All-party Parliamentary Groups

Debate between Chris Bryant and Peter Bottomley

Wednesday 19th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

First, may I put on record my gratitude to the members of the Standards Committee—both the MP members and the seven lay members—to all the Clerks and, in particular in regard to this paper, to James Davies, the registrar, and Philippa Wainwright, the other part of the team running the APPG register.

We have 762 APPGs at the moment. It is virtually impossible to have any kind of proper regulation or oversight of them, or examination of whether they are doing their job properly when we only have two members of staff, one of whom also does the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. So I pay enormous tribute to them for their work. They try to be as helpful as they possibly can be and to ensure that Members do not inadvertently break the rules, because the rules are complicated and there are too many of them.

We have rules for what we are allowed to do in the Chamber, the code of conduct, the behaviour code and the rules on APPGs. Then there are the stationery rules, the rules of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and the ministerial code. All those bodies are different. Frankly, it is very difficult for most Members of Parliament to keep up. I am desperately keen, as is the Standards Committee, to try to have rules that are coherent, consistent and, to use a valleys word, “tidy”.

I used that phrase when we were introducing Ofcom, many years ago, and Hansard rendered “valleys” as “valets”. We do not have many valets in the valleys, so Iusb hope people understand what I mean. We are just trying to bring a bit of tidiness to the sets of rules that we have. Some of you may have valets who do that for you—I do not know why I am looking at you, Madam Deputy Speaker—or indeed batmen, if I am looking at the Minister who opened the debate.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

rose—

[Sir Chris Bryant]

And here comes my valet.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

It does depend on how many Ls there are, and whether there is a T.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Chris Bryant]

I am not giving way. It is a courtesy to the House that if you are going to start intervening in a debate, you should have been here for the ministerial openers.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I think it is within the orders of the House not to accept an intervention, but to make a derogatory comment while not accepting an intervention does not allow the hon. Member who has been referred to to answer back.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Chris Bryant]

No, I do not buy that, I am afraid, because what we are trying to say is there are officers and there are registered members. All the registered members should express an interest in the running of the group, and that will demonstrate the cross-party nature of the body.

We recognise that there are many APPGs where there is no financial interest at all. There is no money or external secretariat; it is simply done out of the goodness of the office of the individual Member. We have left most of the rules for APPGs with no financial interest unchanged in all other regards, and the quorum will remain five people.

However, we are introducing a quorum of eight for APPGs where there is a financial interest, and we are saying that the chair for an AGM or extraordinary general meeting of those APPGs will be provided by Mr Speaker, as was requested by Mr Speaker and the Lord Speaker. They want a clear, independent body to be able to administrate whether there has been a proper annual general meeting and that all the rules have been abided by.

I know that Mr Speaker has had some conversations with the Panel of Chairs. It may be necessary to have a couple more members of the Panel of Chairs. We are fully cognisant of the fact that it will take time for all groups to have their AGMs and extraordinary general meetings to be able to comply with the rules, which is why we are making transitional arrangements, although we want the main body of the rules to apply from 16 October, as the motion says.

It might help if I read out the transitional arrangements, because they are important for everybody. They are at the beginning of the document referred to by the hon. Member for Christchurch, and they were in the resolution of the Committee yesterday.

“(1) The rules prohibiting foreign governments from providing or funding (whether directly or indirectly) a secretariat come into force with immediate effect on 16 October 2023.

(2) APPGs need to comply with any other new rules from their first AGM following the new rules coming into force, or 31 March 2024, whichever is the earlier; except that the additional rules applying to APPGs that meet the £1,500 funding threshold will apply only from 31 March 2024.

(3) APPGs will be able to hold EGMs virtually or by correspondence during a transition period (to meet the requirement for 4 officers and no more; and to ensure that those officers are officers of no more than 5 other APPGs) ending on 31 March 2024.

(4) An audit of compliance will be carried out in April 2024. Any APPG that has not complied with the Rules by 31 March 2024”—

which happens to be Easter Sunday—

“will be deregistered.”

I hope it is helpful that I have read that out, because we want to make it as clear as we possibly can.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

When was what the hon. Gentleman has just read out agreed? How is it available to us now?

