House of Commons Financial Plan and Draft Estimates

Debate between Chris Bryant and Mark Tami

Tuesday 11th December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant]

The second exception that we make—again, I think that it is difficult to disagree with—relates to security. The physical aspects of security in this building and of Members in their constituencies are obviously important, but as we have seen in the last two years, the cyber-security of the parliamentary estimate is also a vital element of enabling the democratic process to proceed. It is not just Russia but China and, potentially, a whole series of other countries that, as state actors, might be seeking to undermine the cyber-security of this place, and it would be all too easy for other people engaged in espionage to attack it. Of course, there have also been the very sad deaths of Jo Cox and PC Keith Palmer.

I am therefore fully aware that it is important to have an exception from the remit for security, but we need to be very clear that we are getting good value for money and that we are not wasting taxpayers’ money, even when we are dealing with security matters. I have some concerns about the contract with Chubb and the way it has been administered; I think that the Committee will want to look at that in the near future.

One of the largest areas of exception from the remit is, of course, the major strategic programmes that we have in the Palace of Westminster. There are three such programmes. The first is restoration and renewal. Everyone is aware of that—we had a big debate on it. Unfortunately, the delays in delivering it have made it very difficult for us to be clear about exactly when we will be incurring the expenditure. Indeed, the delays in decision making in the House have made it more difficult for the Officers of the House to be able to deliver clear financial decision making.

The second programme is the northern estate programme. That is definitely progressing. We have been involved in looking at some of the suggestions of what there may be, including in relation to the alternative Chamber that will be built, largely on the same basis as the current Commons Chamber but with better disabled access; provision of offices for Members who are being decanted out of this building; and ensuring that the whole of the northern estate within the curtilage is efficiently and effectively used. I passionately support that programme, because I think that at the end of it we will have a legacy for future generations that will improve access for the public to the whole of the parliamentary estate and to the archives.

That is the third programme—the archives accommodation programme. I do not know whether any Members have been into the archives of late, but it is virtually impossible to get there; it is certainly very difficult for any members of the public to get there. The photograph room has never worked since it was first installed, and all the rolled Acts of Parliament, going back to the 14th century, could be far better stored than they are now. They are higgledy-piggledy; they are in time order, but should be far more carefully stored. However, that cannot really happen until such time as we have new provision.

We have also made an exemption—this is new for us—for any decisions made by the House in relation to reports that are being done. The most important example is the Dame Laura Cox report, which has already led to significant public interest, as people want to ensure that Parliament is a safe place for everybody to work and that there is no bullying or harassment. There are costs involved in delivering that review and we are keen to support that, and we will doubtless be keen to support whatever Gemma White QC comes up with, when her review is completed.

In addition, we have allocated £2.4 million for the Sponsor Board, which is up and running in shadow form. I see that one of its members—my right hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami)— is here in his less shadowy form; certainly his tie is less shadowy than it might be, as usual. The shadow Sponsor Board is up and running, and we are hopeful that it will be able to engage in its work as fast as possible. As I understand it, it is keen to speed up decisions, rather than delay. At the moment, we are talking about not leaving the Palace in the decant until 2026, but there are people who would like that to be brought forward to 2025 if it is physically possible.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

I apologise for missing the opening few minutes. I just want to emphasise the important point about driving things forward. This is not a vanity project: we are doing this work because the building is not safe as it is at the moment.

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[Chris Bryant]

That is absolutely right. When—if—Brexit happens, it will be all the more important, in relation to other European countries, that Members of this House and the House of Lords will be seen as diplomats or ambassadors on behalf of Parliament. We need to garner the information, ideas and contacts that come through that in the national interest. I worry that we do not do that very well at the moment.

The capital elements of the administration estimate are quite significant. We are talking about £236.8 million. Some of the figures in the report that we have published are slightly different from the figures that we are talking about now, because this is an iterative process. In a sense, the reason for having this debate was to be able to inform those decisions as they go forward to the commission. The two largest elements of this relate to the major ongoing building projects. Of that, £117.4 million relates to the Strategic Estates projects. I think everybody on the Committee would say that we worry about the Strategic Estates. It is not just that the Elizabeth Tower started off at one price and ended up at a completely different price—incidentally, it ended up being a rather different project. With the stone courtyard project, the money we were allocating for all five courtyards has been taken up on one. I am sure that both the Labour party and Conservative party would have moaned about this, but we also decided to close the cloister—one of the most beautiful parts of the Palace—and move all the staff out more than 18 months ago, yet work has still not started on it, even though it desperately needs work.

[Mark Tami]

We were told at the time that those people had to leave because that work was essential and could not wait under any circumstances—it was quite an exercise to find somewhere else for those people—only to see it left empty, apart from some building materials that have been left there.

[Chris Bryant]

That is distressing and worrying. Apart from anything else, it is worrying because it is one of the most beautiful parts of the palace, which is hardly used or visited by the public. I hope that when restoration and renewal is complete we will not have destroyed the beautiful work that was done by Henry VII and Henry VIII. That would be a terrible sadness. The delay is down to capacity in the team and physical capacity on the site. It is not down to somebody being negligent in their job, or anything like that, but it is simply down to capacity. If we are unable to get that work done, there is a danger that we will lose one of the most important architectural aspects of the building.

It is not all bad. The cast-iron roofs project has been extraordinarily successful. It is on time and on budget. It is a massively impressive project. It has basically kept two companies in the north of England afloat over the last few years. The encaustic tiles project has been very successful as well. It is great to see the floors now being sorted out. It is also quite interesting to see people in the shop buying the old encaustic tiles that have been lifted up, thereby bringing a little bit of income back into the Palace as well. They are quite good Christmas presents, Mr Howarth. If you feel like buying one, you can buy me one.

