Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Christopher Chope Excerpts(15 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
When we talk about the law of unintended consequences, which applies big time to the provisions of the Bill, will my hon. Friend not apply that in his mind to what is happening in Ireland at the moment? There is a constitutional crisis that requires the Prime Minister, in honour, to put an issue to the electorate for a general election. This Bill would preclude the Prime Minister from doing a similarly honourable thing in this country.
Mr Cash
My hon. Friend with his customary originality brings into play a contemporary example. Imagine a two-thirds rule being applied in respect of Mr Cowen at this moment. Be in no doubt, there would be riots in the streets of Dublin. This is an essential question about the irresponsible manner in which this power could be used to induce results that are fundamentally undemocratic.
Chris Bryant
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I understand that for there to be a super-majority in this Parliament, 434 votes in favour would be required, although that is before the Bill currently before the other place, the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, comes into operation in an unamended form. We are talking about 434 out of the 650 seats at the moment. As I have said, the arrangement leaves some things completely uncertain; I presume that the Speaker and the Deputy Speakers would not be allowed to vote.
That brings us to another interesting point, which is that, as you will know, Mr Hoyle, under the Standing Orders and the custom of this House, the Speaker and the Chair do not vote unless there is an equality of votes. That is different from the arrangement in the other House, where the Speaker or the Chair of the Committee is able to vote twice. The commonly accepted provision, as stated in “Erskine May”, has then been as follows for the Speaker:
“it is usual for him, when practicable, to vote in such a manner as not to make the decision of the House final”.
In a vote such as I am describing, there would not have been equality of votes, but if one side had got to 433 seats, would the Speaker be allowed to vote or not? This is slightly complicated when there are 650 seats, but if the number is reduced to 600, as suggested in the Government’s proposals in the other Bill, 400 seats would be the mark that we would have to reach. If the vote is on a knife-edge, would the Speaker and the Deputy Speakers, or the Chair of the Committee, be allowed to vote on such a measure? Importantly, this is not just about the Speaker. If the vote were on a Budget and if we took the advice of the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills that in some situations a Budget decision or a financial decision would be considered a motion of no confidence, the provision would relate not to the Speaker, but to the Chairman of Ways and Means or one of the other Committee Chairmen, who would be chairing.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) said, many difficult elements are involved in operating a super-majority. The biggest problem arises where the Government or the Opposition table a motion seeking to get to that figure and an early general election, and obtain more than half the seats in the House but do not reach the two-thirds majority. In what state would that leave the Government? Would a motion of no confidence immediately have to be tabled for us then to be able to proceed to the other measures? Or would that original motion, by its very nature, have been considered a motion of no confidence, because the Government declared it to be a matter on which winning the vote was an issue of confidence? Again, this provision is either a dangerous or entirely unnecessary element.
Chris Bryant
I am enthusiastically in favour of having a vote on amendment 4, because it goes to the nub of the issue; in large measure, it deals with the only issue of significance in this group of amendments.
Mr Chope
I am against the Bill because of the lack of flexibility in it. From what the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) has just been telling us, I think he agrees that if we have a fixed-term Parliament, a lack of flexibility is inevitable. He said that in the current constitutional and financial crisis in Ireland it is reasonable that its Parliament should be able to call what he described as an early general election rather than an immediate one.
However, the consequence of the Bill will be that if we had a constitutional and financial crisis in this country similar to the one besetting the Irish people—God forbid that that should happen—the hon. Gentleman or I might ask my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister whether he intended to call an early general election so that the people could have their say. Under the terms of the Bill, the Prime Minister would turn around and say to me or the hon. Gentleman, “I am sorry, but I don’t have the power to call a general election now. The only way I can engineer one is for you to put down a motion of no confidence in me, with the humiliation that it would involve, or for me to try to get a two-thirds majority in the House to facilitate it.” The Prime Minister would lose the right to call an election. The Minister seems to think that is a good idea, but I do not. I trust the Prime Minister’s judgment on such issues, and I think we should trust the people and let them decide.
When our good friend Edward Heath was Prime Minister, he decided to call an early general election to deal with the miners’ strike. The people reached their verdict. Basically, they said, “We think that you have proved yourself unworthy to remain in office.” The fact that a Prime Minister calls an early general election does not necessarily mean that they are going to win it. Whether they win or not is a matter for the people.
If there was a financial or constitutional crisis, such as the one in Dublin, a reasonable Prime Minister—I should like to think of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister as a reasonable man—would say, “In the light of what has happened, we should call a general election. We should call it now. We should not have to have a contrived vote in the House of Commons. I wish to go to the Queen and ask her to exercise her prerogative to call an immediate general election.”
