Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Chris Bryant and Chloe Smith

Monday 13th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith]

I certainly will. I pay tribute to Becky Maddern, who I too find inspirational. Indeed, I was thinking about her only at the weekend as I visited a playground with my own children and looked at the range of swings and equipment that was available. This is incredibly important because disabled children deserve to play as much as their brothers, sisters and friends. That underlines why our strategy is a very wide-ranging one that goes across the full range of public services and into culture, leisure and play as well, because it all matters greatly.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

One hidden disability often is an acquired brain injury, and 10 days ago, the Government committed to creating a national strategy for acquired brain injury. Will this Department ensure that it fully co-operates with the programme board, which will be set up in the new year, so that we can radically transform the opportunities and chances in life for those who have had an acquired brain injury?

[Chloe Smith]

I am very grateful for that question, and I pay tribute to the history that the hon. Member has and the work that he is doing in this area. Two Ministers in this Department have some personal direct experience of these issues, so yes, the Department for Work and Pensions will be keen to make good progress with that work.

Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill (Instruction)

Debate between Chris Bryant and Chloe Smith

Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

So will the Minister give way to me instead?

[Chloe Smith]

indicated assent.

[Chris Bryant]

Thank you. The question then is: if not now, when? That has still not been answered. If we are not to debate the matter today, I presume that the Government still believe that Prorogation should not be justiciable, so when are we going to discuss legislative measures to deal with Prorogation?

Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Chloe Smith

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

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

But it is not actually five years; it is five years and a bit, is it not? As the Septennial Act 1716 did, it goes from the date of the first sitting of the new Parliament. It means that, if we stick with this, we will have the longest period from election to election of any democracy in the world. Would it not be better for the period from election to election to be at most five years?

[Chloe Smith]

The hon. Gentleman pre-empts my remarks in respect of his amendment, which I will endeavour to come to after I have worked through all the clauses.

The scheme that we are proposing is the right one and I will come in a moment to why I think that that is the case when compared with other technical methods of achieving a five-year term that the hon. Gentleman is thinking of. This clause provides for a maximum parliamentary term of five years from the date that Parliament first met, so we measure five years from the date of first meeting to the Dissolution of Parliament, and that is the Government’s proposition. We think that that provides the right balance of stability, flexibility and accountability that is entailed in returning to the arrangements that allow for a general election earlier than that. On that basis, I recommend that clause 4 stand part of the Bill.

I shall speak very briefly to clause 5. It introduces the schedule to the Bill, which makes provision for the consequential amendments that are needed to ensure that other legislation operates effectively once the 2011 Act has been repealed and we return to the status quo ante. The consequential amendments primarily reverse or alter legislative amendments made by the 2011 Act. They remove references to the Act in legislation and ensure that, after the repeal of the 2011 Act, other legislation that links to it still works. For example, in repealing the 2011 Act, they reflect the fact that there will no longer be fixed-term Parliaments, so the concept of an early general election would no longer exist in law.

Clause 5 also provides that the repeal of the 2011 Act by clause 1 does not affect the amendments and repeals made by the schedule to that Act. This ensures that essential provisions are not lost. It allows us to modify changes made by the 2011 Act and ensure the smooth running of elections by retaining sensible improvements made by that Act or subsequent to that Act. I know that those are some topics that we will come back to a little later as we progress through our debate this evening.

The schedule also makes a small number of minor changes to ensure the smooth running of elections. In short, this clause is necessary to ensure that electoral law and other related parts of the statute book continue to function smoothly. As such, I recommend that clause 5 stand part of the Bill.

Clause 6 is the one that we all know and love that deals with extent, early commencement and short title. It confirms that the territorial extent of the Bill is the United Kingdom, except for a very small number of amendments in the schedule where the extent is more limited. The clause ensures that the Bill has an early commencement, meaning that it comes into force on the day on which it receives Royal Assent, and it provides that the short title of the Bill will be the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2021.

That gives me an opportunity to explain that the Government have agreed with the recommendation of the Joint Committee that a Bill of constitutional significance that seeks to put in place arrangements that deliver legal, constitutional and political certainty around the process of dissolving one Parliament and calling another should be titled accordingly. The short title now reflects the purpose of the Bill and will help to ensure that it is clearly understood and that successive Parliaments are able to discern the intended effect of the legislation. I therefore propose that this clause stand part of the Bill. Mr Evans, would you like me also to make a remark about the schedule and then turn to the amendments?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

All right then, if it is the simplest way of doing it, what is the last date that the next general election can be held if all this is carried as the Minister says?

[Chloe Smith]

With respect, that is not the right quiz question—the right quiz question is whether, under the hon. Gentleman’s amendment, the period would be five years plus 25 days. That would, I believe, arise from his amendment, because he is not counting the length of the election campaign, whereas our provision is five years from first sitting to last sitting, so we are trying to measure the life of a Parliament. I am not trying to engage in maths problems; I simply think that this is the most sensible way to measure it, and I hope hon. Members might agree. [Interruption.] I am really not going to engage in maths questions beyond that. We need a clear and easily understood scheme. I think we are all agreed that it ought to be five years, and we are dealing with how to achieve that. The Government’s proposition is that it should be, as I say, from five years after Parliament has first met. That is important.

Let me turn to the pair of amendments that relate to the shortening of the election timetable: new clause 1 in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) and amendment 3 in the name of the hon. Member for Rhondda. I am absolutely sure that there will be some very strong arguments put in this area. To try to help the Committee, I will set out why we have our current timetable and then seek to address what I would anticipate to be some of the core arguments that right hon. and hon. Members will raise.

