Oral Answers to Questions

Christian Matheson Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stuart Andrew]

It is important to recognise that universal credit is a transformational benefits system that is working to get people back into work. The recent employment figures, showing that employment in Wales is up by 5,000, are a significant step, but the issues that the hon. Gentleman raises are exactly why we have been careful. We have made significant changes as we have carefully rolled out the project.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

13. What discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on upgrades to transport infrastructure in north Wales.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Stuart Andrew)]

The Secretary of State and I hold regular discussions with Cabinet colleagues and the Welsh Government on Wales and road infrastructure, and we recognise the benefit to communities on both sides of the border.

[Christian Matheson]

The M56 is the main arterial route not just through Cheshire but into north Wales. What discussions has the Minister had about upgrading the M56 as part of the next road investment strategy for Highways England?

[Stuart Andrew]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to highlight the importance of the M56 and the whole of the cross-border connectivity routes, because the amount of people who live in Wales but work in England is significant. That is why the Secretary of State recently met the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), to discuss these issues—[Interruption.]

Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill (Eleventh sitting)

Christian Matheson Excerpts

Committee Debate: 11th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 18th July 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

I beg to move, That the Committee do now adjourn.

I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) on the birth of her baby. It was a pleasure and a great help to have her on the Committee. I wish her and her family health and happiness.

Last week, when the Minister did not turn up, I was a little worried. I thought, “Is it another resignation?” I am pleased to see her here, and I hope that we will be able to work constructively once the money resolution comes forward.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

It is fair to say that the Minister’s absence was one that frankly could have happened to any of us, and I do not think any blame attaches to her. Does my hon. Friend agree that after Labour wins the next general election and we have a nationalised, unified railway system, all the trains will run on time?

[Afzal Khan]

I agree with my hon. Friend on both points. I accept that what happened to the Minister could happen to any one of us. I was just expressing my worry about what might have happened. On his second point, of course we want to see the railway system working properly. I get many complaints from constituents about the mess-up of the timetable, so the sooner we get that sorted out, the better.

This is our last meeting before the summer recess. I am also coming to the end of my first year as a Member of Parliament. At that milestone, I have been reflecting on what I have done, what I have not quite achieved and what can be done better next year. One sticking point in my mind was my private Member’s Bill. I am disappointed and more than a bit frustrated that we have not made any progress on it. Despite repeated calls from both sides of the House, we have reached this milestone without a money resolution.

Who knew that I would spend my first year in Parliament arguing over such an obscure, and until now uncontroversial, aspect of parliamentary procedure? When I was first elected as an MP, I thought I would have the chance to make a real difference in this place. I was under the impression that we have a democratic system of government, where the powers of the Executive are balanced with the powers of Back-Bench and Opposition Members to produce the best legislation we can collectively. Instead, I have been surprised and deeply concerned by the lack of transparency and accountability in the way this Government operate.

Before coming to Parliament, I was a member of Manchester City Council for many years, and served as a Member of the European Parliament. In all my time in those two elected positions, I did not encounter an Executive as overreaching and fuelled by weakness and indecision as this one.

In my first year as an MP, I have been astounded by the lack of Bills and substantial business in the House. We seem to have had endless general debates to fill time while the Government try to work out among themselves what they actually want to get done. As parliamentarians, we would all rather spend our time discussing legislation than adjourn early, as it was proposed the House should do this week and as the Committee will be forced to do today.

Before we adjourn for the final time before the recess, will the Minister tell us when the Government will publish the Boundary Commission’s final recommendations? Are we to expect to resume these time-wasting Committee meetings every Wednesday morning when we come back after the recess? Will the Government stop arguing among themselves long enough to bring forward a money resolution and allow the Committee to discuss the Bill, which has now spent 10 weeks in limbo?

I wish all Committee members a good recess.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

Then I call Chris Matheson.

[Christian Matheson]

Thank you, Mr Owen. It is a great pleasure to follow my good friend the hon. Member for Glasgow East, who taught me something I did not know: the Government have failed to table a money resolution for another private Member’s Bill, one in the name of the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar.

Will you indulge me a moment, Mr Owen, so that I may make a quick statement to correct the record? It is relevant to the Bill.

[The Chair]

If you can frame it in the context of the Adjournment debate.

[Christian Matheson]

Indeed. This being the Adjournment of the last sitting before recess, I want to correct something that I said in the debate on the motion that the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean mentioned. I said in that debate that, when the Government introduced individual electoral registration, 2 million voters fell off the register. The Minister suggested that I check the figures. I have done—I am very grateful for her guidance—and 600,000 voters fell off the register according the figures I used. I got the 2 million figure because in the next year, 2 million extra voters were added to the register for subsequent elections. I am happy to correct the figure that I gave.

That correction amplifies the problem that my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton, seeks to correct with the Bill, which is that the boundary changes that are currently being considered will be based on seriously flawed electoral data. That is one reason why we need to crack on with the Bill: to address the very problem that I mentioned, albeit with slightly confused figures.

I pay tribute to the Minister, who has stoically held the Government’s line. The Opposition have sometimes found her contributions frustrating, but she has had a job to do and she has done it with tenacity. She has got to where she needed to get to, which was for the Bill to reach the summer recess without being discussed. In the next two or three parliamentary weeks there is the chance, as the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean said, for the House to make a decision on new, revised, and I believe, probably flawed proposals—flawed because the basis on which they were drawn up was flawed.

Notwithstanding that, the Minister still has to indicate what the Government’s position on the Bill will be. Whether or not the House accepts the new boundary proposals in September, the Bill will remain on the Order Paper. At some point, the Government will have to table a money resolution. The alternative is that they do not table one and allow us to continue meeting in perpetuity, or at least until the end of this Parliament, in the absurd circumstances described by the hon. Member for Glasgow East.

At some point, a decision will have to be taken on the Bill. I suspect that since the Government cannot kill off the Bill in Committee, they will have to move a money resolution and seek to have the Bill dismissed on Third Reading. The Government will still have to table a money resolution, irrespective of the results of the vote in the House in September. If the Minister does not wish to contribute today, I hope that she will take away with her on recess the thought that we cannot continue to meet in perpetuity on Wednesday mornings and not make a decision to proceed. At some point, something will have to give, and it will not give simply because we pass—or do not pass—the Boundary Commission’s proposals in September.