Mark Durkan
In Dublin, a budget needs to be passed and then people can make a legitimate judgment. The imperative is to get a budget passed to create some economic and financial stability to boost confidence in the wider markets—not just for the Irish economy but for other economies both inside and outside the eurozone that will be under pressure. There will be an election in late January and that is known, but at least the Dail has the opportunity to pass a budget.
Mr Chope
I will not get involved in the detail of what is happening in Ireland at the moment. If a similar situation were to happen in this country, people might well turn to their Members of Parliament and say, “Why should we trust this Government to pass another Budget when it has made such a Horlicks of the current arrangements? Why don’t we elect a new Parliament and a new Government to deal with the crisis?”
Mr Harper
At first, my hon. Friend said that this Bill would not provide any flexibility. Then he set out two ways in which we could have an early election. Our proposition is that it would be up to this House rather the Prime Minister to call an early election. The Prime Minister could come to this House, put down a motion and then Members could decide whether they wanted an early election to deal with the financial crisis. To give the power to this House and not leave it with the Prime Minister is an improvement.
Mr Chope
Where we all part company with my hon. Friend is on the issue of whether a 50% plus one majority should suffice. That is where the amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) comes in. In the hypothetical situation that we describe, a majority of this House may decide that there should be a general election, and surely that is reasonable. Why should we have to have the constraints of a two-thirds majority, which is a contrivance in itself?
I had the privilege of introducing the first Adjournment debate in this Parliament when we discussed the issue of the 55%. I like to think that it was largely because of the cross-party ridicule of the 55% arrangements in the coalition agreement that the Government decided to think again. They did think again, but they reached the wrong conclusion. They should have gone back to saying, “Let’s have a bare majority” rather than going to the artificial two-thirds majority. They tried to pray in aid, falsely, the Scottish precedent, which was discredited during that first Adjournment debate and on a number of other occasions as not being in line with our situation. In Scotland, there was full public consultation on the new Parliament and the way in which it could be dissolved early, short of the expiry of the fixed term. After that discussion, the Scotland Act 1998 was brought in with the arrangements set out in it.
In the United Kingdom, a general election took place. I and others were elected on the Conservative manifesto. We then found that we did not have an overall majority, so we were forced to go into a coalition Government—at least that was the decision that was taken. We are now told that only a two-thirds majority can bring this Parliament to an early end, short of a vote of no confidence in the Prime Minister. I have all sorts of objections to that proposal, not least that it is effectively retrospective legislation. If this House is to legislate to fix the lengths of Parliament, it should legislate for the lengths of future Parliaments, not the current one. I object to the proposal, and I hope that it is taken up in the other place.
I also reject the idea of the artificial two-thirds threshold, which has not been discussed anywhere. When my hon. Friends consider whether to join my hon. Friend the Member for Stone in the Division Lobby on amendment 4, they should bear in mind not only that the two-thirds threshold was not in the Conservative manifesto, but that it was not even in the coalition agreement. They should be free to say to their Whips, “I said I’d go along with the coalition agreement, albeit reluctantly, but I am certainly not signing up to amendments to the coalition agreement that the Government make on a whim and expect me to support automatically. I’m going to look at each issue on its merits, and I see no merit whatever in the two-thirds majority.”
In conclusion, the excellent speech by the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) was well worth listening to. He speculated about the motive and urgency of the Government’s proposal. We know what the urgency is: the Government are split completely over the AV referendum. The Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives—the majority party—both want to be sure that the other does not pull the rug from under the coalition Government after that referendum. It is quite possible in my submission that the Conservatives will lose, although I hope not, but who knows what will happen in that game of Russian roulette?
The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Such an experienced Member will know that the referendum is not quite part of this group of amendments. I am sure that he would like to get back to the amendment.
Mr Chope
Absolutely, Mr Hoyle. I am sorry, but the right hon. Member for Blackburn, who is a former Home Secretary and holder of many other important national offices, drew me down that road of speculation.
To sum up, the Government have a motive to cover either outcome of the AV referendum. It suits both parties in the coalition to prevent an early general election, which is why they want a fixed-term Parliament—they want to assure themselves of a longer period in office. I say only this: good luck to them, but they should not expect me to vote for the Bill tonight.
Tristram Hunt
I wish to speak to amendments 33 and 34. Even though I, too, am a member of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, I did not put my name to them. As the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) suggested, they allow us to pursue the idea of exclusive cognisance, and of this place having control of its powers rather than being opened up to external powers, particularly the possibility of the courts intervening in the parliamentary process.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said, the Clerk of the House has repeatedly warned Members that the provisions of the Bill
“impinge upon Parliamentary privilege and…may bring the Courts and Parliament into conflict”,
and yet the Government seem unwilling to heed any such advice. When the Clerk of House appeared before the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, with his usual subtlety and modesty, and we tried to press him on whether he had been consulted on the developments behind the Bill, he rather averred in his answer. The Government consider that
“this Bill would cause no such rebalancing and that the Bill will not in any way open up parliamentary proceedings to the jurisdiction of the courts.”