[Sir Chris Bryant]

It was agreed yesterday at the Standards Committee. We only knew today that this debate was going to be happening today; we thought it was going to be later in the year. It is available on the front page of the document referred to earlier, “The Guide to the Rules on All-Party Parliamentary Groups”, which is available from the Vote Office. It was agreed yesterday, under the authority granted to the Standards Committee.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I have “The Guide to the Rules”—I am one of the ones who managed to get a copy. I don’t see it—

[Sir Chris Bryant]

It is on page 2.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Transitional arrangements? I have read through every other page, starting with page 3—I did not read page 2. I do not believe any other Member of this Chamber, except for the other members of the Standards Committee, has read that. To take a decision on the arrangements this evening, given the impact it will have on every all-party group, is not necessary, wise or advisable.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

I think that was a speech. Perhaps the hon. Member will be able to catch your eye later, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am conscious that I have spoken for quite a long time and I had not intended to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

We have heard that the Committee could, so to speak, impose the proposals even if the House rejects them. I think that we probably should vote on them, just to ensure that Members who are paying attention have the chance to express their view. I will vote against them on the basis that they should be reviewed.

I am happy to co-operate with the commissioner, the hon. Member for Rhondda, the Committee, the Clerks, the Lord Speaker and the Commons Speaker to help to make the improvements that people desire and that are necessary. Some implications of the proposals are not improvements; they are retrogressive.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

I am trying to be helpful to the House. The rules on APPGs are the prerogative of the Committee. That was already a decision of the House, but we did not want to proceed without the House taking a view. I hear quite a lot of discomfort about several elements of the proposals. I think that it will look terrible if we decide to pull them this afternoon—it will look as if the House does not want to take action, and that will be seen badly. What might be right is that we reassess the issue of transitional arrangements if people want to make representations to us, which the Committee could hear at its first meeting in September. One option is obviously that none of the proposals applies until the next Parliament. The Committee was hesitant about that—I am sorry that this is a long intervention, but I am trying to be helpful—only because it might look as if this Parliament was not prepared to put its house in order; it just wanted a future set of people to do it.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

That is potentially helpful. I am grateful, and the House will be as well. If the transitional arrangements concentrated on foreign Governments, or significant commercial beneficiaries, effectively supporting groups, that would be understood. It is the other parts that I do not understand. I say that as someone who was asked to chair the Austria all-party parliamentary group when Angus Robertson became leader of the SNP group at Westminster and felt that he could not do it. I stood in and did it, and I remain the chair of that group. In co-operation with the Austrian embassy, which provides no money and no resources, we welcome Austrians here. I guess that alternative arrangements for some functions of that kind could be made quite easily within the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

I am chair of the BBC all-party parliamentary group because one of our colleagues became the interim Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. To keep the all-party group going, given the importance of being able to hear from the BBC and liaise with it on controversial and non-controversial issues, I thought that it was important to stand in.

I am, I think, the chair or co-chair of 12 groups. I am the person the hon. Member for Rhondda referred to as being an officer of more than 80 groups. I could quite cheerfully take him and the House through each of the groups and why I am a member of them. [Hon. Members: “No!”] I will not go through them all, but I will give some illustrative examples.

I am the parliamentary warden of St Margaret’s Church on Parliament Square. I saw the lights on one evening and went into a service, which was the 12-step addiction service. All kinds of people with addictions, whether alcohol, gambling, sex, stealing or whatever else, were giving their witness. That gave me an interest in 12-step recovery programmes and, when a Member of the House of Lords asked whether I would help to set up an all-party group, I agreed. That is one of the groups of which I am a co-chair and registered contact, and I think it is worthwhile. The idea that we would necessarily get four members together at the same time or have 20 people registering as members is unlikely, but the work done by that group is important to all kinds of people inside the House, both Members and staff, and outside it.

I was once asked by Tristan Garel-Jones, a humanist, whether I, a member of the Ecclesiastical Committee who had been a trustee of Christian Aid and chairman of the Church of England Children’s Society, would be prepared to get a humanist group going. I said I would; I said that I was not a humanist, but it seemed to me that it was a line of thought that deserved some kind of parliamentary opportunity. The group has since grown and I am no longer a member of it.

I could go through the various other groups, but there are two that I am keenest on. The first is the group on leasehold and commonhold reform, where for more than 10 years, working first with Jim Fitzpatrick and now with the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), and with the help of the campaigning charity Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, we have fought to look after the interests of 6 million residential leaseholders. Even in the last couple of days we have had success with the Financial Conduct Authority on trying to ensure that those people are not ripped off on insurance, commissions and the like. That group can get large numbers of Members interested, but not get them all together at the same time.

The same applies to the group on park homes, which my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) has been in charge of for a long time with Sonia McColl, one of the campaigners. To show the kind of interests that we were up against, when her mobile home was being moved from one place to another, it was stolen.