I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton. I think the Committee knows that he and I have been friends outside this place for many years, and it has been a great pleasure to sit with him and other hon. Friends. It has been a pleasure to see other hon. Members, particularly the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean, who is an esteemed colleague on the Government Benches.

We will be back in September. If I may speak on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton, I think it is fair to say that we will be back for as long as it takes to get the Bill through Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Electoral Commission Investigation: Vote Leave

Christian Matheson Excerpts

Tuesday 17th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chloe Smith]

I understand the seriousness of that point and the points made earlier by the hon. Member for Streatham (Chuka Umunna), which were similar, but what I would just note is that the rules we are looking at in this report are rules that comprise our democracy. Our democracy comprises having such rules, among some other very important principles. In essence, our democracy is underpinned by the fact that we have such rules. That the rules were broken means that the system is in fact working; that we have a regulator that is able to conduct an investigation is one of the things that marks out the quality of our democracy. That the rules were broken does not actually mean the rules in themselves were flawed. In concluding my answer to my right hon. Friend’s question, let me say that Parliament, over the course of many years, has put in place those rules for referendums and for elections. If I heard him correctly, he asked for a wholesale reform of all of those rules. That is a very large undertaking indeed and it goes wider than the report we have before us today. I note that other investigations are ongoing, such as the Information Commissioner’s, and that ought to be looked at in the round by Parliament.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Chuka Umunna) on securing this urgent question and on his introductory remarks. Today’s report from the Electoral Commission is a devastating indictment of the official leave campaign’s conduct during the referendum, which has been found to be based on cheating and possibly lawbreaking. Financial expenditure was deliberately co-ordinated through what now appears to be nothing more than front organisations, and Vote Leave failed to co-operate with the Electoral Commission inquiry. It showed contempt for the law set by this House, which makes a mockery of claims to “take back control” and displays the breathtaking arrogance of people who clearly believed that the law of the land did not apply to them.

We only got to hear about these activities because of the bravery of whistleblowers. What was the response of those involved? They outed one of the whistleblowers as gay, without his permission, and therefore put him and his family at risk. One of the people responsible for this outing was working as a senior adviser in Downing Street. The Prime Minister refused to sack him, so presumably she supports, or at least excuses, these monstrous actions. Will she now, on the back of this report, dismiss him as an adviser?

Of course, as my hon. Friend has mentioned, senior members of the Government were involved in the Vote Leave campaign. Those include the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the recently departed Foreign Secretary, who is uncharacteristically silent today. Will they now come to the House and explain their role in both the initial scandal and the cover-up? If the leaders of the Vote Leave campaign cannot be trusted to abide by the rules of the referendum, how can we trust them to abide by the rules of any future election? Indeed, how can we trust them to conduct their ministerial duties with honour, integrity and honesty? So can the Minister tell us whether those leaders of Vote Leave who are now Ministers or who are former Ministers will be referred to the Cabinet Secretary for investigation as to whether they have broken the ministerial code?

Yet again, we have been confronted this week by the chaos this Government have got themselves and the country into, dumping their own Euro civil war on the rest of us and sowing division throughout. We have Brexit extremists at war with their own Prime Minister, and a Government who at every stage have put party before country. Members in this House and the public are entitled to ask how on earth we got here, yet British politics and the British people deserve better than this. We cannot allow cheating and dishonesty to become accepted norms in our political system, so let me ask the Minister: what is her proposal to bring decent honest politics back to the fore? If this Government have not got any, perhaps it is time they moved aside for a Government who have.

[Chloe Smith]

Given that Labour Front Benchers are so committed to propriety, perhaps they should report themselves to the police for their national spending in the 2015 general election, for which the Labour party was fined by the Electoral Commission in October 2016. They are on thin ice if they think they are able to say that this cuts only one way. It does not.

We have in front of us a report of an investigation in respect of named individuals. I have already said that I am not going to comment on ongoing investigations, and that covers several of the points that the hon. Gentleman just raised. I will say again that the Electoral Commission is an independent organisation and can undertake any investigation that it feels is necessary. Indeed, as you know, Mr Speaker, it can report back to this House through your Committee on the Electoral Commission. That is its governance. The point is that we need to be able to say to the public who are watching this debate that we are getting on with delivering the result of the referendum in which they voted. [Interruption.] I can hear some Opposition Members shouting; perhaps it is that faction of the Labour party that believes in having a second referendum, or perhaps it is that faction of the Labour party that believes in not having one, or perhaps it is that faction of the Labour party that does not know what it believes in. What we believe in is that our independent—[Interruption.]

Infected Blood Inquiry

Christian Matheson Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his statement and for giving me advance sight of it.

Today’s statement is a sign of progress, but it is also an indicator of how delayed this whole process has been. It is a year since the inquiry was announced and six months since responsibility was, rightly, transferred to the Cabinet Office, yet we are only now getting details of its sittings and terms of reference. The unpleasant and inconvenient truth is that the longer the delays and the longer the grass into which this matter has been kicked, the fewer victims will be around to see justice done—the Minister referred to the testimony of one survivor in his statement. Taken together with other inquiries such as that on Grenfell Tower, where the Government had to chop and change the format numerous times in response to public dissatisfaction, we are given the overall impression that when it comes to public inquiries on public safety or government malfeasance, this Government have wanted to give away as little as possible, as late as possible.

Nevertheless, today we have seen progress. We welcome the statement, the new terms of reference and the start of the inquiry. It will look at issues ranging from what happened at the outset to the response of the Government, the treatment of victims and their families, the question of whether evidence was deliberately destroyed and a possible cover-up mounted, and whether individuals or institutions are to be held responsible. Those terms of reference have been welcomed by those affected, their families and the campaigners supporting them. May I also welcome the Minister’s recognition in his statement that speed is of the essence, given the previous delays?

We also welcome the fact that the inquiry is to be UK-wide, which will overcome the anomaly of previous inquiries or compensation schemes that were dependent on the jurisdiction in which the original contamination took place. We hope that the inquiry can now crack on with its work. Will the Minister confirm that it will be given the finance it needs to follow the evidence and complete its work so that it is unhindered and unrestrained by a lack of resources?

The responsibility in government for sponsoring this inquiry was transferred to the Cabinet Office because the Department of Health was at best conflicted and at worst possibly implicated, albeit perhaps historically. Will the Minister confirm that a clear instruction has gone out—or will go out—from Downing Street that full co-operation is expected from Ministers and officials at the Department of Health and Social Care? Have any mechanisms been put in place to support the inquiry by monitoring the Department’s co-operation in this matter?

