All-party Parliamentary Groups
Debate between Chris Bryant and Peter Bottomley(9 months, 2 weeks ago)
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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
It does depend on how many Ls there are, and whether there is a T.
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.
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 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.
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(2 years, 11 months ago)
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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
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.