That is an idea that the amendments are beginning to tease out. In their reply to our Committee, the Government also said that insufficient time for pre-legislative scrutiny is a
“natural consequence of legislating at the beginning of the first term”.
I am a new Member in this place, but I do not regard that as a sufficient excuse for some of the lacunae that we have seen opening up in the course of our scrutiny of this legislation.
Public Services (Social Enterprise and Social Value) Bill
Christopher Chope Excerpts(15 years, 4 months ago)
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Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
I am proud to be able to stand here this morning and put this Bill before the House. Becoming the Member of Parliament for Warwick and Leamington has been a deeply humbling experience, and this Bill has brought home to me once again the responsibility that we in this Chamber all carry. I am honoured to be part of this process, and it is something that will stay with me for, I hope, a few years yet.
I take this opportunity to thank all the voluntary organisations, charities, social enterprises, representative bodies, officials and individuals who have helped me in the drafting of the Bill. I single out the Social Enterprise Coalition for its help and especially for its powerful advocacy for the legislation. I also thank the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) for her encouragement and support.
It would be best to start by setting out the rationale behind the Bill. At this year’s general election, I, like many others, even on the other side of the House, ran on bringing positive change to our country and our society. The big society is an idea that I believe in, not only because it offers an optimistic vision for the future, but because it is common sense. It is one of the strongest ideals of recent times: every political party has attempted to embrace its principles and it has been espoused by many former Prime Ministers and Leaders of the Opposition. We should bear in mind, though, that the big society is nothing new in itself.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr Cameron), although a most passionate and effective advocate, did not create the concept of the big society. Let us not forget that before my right hon. Friend, a former Member for Sedgefield, Tony Blair, told his party conference in 1999 that Labour needed to revive civic society, based on fairness, equality and responsibility.
“We are citizens proud to say there is such a thing as society”
he said, but even before him, there was Baroness Thatcher, who in 1986 said that the
“responsible society is one in which people do not leave it to the person next door to do the job. It is one in which people help each other. Where parents put their children first. Friends look out for the neighbours, families for their elderly members. That is the starting point for care and support—the unsung efforts of millions of individuals, the selfless work of thousands upon thousands of volunteers. It is their spirit that helps to bind our society…. Caring isn't measured by what you say: it's expressed by what you do.”
That sounds remarkably familiar. In the 1950s and ’60s, Jo Grimond, leader of the Liberal party, articulated the vision of the big society when he talked about the need to revive the spirit of association that had once bound our nation together. The idea of a big society, a responsible society, or a civic society, is timeless. It has inspired politicians from all political parties for centuries. I believe that it encapsulates the idea that people can truly flourish only if they feel part of an organic, evolving and strong society. It recognises that we are not merely economic units to be put into certain boxes and cut off from others, but human beings who wish to belong and to feel actively involved in a wider society.
That is a powerful philosophy, and it has been the strong motivation behind my Bill. However, although it is easy merely to say what one believes, it is much more difficult to put forward concrete proposals that can help to realise those beliefs. This Bill is my attempt to do such a thing. In order to realise a stronger society and to build on those bonds within communities, we need to empower and champion civil society. We need to create the conditions for civil society to flourish. We need to create the opportunity for voluntary organisations, social enterprise, charities and socially responsible businesses to thrive. That will not happen by itself.
Although it is easy to look back on the past, perhaps even to the Victorian era, when many organisations sprang up with little Government intervention and philanthropy was fashionable, we are not in the same position today. Unfortunately, many years of centralisation from Governments of all colours have stifled the natural creativity of our communities and, given the difficult economic times we now face, it will be a challenge to stimulate the kind of movement necessary to realise the big society. Of course, Government cannot, and should not, see it as a duty forcibly to create this society—that would defeat the point and merely see one centralising structure replace another. Forcing communities to depend on the direction of central Government would undermine a stronger society and would not lead to any change to the status quo. That said, the Government do have a role to play in being the catalyst for the development of civil society and giving organisations and individuals who wish to reach out and build stronger social networks the chance to do so.