[Chris Bryant]

All of us on the Committee have a fundamental worry that sometimes, because we have to meet Government pay scales and agreed limits, we end up paying for a lot of consultancy advice. That ends up creating more expense, but because it is sort of off the books, or is not accounted in the same way, somehow it meets some kind of Government requirement. I think this is a false economy. We are desperate to do whatever we can to ensure that we do not continue wasting taxpayers’ money in that way.

I should add that we are spending £88.8 million in the capital element of the administration estimate on the northern estate programme. It has been difficult to know when this money will be spent. That is one reason why it has been difficult to get the finances precisely right this year, because we did not know when we would be starting the work. If political decision-making causes delays, it adds to the cost. If the Minister has any role in making sure that key decisions come at the right time, and that we are not putting off votes, for instance—if she can chivvy the Leader of the House, or whoever makes such decisions—it would be enormously helpful to the finances of Parliament.

The Members estimate relates to Short money, which is available to make sure that Opposition parties can do their job properly. I am glad we won the battle a few years ago to make sure that is adequate. It also pays for the Deputy Speakers’ salaries and for the Exchequer elements of contributions to the pensions fund. It stands at £17.7 million, which is a little bit up from £17.1 million previously.

I will finish with a few general points. We on the Committee feel that we do not manage many of these processes well yet, so there is work to do. One issue about the Elizabeth tower, which I have already referred to, was that not enough investigative work was done before we started to let the contract. We then found out that the cables were not in the place that all the maps said they were, which incurred significant extra cost. We were also probably too optimistic about what it was going to cost. We now have a much better estimate of our optimism bias, although I have a slight worry that if we are too pessimistic, that will simply be an excuse for spending more money than we needed to in the first place. It is a difficult balancing act.

Another issue was that, in the end, the contract for the Elizabeth tower was let when there was no Parliament. Everybody ran around asking, “Who made the decision?”, but the truth is that it was taken somewhere between the Commission, which still existed because it is a statutory body, the Treasury, the Leader of the House and the accounting officer, who is the Clerk of the House. We need to have much greater continuity when we have general elections. To not have a Finance Committee for the best part of six months is a mistake. There is a strong argument for putting the Finance Committee on a statutory footing, as the Commission is, so it can still exist even when there is no Parliament, because financial decisions still have to be made.

[Mark Tami]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; I have served on the Finance Committee and the Administration Committee. We sometimes concentrate on small items that cost very little, and scrutinise them to the nth degree, yet no one is quite sure who actually signed off a massive project.

[Chris Bryant]

Yes; I never want to have the debate on whether we should put 3p or 5p on the price of a cup of tea ever again.

[Chris Bryant]

I am led by the Committee. It is a serious point that we sometimes obsess about small amounts of money, but, for example, it looks as if the fire safety budget will have gone from £90 million to £160 million, and it is perfectly legitimate to ask who made that decision and at what point a decision was made by a Committee of the House or by the accounting officer. If we cannot match responsibility and accountability, there is a real danger that financial mistakes will be made and significant amounts of money will go in the wrong direction.

I have already made the point, but I want to labour it, that we are too bound by Government pay scales. That has made it difficult to pay the right price to get the job done in one of the most complicated and difficult buildings and in the context of the most complicated and difficult political decision-making processes. Many staff who work here are admirable—they dedicate themselves to their task as much as any Member of Parliament and work many hours beyond what they are required to do—but, all too often, we end up bringing in experts on consultancy rates and paying more than we need to simply because we are trying to meet the Treasury’s rules. That is a mistake.

I worry that the building swamps the work financially. We are talking about spending dramatic amounts of money on the building, but what is really important here is the scrutiny work that we do, the public coming to understand how we do our democratic business and the engagement with the public. There are major projects that should be slanted much more towards the public.

A classic instance is that, of late, people have regularly queued for an hour or two hours—often standing in the pouring rain—to get into the building to watch democracy in action. We simply have to do better on such projects. I have heard lots of different explanations. Sometimes I am told that it is because one of the security arches is not working, or that people are working to rule because they are fed up with decisions that have been made elsewhere in the Palace—who knows? All I know is that the public feel they are getting a pretty rum deal. They are often late for meetings that they are coming to in Parliament. This should be an open place, not one that is almost impossible to get into.

[Mark Tami]

I certainly agree. After many years of using the Palace, some organisations are questioning whether they will carry on, because of the inability to get people in. After restoration and renewal, we are talking about doubling the number of people who come here, but there is no point having ambitious targets if we cannot get people in safely and more quickly.

[Chris Bryant]

As always, my right hon. Friend makes my point better than me, so I am grateful.

Finally, the structure is not quite right. It has been some time since the Commission was put on a statutory basis after the Straw review. The Leader of the House is keen to look at having the Commission elected, which I support; I would have the whole Commission fully elected to do a job. It would then function more like a traditional Select Committee and more like a team. That would be a good way to go forward, rather than the process we have now, in which all the members of the Commission are appointed by their respective party leaders, and then there are two external members, who are often the most informed and independently-minded on all the financial aspects but, bizarrely, are not allowed to vote. That system needs to change.

I have already said “finally”, but I will say it again: finally, if anything I have said has given the impression that I am not respectful of the Clerks or the people who work for the Committee, that would be a complete mistake. Myfanwy Barrett is a wonderful woman who has done a sterling job for many years. It is an enormous sadness to us that she is leaving—but who knows, maybe we will be buying in her consultancy advice later at a much greater price.