I have some incredible things going on. If I were brought down to six chairmanships, I would not be able to do half the good that I do, and I do not always know which group will become important. When one of my hon. Friends became a Minister, he asked if I would take on, with the Astronomer Royal, the group on dark skies. We are co-leaders of the world in astronomy, and it is important to have parliamentary interest, so that Members of the Lords and Commons who are interested can come to meetings and we can liaise with outside groups.

I think very few of the groups I am involved in—although there are some—would not do worse if I were not interested. I say this to the Government, to those on the Front Benches and to the SNP: it is not necessary for this motion to pass. We have been told it does not matter to Parliament, because the Committee itself can set the rules, but it is possible to get through to the beginning of the next Parliament with suitable transition arrangements that are variations of what is on page 2 of the guide to rules.

Debate on the Address

Debate between Chris Bryant and Peter Bottomley

Tuesday 11th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

It shows that we can go on having these exchanges. Sometimes I will speak before the right hon. Gentleman, sometimes afterwards. He has now done both, so I congratulate him on that.

I turn to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and congratulate him on the general success of the elections on Thursday. In trying to deliver the sorts of things that people want, we should recognise that there is good on all sides, and where the parties can overlap for progress it is best. If there is a contest of ideas, let the people decide.

In my constituency, the Labour party did better than some people expected. It is our job to try to find out what we can do to match it, although we took seats from other people, as well as Labour taking some seats from us. It is the kind of contest where if the Liberals are on the up in my area, Labour is down, and if Labour is on the up, the Liberals are down. Conservatives have control and responsibility for most of the decisions made for the quiet, undramatic provision of local services, which is what most of the local elections were about. They were not national elections. They were across the country, but they were about providing services to local people.

In this Queen’s Speech, there are many points to welcome. If I may say to the Prime Minister, one thing is not in the Queen’s Speech, and I am glad it is not there. When the Chancellor had to come to the House and announce he was cutting the official overseas aid budget, he said there would be legislation. I am glad that has changed. One of the points of leadership is being prepared to change one’s mind.

Will my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister lead his Government in re-establishing that target of 0.7% on aid and getting there as soon as possible? We know that the coronavirus epidemic has hurt us. It has hurt other parts of the world and hit the poorer people much, much harder, and our job is to try to help them to raise their standards.

Turning to building safety, there was a major fire at the end of last week. Three storeys caught fire. The builders who two years ago should have taken the dangerous Grenfell-style cladding off the building—that work actually started two weeks ago—said that the affected cladding did not catch fire. I think that was by chance, not design. The only people who have got no absolute right to sue the builders, the regulators and the component suppliers are the residential leaseholders themselves.

The only people who are being asked to pay the extra £10 billion—that is on top of the £5 billion that the Government have rightly started as their contribution towards the costs—are the leaseholders. They are left carrying £10 billion, with no right to sue those who are responsible. Will the Prime Minister kindly have a summit on fire safety with the affected groups—the cladding groups, the National Leasehold Campaign, the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership and the officers of the all-party group on leasehold and commonhold reform—and then put to the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, together with the Chancellor, this simple point: provide all the money that is needed, whether the building is above or below 18 metres, and then find out who can sue those who are actually responsible?

What the Government are doing with levy and taxes is one thing, but that £10 billion outstanding makes people’s lives impossible. They have homes that are not safe, that are not saleable, that cannot be funded and that they cannot afford. If we want to know the effectiveness of the waking watch, we should remember that for a fire in daylight it was not effective. The Government have to step in, although not necessarily to say that the taxpayer will pay the money in the end—it can come from those who were responsible. It is partly a public responsibility on regulation, but it is mostly the responsibility of those who designed, built and went on selling components that were known not to be safe, or were not known to be safe.

I say to media people, “Do appoint a housing editor,” because when housing stories come up, it is too bad when each individual producer or reporter has to learn from scratch what is happening. This is as important an issue as health, so it needs an approach that is consistent, effective and fast, and that works.

I turn to some small issues. One is the VAT treatment of yachts that are being brought back to this country—it may be a small point, but I think that the Treasury or VAT people should look at it. If VAT is paid on a yacht that is then kept abroad for more than three years, it has to be paid again when the yacht is brought back. That will not produce any revenue, because no one will bring their boats back.

All our important nautical brokerage in this country depends on those yachts being here, so we should either bring in a marine passport or lower the rates that are above 5%. We should have talks with the Royal Yachting Association and get on with finding a solution, not just say, “It is the way the thing has to be.” It is not the way the thing has to be; it is not right, and it will not work. I confess an interest, but my boat is an open canoe, not a boat that is affected by the 5% rate or the 20% suggestion.