The elephant in the room, however, is money. Organisations across the country agree that civil society should be able to do more to provide services, and that there is fantastic potential for innovation and improvement in getting civil society more involved, but they ask the very valid question how they are going to be able to do all this. Civil society cannot function in a financial vacuum. Obviously, a great deal of work that civil society does is based on people volunteering time and money, but it would be foolish to pretend that that, in itself, will be enough. Capacity has to be built. People need to be trained—professionals who understand that many of the complex technical, legal and administrative issues that organisations face need to be paid for. Rents and equipment are not free, either. The financial pinch is already affecting civil society, and if we do not act, the development of the big society could be smothered by our economic problems before it has had an opportunity to flourish.
We must therefore be very careful that, in our zeal, we do not try to support these vital sectors of our economy on the cheap. We have a moral, as well as a political, obligation to ensure that we support this section of our economy during this difficult time. We simply cannot allow these organisations to fail. If we do not take the opportunity with which we have been presented to put into practice the principles and ideals that many of us campaigned on, it will be extremely difficult to do so in future. It will demoralise VCSEs—voluntary, community and social enterprises—and politicians will further lose public confidence. That is not acceptable.
The window that we have in which to catalyse this change within our society is not large—perhaps a few years at most. So how can we achieve this? The Bill marks a way in which it could be done. The UK taxpayer spends nearly £200 billion a year on procuring and commissioning goods and services, and while that funding will fall over the next four years, it will remain a significant amount. I believe that we should be using this funding, which we need in order to provide the services that people want, to leverage and galvanise VSCEs. If we want long-term growth and a general strengthening of civil society, we will need some stability in the funding that it receives. We cannot merely allow Government to throw funds at these organisations when they are flavour of the month, only to cut them when the newspaper headlines diminish. We need a situation whereby they can plan for the future, craft niches and roles for themselves, and know that what they are providing is good and that, as long as they serve their communities well, and innovate and create, they can survive and grow.
To quote a recent think-tank report, the UK is a “service hungry nation”. This is not going to change over the coming four years. If the past few hundred years have taught us anything, it is that people have an insatiable appetite for services, and we can never predict what they will be demanding in future. However, we can see that there is a definite trend towards services that are more local, more personalised, and more responsive to our community needs. Civil society has a great opportunity to provide these services if it is given the chance to do so, and, once that has happened, to build on them.
Let me take the example of Sandwell Community Caring Trust, which started by taking over adult social care homes in the black country. It took over the failing homes, reformed the institutional structures, remotivated staff and reinvested in buildings and equipment. It has driven down the cost of adult social care and kept people in the local community in work, and it has now won a contract to provide NHS and social services in Torbay. It is an excellent employer that is well supported by the communities it serves. In short, it is a fantastic example of what this sector can achieve, and it throws down a gauntlet to the rest of the country, even areas close to home, to follow its example.
A report in 2003 by the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations called “Replacing the State?” made it clear that there are also powerful reasons of quality for this approach, highlighting five reasons why civil society is better placed to provide services than traditional providers. First, such organisations are more local and have a stronger focus on users than on providers. As every Member here will be aware, those who set them up are, more often than not, motivated by a sense of concern for their communities rather than a passion for profit. Secondly, civil society is far more co-ordinated than is usually the case in the public sector. Because of the natural interdependence that exists between these groups and the community-wide focus that they have, they can provide a far more holistic approach to delivering services, which is exactly what we need at this time.
Thirdly, at a time when the public are ever more distrustful of politicians, in particular, these bodies have a high level of public trust. It is not surprising that people are more willing to trust services provided by neighbours and well-meaning public-spirited individuals and organisations than by traditional top-down public bodies.
Fourthly, as I have mentioned previously in the House, civil society is one of the most innovative parts of our economy, and it has often radically changed the delivery of services for the better. Civil society organisations can engage where others cannot. They can reach out to communities and localities where traditional public service providers cannot. As they are formed from communities, they are better at engaging with them, and we should recognise and utilise that.
The Bill is not just about trying to help one set of providers at the expense of others, but also about getting higher quality provision, which I am sure all Members would support. It will not replace or undermine the concept of value for money, and I know that we must focus on that concept now more than ever. It is intended to make commissioners more enlightened in their approach, and to send a strong message to all areas of the public sector that what is currently seen as good practice should become normal practice.
We should not allow voluntary and civil sector enterprises to become dependent on the state for funding. That would not only damage civil society but completely undermine the empowerment of communities, which I am sure hon. Members of all parties are trying to achieve. However, I do not believe that that will be the case. Organisations across the country have consistently shown that far from wishing to become dependent on the state, they want to be able to compete on their own terms. They want to use such contracts as a base on which they can innovate and expand their activities, using their funding to further build their capacity and strengthen their community base. It is important to stress that we are not just trying to create new services and contracts in order to support civil sector organisations, but trying to open up existing contracts so that they can access them.