We welcome the fact that Sir Brian Langstaff will have expert working groups to advise him. Some campaigners feel that the Penrose inquiry in Scotland suffered from having Lord Penrose sitting on his own, and we note that Sir Brian will make a recommendation to the Minister on additional panel members after consulting the core participants. There had previously been a doubt about the provision of legal aid to the victims and their families for the earlier consultation, so will the Minister confirm that support will be available for those participating in the inquiry itself—both financial support and, where necessary, counselling?

Will the Minister confirm that any claims to commercial confidentiality made by the firms involved or their modern-day successors will not take precedence over the need for the inquiry to get to the truth on behalf of victims? This inquiry now passes into the independent control of Sir Brian. However, will the Minister indicate whether there will be a mechanism for interim reports to be given to this House, and so to those affected and their families?

Finally, will the Minister join me in paying tribute to the courage, resilience and determination of the surviving affected people and their families who have stayed in this fight for so long? Will he also join me in paying tribute to hon. Members on both sides of the House in the all-party group on haemophilia and contaminated blood, and especially to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) for her leadership in keeping this matter in the minds of Ministers and the whole House?

[Mr Lidington]

First, I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s support for the inquiry and for the direction of travel that I have announced today. I am happy to join him in paying particular tribute to the courage and tenacity of the survivors and the organisations that work with them. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley), who have worked together in a compelling demonstration of cross-party unity and determination to secure justice for the survivors.

On the time taken since the inquiry was announced, I emphasise to the House that the Government have tried consistently to move this inquiry ahead as quickly as possible. It was right that we reflected on the criticisms of the initial idea that the inquiry should sponsored by the Department of Health and Social Care, and that responsibility was therefore switched to the Cabinet Office. It was important to get a judge not only who had the right experience and expertise to take on the task, but who was willing to take it on and could free him or herself for up to two years, full time, to chair the inquiry. Finding the right judge with the willingness and ability to commit time is not always straightforward. Sir Brian has wasted no time: even ahead of his retirement from active duty on the bench in May, he took initial steps to understand the brief. Since his retirement, he has been active in ensuring that he talks directly to survivors’ groups and others. There is no doubt in my mind that he is absolutely committed not only to getting to the truth and securing justice, but to doing so in as speedy a way as possible, given the need to ensure the proper examination of evidence.

Let me turn to the hon. Gentleman’s particular questions. First, on finance, yes the Cabinet Office will provide Sir Brian and the inquiry team with all the resources that they need to do their job effectively.

Secondly, the Prime Minister has made it clear that the Department of Health and Social Care, the national health service and all branches of government should co-operate fully with Sir Brian and the inquiry. It is for the NHS in the devolved areas to take decisions in the light of the devolved Governments’ views, but I wish to make it clear that I have no reason to expect anything other than full co-operation. I know that the Governments in Scotland and Wales are determined to ensure that there is justice and openness and that, at the end of the day, the truth is delivered for survivors.

The hon. Gentleman asked whether measures will be taken to monitor the Department of Health and Social Care. I assure him that were there to be—I do not expect this—the slightest suggestion of a failure to co-operate, the necessary instructions would be given. The Prime Minister’s view on that has been absolutely clear.

The hon. Gentleman asked about legal aid, and I can confirm that we are making it available. We have said that people can claim for the costs of legal representation during the consultation. Under section 44 of the Inquiries Act 2005, I am allowed to determine the power of the chair to make awards for legal funding. Given the exceptional nature and gravity of the infected blood tragedy, I have decided that it is overwhelmingly in the public interest that the Government provide such funding for applicants. Those applicants will not be subject to means-testing.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the Penrose inquiry. One problem with that inquiry to which the Scottish campaign groups drew Sir Brian’s attention was that Penrose was assisted as chair by a single medical assessor. Sir Brian’s proposal is for there to be panels of experts representing different areas of expertise that need to be brought to bear in our search for the truth. He proposes that that is the best way, commensurate with the speed required, to ensure that the survivors get to the truth as rapidly as possible.

Advisory Committee on Business Appointments

Christian Matheson Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) on his recent knighthood, richly deserved after many years’ service in this place, and on the work of the Committee and the dogged way in which he and his Committee have gone after this particular issue. It is a lesson to all in the House about the value and the strength of Select Committees when they are well led and follow the evidence with robust questioning. I pay tribute to him and his Committee.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his tribute, but may I echo the comments of the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Ronnie Cowan)? We really do owe much of our work to the persistence of our absent friend, the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), who has always contributed and motivated the Committee on this matter.

[Christian Matheson]

I am most grateful for that clarification and the House will have noted it.

The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments is entirely necessary, but, to use the phrase of the moment, not at all fit for purpose. The clue is in the name. The A in ACoBA stands for “advisory” and it is clear that the committee is just that: it has no teeth and if its harshest sanction is to embarrass—well, that is scarcely a sanction at all. I wonder whether, as currently constituted, it is even designed to make a difference with a very narrow remit. As far as I can tell, ACoBA has never actually refused an appointment.

ACoBA is appointed by the Government to provide independent advice to senior Crown servants and to all former Ministers of the UK, Scottish and Welsh Governments on any appointments they wish to take up within two years of leaving public or ministerial office. ACoBA applies the business appointment rules, which are largely procedural and set by the Government. They have no statutory basis and there are no sanctions for non-compliance. The rules apply for up to two years after leaving office and they are applied with inconsistency.

It is a clear failure of ACOBA that it cannot adequately distinguish between different types of post-ministerial appointment, for example paid as opposed to unpaid work. One former senior civil servant recounted to me the story of when they left the civil service. They took a position on the board of trustees of a community group. It took months upon months for this voluntary position to be approved. Part of the delay was down to due diligence, because the trust was a charity. If charities and the Charity Commission can undertake due diligence and prevent an appointment pending such checks, why can ACOBA not do that?

Meanwhile, as we have heard, the former Chancellor George Osborne can take a job with BlackRock in the City of London and not even tell ACOBA that he was taking a job editing the London Evening Standard. I understand the same applies to the former head of GCHQ, Robert Hannigan, who was appointed to the European advisory board for a new US cyber-security firm, BlueteamGlobal, and did not even tell ACOBA. Because it is set up as an advisory and non-statutory committee, ACOBA finds enforcement difficult. I suspect that this is the reason it does not attempt to enforce. Indeed, it may be the reason it was set up in this way in the first place.