I know that many hon. Members want to speak, but I turn briefly to the importance of the Government’s approach to levelling up. More and more young families and households are coming to the south coast and living there as happily as those in more mature households, who may be of retirement age but are not inactive. All of them need the kinds of things that I think are now being provided with the support of all parties.

Education is now much better than it was. The prospects of people getting training and apprenticeships and moving on to further and higher education are good; I pay tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan), who has been doing the media round today and putting forward the Government’s approach.

[Chris Bryant]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Is this Wales again?

[Chris Bryant]

No; I am sure that the hon. Gentleman was not going to ban Wales from the conversation, but this is on levelling up. I will ask the question that I was going to try to ask the Prime Minister, which is about acquired brain injury.

Children in the poorest houses are four times more likely to suffer a traumatic brain injury before the age of five years. The significant effects that that will have for the rest of their lives—and the problems with concussion in sport, which leads to so many sportspeople in this country suffering early onset dementia—surely mean that it is about time we had proper legislation to make sure that everybody gets a decent chance when they have had a brain injury.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I think that the House will approve that approach.

If I may, I will conclude with a sensitive issue; I say this having put it on record that in my extended family and connections, over 100 died in the holocaust. At some stage, a decision will be made by the Government on the inspector’s recommendations—the inspector was not allowed to make a conclusion—on the proposed holocaust memorial and learning centre in Victoria Tower Gardens. The decision was supposed to be made by the Minister of State, because the Secretary of State is the applicant. I ask the Prime Minister to ask advice on whether the September 2015 specifications for the proposed memorial and learning centre are met in any way by the present proposal put forward by the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. They are not.

Secondly, will the Prime Minister ask for a briefing on the area of central London that was then thought to be acceptable, which ran from the west of Regent’s Park across to Spitalfields and down to the Imperial War Museum? Will he then consider having a meeting with Baroness Deech, with the architect Barbara Weiss, and with the people who are proposing the present monument, which has a design very similar to one that was not accepted as the Canadian national memorial? Will they see whether it is possible to stop this system of trying to push something through when it is not justified; get a proper memorial and a proper learning centre, probably using the one at the Imperial War Museum; and make sure that we can be proud of what we do?

For the sake of those who died in the holocaust and in other genocides, I say in public to the Prime Minister what I have said to as many people as I can in private: what is being put forward now is the wrong proposal in the wrong place in the wrong style. I ask everyone to reconsider it, starting with the specifications made in September 2015.

Tributes (Speaker Martin)

Debate between Chris Bryant and Peter Bottomley

Tuesday 1st May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

Michael Martin would have been an MP for nine years when his successor but two was born. It is worth noting that if had he remained in the Chair until now and then gone on for a few more years, he might have been Father of the House as well as Speaker. How he would have heard the nomination and dragged himself to the Chair I am not quite sure, but he probably would have found a way.

It is worth noting that some of the criticism of him was absurd. A quarter of a million pounds was thought to have been spent on Speaker’s Green, which was supposed to have been his garden. The fact that it is a bike rack and a goods yard for the rebuilding of the Palace shows how sometimes our journalists think that a story is too good to check. He put up with that with good nature, and it is worth noting that his reason for retiring from the speakership was the unity of the House.

He and I once had a conversation when he was Speaker about how it might be possible to have a debate in the House about the conduct and role of the Chair without that being an implied criticism of the Speaker. Perhaps you as his successor, Mr Speaker, might find a way for that to happen every two or three years, because there are many things that happen when a Speaker might like to get the sort of direction that Speaker Lowther claimed that he had when he had Charles I to deal with.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Speaker Lenthall.

Welfare Reforms and Poverty

Debate between Chris Bryant and Peter Bottomley

Monday 13th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention and I appreciated his speech, too. We ought to try to ensure that we have sources of lending in which people understand the industries in which people are working. That is where the building society movement came from—originally, it was about building homes. If we could get some mutuality back into the agency area, people would be able to decide who could be lent money and who should be deferred.

The last point in my mind concerns how we can go on preparing people for the jobs and occupations of the future. Many people’s futures will be as entrepreneurs, as they set up their own businesses; others will be in employment. I remember with pleasure Peter Thurnham, one of our former colleagues. When he was made redundant, he used his redundancy money to buy two machine tools, set up an engineering business and eventually employed 150 to 200 people. People sometimes say to me, “MPs shouldn’t have outside interests.” I would far prefer to have in Parliament people such as Peter Thurnham, who can tell us how business and employment work and how to get more people off welfare and into the kind of jobs that make them pretty independent for most of their life.

