Ministerial Statements

Debate between Chris Bryant and Julian Lewis

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

That is true, and the Europe directorate of the Foreign Office is punctilious in ensuring that announcements are made to the European Scrutiny Committee first. Indeed, many matters go to the Committee with several months of warning before they become public anywhere else in Europe, and I think that is right. However, when I was Deputy Leader of the House I tried my level best, as did many others in Government, to make sure that we adopted such a process.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I hope that the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) agrees with that.

[Dr Lewis]

I certainly do. I should have thought that most people would feel that the later any news about Europe was released, the better. However, what I want to ask the hon. Gentleman is this: what does he think that the newspapers offer Ministers as a reward for letting them have the news early?

[Chris Bryant]

Oh, Lord! I think that I have spoken enough about newspapers in the last year not to opine on that now, but obviously the aim is to manage the news in such a way as to ensure that there is as little scrutiny as possible. However, I can say on the basis of my limited experience as a Minister that on the few occasions when we did make statements to the House, the quality of questioning in the Chamber—which was sometimes haphazard, but was often extremely to the point—improved the quality of decisions and the way in which they were eventually transacted, and I therefore do not believe that Governments have any reason to run away from this proposal.

I think that the position has worsened in recent years with the advent of 24-hour news. There is an insatiable beast that needs to be fed all the time, and extra diligence is required on the part of Ministers and Government to ensure that they do not succumb to it.

The hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) asked what was meant by the House being in session, but the truth is that nearly every decision made by Government is not time-sensitive. Most decisions can be made at any time, and it is therefore always possible for Ministers to wait until Parliament is in session. When I was Deputy Leader of the House, one of the things that I tried hard to curtail was the number of written ministerial statements made on the last day before a parliamentary recess, because a large number of such statements makes it virtually impossible for you, Mr Speaker, to intervene by allowing an urgent question, or for the House to allow any proper scrutiny before Parliament sits again.

House of Lords Reform

Debate between Chris Bryant and Julian Lewis

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I will not, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind, because he has only just spoken. Some 34 Back Benchers spoke, and I want to reply to as much of the debate as possible.

The current system is also unsustainable simply because of the numbers. There are already more than 800 Members down the other end, and if we do not make reforms towards an elected second Chamber, we will end up with another 269.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Reduce the number!

[Chris Bryant]

I hear the hon. Gentleman say, in a rather Tudor way, “Let’s just reduce the number.” What? A kind of cull? Beheadings? We should have Acts of Attainder, perhaps, down this end just to get rid of particular named Members down the other. I am not sure that that is right, and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones), who said that there are too many Members and we need to ensure that there are fewer. The proposals are right in that regard.

A system that is based on appointment always leads to patronage. It was ever thus, and surprise, surprise, whoever we get to appoint people, they end up appointing people who are rather like them. When Lord Home of the Hirsel announced that women were to be introduced to the House of Lords, he rather bizarrely said that

“taking women into a Parliamentary embrace would seem to be only a modest extension of the normal… privileges of a Peer.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 30 October 1957; Vol. 205, c. 590.]

People did not quite understand what he meant, but the following year, when the first four women peers were introduced, one was the wife of a viceroy, another was a daughter of a viceroy and a third was already a Dame of the British Empire.

It was exactly the same in 1997, when the Labour Government decided to ask somebody to draw up a new system of appointments. We asked Herman Ouseley to do so, and he came forward with the House of Lords Appointments Commission, which we now enjoy. Guess who was on the first list of people whom the commission appointed—Herman Ouseley, now Baron Ouseley. To recite an old Robin Cook joke, there is of course Elspeth Howe, who became a Lady when her husband became Sir Geoffrey Howe, a Lady when her husband became a Member of the House of Lords and was then, herself, made a people’s peer, so she was “Once, twice, three times a lady”—[Interruption.] Sorry!

Appointment for life is also, in the end, reactionary. It often means that the wisdom and experience that goes into the House of Lords sits there for 20, 30 or 40 years and then becomes out of date and refers to a society of many years before. It was suggested earlier that the House of Lords should be a place of debate for an older generation. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) said that that is effectively the Saga version of the House of Lords. We need a far better system to ensure that what it does reflects the will of the whole country. One of the other problems about appointment is that over the past few years the vast majority of appointments have come from London and the south-east of England. It is almost inevitable that those who end up doing the appointing end up appointing in their own likeness.