[Mark Tami]

Fiona Channon, who I have dealt with for many years about offices, is also leaving and going to the House of Lords, which will be a great loss to the Commons.

[Chris Bryant]

I do not want to turn the debate into the Oscars, but I also thank Philip Collins, who has done a magnificent job for us, and Rob Cope, who is our Committee Clerk.

We have done things differently in the last few months. We are keen to make sure that the Commission regularly hears our voice before it makes decisions about key financial matters. In the end, we are spending taxpayers’ money and we should do it better.

Palace of Westminster: Restoration and Renewal

Debate between Chris Bryant and Mark Tami

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered restoration and renewal of the Palace of Westminster.

The motion is the formality, but I do not think that by the end of this one and a half hours we will have considered the matter properly. The Government should be tabling a motion so that the whole House and, for that matter, the House of Lords, can do so. It is now 19 and a half weeks since the Joint Committee on the Palace of Westminster produced its report. At the rate we are going, it will be six months from the delivery of that report to the moment when we start debating it properly and coming to a decision. That is verging on the irresponsible.

I want to lay out the nature of the problem that we have in the building. Many people think it is falling down—it is not falling down, although the Clock Tower does incline a little. The mechanical and electrical engineering systems that keep the place lit, heated, cooled, drained and dry are already well past their use-by date. The risk of a catastrophic failure such as a fire or a flood rises exponentially every five years that we delay. We should be in absolutely no doubt: there will be a fire. There was a fire a fortnight ago and there are regularly fires. People patrol the building 24 hours a day to ensure that we catch those fires.

Some of the high-voltage cables in the building are decaying and doing so deep inside the building in the 98 risers that take services from the basement past all the rooms in the building up to the roof. They are so blocked up with additional services that access to them is virtually impossible. That is why a fire in any one of them could spread very rapidly from floor to floor and take the whole building with it.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

I am very pleased that my hon. Friend secured this debate. Does he agree that anyone who has any doubts about the problems that we face would do well to go on a tour of the basement and see the wiring, the plumbing and the risers that are key to the risks?

[Chris Bryant]

Yes. I have done about 30 of those tours now, with different members of the public, broadcast outlets, newspapers and other Members of Parliament. Everybody has been struck by the fact that 75% of the work that we have to do is on the mechanical and electrical gubbins of the building. This is not about a fancy tarting up of the building—it is about whether the building can function.

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[Chris Bryant]

There is a very serious point here. Some people are arguing—I will come on to this point later—that we should stay in the building while the work is being done. That incurs a very significant risk to our safety and that of the people who work here. If we were to take the measures necessary to protect people properly while removing asbestos, that would dramatically increase the cost of and the risk to the project and the public.

Water is penetrating much of the stonework and doing lasting damage. Many of the 3,800 bronze windows, which were a wonderful idea when first installed, no longer work properly and have to be refitted.

We should be thoroughly ashamed that disabled access in this building is truly appalling. It is phenomenally difficult to get around the building for someone in a wheelchair or who has physical difficulties. The roundabout routes that many have to take to make an ordinary passage through the building are wrong. We still expect members of the public to queue for more than an hour in the pouring rain, which is not acceptable in the 21st century.

We have to act because this is one of the most important buildings in the world. It is part of a UNESCO world heritage site. The walls of Westminster Hall date from 30 years after the Norman conquest, the ceiling dates from the time of Richard II at the end of the 14th century and the cloisters date from the time of the Tudors. Every single tourist who comes to this country wants to be photographed in front of this building, and every film, Hollywood or otherwise, that wants to show that it is set in the UK or in London shows this building.

The people of this country have a deep affection for the building. One poll—I am very sceptical about polls, but none the less I am going to use this one—showed this week that 57% of the public want us to do the work and 61% think that we should move out to allow it to be done more effectively, more quickly and more cheaply.

Today’s MPs and peers hold this building in trust. It is not ours—we hold it in trust. Our predecessors got it hideously wrong in the 19th century. They kept on delaying necessary work. That delay made the fire in 1834 not only possible but inevitable, and so we lost the Painted Chamber, St Stephen’s Chapel and what was reputedly the most beautiful set of medieval buildings in the world. They then insisted on staying on site while the new building was built around them and constantly complained about the noise and the design. The result was long delays and a massive budget overrun. They started in 1840, but it was not completed until 1870, by which time Barry and Pugin were dead and their sons were battling about the ongoing design issues. If we do the same today, we will not move back in until 2055 at the earliest.

Of course we have to be careful about money, which is why the Joint Committee, which started with a very sceptical point of view on the project, recommended what we believed to be the cheapest and best option, which is a full decant. I say “cheapest” because, however we cut the numbers that have been put together on a very high-level basis for the two Houses, the option of full decant comes in at £900 million less than trying to stay in the building.

The Earl of Lincoln, the first commissioner of works, told MPs in 1844 that

“if I had been employing an architect in the construction of my private residence, I should have a right to fool away as much of my money as I thought fit; but in the case of a public building, I consider myself acting, to a certain degree, as guardian of the public purse, and to have no right to sanction any expenditure, either for the gratification of any pride, or the indulgence of any fancy I might entertain, as to the proper and efficient construction of the building.”

We should adopt that same attitude today. We should be going for the cheapest option—our constituents would expect that of us—but not a cheap option that does not do the job properly.