Many of us will require some support at some stage in our life; relatively few of us need support all the way through our lives. Before this Government came to office, we were getting to a stage at which too many families were in dependency from generation to generation; Keith Joseph told us quite a lot about that. Statistics show that only 10% of people who were in the bottom decile—the bottom 10%—10 years ago are in the bottom 10% this year. There is a great deal more movement among those who are poor or very poor than most people understand.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

indicated dissent.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

The hon. Gentleman shakes his head; when he speaks, perhaps he can give his statistics. We need a commission, with statistics that we can all rely on from the Office for National Statistics, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Office for Budget Responsibility.

Women in the Church of England

Debate between Chris Bryant and Peter Bottomley

Tuesday 28th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) on taking up the baton after our colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), was unable to start the debate today. She has done it admirably. I think I am the only ordained person in the Church of England speaking today, unless anyone is hiding something from us. The Second Church Estates Commissioner, the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) sounded remarkably ordained as he delivered his final intonations.

I remember going to Ripon College Cuddesdon in the 1980s. I arrived in 1983. The year before, there had been one woman in training at Cuddesdon, which was generally known as the bishop-making college. In the year I arrived, there were 13 women. It was the first time that the college had had to make real accommodation for women. Cuddesdon was a strange place, with 72 people living in the same space: eating, drinking, worshipping and studying. It was very intense, and I think it was difficult for many women. Frankly, they were given a hell of a time by some of the men. I have to confess that, in some regards, I think that was because some of the men were gay and did not want women intruding in their world. That is not true of the vast majority of gay men in the Church, who are supportive of women’s ordination and ministry, but it was certainly true at the time. Indeed, the Church was going through a difficult period because it did not know what to do about inclusive—or not inclusive—language. Should it refer to “all men” or “all men and women”, especially in the creed and much of the liturgy? Some of us ostentatiously refused to say just the word “men”. In retrospect, some of that feels a little childish, but the role of women was hardly respected or honoured at all in the Church, and there was a real conflict for many women. There still is in many parts of the Church, where the role model for a woman is as a virgin and a mother at the same time. Not many will be able to achieve that.

In the Church hierarchy, which had the vicar and curate, both of them men at the time, few women were allowed to be lay readers, and some churches refused to allow them to give communion. It felt as though women were fine for making cups of tea, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North mentioned. They were fine for ironing the linen for the altar and for mending the cassocks, the albs and the humeral veils and so on. They were even fine for polishing the silver, and obviously for arranging the flowers, but when it came to the serious business of running the Church, that had to be reserved for men. I know that this has changed in many places, but it feels as though the work is not yet complete. As people were talking about the time that the change is taking, I was reminded of Longfellow’s brief poem:

“Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;

Though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all.”

In other words, I think we will get there, but it is taking a long time. It feels as though those who are not prepared to step outside the Church because they are frightened are none the less trying to die in the ditch of dilatoriness. They are just trying to delay, making it far more difficult for the Church to embrace its historic mission.

There is a sad history of some people in the Church, including senior leaders, not understanding how grossly offensive they have been at times. Graham Leonard, the former Bishop of London, said that a woman was no more ordainable than a potato. That was a man who was meant to be providing spiritual leadership, not just to the men in his diocese but to everybody else as well.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I once asked Graham Leonard why he did not oppose the ordination of women as deacons, although he opposed their ordination as priests and bishops. I asked, “Does it come down to the fact that you believe women were ordained as deacons before, but not as priests or bishops?” He said yes. That is a plain example of the historical negative, let alone his other remarks.

[Chris Bryant]

Yes. It rather reminds me of Cardinal Martini—a fine name—who was asked in 1998 or 1999 whether there would ever be women priests in the Roman Catholic Church. He said, “Not in this millennium.” Obviously, the millennium was about to come to an end, so I hope that he was anticipating change swiftly, and not within 1,000 years.

Senior clerics have sometimes not realised what bruises their supposedly theological utterings have inflicted on many women in the Church who have felt seriously called to work for God, but have not been allowed to due to some flippant remark by a bishop or an archbishop. When it seems to be solely about manoeuvring and whether there are two votes above two thirds in each of the three houses, it feels as if humanity has been lost and it has become a political game rather than anything else. That is when the Church loses adherents, members and the passionate, loving support of those who want to be there with it.

A key argument that many people advance against the ordination of women, particularly as bishops, relates to the fact that Jesus supposedly chose no female disciples. We do not actually know that. If asked how many disciples there were, most people would probably say 12, but we have no idea how many there were. In Luke 10, Jesus sends out 70 in pairs, but the chapter does not say whether they were men or women. It says that there was a large crowd, and that the group was in addition to others that he had already sent out.