That flows into another matter about which my party often spoke in opposition and has continued to do so in government: the need for diverse providers of public services. There is already a growing public services industry in this country based on contracts from the Government. It is made up of a diverse range of organisations both large and small, from the private and VCSE sectors. It had a turnover of some £79 billion in 2007-08 and generated some £45 billion in value added. That rises to more than £88 billion if indirect impacts are included. It keeps 1.2 million people employed, rising to 2.3 million including indirect impacts. It is already a significant part of our economy—bigger than our communications and utilities industries—so the question is not whether we wish to create an industry for public services but what kind of industry can be created.
Of course, if we allow things to continue as they are, there is potential for a “supermarketisation” of our public services. Already, large private sector organisations are beginning to dominate the industry, and they are crowding out smaller and local competitors. I refuse to believe that that is the only option available to us. What I believe in is a future in which our public services are run by communities and the organisations close to them that have a sense of social responsibility and put people ahead of profit. We need a future in which public services see greater mutualisation, empowering clinicians, teachers and other public servants to take over the running of their services and deliver high quality and good value for money. We need to do more to get micro-businesses and small businesses working together to deliver better goods and services and build more sustainable supply chains.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
My hon. Friend will be aware, as a number of us are, of the concerns of the Federation of Small Businesses about his Bill—not about its avowed intentions, but about the possibility that it will have effects that are unintended but very damaging to the ability of small businesses to compete.
Chris White
I am glad that my hon. Friend brings up the FSB, which wrote to us only this week to state that it supports the Bill in principle. I hope that we can pass an exact copy of the letter to his office to ensure that we can discuss the matter come Committee stage—I hope—and that any input the FSB has can be put into the mix.
Chris White
I do not know whether the deputy policy director has had the opportunity to discuss the Bill with the rest of her organisation, but all I can say is that we have had a clear statement of intent from the FSB that it supports the Bill in principle.
The Bill is intended to create the right future for our public services. Across Government, Ministers are talking about engaging VCSEs in delivering public services. They want to mutualise and localise. I welcome that, as I am sure many Members do, but it will not be achieved through mere rhetoric. Those providers have been bidding for contracts for years, yet many still fail to break into public service delivery. Why is that? It is partly a question of cost. The cost of bidding for public services contracts in this country is far higher than that of bidding for contracts in the private sector. A report by the think-tank ResPublica highlighted the fact that the average cost of bidding for a public sector contract was double that of bidding for a private sector contract. The cost puts civil society organisations off, and if we want them to be more involved in delivery, we have to reduce that cost.
The failure to break into public service delivery is also partly due to the complicated nature of bidding. Many organisations simply do not know how to bid for contracts, and even if they do, they often feel that they lack the necessary expertise to bid successfully. Given the prohibitively high average costs, they are worried about failure. The Bill does not address those points directly, although I hope they will be considered in good time. However, it is important that they be raised, and I believe that we need to do much more to remove those barriers.
What would be best is a widening of the concept of value. At present, “value” is a word that is often purely associated with financial cost. If one buys a box of eggs from one supermarket for 20p less than the price at a competitor supermarket, one is deemed to have got value for money. It has often worked that way in public service delivery. Sadly, the means of delivery and the potential benefits to communities are all too often ignored when it comes to considering the word “value”. I know that many colleagues feel that that is as it should be; after all, if it is cheaper to use one provider than another, why should the taxpayer pay for something that, on the face of it, appears more expensive? However, by focusing purely on short-term cost, we ignore the potential long-term benefits that other organisations could deliver, particularly VCSEs.
Let us take the example of a local authority seeking to hire an organisation to renovate some social housing. There are two bidders. One will simply renovate the social housing, but another will not only do that but take on long-term unemployed people and teach them skills in the construction sector. It will go out to local schools and provide hands-on training so that children learn about the sector. Yet provided that it costs less, the first bidder will often get the contract. That is simply narrow-minded. If we take people who are long-term unemployed off benefits and put them into work so that they can learn valuable skills, and if we teach young people how the sector works, and maybe inspire some to develop related trades, we will bring not only environmental but economic benefits to the wider community. Surely that is better value for the community and better value for money.
In the long term, that is far more valuable than merely paying to renovate a few houses, it is more cost-effective for the taxpayer and it is more beneficial to our communities. In short, it is a better deal, but to get that better deal, we must be willing to consider all the aspects of value, not merely a narrow few. Of course, some bodies and organisations have noticed that. It would be unfair to mention merely one or two at the expense of others, but forward-thinking commissioners across local authorities and the public sector have been considering the wider social, economic and environmental benefits that such contracting attitudes and approaches can generate, which is a big step forward in realising truly intelligent commissioning.
