many of these processes have existed for a very long time, but they lead to profound confusion in most ordinary voters’ minds about how we in this House conduct our business.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman therefore join Members on my side of the House in applauding the Government for establishing the Office for Budget Responsibility, which is conducting independent forecasting and analysis of the Budget, and for putting far more information than before in the Red Book about the distributional impact of tax changes on the people of this country?

[Chris Bryant]

Broadly speaking, yes, I do, just as I supported making the Bank of England independent at a time when the Conservative party was opposed to doing so. However, my point remains that this House does not really vote properly through the expenditure of the Government; we do not, in any sense, analyse it line by line. We also do not match expenditure with the raising of taxes, unlike nearly every other legislature in the world. Most countries that have based their system on ours have now amended their processes and have better processes than we do for budgetary matters.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrea Leadsom]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I am not going to give way to the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) again—[Interruption.] No, he gestures that his intervention would be short but the last one went on for ever, so I am going to give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) instead.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Field]

rose—

[Andrea Leadsom]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman cannot have another go, but the hon. Lady can.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I want to draw his attention and that of the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) to a point about ethics. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the Government intend to increase the tax take from the wealthiest in this country? Where ethics are concerned, it is appalling that people have deliberately used a company to buy a multi-million pound house simply to avoid paying stamp duty. Does he accept that taking measures to ensure that people pay what is a reasonable and acceptable level of tax is a better method than trying to enforce something that is very easily avoidable for many people?

[Chris Bryant]

Well, I am really impressed by the hon. Lady. I can understand how my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South read my notes but not how the hon. Lady managed to read them from over there. I was going to come to exactly the point she makes but not quite in the same way. Yes, there is an ethical clash about whether this is the right time to introduce this measure for political and economic reasons, but my concern is that because the Chancellor had, I think, personally decided that he was going to cut the 50p rate to 45p, so many other elements of the Budget had to follow that change. A prime example is the fact that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor wanted to be able to say that the rich would pay five times more tax after the Budget than before—I think that is, broadly speaking, the point that the hon. Lady is making. I am not opposed to some of the measures that will increase the amount of tax paid by people who have wealth in a variety of circumstances, but I think that some of the measures in the Budget and the Finance Bill ended up there only to try to shore up that argument, and I do not think that due diligence was done around them.

Let me take one example—I note the look in your eye, Mr Hoyle, and I shall bring my remarks to a close very soon. I think that the measure about capping the tax relief available for people giving money to charities is in the Budget solely so that the Government can argue that the rich will pay more. It is not based on fact or research. There might be perfectly good things we could do on whether charities outside this country that are not covered by the Charity Commission should be removed from the system or on whether greater powers should be given to the commission, but I think that the only reason that the measure was in the Budget was so that the Government could say that tax has increased. This has left the Chancellor and the Prime Minister somewhat double-faced—I shall not say two-faced, because obviously I could not. On the one hand they are saying that the top rate of tax should go down and the rich should not pay so much and, on the other, they are saying that the rich should pay more.

I hope that I have persuaded all the hon. Members on the Government side to change their mind. I see that I have persuaded the reckless Member over there, the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless), to support the amendment in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd.

Legislation (Territorial Extent) Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Andrea Leadsom

Friday 11th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

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

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

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

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

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

[Andrea Leadsom]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

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

[Andrea Leadsom]

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

[Chris Bryant]

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

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

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

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

[Andrea Leadsom]

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

[Chris Bryant]

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

[Andrea Leadsom]

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

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

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

[Andrea Leadsom]

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

[Mr Speaker]

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

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Andrea Leadsom

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Those were the days, eh? When high-mindedness ruled.

The point is surely that it should not be within the power of the Government to determine the rules. It is like the situation in which everybody is running a 100 metre race, but the starting gun is held by the person in charge, and sometimes he decides to shoot some of the runners instead of just starting the race.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I agree that constituents reach the point at which they feel that the Government need to change, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is often in part because constituents are desperate for the Prime Minister of the day to announce a general election? Having such certainty to a reasonable extent will therefore obviate the need for constituents to wonder, “When is the election going to happen? When is the date? It can’t happen soon enough.” That certainty will surely improve the situation.

[Chris Bryant]

Yes, of course. The hon. Lady is right in the sense that constituents will not have to worry about the date of the election. In fact, newspapers and the BBC will have to employ considerably fewer journalists, because they will know the date of the general election and actually have to obsess about something else. However, the past 50 years have shown that, for the most part, once a Parliament has run for more than four years, either the Parliament itself is so fed up with the Prime Minister that it chooses to change the Prime Minister before holding a subsequent general election, or the country is becoming pretty fed up.