People say, “All right, but there were only 12 apostles. We must know that.” Again, it is difficult. In Romans 16:7, St Paul refers to two apostles, Andronicus and Junia. There is only one instance in the whole of classical history where Junia is a man, and I suspect that it is not this one. Those two people, probably husband and wife, were in prison with Paul, and he described them as apostles.

Likewise, in Matthew 10, Jesus appoints 12 apostles and sends them out. I suspect that there were 12 in Matthew’s account in particular because he wanted to say that they were going to the lost sheep of Israel; it is about the 12 tribes of Israel as much as anything else. However, if hearty adherents of the Church were asked to name the 12 apostles, I bet that most would not be able to. It is also difficult to be precise about who the apostles were. The gospel of St John names Nathaniel, who is not included in Matthew, Mark or Luke. Mark and Matthew both name Thaddeus, who does not appear in Luke. Instead, Luke names Jude the son of James, often referred to as Jude the obscure—as opposed to Jude the extremely not obscure: Iscariot—yet Jude the obscure is one of the apostles most frequently cited.

My only point about all that quibbling is that I do not think the whole decision whether women should be bishops can rest on the idea that Jesus supposedly called only men. He undoubtedly had many women followers, who certainly considered themselves disciples. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North referred to the scene in the garden on Easter Sunday morning, where it was a woman who first experienced the resurrection, and women undoubtedly played a significant role in the early Church.

People sometimes have too light an understanding of the Bible and use it flippantly. I remember, many years ago, somebody complaining to me in a letter that we kept producing new Bibles. He said, “King James wrote the Bible in the 17th century, and I don’t see why we have to keep on translating it.” King James was an interesting person, but I do not think that he wrote the Bible.

People often refer to the story in Genesis. Genesis does not tell a creation story; it tells at least two stories. In the first, in Genesis 1:27, man and woman are created at the same time:

“So God created mankind in his own image,

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them.”

It is absolutely, point-blank clear that it was all done in one fell swoop.

Genesis 2 gives a completely different story. Interestingly, God decides that man is on his own, so He first decides to give him the beasts of the field and the birds in the sky, then creates woman out of man’s rib, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North said. I do not think that anyone thought when those stories were initially recounted that someone would be standing in Parliament today saying, “You cannot ordain women bishops because God decided it,” and that that was a historically accurate version of events. I leave aside the tiny point that in the Bible, Adam and Eve had two sons. How that could lead to the rest of humanity, I do not understand.

Interestingly, of course, in nearly all the Old Testament creation narrative, the word used for the Holy Spirit is “ruach”, a feminine word. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit is clearly female. In many interpretations in the later history of spirituality, beautifully recounted in Rowan Williams’s splendid first book “The Wound of Knowledge”, the spirit is female. The overlay of history has often made spirituality seem extremely masculine—martyrs and all the rest of it, and an authority structure left in the hands of men—but the spiritual insights of women in our history have been every bit as significant as those of men. Our own country gave us Dame Julian of Norwich, although a lot of people think that Julian of Norwich was a man. Her spiritual insights are profound, and one need not look far, to Teresa of Avila and many others around the world, to see the same thing.

The hon. Member for Banbury, who should at least be right hon. by now—it must be imminent; I feel grace falling upon him—asked whether the Church of England can do it alone. For a start, it is not doing it alone. Other Churches have had women as bishops and in prominent roles for many decades, particularly some Lutheran Churches, to which we are allied. In addition, as has been said, every single diocese in the Episcopal Church in the United States of America now has women priests, and ECUSA has had a woman primate—“primate” is always an odd word in the Anglican communion. Canada, New Zealand, Australia and even the Anglican communion in Cuba have had women suffragan bishops. We are not on our own.

Secondly, I thought that one of the fundamental teachings of the Anglican and Catholic Churches and, for that matter, the whole Orthodox communion, is that the sacrament does not depend on the person. That is to say that even if the person who is giving communion, who has stood up and recited, “who, in the same night that He was betrayed, took bread” and all the rest of it, is a filthy, evil, horrible and nasty person—indeed, many of them in the history of the Christian Church have been so—that does not mean that the sacrament does not work. That is absolutely essential. Anyone who believes that the personality of an ordained woman somehow means that the sacrament that she presents does not work is living in theological cloud cuckoo land.