In addition to ACOBA’s toothlessness, there are further problems, for example with conflicts of interest. There are numerous, multiple examples of members of the committee declaring interests in firms to which the applicants were being appointed, but not recusing themselves from those cases. This included Mary Jo Jacobi, who has financial interests in BP but did not recuse herself from Vernon Gibson’s application, and John Wood, who has interests in BT, did not recuse himself from Keith Bristow’s commission with them.

ACOBA was also criticised by the former Public Administration Committee for having an “establishment” make-up—the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex raised this point. ACOBA is chaired by a Baroness and former Conservative Minister, who also works as a consultant for a company that looks very much like a lobbying firm. Other members of the committee include two Lords, a knight, a former general secretary of the First Division Association, lawyers and former senior civil service grandees. I go back to the evidence cited by the Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee about bus drivers or hairdressers. As he says, there seems to be no sight of them.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My hon. Friend is making the point made by the Chair and other colleagues. Putting people on ACOBA who look like members of the establishment, honest though they may be, just reinforces the image among the public of the establishment looking after itself, instead of having ordinary people, maybe bus drivers and hairdressers, who are remote from the establishment on the committee.

[Christian Matheson]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point, but it is not simply about image. It is about having a different perspective. It is about approaching the question of an appointment from a different point of view, so that somebody from the outside, a bus driver or a hairdresser, can say, “Look, this really doesn’t look right from where I am sitting.” He makes an extremely good point, but the issue is about more than how it looks.

We welcome much of the report, including its finding that the problem of conflicts of interest

“has escalated, with increased numbers of public servants moving between the public and private sectors, and a number of very high profile cases resulting in declining public confidence in a system that was set up to command trust by mitigating any breaches of the Rules.”

It also states:

“The regulatory system for scrutinising the post public employment of former Ministers and civil servants is ineffectual and does not inspire public confidence or respect.”

It refers to

“numerous gaps in ACoBA’s monitoring process with insufficient attention paid to the principles that should govern business appointments.”

The report has several clear and pretty strong recommendations for ACOBA, including much greater transparency of data published about decisions, an amendment to the Ministerial Code, and the publication of applications on receipt and not after the fact. It also proposes the disclosure of full information about ACOBA‘s procedures for assessing applications and the reasons for its judgments.

Labour Members welcome the report as a starting point for the reform of ACOBA, but I disagree with the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex, who said—although I may have misunderstood him—that reform might be quite difficult. I am not sure that it would be if enough attention were given to it, and as long as the political will was there, although I concede that he, rather than me, is the one who has done all the studying of the detail.

We have been calling for the reform of ACOBA since 2011. Whether the issue is the lack of diversity of its members, their own conflicts of interest, or indeed the very rules by which they work—or, indeed, do not work—it cannot continue to exist as a fig leaf that fails even in that role of concealing the revolving door. It should be entirely reconstituted, with clearer terms of reference and stronger powers to delay or block appointments that are not appropriate. By failing to act, or being unable to act, ACOBA highlights the fact that the current arrangements are simply not working, and it must be reformed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Christian Matheson Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right, and we will be launching a consultation shortly to deal with exactly that point.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

Edward Timpson was appointed chair of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service and of the new Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. Andrew Tyrie has been appointed chair of the Competition and Markets Authority. Baroness Stowell was appointed chair of the Charity Commission. They are all probably worthy appointments individually, but a clear pattern is emerging, so will the Minister confirm that the main criteria now for senior public appointments is that someone has to be a former Tory MP or Cabinet Minister?

[Oliver Dowden]

As ever, the hon. Gentleman makes a rhetorical flourish. Sadly, the facts just do not bear it out. The Government’s code for public appointments is clear that political activity is neither a judgment of merit nor a bar to becoming a political appointee. If he looks at the statistics, he will see that of 1,000 candidates in the past year—2016-17—4.9% were Conservative and 4.8% were Labour.

Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill (Eighth sitting)

Christian Matheson Excerpts

Committee Debate: 8th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 27th June 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Dorries. I have a few remarks on the motion to adjourn, picking up on the comments made by the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton, whose Bill it is.

First, we have an update on where we were last week, because there are now only three full sitting weeks until the Boundary Commission’s report. I agree that there is not consensus or 100% unanimity about Parliament’s decision a number of years ago to reduce the size of the House—of course not. It was a hard-fought battle to get it through, but the House agreed to it, as did the House of Lords. It is an Act of Parliament; it is the law. Rather than anticipating what decision the House might make when faced with the Orders in Council suggesting that we implement the reports of the boundary commissions—whose final versions we have not yet seen—we should wait for that decision.

As I said last week, in answer to a point from the hon. Member for Glasgow East, who unusually is not in his place today, there is an injunction on Ministers in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, and in the amended legislation on parliamentary boundaries, to bring forward the proposals as soon as is reasonably practicable after the boundary commissions have reported. I do not think that Ministers can just not do anything for ages. We will get a reasonably early chance to make a decision.

The reason that I do not think we should act in parallel—as I also said last week—is that the Bill makes some significant proposals about changing the size of the House, the frequency of boundary reviews going from five to 10 years and the amount of flex in the size of the seat. We will want to debate those issues having listened to the debate on the Boundary Commission’s proposals. They will be debated on the Floor of the House, so all Members will get the opportunity to discuss them, and I think that that is what we want.

My final point was also made last week—forgive me for repeating it, Ms Dorries. There is a strong case for saying that if the House were to reject the Boundary Commission’s proposals, and therefore the Government wanted to give Parliament an opportunity to look at an alternative strategy, the Government should find time to consider the Bill in all its stages, including Committee, on the Floor of the House. It is a constitutional Bill. All stages of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 were debated on the Floor of the House. I would argue that it is not right to debate changes that significantly affect Parliament in Committee, with relatively few Members present, so that all Members could debate them only on Report. The Government cannot make the decision about finding time on the Floor of the House until we know the position with the boundaries.