The system of by-elections for hereditaries is unsustainable, as is reflected by the elections that take place when one of them dies. As I am sure that all hon. Members know, earlier this year, on 11 May, there was a by-election following the death of the 11th Baron Monson. Fourteen hereditaries stood; seven got no votes at all; five—the Earl of Oxford and Asquith, the Earl of Shaftesbury, the Earl of Drogheda, Lord Cromwell and Viscount Colville of Culross—were eliminated because the single transferable vote is already used for the House of Lords; and the Earl of Lytton beat the Duke of Somerset by 15 votes to nine. I have to say that my favourite is still the 2005 by-election in which there were 28 electors, 26 stood, 19 got no votes at all, and in the sixth and final round Viscount Montgomery of Alamein defeated the Earl of Effingham—you couldn’t make it up, could you?—by 11 votes to eight. It was pure “Blackadder”. I am delighted, however, that in the other by-election that took place this May, a Labour candidate, the third Viscount Hanworth, stood against a Liberal Democrat, the Earl of Carlisle, and the Labour man got 233 votes while the Liberal Democrat got only 26. Interestingly, it is sometimes said that people will not stand for election to a second Chamber, but the Earl of Carlisle has not had much luck, as he also stood for the Commons in 1987 and 1992.

Incidentally, it is inappropriate that we still combine the peerage with the legislature. If the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) wants to be a baron, a viscount, an earl or whatever, it would make far more sense for him to make his bid and start to get a bit less rebellious, because the Government will not be doling it out to him, and I am sure that Her Majesty will end up giving him a suitable honour.

Several hon. Members referred to experience and expertise. As the hon. Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson) has said, we should not undervalue the expertise and experience in this House. Many of us look to people such as the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), who have a degree of experience in certain fields, to bring that to this House. It is true that there are not many generals here, but there are majors and people who served in the ranks. One of the best speeches on the military covenant that I have read or heard in either House was made by a Member who has never been a member of the armed forces—my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton North East (Mr Crausby)—as I think that a lot of hon. Members who heard it would agree. As regards the NHS, we have GPs and a gynaecologist, who is in the Chamber now. We have teachers, people who have run their own businesses, people who have built their own businesses and people from the shop floor—we even have a vicar and a former Member of the House of Lords. We should not undervalue the experience that people like to see getting elected to this House.

On the bishops, it is inappropriate that they should represent only the people of England. For me, one of the great moments of the debate was hearing my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy), who is a well-known papal knight and a respected Roman Catholic, acknowledge that the bishops of the Church of England are actually bishops—so the job of the Reformation is done. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell), who served with distinction as one of the Church Commissioners, that the bishops were originally here because they were one of the major land tenants in the country, then because we took into Parliament the business of deciding on religious matters such as transubstantiation and now because people argue, as we have heard, that we need them for spiritual support.

In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, neither the spirit of the land nor the Churches have collapsed because no bishops represent those areas in Parliament. Although some of my best friends are bishops, I honestly think that the time has come for them to depart the House of Lords. That would not signal the disestablishment of the Church of England, just as the fact that there are no representatives of the Church of Scotland in the House of Lords does not prevent it from being established. I say to my bishop friends that they can make a far more effective contribution to society by editing the New Statesman. If that has not helped Conservative Members join my cause to take bishops out of the House of Lords, I do not know what will. I hope that we will see an end to bishops in the House of Lords.

There are some problems with the legislation, as hon. Members have said. First, the powers of the House of Lords must be addressed. I do not think that clause 2 will stand the test. The Salisbury-Addison convention, to all intents and purposes, is now non-existent. It cannot hold water when there are more than two political parties in Parliament. It is frankly not worth the paper that it was not written on.

I think that 15 years is too long for somebody to be elected for. It is very difficult to see how somebody can be genuinely representative and accountable when they sit for fully 15 years. As the hon. Members for Crawley (Henry Smith) and for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) have said, it is important that we have a system of recall. If somebody is elected and hardly ever turns up, abuses their position or gets into some kind of trouble, there should be some system of recall, just as there should be for this House.

Many Members have said that this issue is not a priority and that we should not deal with it, but I profoundly disagree with them. In the end, it is about how we use power. All the other issues that my constituents of course talk far more about, such as jobs, unemployment, benefits, creating a successful economy, transport, teachers and hospitals, depend on whether we distribute power properly. That is why it is important to have change. Having just a system of appointments is reactionary. It means that we always reflect the past and do not offer a greater future, and it also creates the problem of patronage.

The hon. Member for Gainsborough hopes that the radical left and the radical right will combine to see off the proposals. I hope that everyone unites to improve the proposals, because they certainly need improvement. If the Government are too intractable, the measures will die. However, let us not lose sight of the unsustainability of the present arrangements. Surely, if one wants to tell other people how to live their lives, which is in essence what a Member of a legislature does, the least one can do is to put oneself up for election.