When I was at theological college, I remember clearly that Michael Ramsey, perhaps one of the greatest archbishops, was asked a question by a high Church Anglican trainee ordinand at St Stephen’s house in Oxford—the very high Church college. What should someone in a poor parish do if they had just bought an expensive new altar carpet costing several thousands of pounds, and some consecrated communion wine was spilt over it? I think the high Anglican lad thought that the correct answer would be that since the wine had been consecrated, the carpet would have to be burned. Michael Ramsey said, “Well, first of all, why a church in a poor parish would buy an expensive carpet, I do not understand. Secondly, and much more importantly, I am sure that if God knows how to get into it, He knows how to get back out of it.” I am absolutely sure that if we were to make a mistake with the consecration of woman bishops, God would none the less somehow know how to make sure that we were all still receiving valid sacraments through them.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

The reverend, learned hon. Gentleman could have reminded us about number 26 of the articles of religion, which says that things done by evil men can still be sacramental. It refers to evil men, but not to evil women.

[Chris Bryant]

Several articles need a little bit of reform. When I was a curate, my cassock had 28 buttons, and I did not do them all up for that very reason, but I have always been a little heterodox. I feel a bit disturbed when the hon. Gentleman refers to me as reverend; I think that is over.

The Church of England surely offers something different. Plenty of other Churches do not have women bishops or allow women to perform a full ministry, but I believe that the Church of England developed not just because of Henry VIII’s licentiousness, but because it had something genuine to offer—a middle ground between Protestantism and Catholicism, and a belief that the rational can inform the spiritual and that disciplinary autonomy in this country was important if there was to be a mission to everyone in this country, regardless of whatever the Pope might say, do or insist upon from over the seas. That was an important mission, and I think it survives today. I have a terrible fear that some people want the Church of England to become a sect and not be a Church at all, and I hope that that will be put behind us.

A bishop has to be the centre of unity in the diocese. That is why all the proposals, including those from the two archbishops, have completely misunderstood the theology of episcopacy. If someone is not the centre of unity, surely they cannot be the bishop. Any proposal that parishes should be able to opt out of a bishop because the bishop is a woman is not only fundamentally offensive and demeaning to the ministry of women—we should either do it or not do it—but will simply create a new style of wholly inappropriate schism in the Church. We were wrong to have flying bishops, and we would be wrong to advance similar proposals.

I hope that when the bishops meet, soon, they do not make any changes at all—certainly no changes of substance. I also hope that the Government will not shilly-shally about providing time for us to get on with it. The Ecclesiastical Committee should not have to wait until October. I am sure that it will take just one day. Why can it not meet in July, during the Olympics, or whenever?

Business without Debate

Debate between Chris Bryant and Peter Bottomley

Tuesday 21st February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

In particular, we note that 28 March is the anniversary of the last occasion on which a Prime Minister was ousted by virtue of a vote of confidence. Can you confirm, Mr Deputy Speaker, that if we were to sit on 23 March, which is a Friday, it would be perfectly possible for there to be questions to the Prime Minister, and indeed a statement from the Prime Minister, if the Government tabled a motion to that effect?

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Would it be sensible—whether generally or just in the case of the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)—for Members to be asked to submit their points of order in writing, so that we could be spared the words that are unnecessary to the making of the actual point?

Ministerial Statements

Debate between Chris Bryant and Peter Bottomley

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Half the Members on the Government Benches are trying to intervene.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman clearly supports the motion. May I raise a slightly tricky issue? The Speaker has a role in what happens in the House. Are we in danger of putting him in charge of what people say outside the House unnecessarily, and does that pose the risk of his being not tempted to become, but drawn by his job into becoming, more of a player and less of a referee?

[Chris Bryant]

I think that the motion raises a bigger issue relating to you, Mr Speaker, but I shall deal with that later if I may.

Registration of Members’ Financial Interests

Debate between Chris Bryant and Peter Bottomley

Monday 7th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) and others. I am not certain that security vetting solves all problems. The number of people who have been assassinated by their own bodyguards suggests that there might be a weakness in that.

[Chris Bryant]

It is worth bearing it in mind that the person working as the secretary for the all-party parliamentary group on Russia, prior to my becoming the chairman, is supposedly being thrown out of the country by the Government, yet managed to get a security pass here.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I recall that about 25 years ago, the London representative of the Palestine Liberation Organisation was assassinated for being too moderate. Many people who take part in public affairs are at risk, which is one of the risks that an open society faces in peacetime just as it does at times of war.

Let me say to the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) that, although I do not intend to try to divide the House on the first motion, I think it would be better to specify 0.2% or 0.3% of the parliamentary salary. A long time ago, when I was a Minister, I visited a country in south-east Asia and was presented with a tin bowl. I saw the same bowl in a shop priced at the equivalent of £130 in local currency, so I gave it to my private secretary. At the airport on my way home, I saw it again priced at £65, so I asked for it back. [Laughter.]

