Finance (No. 4) Bill
Debate between Chris Bryant and Christopher Chope(12 years, 7 months ago)
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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.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I do not think it is necessary for me to speak to amendment 1 because my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) and others have, in their interventions, destroyed the Opposition’s argument. I recall that the TaxPayers Alliance organised a wonderful celebratory dinner not long ago, in the Guildhall I think, at which the guest of honour was none other than Dr Laffer of the Laffer curve. I am delighted that the Treasury is now paying more attention to the principles behind the Laffer curve, which, in my view, are well represented in the argument for reducing the top rate of tax back to 40%, rather than 45%. I hope that in due course my hon. Friend the Minister will explain why someone like me should not be tempted to vote for amendment 1 on the basis that it would reduce the level to 40%.
United Kingdom Parliamentary Sovereignty Bill
Debate between Chris Bryant and Christopher Chope(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Chope
I do not intend to withdraw the Bill—it is important to put it to the test. Constituents up and down the country will want to see whether their Conservative representatives are doing their best to try to implement the manifesto commitments on which we were elected at the general election, or whether we are prepared to allow those commitments to fall to one side because we are in a coalition. I understood that the Government were trying their hardest to implement the commitments, but from what the Minister has said, I remain to be convinced.
I am grateful to all those who have participated in the debate and those who have supported the Bill. I am particularly indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) for his great knowledge on the matter; much of the Bill’s drafting is owed to his work in the past. He mentioned Jeffrey Goldsworthy, who has written a document on parliamentary sovereignty—I say document, but it was published as part of the “Cambridge Studies in Constitutional Law”.
Mr Chope
He has written more than one document. I find it odd that the Minister asserts that everything that Jeffrey Goldsworthy says on the important subject of parliamentary sovereignty is wrong, and that the Minister is right—he has many attributes, but I am not sure that he is a constitutional law expert. I would prefer to go along with Jeffrey Goldsworthy’s expertise in the absence of any other compelling legal arguments.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) for raising some interesting points, not least when he intervened when the Minister objected to clause 1. The Minister seems to be under the illusion that the courts in this country can only interpret legislation, rather than apply common law principles. My hon. Friend bowled the Minister middle stump on that.
I am also grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) for her support. She has done the House and the people a great service in tabling a host of probing and effective written questions that have exposed the Government’s policy for what it is—the Government are far too relaxed about the further erosion of our sovereignty.
I commend the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on the brevity of his speech. There is a lot to be said for Opposition Front Benchers making similarly short speeches when they do not have any support on their own side of the House at all, as is the situation today.
The idea that the UN resolution passed last night is inconsistent with the Bill is far fetched. May I suggest a better analogy? When this country went to a war in Iraq that, arguably, was illegal under international law, we were not prosecuted by some international criminal court. However, if we went into something that was at odds with the decisions of the European Court of Justice, we would be prosecuted and taken before that Court on the continent. That is the difference.
The Minister suggests that various details of the Bill could be made clearer. One way to do so would be to ensure that clause 2 refers to clause 1. However, the essence of the Bill is in clause 1, which stands on its own, reaffirming the sovereignty of this Parliament.
United Kingdom Parliamentary Sovereignty Bill
Debate between Chris Bryant and Christopher Chope(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Chris Bryant
No, this is an application not to be on the Bill Committee. I have heard these arguments so many times that I have no desire to hear them all over again, even if it would give us an opportunity to hear the whole of the Minister’s speech on the subject. May I point out to the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) that greed is a sin? Taking so many private Members’ Bills on one day might be thought somewhat greedy.
Mr Chope
I have been accused of many things, but not greed. People who are frustrated legislators and willing to spend a couple of nights sleeping in the Palace of Westminster to queue up for their tickets may have the opportunity of having their Bills brought before the House. I hope that some of my other Bills on the Order Paper will be debated, not least my Local Government Ombudsman (Amendment) Bill. When I first put that title down last June, I had not anticipated that I would read in my local paper last Friday that the Hampshire county council health and safety people had interfered in the Beaulieu pancake race, so that it is now the Beaulieu pancake walk rather than race. I had not realised that my third Bill would be so relevant to a local story, but now it has a relevance above all else. I hope that we get a chance to discuss it.
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Debate between Chris Bryant and Christopher Chope(14 years ago)
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Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I understand that for there to be a super-majority in this Parliament, 434 votes in favour would be required, although that is before the Bill currently before the other place, the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, comes into operation in an unamended form. We are talking about 434 out of the 650 seats at the moment. As I have said, the arrangement leaves some things completely uncertain; I presume that the Speaker and the Deputy Speakers would not be allowed to vote.