For all those reasons, I think the Government’s position is sensible. They have made it clear that they are not trying to kill the Bill: they want to hold it in suspended animation—or whatever other phrase we might choose—until the House has had a chance to consider the Boundary Commission’s report. I think that is a sensible way forward. I recognise why the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton is frustrated by it, but the period of his frustration is shrinking as time passes; we do not have many sitting weeks until the Boundary Commission’s report. I hope that the current approach will eventually meet with his approval.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

What a pleasure it is to see you in the Chair, Ms Dorries. It is always worth restating what a great pleasure it is to follow the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean, who, week after week, makes considered and relevant comments about the nature of the Bill. We appreciate that he is taking the issue seriously even if we do not necessarily agree with the comments that he is making.

The right hon. Gentleman points out that we have only three sitting weeks left before the recess, and that after the recess the Order in Council is likely to be laid. That is a good reason to crack on with the Bill now and give it detailed consideration in Committee, as it cannot possibly complete its parliamentary passage through both Houses within those three weeks. We could, however, carry on with the detailed consideration of the Bill and get on with the stages that we are able to, before the Order in Council is laid. If the decision is taken not to accept the Boundary Commission’s proposals, we would have something waiting in the wings and we could crack on quickly. I remind the Committee that no one—certainly no one in the Opposition and, if I may be so bold as to speak for them, no one on the Conservative Benches either—denies that we need a review of boundaries.

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for what he said in his opening remarks.

I would just add, and I say this gently because I accept that he was not responsible, that the Labour party—including the hon. Gentleman and the Bill’s promoter—has now accepted that we need to update the boundaries. That would be a bit more credible if it had not kiboshed the last boundary review that was supposed to have been completed in 2013. We should have done it by now and had it in place for the 2015 election. It was, of course, the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats who kind of did a slightly dirty deal in the House of Lords, and then in the House of Commons, to kibosh the last review. So his protestations about wanting a rapid conclusion would be a bit more credible if his party had not done that in the past.

[Christian Matheson]

I cannot perceive that any deal with the Liberal Democrats is ever dirty, but I would take advice from the Conservative party on that matter.

That review was kiboshed—I was not in the House at the time—because it continued with the notion of reducing the number of constituencies from 650 to 600, which does not enjoy Opposition support, particularly at a time when other constitutional changes mean that we need to maintain the strength of the House. We are where we are.

In his speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton, talked about a “disturbing trend towards the obstruction of the parliamentary conventions on which our democracy depends.” I know the Minister personally and I do not believe that is her intention. It may be the intention of Ministers elsewhere in Government, but I do not believe it to be hers, although she represents the whole of Government in this Committee. I hope she will respond to some of the questions that have been raised.

I would like to consider the position of the Minister at the moment. It is a rather tricky role that she has been asked to play. I could not help but notice that another member of the Committee is not in his place today—the hon. and gallant Member for Beckenham. He is very well thought of in my constituency because of his service in and leadership of the Cheshire Regiment. I do not know if hon. Members have ever been on battlefield tours with him, but they are well known and one of his battlefield tours is of the D-day landings. I recall the D-day landings on the night of 5-6 June 1944. The Orne river bridge and the canal on the eastern flank—

[The Chair]

Order. Mr Matheson, this is going dangerously off-track.

[Christian Matheson]

There is method in my madness, Ms Dorries, if you would just bear with me.

The 2nd Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry—the Ox and Bucks—under the command of Major Howard, were tasked with securing the flank and the bridge, now known as the Pegasus bridge, over the canal. Major Howard was given the rather open-ended commission to “hold until relieved”—to hold the bridge and flank until relieved—by Brigadier Lord Lovat. That was one of the key engagements, using the glider force from the Air Assault Brigade for the first time to maintain the eastern flank despite fierce counter-attacks from the Germans throughout the night. Lovat did indeed eventually relieve Howard.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

I finally understand where the analogy is going, but does that make the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues the Germans?

[Christian Matheson]

I would like to think that we are all on the same side in this Committee and all want the finest parliamentary representation possible. What it does mean is that we have finally managed to get the Minister to contribute to the Committee, which is fantastic. “Hold until relieved” was Major Howard’s injunction and that has been the rather open-ended injunction that the Minister’s colleagues have given her.

There is a potential ending: the appearance of Lord Lovat and the commando brigade coming from Sword beach, in the guise proposed by the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean. If the Minister can hold for three more weeks, perhaps we will get to the place she is going, but hold until relieved, when we are talking about parliamentary democracy, is not the ideal scenario. I pay tribute to the Minister for her resilience in all this, but it would be nice if she could respond to some of the questions that my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton has posed.

[Mr Harper]

I am extremely grateful, Ms Dorries, that you bore with the hon. Member for City of Chester, because that was a quite entertaining story. We would have been very disappointed if you had cut him off before we saw where it was going. Although I have never served in uniform, the comparison the hon. Gentleman just made is one of the most complimentary that anyone has ever made about me in the House, for which I am grateful.

[Christian Matheson]

The right hon. Gentleman deserves it. I go back to my previous point—he has enhanced his personal reputation in this matter. Thank you for bearing with me, Ms Dorries. Open-ended commissions and instructions are not always helpful. At some point, we need to get to a conclusion in this matter. Simply knocking it into the long grass is not the way forward for parliamentary democracy. Debate is always better than closing down debate. With that, for one more week, I resume my seat.

[Chloe Smith]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. Out of personal courtesy to the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton, I rise to state that there is no more I can or will add to what has already been said on the subject. I do not think the place to answer his questions is under a motion for adjournment.

Question put.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

The Committee has voted not to adjourn. Unless a Committee member can offer a motion for debate, I shall have to ask a Committee member to move another motion to adjourn.

[Christian Matheson]

I would like to offer clause 1, if that is at all possible, for a general debate, which means that we do not have to enact any money resolutions that have not yet been tabled.

[The Chair]

Without a money resolution, I cannot accept a motion to consider clauses of the Bill or amendments; I am afraid we are just not charged in this Committee with doing that.

Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill: Committee Stage

Christian Matheson Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

We have heard today from G. K. Chesterton and P. G. Wodehouse, which is of course a pleasure. Nevertheless, it is a matter of regret that we have had to hold this debate because the Government should long ago have respected the wishes of this House and proceeded to move the necessary money resolution. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) for persevering in holding the Government to account.

The Public Bill Committee, of which I am a member, has now had six sittings to try to scrutinise this important Bill, which passed its Second Reading in this Chamber by 229 to 44 votes. However, we have been unable to consider a single clause because of the highly unusual step taken by the Government to refuse to table a money resolution.