There will be boundary problems of that kind whatever limit is set, but my general view is that a limit of £130 or £180 would be better, and that it would be even better to make the limit the same as that applying to gifts presented to Ministers. As for the question of Members’ including on their websites gifts whose value was below the minimum, the registrar could advise us if we tried to include details that were not required according to the interpretation of the rules.

In view of your ruling, Mr Deputy Speaker, I shall not add to what has already been said about the motion on all-party groups. If it is possible for me to attend the meeting of the all-party group that has been mentioned, I will happily do so.

Let me, in passing, pay tribute to some people in my constituency. When I was involved with students from the Three Faiths Forum, I was delighted that the senior Jewish woman in my constituency was willing to meet us, as were representatives of the local Islamic society and mosque, the Salvation Army and the Worthing Churches Homeless Projects. It was immensely valuable that people were able to share that experience, and learn along with members of other faiths and people with different views. I also pay tribute to members of my local mosque, who have been pleased to attend the holocaust memorial event in Worthing. I hope that its organisers will at some stage focus on the massacre at Srebrenica. It should be borne in mind that the most recent modern massacre in Europe was a massacre of Muslims, both secular and otherwise, by people claiming membership of other religions.

I have no strong views on the issue of all-party groups, but there seems to have been a bit of “creep”. Paragraph 13(b) on page 5 of the “All-Party Groups” report by the Committee on Standards and Privileges, the eighth report of Session 2008-09, HC 920, states that in future such groups should have to

“register any commercial company with a direct interest in the work of the APG which contributes materially (say more than £5,000 or 5%, whichever is the lower) to meeting the central costs of the charity.”

According to the motion,

“The charity or not-for-profit organisation must agree to make available on request a list citing any commercial company which has donated either as a single sum or cumulatively more than £5,000”.

Perhaps the Minister who replies to the debate will tell us whether the movement from the requirement for a “direct interest” to no qualification was deliberate, and, if it was not, whether it could be considered when the resolutions are before the House.

Let us suppose that, for instance, the Army Benevolent Fund were to provide the secretariat for an issue-based all-party group. I am not saying that it should do so. Given that it has raised millions of pounds for our armed forces, I think that it would be going too far to have to list every commercial company that has given it money for that purpose, whether by gift aid or otherwise. At one stage I was chairman of the Church of England children’s society. A fair amount of money was donated to us by commercial companies for events and other purposes. I think that we might be putting a burden on some charities and not-for-profit causes if the resolution followed the motion—which will obviously be accepted—rather than the committee’s report.

Let me return briefly to the issue of earnings as opposed to gifts. For a number of years I have tried to avoid having any outside earnings. I failed in the current year, because I wrote an obituary for a friend and, rather to my surprise, received a cheque from the newspaper that kindly published it. I have given the money away, but it clearly constituted earnings, and I think that I am obliged to declare it. I believe that the sum was £300. A long time ago, between 1979 and 1984, I was personnel director of a fairly major commodities trading company. I should have been very prepared to declare the salary that I received for that.

On another occasion, I was an adviser to the International Fund for Animal Welfare. I gave it advice that it did not take and did not want, but its founder asked whether I would do more work for it, which I did, although it did not take any notice of what I said. That relationship came to an end in time.

What is clearly employment or something done for the purposes of an organisation for which one is paid should be declared, and what one is doing outside ought to be. However, I have a warning. Let us suppose that Peter Thurnham, who was a colleague at one stage in this House and who bought two machine tools when he was unemployed and set up an engineering business, entered the House of Commons when the business was on its feet. How would he calculate the time that he was putting into the business? That seems to be a very difficult thing to do. When James Callaghan was a farmer after being Prime Minister, how much time did he put into it? When Michael Foot was writing his biography of the founder of the health service, how much time did he put into it? If I, for example, had to put in the number of hours that I spent on the obituary, I would have to guess. It is obvious that we have to be prepared to put down rough and ready figures, which will not be easy.

The key point is to back a system where people will feel embarrassed if they know that they are doing something wrong, rather than having an enormous box-ticking exercise. I hope that when we ask the Committee on Standards and Privileges to review the matter and it conducts a consultation, more people will agree that 0.1% is too low and could be at least doubled or trebled without disadvantage to the House or to the interests of the public.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Peter Bottomley

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend was asked about clause 1(5) and the length of time between general elections, but my reading of that provision is that it does not extend the life of a Parliament. Parliament will still expire after five years, but the general election has to come within two months after that if it is extended, which is a shorter period than the current maximum.

[Chris Bryant]

That is not correct.