Greenpeace Activists in the Russian Federation

Debate between Chris Bryant and James Gray

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant]

The answer to the question by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) is yes. I hope that the Minister will reply on the issue of how the British Government can work with Russia, because the British Government’s relationship with the Russian Government is not always at its best, and whether it might be possible to work with other countries and some other agents, such as Shell and BP, to ensure a successful outcome. In my view, a successful outcome means that all the activists are out of Murmansk, out of the Russian Federation and home before Christmas, preferably in the next couple of weeks.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

Yes, but the hon. Gentleman must be brief.

[Mr Gray]

I will speak fast, so I will be extremely brief. I agree with the points that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) made a moment ago. She and I attended the Arctic conference. The point she made was not so much about the consular issues, which the hon. Gentleman is perfectly correct to raise—I strongly agree with every word he has said so far—but that we must find a way for the future of bringing the two sides together in a way that does not involve raiding oil rigs and taking action. It should involve talking and sitting down to discuss the issues among ourselves.

Ministerial Statements

Debate between Chris Bryant and James Gray

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I think that those occasions are very rare. On very rare occasions, something is market-sensitive, for example, in which case there is an argument for Treasury Ministers to be able to exercise that judgment, but it is a rare occurrence. Labour Members are always mindful of Hugh Dalton, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, managing, before the Evening Standard came out, to leak a couple of elements of the Budget, although not deliberately—I think it was accidental. He ended up losing his job as Chancellor of the Exchequer because of that. Therefore, I do not want to create a rule for Ministers whereby, when they think that an announcement is time-appropriate, they can use whatever device they want.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I was reflecting on the hon. Gentleman’s exchange with my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) about whether, if the House sat earlier on a Monday and Tuesday, that would reduce the incidence of Ministers leaking information. Does he believe that, when the House sat earlier for the autumn statement last week, that meant that the statement was entirely unknown before the Chancellor stood up?

[Chris Bryant]

The only response to that is, “Touché.” By definition, the hon. Gentleman is saying, and I wholeheartedly agree, that large parts of that autumn statement were pre-leaked over the weekend. Although I have my criticisms of what went on when we were in power, may I point out to hon. Members that the last Queen’s Speech was leaked? I do not think that that has ever happened before. Although you, Mr Speaker, investigated what happened—you can investigate what happens here—the Prime Minister, as far as I am aware, made no investigation into how that happened. That is a gross discourtesy to the House. In addition, figures from last year’s Budget were leaked. There is a danger that people have learned the lessons of our Government in the wrong way and are now exercising their powers incorrectly.

Procedure Committee Reports

Debate between Chris Bryant and James Gray

Thursday 13th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gray]

I cannot understand how my right hon. Friend has interpreted my amendment to mean that there should be no searching for information. Of course, there should be. The point of the amendment is that the devices could be used for any purpose connected to the debate, but for no other purposes. Of course, under the wording of my amendment as I understand it, they could be used to search for information.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It does not say that.

[Mr Gray]

It does not have to.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I am grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to speak and to Mr Speaker for selecting the amendment that stands in my name and those of a goodly number of right hon. and hon. Members from across the Chamber. I thank you for allowing a goodly amount of time for this important and useful debate. I do not intend to take up much of the House’s time, because a number of useful speeches have addressed most of the important arguments on both sides of the debate.

I very much agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), who started the debate by saying that this is a matter of taste, discretion and delicacy. There are not passionate arguments on either side. One side is not definitely right and the other side definitely wrong. It is a matter of how we handle such machines, what we use them for, what their purpose is and how we ensure that debate in the Chamber is as good as possible.

In fact, as is often the case when we discuss matters that affect ourselves, today’s debate on the issue has been among those of the highest quality that I have heard recently. My right hon. Friend’s Committee was split on the report; four of us have signed the amendment disagreeing with it. We go from his stance, which is that virtually any electronic device can be used for virtually any purpose either in the Chamber or in Committee, through to that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst), a former Deputy Speaker—he is by no means a dinosaur in this matter—whose broad view is that such devices should not be used for any purpose whatsoever.