Chris White
I hope that the Bill will give us the opportunity to discuss these issues in a wider forum. We have a real opportunity to put some of these issues on the table. If the Bill passes through this stage, we will, I hope, be able to discuss further in Committee some of the issues that my hon. Friend raises.
Hon. Members on both sides of the House have spoken about how we need to generate more for less. By using social value, we can help to achieve the holy grail of generating more for less. By using the £150 billion the taxpayer already spends on services, by maximising what we get for those pounds and by using community groups, mutuals, co-operatives, charities and social enterprises to deliver services, we can achieve far better value and a far better deal for our communities. During these difficult economic times, we should not put blinkers on and adopt a mindset that says that reductions in public funding must necessarily lead to reductions in the quality and quantity of our services. We should think bigger, and civil society is key to that.
Now that I have had the opportunity to lay the groundwork for the Bill and to give an outline of why it is important for hon. Members to look at these proposals, I want to focus on the Bill’s specifics. The Bill can be divided into three parts, and I have already described the rationale behind the third part, which is the most important and concerns social value in public sector contracting. The first two parts deal with strategies concerning social enterprises, which are a rapidly growing part of our economy. The work of the Social Enterprise Coalition, the social enterprise mark and the various regional social enterprise organisations are playing an ever-increasing part in our economic and social development.
In recognition of the sector’s potential, various Departments, from the Cabinet Office to the Department for Communities and Local Government, have created their own strategies and come up with ideas about how to help the VCSE sector. The Bill asks the appropriate Secretary of State to create one national strategy to look at the promotion of social enterprise. I hope that that would lead to the consolidation of all strategies across the Government into one clear, joined-up piece of work, so that we do not have a hotch-potch of strategies, which ultimately confuses and frustrates many in the sector.
I recognise that strategies and the like often cause many Members a nervous twitch, so I have done my best to find an estimate of how much such a strategy might cost in terms of manpower and consultation. According to the figures that I have been given, it is estimated that it would cost about £41,000. That is about £63 per constituency, under the current boundaries, or one tenth of a penny per elector.
Chris White
I would like to make some progress.
I recognise that we face difficult challenges, but the proposals are something for which we can and should pay. A clearer set of proposals from central Government and a more strategic outlook will do a lot to help this emerging sector.
In the second part of the Bill, I have tried to ensure that when locally generated sustainable community strategies are created, they consider social enterprises in their area. It is important that communities are given the chance to engage in the creation of sustainable community strategies, but there is a role for organisations such as social enterprises, which often emerge as responses to sustainability issues in communities. By considering such strategies and promoting engagement with them, we can help to generate more community-led and community-based solutions, empowering communities by promoting the vehicles that they can use to deliver solutions.
I hope that that is within the spirit of the legislation proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), who is now Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office and whom I am pleased to see on the Government Benches today. I hope that organisations set up with the purpose of helping communities across the country will take part in such strategies and engage better with their communities. That said, we should consider the proposals within the framework of the present burdens on local authorities and be prepared to amend them accordingly should they be proved unnecessary or too costly a burden.
I hope that I have justified at some length the third and final part of the Bill, which relates to social value. The Bill asks all organisations that are currently publicly contracting authorities under the Public Contract Regulations 2006 to consider how they might promote wider economic, social and environmental well-being in a contract and how they commission such contracts accordingly. Although considering that wider social value during the contracting process is only a small technical change, it would bring significant benefits for our public services in terms of the quality of contracting. It would also benefit communities, social enterprises, voluntary groups and small businesses, which generate considerable social value.
I am honoured to be able to present the Bill on behalf of a large coalition of supporters from VCSEs, local authorities and small and socially responsible private businesses. The Bill comes at a time when people are seriously asking questions about the future of our public services and about how we deliver a stronger economy in a way that reflects the values of people and the communities in which we live.
Although rhetoric is important so that we can inspire people to join in the project and articulate a vision for the country that all can share, we must also be conscious of the need to take a definite course. I believe that the Bill is a practical step forward, which I hope representatives from across the political spectrum can support. By working together constructively, we can achieve a stronger future for our communities and a stronger financial footing for our VCSEs. The onus is on us to think radically and, more important, to act boldly. I hope that the Bill can make a small contribution to a wider effort to boost our civil society, sustain the civil economy and make our public services better than ever. I therefore urge my colleagues to support the Bill.
Richard Fuller
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I agree that we want the opportunity to discuss these issues in Committee.
Where will the Bill lead? The right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles—I apologise for referring to her again—talked about this being a relatively modest-sounding Bill that could have significant consequences. From my short time looking at politics, that often seems to be the way. The Conservative Government in the 1980s, when they started with their approach to privatisation, were probably not aware of what a significant wave of change they were unleashing and that it would be a model around the world. In a different way, this Bill and the additional measures that I hope the Government will introduce, building on the work of previous Governments, could have the same significant impact.