Our argument in Committee did not hinge entirely on the money. Three Members in the Chamber were on the Committee—my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami), and the hon. Members for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) and for North Antrim (Ian Paisley). They would agree that, when we started our consideration, we all assumed we would come up with some kind of plan that meant we stayed in the building—a kind of half-and-half solution. We consulted widely, but every single person we asked told us that that was simply not workable. “Not workable, unfeasible, impracticable, foolhardy, risky and dangerous” were the sort of words people used. We should listen to them.

I want to deal with some of the things that other people have been suggesting. First, something I have heard often, though not so much in the Commons or Parliament, is that we should move to elsewhere in London or outside the capital. I disagree. This is the home of Parliament and should remain the home of Parliament, but there are good reasons beyond the romantic association. If we were to leave the Palace forever, we would still have to do the work to protect it because it is a world heritage site, and we would not save a single penny. If we moved elsewhere in London, we would have to find a space that can accommodate everyone not only in the Palace but on the rest of the parliamentary estate—Portcullis House, Norman Shaw North, Norman Shaw South, Parliament Street, Millbank and all the Lords’ offices—which would be a considerable piece of prime estate to find. If we moved outside London, we would have to move the whole of Government as well, because all Ministers are Members of the Commons or the House of Lords. That option is impracticable and very expensive.

The second thing I hear—this is the most common—is that, if we leave we will never come back. I have been told that by four Members of Parliament today alone. They argue that the Commons should sit in the House of Lords, and the Lords should sit in the Royal Gallery. That is basically the proposal of the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh)—he is not right hon. but he should be, and learned and gallant and all sorts of other things as well. I have discussed the issue with him many times and we can be friendly about it, but there are lots of problems with his proposal.

That proposal would add £900 million to the cost—I have already quoted the point made by the Earl of Lincoln in 1834. Furthermore, public and press access would be very restricted under the hon. Gentleman’s plan, and it would be difficult to have any kind of fully functioning Public Gallery in his scheme, whether for the Commons or the Lords. His plan would rely on keeping a large part of the building open around the work, because of the need for Whips Offices, rooms for Doorkeepers, police officers and Ministers, and—who knows?—some people might even want a Tea Room.

[Mark Tami]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Chris Bryant]

On the Tea Room?

[Mark Tami]

Not actually on the Tea Room itself, however vital that is. Some Members who may think that proposal a good idea do not realise that there is one system for the plumbing and all the electrics. The House of Lords is a separate House, but it does not have a separate supply system. We would have to build some great structure outside to ensure that one part of the building could carry on working.

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Basically, there is one electricity system, one drainage system, one central heating system, one cooling system—the building is a unity. If we want to keep part of it open, especially a whole corridor, we would have to put in temporary services to accommodate everything. That is an expensive and, I would argue, risky business.

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[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: we should have started some considerable time ago.

About 10 years ago, when I was Deputy Leader of the House for five minutes, we were already arguing that we needed to get this work on the road. The Committee was asked to delay publishing its report until the local government elections were done, until the referendum was done, until we had a new Prime Minister, and so on, and still there has been no debate. We have to get a move on.

[Mark Tami]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the amount that we spend on just patching things up grows every year, and it will continue to grow if we do not bite the bullet now?

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In addition, when all that minor work is going on, which still costs millions of pounds, there is further risk in the building. There is building work going on. Indeed, a few weeks ago, the House of Lords decided that it could not bear the noise that was going on and had to suspend its sitting. I think that if we tried to sit in the building while work was going on, we would do that every single day. I can just see the hon. Member for Gainsborough standing in the Chamber in 15 years’ time—if he gets his way—saying, “I can’t even hear myself think, let alone speak!”

Another thing that has been said is: “What about giving up on the September sittings?” That is quite popular with quite a lot of colleagues, especially when they are asked in September. That was specifically factored into the rolling programme option in the independent options appraisal. It was termed “scenario E1A”, because it would be enabled by longer recesses and what the IOA called an acceptance by MPs of considerable disruption for three decades. That option also assumes that there will be alternative Chambers for use during an unexpected recall of Parliament. It is worth bearing in mind that recalls are a simple fact of life. During the last Parliament alone, we were recalled twice in 2011, twice in 2013 and once in 2014, and of course we were, horribly, recalled last year after Jo Cox’s murder. There will be recalls—that is just a fact.

I have heard one other argument: “We need to put on a good show in times of Brexit. We can’t just meet in a car park.” Let me be absolutely clear: the temporary Chamber will not be some cardboard cut-out. It will be a properly impressive Chamber with full access for the public and the press. Moreover, any half-and-half proposal will delay our full return to the building and keep the scaffolding up for another decade or two.

But there is a much bigger point. The last thing we want as we leave the European Union is to look as if we are hanging around in an old ancestral mansion like a dowager duchess, running with buckets from one dripping ceiling to another. Nor can we risk a catastrophic failure, such as a flood or major fire. That really would give the world the worst possible impression. We want to show the world that we can take tough decisions—that we value our heritage but have a strong, modern, outward-looking vision for the future. What better way is there of showing that than taking this 1,000-year-old building, restoring what is beautiful and historic about it, and renewing it so that it really works for the 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 24th and 25th centuries?

As a Labour Member, I think that we should see this as an opportunity. The Committee was advised repeatedly that the workforce in this country does not actually have all the skills to complete this project. After Brexit, we may have even fewer qualified builders. We should see this project as part of our industrial strategy today, and use it to show that this country can deliver a massive infrastructure project on time and on budget. We should train youngsters now in the craft and high-tech engineering skills of the 21st century, so that young people from every single one of our constituencies can work on what is the best-loved building in the world—an icon of British liberty, democracy and the rule of law.