That brings us to another interesting point, which is that, as you will know, Mr Hoyle, under the Standing Orders and the custom of this House, the Speaker and the Chair do not vote unless there is an equality of votes. That is different from the arrangement in the other House, where the Speaker or the Chair of the Committee is able to vote twice. The commonly accepted provision, as stated in “Erskine May”, has then been as follows for the Speaker:
“it is usual for him, when practicable, to vote in such a manner as not to make the decision of the House final”.
In a vote such as I am describing, there would not have been equality of votes, but if one side had got to 433 seats, would the Speaker be allowed to vote or not? This is slightly complicated when there are 650 seats, but if the number is reduced to 600, as suggested in the Government’s proposals in the other Bill, 400 seats would be the mark that we would have to reach. If the vote is on a knife-edge, would the Speaker and the Deputy Speakers, or the Chair of the Committee, be allowed to vote on such a measure? Importantly, this is not just about the Speaker. If the vote were on a Budget and if we took the advice of the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills that in some situations a Budget decision or a financial decision would be considered a motion of no confidence, the provision would relate not to the Speaker, but to the Chairman of Ways and Means or one of the other Committee Chairmen, who would be chairing.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) said, many difficult elements are involved in operating a super-majority. The biggest problem arises where the Government or the Opposition table a motion seeking to get to that figure and an early general election, and obtain more than half the seats in the House but do not reach the two-thirds majority. In what state would that leave the Government? Would a motion of no confidence immediately have to be tabled for us then to be able to proceed to the other measures? Or would that original motion, by its very nature, have been considered a motion of no confidence, because the Government declared it to be a matter on which winning the vote was an issue of confidence? Again, this provision is either a dangerous or entirely unnecessary element.
Chris Bryant
I am enthusiastically in favour of having a vote on amendment 4, because it goes to the nub of the issue; in large measure, it deals with the only issue of significance in this group of amendments.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Debate between Chris Bryant and Christopher Chope(14 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Chope
I am most grateful to you, Ms Primarolo, for trying to ensure that we stick to the amendment. I am a bit flattered in that my amendment is being debated on its own. The best thing for me to do now is to sit down so that I can listen to what the Minister has to say in response to my question: why is the form of AV set out in the Bill preferable to the other form of AV already available in this country, which has been experienced in London and in other cities?
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), but I shall not support his amendment. I disagree with it first and foremost because no provision was made in any party’s manifesto for this version of the alternative vote. When the Labour party said it wanted a referendum on the alternative vote system, we certainly meant a full alternative vote system in which people could continue to express their preference, as long as there was a preference still to be expressed.
Originally, the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto had nothing to do with the alternative vote, but if they had proposed a form of the alternative vote it would have been, as we saw in their negotiations with the Conservative and Labour parties after the general election and as was commonly understood, that under AV the voter was allowed to express a preference all through the system. The hon. Member for Christchurch might object that AV was not in his party’s manifesto in any shape or form. That is why I have a slight suspicion that his amendment is intended more as a wrecking amendment, although to be generous I shall suggest it is a probing amendment. The hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing)—in rather elegant turquoise, if I may say so—said that AV gives some people two or even three votes. That is not the case. People have one vote, but are allowed to keep on expressing it as a preference while the process continues.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Debate between Chris Bryant and Christopher Chope(14 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Chope
Further to that point of order, Mr Evans. In discussing the programme motion on 12 October, the Parliamentary Secretary said that
“we have taken steps…in the programme motion”
to ensure that
“the House will be able to debate and vote on the key issues raised by the Bill.”—[Official Report, 12 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 183.]
On Second Reading he also made it quite clear that we would have the opportunity to debate and vote on the key issues. Nobody is suggesting that the threshold is anything other than a key issue in the Bill. Even at this late stage, it is open to the Minister to tell the Committee that he will come forward tomorrow with an amendment to the programme order to ensure that we can start the business tomorrow with a debate on clause 6, rather than closing down debate on that clause, which seems to be the Government’s intent. I should also point out that unless we have a debate, it will not be possible for the Committee to take a view on the relative merits of amendment 3 as compared with my amendments 64, 65 and 66. In the European debate the other night the Chair was able to decide which amendments were more worthy of being put to the vote on the basis of the debate. Without a debate, we will not be able to do that.
Chris Bryant
Further to that point of order, Mr Evans. Several hon. Members have made the point this evening that there has not been time to debate significant elements of the Bill. In addition, the Government have today tabled 100 pages of amendments to the Bill, which they have proposed we debate next Monday, but they have already said that those amendments are incorrect and will have to be superseded by further amendments. At the moment, only two days are provided for Report. I would therefore ask the Government to consider providing a third day on Report, so that the issues can be fully debated. Otherwise, I am sure that their lordships would want to spend a considerable period of time looking at the legislation properly. Finally, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) rightly pointed out that votes normally follow voices in this House. That is to say that Members who shout aye have to vote aye, and if the Minister is going to shout aye in a moment, he should be voting in the Aye Lobby.