[Michael Tomlinson]

I think it is in fact better than the hon. Gentleman stated, because those were the votes on the closure motion. I believe the House voted unanimously for the Bill’s Second Reading.

[Christian Matheson]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for correcting me, and he is absolutely right.

This has not only become a routine drain on parliamentary time and resources for everyone involved, but is deeply disrespectful to Members across the House who sent a strong message to the Government last December that they wanted the Bill to be considered in Committee. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton that it is now 200 days since that vote took place. It is vital that we uphold parliamentary sovereignty, which is why I am pleading for all Members across the House to support the motion.

We are where we are, and I pay tribute to hon. Members for their participation in the debate. The right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper)—or, dare I say it, West Gloucestershire?—talked about the fact that his constituency might become West Gloucestershire. Of course, he would also have to be adopted by the association to be the candidate, but I am sure that it would have no problem adopting him. He mentioned the 35,000 responses to the Boundary Commission’s review. I will hazard a guess that most of those responses were complaining about how daft the review was, based on the parameters set by the Government. I will say one thing about him: he has been an assiduous attender of the Bill Committee, even when only a motion to adjourn was moved, and I pay tribute to him for being one of the few Conservative Members who has taken that procedure seriously.

My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton, who is an old friend, told us that he has become an expert in parliamentary procedure. With that expertise, he reminded us that the convention is that the Government always table a money resolution on Second Reading.

The hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) gave a brave speech and said that the circumstances in the world have changed. He talked about the motion setting a dangerous precedent, but I put it to him that the dangerous precedent is surely the Government ignoring the will of the House by ignoring the Second Reading vote.

The hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) talked about her introduction to politics in 2009-10 and all the demands for parliamentary reform at that time. I suggest that those demands were for reform of the expenses system, which is what was causing all the difficulties around this place, not of parliamentary boundaries.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) presented us with an easy solution to the problem: an early vote, so that the Government could test the will of the House on a reduction from 650 to 600 seats, which would save time and resources. He made the important point that we need to remember that we represent place as well as simply numbers.

Then we come to the G. K. Chesterton fan, the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson), who talked about the difficult and treacherous business of taking forward legislation. He is right that legislation should be difficult and should be tested, but if there is any treachery, dare I say it?—I hope I am not being unparliamentary—it might lie on the Government’s side of the House, with Ministers not respecting the will of the House on Second Reading.

The hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) reflected on his experiences on the Procedure Committee and reminded us that money resolutions are always provided. The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) said that his constituency is 103 miles one way by 115 the other—as big as London—and that the new boundaries would make it even more impossible to manage.

Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), who represents the constituency of her birth, talked about the history of those parishes providing a real sense of community. She reminded us that our role here is to represent the voiceless, and she spoke of the 11,000 residents of her constituency who are not on the register but nevertheless need representation. It has been an excellent debate.

[Mr Goodwill]

People not being on the electoral register is not just an urban issue. In constituencies such as mine, many people have second homes and are not on the electoral register. They vote in local elections in many cases, but they require help from their MP if they have problems concerning the local authority. It is not just in inner-city constituencies that there are more constituents than the number on the register.

[Christian Matheson]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Of course, someone who has a second home is perhaps registered elsewhere, but my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden was making a particular point about those who are not on any register but still require representation.

The Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton seeks to resolve a controversial 5% variation in the size of constituencies. As we all know, under the new rules outlined in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, all constituencies are required to have a quota between 95% and 100% of the national quota. The consequences of that rigid 5% threshold are that some communities will be split up, while others are merged and dragged into other communities. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) discussed that and spoke about the crazy effect on his high street, which would be split, with the shopping centre on one side and other shops on the other.

The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee recommended that that constraint be relaxed to 10%—a proposal rejected by the then Government in 2015—so I welcome the flexibility that my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton has shown. He has listened to Conservative Members who believe that the 10% quota is too large, and he has taken their views into consideration. Relaxing the quota to 7.5% would mean that a majority of constituencies would not change at each election, which would strike the right balance and mean that each boundary review would be less disruptive.

The reduction in the number of MPs from 650 to 600 runs contrary to good sense in many ways. At a time when we are planning to leave the EU—hon. Members made this point—and supposedly return control to the UK, we need to maintain numbers in the House. All that the reduction in numbers would achieve is a reduction in the ability of Parliament to scrutinise the Government—another point made in the debate. At the same time, the Government have appointed more unelected peers to the other place than any other Government, so it is absurd that they should reduce numbers in the elected Chamber.

The Hansard Society did not find any rationale for the Government’s decision, noting that there was

“real concern”

that the number had been

“plucked from thin air—600 simply being a neat number.”

Cutting 50 MPs represents a crisis of scrutiny—a concern expressed by the Electoral Reform Society and by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon. Finally, it is vital that constituencies represent the communities that they serve.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

There is no better example of that than my constituency and the number of people I represent. Thirteen thousand people registered to vote in the 2017 general election, increasing the size of the electorate by nearly 10,000. Under the Government’s proposals, that community would be decimated because of the arbitrary point about numbers. The Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) absolutely rectifies that and puts the registration date at the right point.

[Christian Matheson]

My hon. Friend gives an example of communities that are not reflected in parliamentary constituencies. My fear is that there are plenty of examples across the House, not simply in Leeds, where that would happen. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden and plenty of others that that link would be broken.

A major flaw with the boundary reviews is that they were based on the December 2015 electoral register. Since then, as we have heard, over 2 million people have been added to the electoral roll, following the increase in registration for the EU referendum and the 2017 general election. Some Government Members argue that the date for any boundary review is inevitably a snapshot. However, 2015 was not just any year. It was the year 600,000 people dropped off the electoral register after the Government’s decision to rush through the introduction of individual electoral registration, against the advice of the Electoral Commission.

[Mr Harper]

It is absolutely right that a significant number of entries were removed from the register, but the point was that many of them were not legitimate. Individual electoral registration was introduced to deal with accuracy and completeness. Having lots of people on the register who do not really exist is not a good thing—it is a bad thing—and it is good that we fixed it.