I received a letter from a very senior Member with which I would not necessarily agree. He said that he felt that the rules applying in the House should be precisely the same as those applying at the opera—we should not use such devices at all—and there is some sense in that, although I do not necessarily agree with it.

[Chris Bryant]

Give us a song!

[Mr Gray]

I shall not give the House a song; I fear that my voice does not rise to that.

I would not necessarily agree with the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger), who focused on the use of electronic devices for Twitter. It is right that I suggested in the e-mail that I sent to all hon. Members that we should probably not use Twitter and blogging, although I will suggest how we might be able to use them. I am not necessarily totally opposed to the notion of twittering.

The main thrust of my amendment, and of my thoughts on the subject—and the thoughts of a great many hon. Members who have spoken to me—is that if we allow unfettered use of electronic devices, three things will happen. The first is that the quality of debate will decline. Let me give an example. Recently, I chaired a Public Bill Committee. Glancing round the room, I saw that some two thirds of the people on the Committee were using electronic devices for one purpose or another. That included the shadow Minister, the Minister, both Whips, and six or eight Back Benchers, one of whom, rather magically, was using two electronic devices simultaneously; how on earth he managed to do that I have simply no idea. It seemed to me that the fine technical point being made about the Pensions Bill—for that was the Bill—was not necessarily being considered carefully by the two thirds of the Committee who were using those machines at that time. Had I challenged members of the Committee to lay out precisely what the person speaking had just said, a very large percentage of them would have looked at me blankly, and would not have had the faintest idea what was going on.

I totally accept the point made by my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), that we can all multi-task. Of course we can; there is no question about that. MPs do it all the time. However, I simply do not believe that the finer points of argument in a debate will necessarily be picked up if one is focusing one’s mind on something else. The purpose of debate is not just for our own voices to be heard, or to get something on the record; we could do that by handing the speech in, as they do in the United States of America. The purpose of debate is to listen carefully to what the other person is saying, to pick up the other person on fine illogicalities in their speech, to make delicate points, and hopefully to come to some kind of useful conclusion. If a person is focusing on emptying their inbox, surfing the net, tweeting or who knows what else—famously, recently a member of the Italian Parliament was spotted surfing an escort site—while theoretically listening carefully to a debate, they are not taking part in it in the way that they should.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gray]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, I was a professional lobbyist for a number of years and so have no difficulty with that whatever. It is of course right that all sorts of interest groups around the world, from journalists to lobby groups, should be able to make their views known to us, but I am not certain about the propriety of a lobby group, the Whips or anyone else getting in touch with us during the course of a debate or a Select Committee evidence session to say, “Here’s an interesting point you ought to raise.” Would it really be right for outside interest groups to get in touch with us via electronic devices during Select Committee cross-examinations, for example of the Murdochs, and say, “Here’s something you ought to say”? I think that that would be an unreasonable intervention in our internal debates by outside influences.

[Chris Bryant]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Gray]

I will give way, but first I should say that I am absolutely sure that what the hon. Gentleman said during the Select Committee cross-examination of the Murdochs was entirely his own idea, irrespective of what outside influences might have said to him.

[Chris Bryant]

Well, I was not a member of that Committee, but that is just one minor factual inaccuracy of several that we are passing by. The point I was going to make is that one of the oldest rights of members of the public and constituents is the right to come to the Lobby and demand that we come out of a debate to listen to their point of view, so I do not see the difference.

[Mr Gray]

The difference is extremely simple. Someone outside communicating via an electronic device during a debate is not equivalent to a member of the public coming to Central Lobby, filling in a green form and asking to speak to us; it is equivalent to a member of the public coming into the Chamber and saying, “Would the hon. Gentleman please ask this question?”, which I do not believe is right. We should be debating among ourselves and not excessively involving people outside.

Most people agree that excessive use of electronic devices is not a good thing. Two or three objections have been raised with me. The first relates to the fact that we must all sit here for six or seven hours before finally being called to speak. That could be corrected in two ways: first, Members could take a greater interest in the debate; and secondly, we could perhaps move to the system enjoyed at the other end of the Palace, where peers have some indication of when they will speak. You, Mr Deputy Speaker, and your colleagues tend to indicate when Members will be called to speak, but the notion that we should sit here clearing our inboxes or writing articles on electronic devices for local newspapers because we are a little bored and cannot be bothered to listen to a debate seems a thin argument.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I understand, because the hon. Gentleman is the Member for Wycombe, and I know how such issues affect people there, but if he had not intervened, we would get on to the next business faster.