The current timetable was introduced in 2013 through the Electoral Administration Act 2006, which absorbed fundamental shifts brought about through having postal votes on demand and individual electoral registration. As I have explained, the Bill seeks to return us to the status quo ante while retaining sensible changes that have been made since 2011 to enable the smooth running of elections, which are, in my view, of benefit to voters. The current timetable is one of those changes. It provides a balance between allowing sufficient time to run the polls effectively and for the public to be well informed, while not preventing Parliament from avoiding sitting for any longer than is necessary, which is a very important consideration.

On the requirements for running polls effectively, the 25 days working days are necessary to deliver elections, which are now often more complex than at any other point in our history, for reasons, as I mentioned, to do with postal voting on demand, but also online individual electoral registration. That was a fundamental constitutional change that enabled increasingly higher numbers of last-minute applications. To illustrate that, at the most recent general election almost 660,000 applications were made on the last day possible. Before 2000, as I said, there was no postal voting on demand, and it has since grown in numbers to represent nearly 20% of registered electors. Both things increased the complexity and demands of an election timetable.

The amendments refer to weekends and bank holidays in the election period. Local authority electoral services teams who do this work are already often working weekends and overtime to make elections work successfully. I also note that elections do not just rely on local authorities and their staff; there is a significant commercial element to their delivery through many suppliers, including, but not limited to, the software for maintaining the registers, and the printing and postage of paperwork such as the poll cards, ballot papers and postal votes. There is very little room for error on all that. Creating and maintaining the capacity to deliver it can be extremely challenging, especially at short notice. Weekends and bank holidays are not necessarily in our gift.

Parliamentary Constituencies Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Chloe Smith

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 2nd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

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

It is a great pleasure to open this debate. The purpose of the Bill is straightforward: to meet the Government’s manifesto pledge of delivering updated and equal parliamentary boundaries, making sure that every vote counts the same. We will do so on the basis of 650 constituencies.

The principal legislative framework set out in the Parliamentary Constituencies Act 1986 remains in place. The Bill makes a small number of amendments to that in order to move us forward with some aspects of the timing and the process of future boundary reviews and, as I said, returning the number of constituencies to 650.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

There is a fundamental flaw, which the Minister brought out for us in her very first paragraph. I think Ministers think that by trying to rejig the constituencies they will make every vote count equally. That is not true. The only way we can do that is by having a proportional electoral system. We could make every person count equally if we counted our boundaries not by the number of registered voters in a constituency but by the number of people, which is what every other country in the world does.

[Chloe Smith]

A huge chunk of what the hon. Gentleman proposes is out of the scope of the Bill, but in terms of what is in scope, I hope therefore that he will reject the Labour party’s amendment, which goes against equalising the size of constituencies by arguing against the tolerance quota. I am sure he will consider that as he comes to vote tonight.

Let me pre-empt a question that might legitimately be asked: why are we doing this now, given the other challenges that are presented by the coronavirus? Of course, we absolutely rely on the electors of the UK to cast their vote and choose the Government of the day, and fundamental to that is the idea that each vote carries the same weight. We can achieve those equal votes only through a robust system of boundary reviews. They should be regular, thorough and impartial, and it is those reviews that provide us with updated and equal constituencies.

The last implemented update of Westminster constituencies was based on electoral data from the very early 2000s. That means that our current constituencies take no account of our youngest voters, and nor do they reflect nearly two decades of demographic shift, house building and migration. That cannot be right. The purpose of the Bill is to update those rules. It needs to do that so that the next review, which is due to start in early 2021, can proceed promptly and deliver, with some certainty, the updated and equal constituencies that the electorate deserves.

I will run through the main elements of the Bill. With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, let me say at the outset that in doing this I have engaged extensively with interested parties, including representatives of the parliamentary parties and electoral administrators, to ensure that these proposals are as good as they can be.

As I mentioned at the start, the Bill will amend the existing legislation to ensure that we continue to have 650 parliamentary constituencies in the UK, as we do now. In order to achieve that, the Bill brings to a close the 2018 boundary review, without implementation. It removes the Government’s obligation to bring those recommendations of the 2018 review into effect, because those proposals would take us down to 600 constituencies.

This is a change of policy from that adopted under the coalition Government. We have listened to views expressed across the House, including that of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, and I am pleased that Opposition Members have stated their support for retaining 650 constituencies. We believe that the decision to move to 600 seats is no longer the right choice for the British public because circumstances have changed. In the past decade, the population has grown and we have, of course, left the European Union, which means that significant areas of policy and law making are coming back to all the legislatures of the Union, including the UK Parliament.

Lobby and Media Briefings: Journalists' Access

Debate between Chris Bryant and Chloe Smith

Tuesday 4th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith]

My hon. Friend makes a helpful wider point, which is how we, as a Government, can use policy and indeed scrutinise it here in this place—I say this as the Budget and other such vehicles come up—to look at ways to support the vibrancy of our press and media across the country. I referenced the Cairncross review earlier. These things, together with fiscal measures, are important in that debate.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I confess that there is one journalist I would quite like to keep out of Downing Street, but he is the Prime Minister and, unfortunately, he won the general election.

There is a serious issue here: every political generation in government want to try to avoid scrutiny if possible, and it is the job of this House to try to ensure that they do not get away with it. So, all the whataboutery in the world will not stop us complaining when we see a clear pattern of the Prime Minister running his leadership campaign, running his general election campaign and now running the Government in a way that is trying to avoid scrutiny. I am sure that, in private, the Minister would agree.

[Chloe Smith]

This is simply barking up the wrong tree again. The Government are ensuring that they are open for scrutiny. The Foreign Secretary stood here yesterday and took scores of questions on the very same subject matter. He was again on television shows on Sunday. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury was on a number of programmes yesterday. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was out this morning; the Home Secretary was out this morning. The Prime Minister himself took many questions on the subject matter in hand yesterday. Nobody is hiding from scrutiny.