Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Chris Bryant and Christopher Pincher

Monday 16th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

It is being done. We have made available £4 million to local authorities to support a data collection exercise looking at external wall systems. Together with the Home Office, we have made £20 million available to increase the capacity and capability of fire and rescue services in their conduct of fire protection activity. We are backing local authorities. We are backing the fire and rescue service. I only wish the hon. Gentleman knew that.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

What discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on local authorities’ responsibilities for the stability and safety of disused coal tips.

[The Minister for Housing (Christopher Pincher)]

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury wrote to the hon. Member in October saying that he is expecting to provide £2.5 million needed for tip repairs in Tylorstown. The letter also clarifies that he is waiting to hear further from the Welsh Government on additional requests to access the reserve and is working with the Welsh Government’s Finance Minister on this very matter.

[Chris Bryant]

It is all very interesting that the Minister reads out a letter that I have already received, so I have actually read it, but it does not answer the question at all. My question is about how we are going to make sure that all the coal tips across the whole UK—because there is still no register of them in England and Wales—are properly accounted for and properly made stable and safe, so that we do not have another Aberfan disaster. I say this as much for constituencies in England as in Wales, because the real danger is that if we have had to find £12.5 million for a single tip in Tylorstown that fell into the river, imagine what the bill is going to be across the whole of England and Wales. It is time the Government woke up to this, and I really hope the Minister will answer the direct question about who is going to be footing the bill. Local authorities will be bankrupted by this if we are not careful.

[Christopher Pincher]

I was just checking that the hon. Gentleman had received the letter and that he had read it. He has, and I am pleased and grateful for his further contribution. He will know that Welsh local authorities started the 2020-21 financial year with over £1.4 billion of usable reserves. Of that, £200 million was general and unallocated. As I said to him, the Treasury is in discussion with the Welsh Government regarding the funding on this topic. Welsh authorities should discuss further funding with the Welsh Government and I encourage him to do similarly.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christopher Pincher]

My hon. Friend rightly points out the £11.5 billion that we have made available in the next five years to build 180,000 new affordable homes, a significant proportion of which will be for affordable or social rent. We have already heard about the £700 million or so in total that we are spending to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping, and I direct my hon. Friend towards the abolition of the housing revenue account cap, which allows local authorities to build social homes if they wish to. It is a local authority matter and we encourage them to do so.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Tempted as I am to ask a question about tips again, I am going to ask about something completely different: brain injury. Acquired brain injury is a hidden epidemic in this country, and local authorities often have to bear the significant costs when somebody’s neuro-rehabilitation has not been able to be followed through. With covid this year as well, there will be many thousands of families who would dearly love their loved one to be able to live an independent life, but they need local authorities to be able to step up to the mark. Will the Secretary of State meet me and others who are interested in the subject to see whether there is a way to get better co-reliance among all the different agencies that work with people with brain injury, including people who have neuro-cognitive problems from covid?

Succession to the Crown Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Christopher Pincher

Tuesday 22nd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s arithmetic, flawed though it may be. Perhaps that is why he is a member of the Scottish National party. I look forward to the Minister explaining what the rationale is.

As the hon. Member for Rhondda rightly pointed out, if we put in place a rule that says that the monarch can and must give consent to the marrying of the six persons nearest in line to the throne, imagine a scenario where a monarch has three children, who each have two or three children. The monarch will soon be in the invidious position where grandchild No. 4, who is fifth in line to the throne, must seek consent of the monarch to marry, but grandchild No. 6, who is seventh in line to the throne, need not seek that consent. That does not seem fair.

[Chris Bryant]

Also, we do not have a capricious monarch at present, but there have certainly been capricious monarchs in the past who might deliberately want to affect the succession and might therefore refuse consent capriciously. There is no means in the Act whereby anybody can prevent the monarch from exercising their judgment capriciously so as directly to exclude a particular person. Surely in the end the monarch should be decided either by straightforward succession or by Parliament.

Succession to the Crown Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Christopher Pincher

Tuesday 22nd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to the Minister for suggesting on Second Reading that in 200 or 300 years I may be Father of the House. My right hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) may have something to say about that, either now or in 200 or 300 years’ time.

May I press her on the clause a little more, because her earlier remarks cause me to do so, and refer her to clause 2 of the Royal Marriages Act 1772? It states:

“In case any descendant of Geo. 2.—

George II—

“being above 25 years old, shall persist to contract a marriage disapproved of by his Majesty, such descendant, after giving 12 months notice to the Privy Council, may contract such marriage; and the same may be duly solemnized, without the previous consent of his Majesty; and shall be good; except both Houses of Parliament shall declare their disapproval thereof.”

In other words, if someone is over 25 and has made their intentions clear to the Privy Council, they can get married unless Parliament says that they cannot.

The Bill states in clause 3:

“A person who (when the person marries) is one of the 6 persons next in the line of succession to the Crown must obtain the consent of Her Majesty before marrying.”