I want to correct a couple of points made by the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray). He seemed to think that I was on the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport. I should point out that I am not @tom_watson. There are a few differences between us, although we are often seen together.

I should also say that although he has been much misquoted, John Bright, the Liberal Member of Parliament, did not say that we—the House of Commons—were the mother of Parliaments; he said that England is the mother of Parliaments. That is because he believed—this is an important point—that we had to be transformed as history is transformed. I would say that Parliament has always been bad at opening itself up to the public. Indeed, in 1376 we first decided that we would take an oath of secrecy to ensure that nobody outside this place knew what was going on here. It took many centuries to get rid of that oath of secrecy, which was why John Wilkes ended up being expelled from the House of Commons on four occasions and had to be re-elected before eventually being allowed to publish what went on this House.

It is not a question of being dinosaurs or anything else; it is about opening Parliament up to the wider world around us, so that people can understand everything that goes on here. It is not for our convenience, but for our constituents’ convenience. The world has changed. When I was first elected in 2001, the vast majority of my constituents got in touch with me by coming to a constituency surgery. Now the vast majority get in touch by Facebook, Twitter, e-mail and, sometimes, text messages. We should make that more possible for our constituents, not more difficult.

Incidentally, I wholeheartedly agree with @KevinBrennanMP, who said earlier that proper wi-fi should be available in the Chamber so that people can engage properly. I disagree with the hon. Member for North Wiltshire that only urgent messages should be dealt with. Who on earth will decide what an urgent message is? It is my constituents who should decide what an urgent message is.

[Mr Gray]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I will not give way, because others want to get on to the next debate.

I have this picture in my mind of the Speaker going over to an hon. Member and demanding to see their last tweet or this place setting up “Oftwit” to ensure that Members are behaving properly. The hon. Member for North Wiltshire has only to listen toour constituents to find out what they are moreinterested in.

Members have said how inappropriate it would be if facts were brought to bear in debate, but that is what the officials Box is there for. [Interruption.] I see them smiling. Perhaps we should abolish the officials Box, so that Ministers have to rely on their own wit and intelligence. Would it not also be good if “Erskine May” was available online so that people could refer to it in the Chamber instead of having to buy a copy for several hundred pounds?

I want to respond to a couple of points that the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) made. She is absolutely sincere in wanting to make our business more intelligible to people. However, I would like to know how explanatory notes to amendments would stand legally if an amendment were carried. There is a danger in proceeding down that route. In addition, I would have thought that the whole point of a debate on an amendment was to decide what it meant and what it did; just accepting at face value what the hon. Member who tabled it had said would not assist.

Armed Forces Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and James Gray

Monday 10th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I am grateful for those comments and I will pass them on to Minerva in the Rhondda.

My other reason for wanting to take part in this debate is that Wales has a particular tradition of its own in relation to the armed forces, not only in successive wars but in producing a much higher quantity of young men and, increasingly, of young women to go into our armed forces than would be proportionate to its population. It is difficult, as the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) said, to get accurate statistics, but roughly 9% of the armed forces come from Welsh constituencies. That compares with just 5% of the UK population coming from Wales. There is, therefore, over-representation. That may in part be to do with the fact that we have higher levels of deprivation—multiple levels of deprivation —in certain parts of the country.

One of the ironies is that little of the time that Welsh personnel spend in the armed forces will be spent in Wales. They might have to go to Sennybridge. They might spend a very cold, wet, hideous, horrible time on the mountain tops in training, but the likelihood is that the vast majority of their time will be spent, even when they are in the UK, not in Wales but elsewhere.

I make a plea to the MOD and the Minister. I hope that he will be able to answer this later. When we are considering future bases in the UK, of course, as the Secretary of State said, the most important thing is ensuring the security of the realm. Every member of the armed forces would agree with that, but I argue that part of the military covenant is saying that deployment when at home, rather than when in theatre, should allow for a wider spread than is currently the case.