[Christian Matheson]

I have no doubt that electoral registers have to be cleaned up, but I cannot believe that there were 2 million people on the electoral register who simply did not exist. The right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill) discussed people with second homes. I am on two electoral registers, as I have a place in London because of this job, but the numbers are few and far between, and I do not believe that 2 million have dropped off for any reason other than that when IER was introduced it made it more difficult to register.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden referred to Republican party tactics that I would describe as voter suppression. I am not suggesting this of the Government, but I would be concerned if those tactics found their way to this side of the Atlantic and it became harder for people to vote and take part in the democratic process.

[Rachel Maclean]

I feel that I need to put it on the record that I completely refute any assertion that I, as a Member of this House, have been influenced by the tactics of the Republican party on the other side of the Atlantic.

[Christian Matheson]

I consider that point to have been put on the record.

London lost almost 100,000 voters, despite experiencing a rise in population. However, the bigger issue—bigger than the details of the flawed boundary review—is the relationship between the Government and this House. This House gave the Bill a Second Reading with a hefty majority; indeed, it did so unanimously, as the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole reminded us. It should not be for the Government to ignore the wishes of the House, which were expressed so clearly on Second Reading. If we are taking back control, that control should reside in this House, not with the Executive. Running away from debate by using procedural chicanery gives a dreadful impression of the Government, so our proposal tonight is to allow the Bill to continue its detailed consideration in Committee.

I know that, like me, many hon. Members across the House cherish the status of this House and its sovereignty. They might not agree with the aims of the Bill proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton, but they will understand that it is wrong to block its passage by anything other than a vote in this House. For that reason, and to stand up for the primacy of the House of Commons, I invite all hon. Members to join me tonight in supporting the motion and allowing democracy to thrive—not to vote against the Government, but to vote for this House.

Draft Official Statistics Order 2018

Christian Matheson Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2018 General Committees

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Paisley. Clean water, sound money, good statistics and fair chairmanship—you have certainly provided the last, Mr Paisley. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time; I earnestly hope it is not the last.

I thank the Minister for a clear interpretation and explanation of the order. We broadly welcome it and will not seek to divide the Committee. The order updates the list of applicable organisations in line with developments since the original legislation was passed and subsequent statutory instruments.

I have a couple of concerns that I ask the Minister to address. Will she confirm that there are no charities on the new list of orders and that these are all existing Government bodies of one sort or another? Since these statistics will now form the basis of official statistics, and therefore must be accurate, credible and reliable, will any additional support be given to the bodies concerned to ensure that they are able to meet the standards required, and that their core work of undertaking responsibilities will not be suffer as a result?

The current legislation is designed to ensure that we have an independent statistics authority that can challenge the use of statistics where necessary. If the body concerned is receiving Government grants or is in any way over-reliant on Government, will that reduce the capability to challenge the Government with hard-hitting statistics? Will the Minister provide assurance that the independence and credibility of these bodies are maintained? Dare I say it, the Government have some form in this area.

Finally, on a more general point, many of the public do not trust official statistics. The British Social Attitudes survey, conducted by NatCen Social Research, found that large majorities of people question the presentation of figures, ranging from unemployment to crime levels: 90% of people trusted the Office for National Statistics to produce accurate statistics, but just 26% said the Government would present those accurately.

We know that several hon. Members associated themselves with the bogus claims of the leave campaigns in the referendum, about £350 million being sent to the EU. The official statistics watchdog had to rebuke the Vote Leave campaign for those. As recently as March this year, Sir David Norgrove, the chair of the UKSA, rebuked the Prime Minister herself for the use of misleading figures on police funding.

In conclusion, we have a Government who, having changed the definition of poverty, are now using Government statistics to tell us that we are now a more equal society, despite the fact that food-bank usage has gone off the charts: 5,000 families in my own West Cheshire area alone are using food banks, while the Sunday Times “Rich List” tells us that the richest 1,000 people have increased their wealth by £466 billion since the crash. According to the TUC, the average worker will have lost £18,500 in income.

In that context, it is no surprise that folks do not trust what they are told by official figures. What will the Minister do to re-establish faith in the use of Government statistics?

[The Chair]

As I see no tsunami of people wanting to make a contribution, I call the Minister to respond.

House of Lords: Abolition

Christian Matheson Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

What a great pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), who did great credit to both the petition and the Petitions Committee in leading this debate. He managed to present the arguments, and as well as giving some of his personal views, which he is entitled to do, in a fair and balanced way, he talked about the advantages of Lords reform and of a Lords with external expertise and experience. He used a phrase that particularly struck me—“the House of Lords does things that the House of Commons does less of”—suggesting that there is a complementary function.

The hon. Gentleman also outlined different options for reform, which I found interesting. There can be an academic as well as a political debate about how we proceed. Do we have an elected, an appointed or a hybrid Chamber? He suggested that one of the blocks to reform is lack of consensus on what to replace the House of Lords with, and I suggest that we have seen that in today’s debate. There is no real consensus on how we proceed, which is one of the reasons why we are not proceeding at all.

Is there not a real danger that the legitimacy of the Lords will continue to decline? My concern is that if it does, it will drag down the whole of Parliament and therefore this House as well. I was particularly interested in the responses the hon. Gentleman spoke about, from students at the University of Strathclyde and—was it Stelling grammar school?

[Paul Scully]

Steyning.

[Christian Matheson]

Steyning Grammar School. They talked about the lack of diversity in the Lords and a view that it was simply a job for life for politicians. Again, there is a danger, based on the position the hon. Gentleman outlined, that the nation is changing faster than we in Parliament are, and that we are not keeping up with changing attitudes in the nation. That is further evidence that the House of Lords is becoming further and further out of touch with the attitudes of the younger generation, which it does not reflect.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) talked of a “closed political world” from a different century, and there is a very real danger that that is the case. He also quoted “Blackadder the Third” and the Dunny-on-the-Wold by-election, which brought a smile to my face; but again there is a danger that life imitates art and that the relevance and credibility of the whole of Parliament, not just their lordships’ House, is damaged. We are told that one in five Members of the Lords does not vote. My hon. Friend, who is also my constituency next-door neighbour, said that we should not assume, simply because someone is appointed, that gives them expertise. He is absolutely right about that.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon in the Chair]

The hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) gave us an excellent and intriguing history lesson, particularly on the changing nature of the Conservative party over the years. Sadly, he did not bring us bang up to date on where he feels the Conservative party is at the moment. He made a great point about seizing the moment and shaping the change that he wants to see. I hope he will forgive me if I do him a disservice, but he did not actually talk about the type of change that he would like, although in his typical fashion he was very forthright in his views.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) gave a considered speech about what we want the Lords to do and offered a considered view of where we in this House might be going astray, which threw an additional element into the debate. The hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) began by warning of the dangers of sounding like a lawyer. The ears of my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston pricked up, because he is a lawyer. However, the hon. Member for Henley did not sound like one when adding a different element to the debate on the question of how we should organise constitutional change and manage referendums.

The hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) said he was amused by the hon. Member for Monmouth and talked about the importance of the primacy of the Commons. Again, that is an additional complication, but it is a relevant consideration when discussing reform. It is probably one reason why reform has not happened so far, because we cannot decide how it should affect our own House, let alone how it should affect the other House. I will come on to Brexit—the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire discussed our having to wait and see how the Lords behaves over the ping-pong process this week and whether it will accept the decisions of the Commons.

However, it is clear that there is a crisis of legitimacy concerning the House of Lords and how it is composed. Even if we do not feel that so acutely here, there are members of the public—169,000 of them and counting—for whom the House of Lords no longer represents a legitimate part of the legislature. The question is how we go forward.

I express some concern about the nature of the debate. It is timely, and it has come about, I believe, because an awful lot of people out there believe—potentially incorrectly; it goes back to the point by the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire about our seeing in due course—that their lordships intend somehow to block Brexit, or at least the quickest and hardest Brexit possible.

Even today, in its current composition, the Lords has a constitutional role as a revising Chamber and to offer a pause to consider bad legislation. I find it ironic that some hon. Members—none of whom are here, I hasten to add—are happy to block private Members’ Bills in this place, such as those concerning free hospital car parking for carers or the long-term sick or, dare I say it, an urgently needed law to ban the revolting practice of upskirting, using the lame excuse that they do not like legislation that has not been debated and thought through, and they use parliamentary mechanisms to stop any debate at all on such measures.

However, when the House of Lords debates thoroughly a matter dear to those hon. Members’ hearts and asks us to pause to give time for more consideration, those hon. Members are all of a sudden up in arms at there having been too much debate and call for the abolition of the Lords. They cannot have it both ways. Debate is good and reflection on legislation is good, but when it comes to debate on Brexit, those hon. Members believe such debate blocks the so-called will of the people. I remind the House that Brexit is not necessarily the will of the people but the will of a slim majority of voters. I am concerned that, rather than wanting a detailed discussion about the type of democracy and the type of legislature that we want, many of the petition’s signatories—I cannot presume to know why all of them have chosen to sign it—signed it simply through frustration over Brexit.

Attacking the Lords is part of a broader strategy that we have seen in some of our newspapers of attacking and undermining any institution that they believe might be getting in their way. Before calling the snap 2017 general election, the Prime Minister attacked the other place, describing peers as “opponents” of the Government who had

“vowed to fight us every step of the way.”

We have seen hon. Members in this House attack the integrity and impartiality of the civil service, we have seen the senior judiciary being attacked and Conservative Members have been attacked in certain newspapers as traitors for standing up and voting according to their convictions.

Moving away slightly from the subject of the debate, if we really want a fairer, more open and democratic political discourse, we might start with challenging the unelected, unaccountable and uncontrolled power of those national newspapers and their billionaire owners, whose opinions taint our politics so much, long before we deal with the House of Lords. However, that is another debate for another day.

I welcome the notable conversion of Government Members to looking at the need to address the undemocratic nature of the House of Lords. For hundreds of years, the Conservative party had an in-built majority in the Lords—the hon. Member for Monmouth talked about its changing composition—but I do not recall hearing any complaints from Conservative Members during that time. However, with the abolition of most of the hereditary peers, which is an anachronism that I still find very hard to explain to foreign visitors, that in-built majority ceased to exist.

My noble Friend Baroness Smith recently reminded the other place:

“Challenge and scrutiny are not new. They were not invented by this Opposition.”

She meant the Labour Opposition. When the Labour party was in government, the then Conservative Opposition

“could boast well over 500 government defeats, including 145 during the 2005-10 Labour Government and 245 during the 2001-05 Labour Government, which had an elected majority of 167”

in this House. She continued:

“Those many defeats included a government Bill at Second Reading, two fatal SIs and a number of key national security measures that involved ping-pong late into the night.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 13 January 2016; Vol. 768, c. 278-279.]

It is only since 2010 that Conservative Members have shown any concern about the composition of the Lords, but their response has been to pack it with more life peers than any preceding Government. David Cameron appointed more peers per year, and at a faster rate, than any other Prime Minister since 1958, when life peerages were introduced, with more from the Government party and fewer from Opposition parties. Indeed, on the weekend of the royal wedding, the Prime Minister sneaked out an announcement appointing nine Tory peers, following her predecessor’s legacy by appointing only three Labour peers. All of that is at the same time, as the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) mentioned, as the Government intend to press ahead with plans to cut the number of elected Members by 50. It seems incongruous that we are not considering Lords reform but we are considering cutting the size of the elected Chamber.

Let me be clear: Labour believes that the second Chamber should be democratically elected. However, the first step must be to reduce the number of peers, with a good start being to remove the remaining hereditary peers—particularly along the lines suggested in the private Member’s Bill tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson), which remains on the Order Paper. Indeed, my right hon. Friend reminds me that all but one of the hereditary peers currently sitting in the House of Lords are male; only one is female. If we are to tackle diversity, that should be a basic starting point.

There can surely be no continued justification for having hereditary Members of our legislature. The Opposition have proposed a constitutional convention to decide the best way forward for the second Chamber. We support the Burns proposals, which seem entirely sensible, as a start. Above all, we want a solution that is workable, democratic and fair, and which is generally thought through, rather than what I fear is a knee-jerk reaction to the Lords doing its constitutional role of offering our House the chance to think again, particularly on the Brexit issue before us at the moment. If we care about good legislation, we should be grateful for the chance to think again and should not be intimidated by national newspaper owners. However, we have to ask whether an appointed Chamber—let us not even mention a semi-hereditary Chamber—is suitable to be part of a democratic Parliament in the 21st century.

This subject is not going away. I commend to this House the idea of a constitutional convention so that we can get over the disagreements that are blocking the way forward and finally decide how to reform the House of Lords. I urge hon. Members to get behind the idea and get on with the discussion, so that we can get on with the reform.