Debate on the Address

Debate between Chris Bryant and Mark Tami

Wednesday 8th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is a great delight to follow the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), not least because it was Noah Ablett, a member of the Rhondda Labour party in the early 20th century, who founded the Plebs’ League. I note that the right hon. Gentleman referred to himself as an oik, although I am not sure of the difference. In any event, it was a great speech, and I commend him.

I have heard some dire speeches in my time, and indeed I have made some dire speeches—[[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] I knew I would be able to unite the Chamber eventually. But this Queen’s Speech is anaemic, vacuous, paltry and so utterly lacking in fibre that it takes not only the biscuit but the whole of the McVitie’s biscuit barrel—the custard creams, the garibaldis, the rich teas, the digestives and the bourbons are all gobbled up in this Bill. I have watched more exciting episodes of “Little House on the Prairie”. At one point, I thought that the BBC test card would be more interesting and more riveting than what we were being presented with.

Some of the most expensively educated brains in the country sweated over this. Civil servants scurried hither and thither, lawyers were briefed, special advisers scratched their heads and think-tanks were consulted. Of course, Lynton Crosby held forth. Buckingham palace flunkies looked at an early draft and frowned a little, so Lynton Crosby was consulted again. A goat was slain, its innards dragged out and its skin bleached, and the very best vellum prepared. The Deputy Prime Minister then threw a bit of a hissy fit and Lynton Crosby had to give him the hairdryer treatment.

After all those hours of rowing, so many hours in preparation and so many thousands of pounds, this is all they could come up with—so much sententious guff. Just listen to the stuff that the Government made Her poor old Majesty say:

“It will…work to promote a fairer society that rewards people who work hard.”

Sententious guff! What about those who want to work hard, but do not get an opportunity because of the Government’s economic policies? Let us take another bit:

“My Government is committed to building an economy where people who work hard are properly rewarded.”

What about those who are improperly rewarded in the City of London for taking ludicrous risks with everybody else’s economic opportunities?

“My Government is committed to a fairer society where aspiration and responsibility are rewarded.”

Why do we not just have a piece of legislation that introduces motherhood and apple pie for everybody, or have they decided that motherhood and apple pie do not match what Lynton Crosby wants to see in a Queen’s Speech?

It is the tenor of the pre-briefing of the speech that upsets me. It is an attempt at dog-whistle politics, with its hints, suggestions and little insinuations. Show a bit of leg, Lynton Crosby told them, and so they did—just a tiny little bit of ankle. The trouble with dog-whistle politics is that its cynicism eventually repels those it tries to attract. It is like the boy who cried wolf once too often: eventually the dogs realise that it is just a dog-whistle that does not mean anything, and there is no reward or substance at the end. In fact, it is a wolf-whistle, a sort of smutty insinuation that masquerades as a compliment. It is not even a proposition. It is not a declaration of love, but a leery suggestion of better things to come. The classic example is the centrepiece on immigration that the Government have been proclaiming for the past three days, which is already falling apart as we speak—apparently, it is now only a consultation.

Even more important is that this is a Queen’s Speech of stunning vacuity. I remember Queen’s Speeches designed for parliamentary Sessions lasting half a year, because there had to be a general election within six months. They contained more of interest than this speech. Where are the measures to tackle the geographical inequity of Britain that leaves London and the south-east of England as the sweated powerhouse of the whole of the rest of the economy, with people commuting ever further because houses are becoming ever more unaffordable?

Where are the measures to tackle teenage pregnancy rates, which are still the highest in Europe by a considerable way, by making sex and relationship education statutory and ensuring that every teacher who leads sex and relationship education wants to teach it and is specially qualified to do so? Where are the measures to reconfigure the economy, so that the areas of high unemployment and high economic inactivity do not drag on the rest of the country? Where is the Bill to introduce a register of commercial landlords, so that people cannot be exploited and put in accommodation that we would not expect people in Somalia to live in? Where is the legislation for a register of lobbyists? The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield said just now that transparency is the best form of antiseptic. Where is it? The Prime Minister said that the next great scandal to hit British politics would be lobbying. Why do we not have legislation to deal with it in the Queen’s Speech?

Where is legislation to improve the health of the nation by tackling smoking and the excessive consumption of alcohol? I thank God that Lynton Crosby was not providing advice to the Prime Minister when we were talking about a smoking ban in public places, because that would never have become law.

When will there be legislation to ensure that there is finance not just for businesses in London and the south-east, but a regional system of banking across the whole country so that we can re-quantify the whole of the country? Where is the legislation to tackle child poverty? I know that legislation is being introduced that will make child poverty worse, but where is the legislation to tackle it? Where is the legislation to tackle the concentration of the media that means we do not have free press, but owners’ press? Why, for the first time in several years, is there no mention at all of human rights in the international relations section of the speech?

Why is there no measure to suggest that this House, rather than the Government, should determine the business of this House? That would ensure that we sit regularly and do a proper job of holding the Government to account, rather than being adjourned week in, week out, having constant recesses and always stopping on a Tuesday so that the Prime Minister does not have to do Prime Minister’s questions. Where is a measure for how we deal with private Members’ Bills? The present system we have, to use the words of Disraeli—he was talking about a Conservative Government, but they apply here—is an organised hypocrisy. It surely is.

I am glad that the provisions to opt out of the justice and home affairs measures in the European Union are not in the Queen’s Speech. As the Lords Committee on the European Union said only a couple of weeks ago, such provisions would damage the security of this country. I hope and pray that they will not be in the Government’s list of additional measures, and that they will not opt out of the European arrest warrant, Eurojust and Europol, as they help to protect the safety of the people of this country.