We have not mentioned the armed forces parliamentary scheme, but it is an important element of the way parliamentarians obtain information from those who have served or are reservists and from others from other backgrounds, and ensure that that informs our debate. In my time in the scheme, nearly everyone I met in the armed forces—this is not a partisan point—came from a Labour constituency, but all the sites we visited were in Conservative constituencies. That is not because anyone has decided to put them in Conservative constituencies; it is just because of a series of historical flukes. I urge the Government, as they consider what to do about the redeployment from Germany, to think about whether there is a base, for example, at St Athan, that might be used to base Welsh troops in Wales. I say that not as someone who supports a separation of Welsh armed forces from British armed forces but as someone who wants to reinforce the Welsh armed forces.

I believe that there are several elements to the covenant that are not mentioned in clause 2 but are equally important. We have debated one—equipment—at some length in the past few years, in particular because our troops are in theatre in Iraq and Afghanistan. The hon. Member for Milton Keynes North said that he felt that the equipment he was given when he was last deployed was far more suitable and up to date than previously. He is right, but there is going to be a constant process of change.

Likewise, ensuring that our troops have the most up to date, effective training possible is important. Several hon. Members have referred to whether it is possible to unify posts between the three services in relation to the military police. I argue that we need to go much further and extend that combination of training. Those who have had an opportunity to visit Shrivenham will know that bringing the training of officers in the Army, Air Force and Navy together in one place, which was at one point thought unthinkable—the idea that the Royal Navy would leave Greenwich was believed to be unthinkable—has brought enormous dividends to all three services. Notwithstanding the decision that seems to have been made in relation to St Athan and defence training, we need to be able to do more of our training on a shared forces basis because there is more that each of the services can learn from each other.

The hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd has a long record of campaigning on veterans issues, for which I pay tribute to him. All too often, people think of veterans as people who served in the first or second world wars, but many of the veterans in my constituency are 25, 26 or 27 years of age and their service will not just be for the few years that they spent being paid by the armed forces; in terms of the psychological and physical issues that they have to deal with, their service will be for the whole of their lives. Not only will they be serving in that way, but their families will, too. He is right to point to the need for continuity of care beyond—in many cases far beyond—the day when someone goes into civvy street.

I caution the hon. Gentleman, however, as I tried to do earlier—this crops up quite regularly in our debates—about the difference between correlation and causation. For example, it is often argued that couples who co-habit and have children are far more likely to split up than those who marry and have children. It is factually true. The question is: is that because they got married, or because they are the kind of people who felt differently about the institution of marriage in the first place? In other words, is there correlation between these statistics, or is there causation?

That is where we need to be precise in relation to the ongoing care of those in the armed forces. Many of the young people who join the armed forces from the Rhondda go in with many of the problems that they will leave with. They go in, as we know, with lower levels of literacy, which is why the armed forces in recent years have had to do much more to ensure that our troops have a high level of literacy. Some of them will have difficulties with other educational issues that need to be addressed.

The point is that it is not necessarily because those people were in the armed forces that some of the problems follow. Where the problem is because they were in the armed forces—perhaps because their training was so effective that they do not realise the lethal nature of the punch that they could deliver compared with someone else—it is all the more important that the MOD and the whole of society take action to ensure that young people, as they go into the armed forces and see through their years in service, and when they leave, have the full support and training that they need.

I know that many others want to take part in the debate and I do not want to delay others from speaking any further, but I hope that the Minister will respond on the issue of Welsh troops being based in Wales because it is one of the ways that we can ensure that there is continuity for young people who are removed from the Rhondda to serve in Iraq or Afghanistan, or who spend all their service career living in Wiltshire. When they are finished, they come back to the Rhondda—

[Mr Gray]

As Conservatives.

[Chris Bryant]

I am not going to respond to that, although the hon. Gentleman is enticing.

By that uprooting, those service personnel are not given a proper chance when they go back. The key element is ensuring that that matter is addressed not just by the MOD, but by the Welsh Assembly Government.

Defence Spending (Wales)

Debate between Chris Bryant and James Gray

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant]

Drivel.

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order.