To make that happen, however, we need a couple of additional efforts. First, we need to recognise that many social enterprises and charities are institutionally small and consist of few people—perhaps 10 or 20—a lot of whom might be volunteers. They might have a lot of spirit, but the procurement process will be quite complicated for them, so we need to enable them to come together to procure efficiently and compete effectively with the very efficient and knowledgeable for-profit procurement companies. I hope that the Minister will, either today or in the months ahead, come forward with suggestions for how that can be better enabled, so that the window opened by the Bill can be taken advantage of by these social enterprises.
Mr Chope
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is equally, if not more important that small for-profit businesses run by local entrepreneurs should be able to compete for these contracts? At the moment, only 16% of public contracts are taken by small businesses. Should we not be concentrating on that as well?
Richard Fuller
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. One of the consequences of the Bill would be that local and national Government would have to start thinking more locally about where they procure services. I, for one, believe that a local business making a local profit that is retained in its local community is of enormous social value to its local community. At the moment, as I was saying earlier, some of that profit is being exported. The very fact of passing the Bill would assist social enterprise, but would also help local businesses that do so much in their local community. That is why I welcome it so much.
The Bill would also have an impact on the financing of our social enterprises. Many right hon. and hon. Members will be familiar with the social finance work and the initiative in Cambridge with the St Giles Trust looking at ways of constructing the support for financing social services and social goods in a way that is more oriented to successful outcomes and takes away from taxpayers the one-way, pay-it-whatever-the-outcome approach to social services and social goods. That is another step that we need to take. This Bill is an enabler down the path of providing a comprehensive and different way for each of us as individuals, with our motivations and our sense of fairness, to be able to rely on a different institutional form—the social enterprise—to achieve what we all believe would be in the best interests of our country and our people. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington and the Bill.
Jon Trickett
I am not going to take interventions straight away, but I may in due course.
It has frequently been said that the Conservatives, historically, knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. It is therefore interesting to hear so many Conservative Members talking about judging tenders not merely on price but on what has been described in the Bill as social value, whereby one should not necessarily go for the lowest tender. That is at variance with my own experience as a leader of local government in the years when Baroness Thatcher was Prime Minister and simply wanted the lowest possible tenders. Nicholas Ridley said that local authorities should meet once a year in a tent to let contracts and then go away again.
Jon Trickett
I see that at least one hon. Gentleman remembers that as well as I do, and with approval by the look of it.
Several Members made strong references to local experiences in their constituencies. That reminds us of how important it is that Members of Parliament have a constituency base. Whatever form of electoral system we use, it is important to retain the constituency link. The hon. Members for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris), for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah) and others referred to local experiences, as well as to experiences that they had prior to coming to the House.
There was some tension, though, between the various tendencies that were expressed, which was most striking in the hon. Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer), who gave the impression that he was a libertarian, but he actually said—he may be horrified when he reads it in Hansard—that he quite liked compulsion in relation to local authorities. The power of the state compelling local authorities was an extraordinary vision for him to evince. On the other hand, the hon. Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) gave us a disquisition on liberty, saying that every action of the state is an infringement of liberty and is coercive. That was an interesting philosophical diversion.
Jon Trickett
Of course it does, and I take the point, but the truth is that the Conservative party—the so-called champion of liberty against the state—is now taking the state’s powers through legislation to do something that is happening in any case. How does it help to have legislation when the key point is to ensure that public procurement officers in local and central Government are sensitive to the needs of local companies, whether social enterprises or not?
Jon Trickett
I have said that the Bill raises interesting questions and deserves a Second Reading, enabling some of those matters to be debated further in Committee, which will perhaps further expose the differences on the coalition Benches.
What discussion of clause 2 has the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington held with the Local Government Association about amending the requirements for local authorities’ sustainable community strategies? A briefing by the Conservative-led and dominated LGA states that there is
“no need for a piece of legislation which will create a top-down imposition on councils to promote such enterprises.”
There speaks the genuine voice of localism, of the Conservative party locally. Why do the Government believe that it is necessary to impose legislation on local authorities that do not want it? Local authorities are happy to proceed with such matters on their own.
The LGA continues:
“The thrust of this Bill is also fundamentally at odds with the Government’s expressed desire to remove centrally-imposed burdens and top-down targets for local government.”
It feels as if the world has turned slightly upside down. Labour in government proceeded happily with enabling the sector to develop without the necessity for new legislation. My right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) has returned to the Chamber, and I more than congratulate her on her work. How can the Bill become a reality if local government, dominated by the Tories, so strongly opposes it?