Some of the measures in the Queen’s Speech are just downright potty—absolutely bonkers. Why on earth are the Government allowing people to stand on both the constituency and regional list for the Welsh Assembly? It brings democracy into disrepute when somebody can stand and lose, and yet win.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I think my hon. Friend, to whom I will give way in a moment, is about to mention Clwyd West in 2003, when the Labour candidate, Alun Pugh, won. The other candidates were: Brynle Williams, Conservative; Janet Ryder, Plaid Cymru; and Eleanor Burnham, Liberal Democrat. They all lost in the constituency section, but all became Assembly Members because they stood on the list system.

[Mark Tami]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. What sort of message does it give to the voters of Clwyd West when all the candidates were elected? What is the point of voting in such a ludicrous situation?

[Chris Bryant]

It is absolutely preposterous, and I hope that we manage to defeat the Government on this. My hon. Friend is slightly wrong in that there was one other candidate: the UK Independence party candidate. Bizarrely, he was the only one of the five candidates who did not manage to get a seat—absolutely shocking.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Mark Tami

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Of course, but I will not look for you to join us in the Division Lobby, Mr Hoyle.

The Government might say in their charming, elegant and smooth way that this is a hypothetical situation because the honest truth is that in all normal circumstances no Government and no Prime Minister would ever choose to circumvent the power of the House on the two thirds majority that would be needed to call an early general election by enforcing a motion of no confidence. I echo the words of the Clerk of the House in a memorandum on the Bill to the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform: there may be little risk of an accident if one drives up the motorway on the wrong side of the road at 4 o’clock in the morning, but the impact if there were an accident is likely to be very serious, and so although the risk of a dispute about a vote to dissolve Parliament being argued out in the courts might be small if it were to happen, its impact politically and constitutionally would be very great. That is why I say to the Government that although I understand how they have ended up with this legislation—it is not that I detest every element of it, although I dislike the process and I dislike the use of the period of five years instead of four and so on—and although I think there are elements of the clause that are right and proper, I think that they have not thought through the full possible consequences of the legislation.

I can easily foresee a time when a Prime Minister who is desperate to have a general election because of war, an immense financial collapse or something else that he thought was of absolute centrality to the Government that he—

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

Or she.

[Chris Bryant]

Or she. I thought I just heard my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) speaking in my ear.

If that Prime Minister felt that it was essential in the interests of the nation that there should be an early general election, the Government would be prepared to bypass and use every trick in the book to secure an early election. They might well have this Bill in their back pocket as a means of achieving that. So although this Government were supposedly trying to release the grip of the Executive, they would have enhanced it.

I want to reaffirm our commitment to fixed-term Parliaments. That means that we have to lay down in statute that it is for the House, not the Prime Minister, to dissolve Parliament. It should also be for the House to decide the precise date of the general election, which should be in statute, and we should have only one process of calling an early general election. We must be clear that the Government need always retain the confidence of the House of Commons and that should be written in statute now.

For most of the 20th century, we have had very few hung Parliaments, but I suspect that there might well be more in future. We need to ensure that our provisions will stand the test of time rather than simply being drawn up to appease the coalition agreement.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Mark Tami

Monday 25th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mark Tami]

The point, surely, is not who has the legal responsibility, but who has the experience. There should have been plenty of consultation—certainly in Scotland—enabling Ministers to learn from that experience, and to decide on the basis of it whether it would be appropriate to hold the referendum and elections on the same day.

[Chris Bryant]

Obviously that is the case. I should have thought that, given that none of the Ministers in either of the teams affected represents a Welsh, Scottish or Northern Ireland seat, it would have been more important for them to consult the relevant devolved Administrations just to be able to get the position right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

Indeed, and I will come on to some of the specific problems that could arise. My hon. Friend did not add, however, that they are on completely different franchises as well. The Minister seems to think that the franchise for the next general election will be the same as the franchise for the referendum. They will not be, however, because of the inclusion of peers in the referendum. It has to be said that we do not have many peers in the Rhondda, however. We have one: Baroness Gale of Blaenrhondda who, unfortunately, is in hospital at the moment—she is across the road at St Thomas’—and I wish her well. There will be confusion in respect of the different franchises and issues such as whether we have the same register or two registers, and I will talk about those specific issues a little later.

The Minister referred to all the schedules before us and how we will address them, and he said that the territorial Departments for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have today—I presume that means since the beginning of the debate this afternoon—tabled the statutory instruments that are required fully to combine the polls in each of the areas. There is no provision in statute for the combination of polls in Northern Ireland, whether for local government and Assembly elections or any other kind of elections. In Scotland, there is provision by virtue of an order, which I think was introduced in 2007, hanging off the Scotland Act 1998. That order makes it clear that local elections and parliamentary elections can be combined, but in fact it has now been decided not to combine them. In Wales, the situation is different again, because a 2007 order on the representation of the people and the Welsh Assembly makes provision to combine local elections and Welsh Assembly elections, but until now there has been no provision to enable the combining of referendums and elections.

The dangers of combining referendums are completely different from the dangers of combining elections. That is why the Government have had to introduce these statutory instruments to make provision for the referendums to be combined in each of the three territorial areas. Unfortunately, that is not the legislation that exists today, so these instruments have been tabled without, as far as I know, having been sent in advance to anybody involved in this Committee or anybody in the shadow offices in relation to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and without the Welsh Assembly, Scottish Parliament and Northern Ireland Assembly having been consulted on them; they have simply been published. I presume the Minister will be tabling things tomorrow, once we have finished in Committee, and he will then table a series of new amendments, which we will be able to debate on Report. I simply say that such an approach puts the horse before the cart.