In other words, no matter how old that person is they must actively gain the consent of the monarch before marrying and must wait for the Queen or King to say yes. Any reasonable person would infer that the Government appear to be trying to tighten the rules about whom members of the royal family can marry and to give the monarch some extra leverage. Will the Minister confirm that? If that is the case, can she explain much more clearly, as the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) asked, why six has been chosen for the number of those in the line of succession who are subject to this rule? If the idea is to tighten the rules and make it easier for the sovereign to control whom his or her descendants close to the line of succession may marry, surely the number should be greater than six or we should prescribe that it applies to the heirs and descendants of Elizabeth II. Surely grandchildren of a reigning monarch who are Royal Highnesses and active members of the royal family might not be subject to the provision.

I would be grateful if my hon. Friend the Minister could make the decision-making process in reaching that number clear and tell us what advice the Government were given about the number six, why they rejected other numbers and why they rejected the idea of having no numbers. That will allow us to be clear about the Government’s intentions.

[Chris Bryant]

I rather agree with the hon. Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher). I am wholeheartedly in favour of getting rid of the 1772 Act, which seems a ludicrous piece of legislation that has always been ineffectual. It has encouraged monarchs to be capricious in granting or not granting consent and it was introduced as a capricious piece of legislation. My problem is with clause 3, which is meant to replace it. As the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) said, there is no stipulation about whether such permission is necessary for a civil partnership. I presume that all six members could form a civil partnership and succeed to the throne without that being an issue, but if the Government’s same-sex marriage proposals were introduced, they would then have to make a request and have consent granted. I simply do not understand, and I am afraid the Minister has made it far worse for me this afternoon than it was before. Her suggestion that some convenience will be drawn up between Ministers who might or might not be advising means that there will be no clarity for Parliament.

For instance, a potential future heir to the throne might be denied consent to marry by the monarch deliberately because they wanted to exclude them from the succession, and for no other reason. The Bill makes no provision to state that that would be inappropriate. I say that that might happen in the future, because that is precisely what George III tried to do to George IV through the 1772 Act. If the clause is carried into legislation, the monarch will be able, entirely of their own volition and without any guidance from Parliament, to decide who should be excluded from the succession. The only thing that might militate against that would be if somebody got married before they became one of the six or before the monarch took offence or a dislike to them.

The Minister pointed out that other countries have similar provisions. It is true that, of the constitutional monarchies in Europe, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands have similar provisions. However, Norway has no such provision—it just has a simple law of succession, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) said. It is provided for by the caprice of God, as it were, whereas in two of the three countries that have a similar provision it is a vote of Parliament that decides. For the Crown and the Crown’s Ministers to reserve to themselves the decision as to who should be barred from the succession flies in the face of the history of this country, as the succession is a matter that has always been decided by the whole of Parliament—both Houses of Parliament—through statute law. That is why I am deeply, deeply suspicious of the first three subsections, and my suspicions have been made far worse by what the Minister has said this afternoon.

Ministerial Statements

Debate between Chris Bryant and Christopher Pincher

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Indeed we had a draft legislative programme, which we brought forward six months before the Queen’s speech, but that was presented to Parliament. It was not issued in a press release to the regional media or briefed to Andrew Marr. That is the process that we should adopt.

I want to raise one concern in relation to the motion. It says that, where a Member feels that the code has been broken—the ministerial code, which is written into a motion of the House as well; it is not just the Prime Minister’s ministerial code—the Member should report that to the Speaker, who would make a judgment and could then refer the matter to the Committee on Standards and Privileges. That is not the process that we have for other standards and privileges issues, or matters of privilege. At the moment, we write to you, Mr Speaker, and you decide whether we can have a debate on the matter. At the end of that, either it is decided to refer the matter without a Division, or there is a Division, so it becomes the decision of the House to refer the matter to the Committee on Standards and Privileges; it is not your decision, Mr Speaker. There is a double anxiety here. The proposed process would bring you into deciding whether a Minister should be referred. That process of referral would probably mean that the Minister had to lose his job at that point, such would be the clamour among the press and so on. Equally, if you were to bring the matter to the House, the almost inevitable conclusion, given that Ministers by definition always enjoy a majority in the House, is that the matter would never be referred to the Committee on Standards and Privileges.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that protocols introduced for the best possible motives can be taken over and run as political vehicles for the worst possible motives? Not only might Mr Speaker be dragged into a political argument but, heaven forfend, he might be deluged with requests to investigate breaches, which would become just another part of parliamentary graffiti.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman has reiterated my point.

I do not want impunity for Ministers, as that would enable the current situation to continue for ever and a day, and get worse. Scrutiny improves ministerial decisions and government so we must put an end to the current process of impunity. However, I do not want to bring Mr Speaker into the decision-making process. That is why I support the motion.

The motion will not in itself make the required change, however. The Government would have to introduce a motion to change standing orders to bring that change into effect. I hope that in doing so we would arrive at a policy that rendered Government accountable to Parliament and unable to exercise the impunity they have at present without bringing you, Mr Speaker, directly into play.