[Mark Tami]

My hon. Friend finished on the point that I was going to make. Does he agree that the Government are clearly just making this up as they go along? At last Thursday’s business questions, even the Leader of the House was unable to confirm whether the affirmative procedure would be used or whether the instruments would be taken on the Floor of the House. Perhaps my hon. Friend could update us on whether he has been given more information.

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The proper process for a statutory instrument is that, first, consideration is given to whether it should be taken on the Floor of the House or in Committee. Given that all three of these statutory instruments relate to elections and are of a constitutional nature, my preference, and that of Labour Members, is for them to be taken on the Floor of the House and not in some Committee without general public scrutiny. Secondly, statutory instruments have to be considered by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, which has a limited remit but can examine whether the affirmative or the negative resolution process should be used. Last week, as my hon. Friend rightly says, Ministers, including the Leader of the House, did not seem to have the faintest idea whether or not these would be subject to the affirmative procedure. I am glad to say that the Minister has now made it clear today—

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

It is neither A nor B—in fact, it is C. It is a new creation. The franchise for the AV referendum will be, broadly speaking, the same as that for a general election—that is, it will not include EU citizens—but will include, rather exceptionally, peers, including a peer who is able to have that vote only by virtue of their having a business interest in the City of London. A particularly bizarre franchise has been invented, which is why we tried to amend some of the elements of it in a previous discussion.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) makes a good point. In many polling districts, the register will be substantially different. In Newport, for instance, 1,000 voters will be able to vote in the Assembly elections but not in the referendum. I am not sure how many voters will be able to vote in the referendum but not in the Assembly elections by virtue of their being peers.

[Mark Tami]

Does my hon. Friend envisage people turning up expecting to be able to vote, because they can vote in the other election, only to be told that they can vote in that election but cannot take part in the referendum?

[Chris Bryant]

Indeed. There is a series of complications that I shall come on to, if my hon. Friend will bear with me for a while. Amendments specifically refer to that point, but they amend the Government’s new schedules rather than the new clause, and I want first to deal with the amendments to new clause 20 tabled by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, other colleagues and me.

The first amendment is amendment (a) to new clause 20. I realise that some hon. Members might be slightly confused that there are lots of amendments (a) in this group, because some refer to the new clause and some to each of the new schedules. Amendment (a) to Government new clause 20 states:

“Where the date of the poll for a local authority election in England is the same as the date of the poll for the referendum, the polls are to be taken together.”

That is narrower than that which the Government have provided. The Government are suggesting that the polls can happen together when there is the referendum, and a local authority election in England, and a local referendum in England, and a mayoral election in England. In other words, it is theoretically possible that, if we stick with the Government’s proposal, one voter might come in to vote on the referendum on AV, a local authority election, a local referendum and a mayoral election all at the same time. It is one thing to consider all this in relation to someone coming into a polling station, and people might conclude that it is perfectly legitimate—that there is the franchise for the AV referendum, which we have already discussed, and the franchise for all three other issues, which would be the same—but what happens with postal votes for all those polls? If there are four postal votes and four polling cards, that provides a right old tagliatelle of a constitutional settlement for ordinary voters to try to sort out. That is why our amendment, instead of allowing all four polls at the same time, would allow only a local authority election in England to happen at the same time as the referendum. We do not think that is ideal, but at least it would tidy things up a little. I very much hope that the Minister will accede to that amendment.

Amendment (b) would also amend new clause 20 in relation to Northern Ireland. The Government propose:

“Where the date of the poll for one or more of the following is the same as the date of the poll for the referendum, the polls are to be taken together—

(a) a Northern Ireland Assembly Election;

(b) a Northern Ireland local election.”

In other words, they are providing for all three to happen at the same time. Up to now, there has been no legal provision enabling that to happen in Northern Ireland, which is why the Government are bringing forward relevant statutory instruments. We do not believe it is right to have all three elections at the same time, so we suggest, in a consensual way, that the Government might at least limit the combinations to a degree by taking one of the polls out of the measure.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Mark Tami

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

No, it is not Labour party policy that anywhere be under-represented. We believe, as I said yesterday evening, that it is important to achieve greater equalisation of the number of voters in each electorate, but that should not be a purely mathematical exercise. Where there are overriding concerns, those should be brought into play. Indeed, the Government agree to some degree, because they have created a degree of exception for Northern Ireland and a completely different set of exemptions for two seats in Scotland, which, according to the Government’s interpretation of the situation—and, I presume therefore, the hon. Gentleman’s—will effectively create two rotten boroughs in Scotland. We think that if we are going to make exemptions, we should make a broader set of exemptions, rather than just those two.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

To correct not only my hon. Friend but myself, I should say that I am reliably informed that three seats are involved. There is another seat; there is a rule that applies only to that seat on geographical grounds. That does not apply in Wales, where, as I am sure my hon. Friend will agree, a seat could well stretch from one side to the other if the population density was low.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

That is wholly my view. That solution gets around the problems, to which I have referred, for the parts of the Union that are more dramatically affected than others, and it would be entirely in keeping with the tradition of this House, which is that we proceed by evolution rather than revolution.

I could understand the argument for reducing the number of seats from 650 to 600 if over the past 50 years the number of seats had dramatically increased in relation to the electorate. In actual fact, however, the number of seats has grown by 3% and the number of voters has increased by 25%, so if hon. Members were being honest they would say, “As we agree that the number of seats should go with the number of voters, we should argue for more seats, rather than fewer.”

In addition, the job has completely and utterly changed over the past few years. In a previous debate, for which not all hon. Members were present, the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) referred to casework, which is a concept in modern politics—

[Mark Tami]

“Social work”, she said.

[Chris Bryant]

Indeed. As my hon. Friend says, she referred to it as social work.

I have always believed that the job of a modern Member is very different from that of somebody 40 or even 30 years ago. For a start, the advent of 24-hour news, e-mails, which arrive at 3 o’clock in the morning, mobile telephony and all the rest of it has meant that the electorate expect us to be available far more and to return their phone calls, messages, e-mails and letters far more frequently.

The number of letters on a policy issue that a Member would have received in the 1960s in any one week would have been fewer than 10. Today, I guess that most Members receive in excess of 250 letters a week on policy issues or on an individual casework issue. If we want fewer Members, but our answer to that is to give them more members of staff, thereby increasing their expenses, we will actually deracinate Members from the communities that they serve. We will make them less accessible to voters, and that is why I believe it is wrong to cut the number of Members.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Mark Tami

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

That is certainly true. Should the boundary commissions start from the south of England and work their way upwards with their mathematical equations? When the process starts, how often should the boundary commissions allow themselves to use the 95% rule and how often they should force themselves to use the 105% rule? In addition, my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) made the good point that the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has always been constituted on the basis of its four constituent parts. The consideration has always been first that there should be X parliamentary seats for, say, Wales, and then those seats have been distributed within that area. That is a more constitutionally wise way to proceed.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend will be aware that in Wales we are looking at county council boundaries, which is causing all sorts of chaos. Some of my wards have registration levels of 70% to 75%, but in others registration levels are 95%. So the decisions will not be made on the true population levels of the seats.

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend is right. There are many reasons why electoral registration is so low in certain communities, and in some cases people do not want to register because they do not want to pay council tax—a residue from the original attempt to introduce the poll tax—and others might not want it to be known that they are living in a particular house. In some urban areas, with a highly mobile population, many people are not registered because the process of registering is so difficult. We make it virtually impossible for someone to register at any one time, and that is one of the problems that we need to overcome.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

In a sense, the hon. Lady makes my point for me. Registration in her constituency may be at 98%, but in many constituencies in the land it is closer to 80%. That is precisely the problem, because—to meet the point that the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) made—those are the places where there will be an inequity of representation if we proceed solely on the basis of what is proposed in the Bill.

[Mark Tami]

I totally agree with the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler). However, that is the point: the job can be done, but too many local authorities are interested only in doing a tick-box exercise, as if to say, “We sent the forms, we sent them again, we’ve sent someone round, and no one has replied,” despite the fact that everyone knows that a number of people are living in the property concerned. However, as far as the local authority is concerned, it has done what it wants to do, but it is not prepared to put in the extra work to get those people on to the register.

[Chris Bryant]

That is true. Most local authorities are having to make fairly substantial cuts at the moment, and my anxiety is that they will find their electoral registration budgets all too easy to cut, because people will think, “Well, you know, what’s the real benefit of that?” From my perspective, if we are to achieve equity—which, broadly speaking, means achieving the equalisation of seats, but not absolute equalisation, to allow for where the Boundary Commission has an overriding concern, whether about a geographical community or the splitting of wards, which I hope all hon. Members would think was more complicated—then we need to change what the Bill currently provides for.

The Government propose a timetable of less than three years, which is artificially quick, even under the Bill’s own terms. I do not see why the timetable has to be three years. According to clause 8(3), future reviews will be held on a five-yearly basis, but the initial, dramatic redrawing of boundaries is being tracked even faster than this apparent ideal. Why? Is the reason that the Government are trying to minimise the risks of the results being made out of date by interim changes in the population? There are significant parts of the country where population changes are moving swiftly. Is that why the Government wish to move so fast? I suspect that that cannot be the reason, or else they would be proposing that three years should always be the period for boundary reviews.

I suspect that the truth is far less respectable. As the Deputy Prime Minister himself admitted in the House in July, the real reason for this rushed process is political convenience. He said that

“we need to start with the work of the boundary review as soon as possible in order that it can be concluded in the timetable that we have set out. That is why the boundary review will be based on the electoral register that will be published at the beginning of December this year.”—[Official Report, 5 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 37.]

That is a circular argument.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Mark Tami

Monday 18th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Unfortunately it was a Liberal who first said that England was the mother of all Parliaments, so I can only excuse him. However, if the hon. Gentleman wanted to point out that the first Parliament was not on these isles at all, he would be absolutely right: it was the Althing, the Parliament of Iceland, which has sat since 929.

My point is that on election night we were deeply embarrassed by the fact that so many people were unable to vote in so many parliamentary constituencies. The Deputy Prime Minister himself said that the situation was simply unacceptable in a democracy:

“It is not right that hundreds later found themselves unable to exercise their vote when the polls closed. That should never, ever happen again in our democracy”.

In fact, the situation in his own constituency was among the worst in the land. The returning officer, John Mothersole—a name I have not come across before—apologised to voters who were turned away, saying that the council had “got things wrong.” He said that the turnout had been phenomenal, probably the highest in 30 years. That was not quite right—it was not the highest turnout in 30 years—but the fact that some 200 people were turned away in Ranmoor in Sheffield, Hallam and the police had to deal with an angry crowd of about 100 would-be voters is a clear indication that there is a significant issue to consider.

[Mark Tami]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this problem is made worse by a number of local authorities closing polling stations, which means that the number of people having to attend one particular polling station is much greater than in the past?

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is true that some people vote some days before the election when they vote by post, but for many people—those doing shift work, for example—it is vital to keep the polling stations open right up to 10 pm; otherwise, they would not be able to meet their work obligations as well as their voting duties.