Mr Hurd
I hear the right hon. Lady’s concern. She makes a valid point, and she used a very important word—“stewardship”. I totally agree that there is a duty of good stewardship. That contains two elements: a requirement to make sure that public assets are used most productively for the public, and a requirement to make sure that they are not misused in any way. In some ways that is a contracting issue. The right hon. Lady will know that social enterprises take many different organisational forms, and that there is a bespoke legal form for social enterprise called the community interest company, which specifically provides for an asset lock. However, that falls outside the immediate scope of the Bill.
I was talking about why we think the Bill is consistent with our ambitions and aspirations for public service reform. One of our aims is to encourage greater diversity of supply and provision. Here there may be some theological differences between us and the Opposition. We have a strong desire to try to incentivise and encourage much greater flexibility at a local level, such as providing opportunities to pool budgets and integrate services. She may be aware of some pilots that we are encouraging through the Cabinet Office on local integrated services, where the onus is much more on getting out there to find out what the community wants. All those aspirations will be backed up by action that will be reflected in the White Paper.
In the context of encouraging greater diversity of supply, on which the Bill touches, we have an explicit commitment in the programme for Government and the coalition agreement to support the creation and expansion of mutuals, co-operatives, charities and social enterprises, and enable those groups to have a much greater involvement in running public services.
Mr Hurd
I will come to clause 1, and I think that my remarks will give my hon. Friend some reassurance.
We are determined to try to open up the public services markets to a broader diversity of suppliers, and we have been specific about wanting to encourage social enterprises, charities and the voluntary sector to have a bigger role. Why? Most constituency MPs have a sense of the reason. Faced with some of the really stubborn and expensive social problems that this country faces—expensive in terms not only of money but of human cost—there is overwhelming evidence in certain cases, such as the hard job of getting people back into work or keeping people out of jail, that a social enterprise or community-based solution is often most effective in doing the really difficult work. We have to respond practically to the challenge—the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles, as a former Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, knows that it is a challenge—of opening up those public services markets to try to create more space for these organisations to participate and add value. It is not about trying to do things on the cheap, but about trying to deliver better solutions and to “do more with less”, to use the cliché of the moment. That requires a radical reform of commissioning and how the state buys, because, as the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles said, there is a strong feeling out there, represented by the Social Enterprise Coalition and others, that the system is obstructive and gets in the way.
That is why I and the Office for Civil Society are determined to get this right and are on the point of issuing a consultation document setting out what we need to change in state commissioning to fulfil the coalition Government commitment to create more space for social enterprises, charities, co-operatives and mutuals. The consultation document will ask the following main questions: in which public service areas could the Government create new opportunities for civil society organisations to deliver, and why? How can the Government make existing public service markets more accessible? How can commissioners use assessments of full social, environmental and economic value to inform their commissioning decisions? How can civil society organisations support greater citizen and community involvement in all stages of commissioning? And how we can reduce the amount of bureaucracy, form-filling and regulation that gets in the way of and infuriates and frustrates civil society organisations? The whole business of applying for and reporting public money is a bureaucratic nightmare for too many organisations and is often totally disproportionate to the sums of money involved. We are determined to do something about it.
In that context, the Bill’s core proposition—a requirement to consider social and environmental value where it is relevant and proportionate—is a useful complement to our own work of reform and commitment to making it easier for voluntary and community organisations and social enterprises to deliver public services. The Bill has the scope to ensure that commissioners consider the full effect of services on the people whom they serve and enable them to maximise the social, environmental and economic value of every penny they spend.
The Bill reinforces our commitment to value for money. In these tight economic times, it is particularly important that we achieve maximum value in our spend, but our observation is that currently some commissioners miss the opportunity to secure the best price and meet the wider social, economic and environmental needs of the community. Under procurement law, a contract must be awarded on the basis of the tender that is most economically advantaged or offers the lowest price. The Bill does not undermine or circumvent this requirement or otherwise undermine the Government’s value-for-money agenda and efficiency reform. On the contrary, it is anticipated that by taking full economic, social and environmental value into account, the quality and efficiency of public contracts can be improved.
I think that most hon. Members will see the potential for that just from their observations and visits. In my constituency, Hillingdon borough contracts a good proportion of public landscaping work with a company called Blue Sky. It is the only company in the country where someone has to have a criminal record to work. It does a brilliant job in offering employment opportunities to people coming out of jail—a critical milestone in proving to a future employer that they can be trusted. The people of Hillingdon are delighted with the service and the council are very satisfied with the price, and through this process we are making a huge impact on helping people to turn their lives around. I have spoken to some of the people working there. Some of them travel the length of the Central line every day to be on the course, because they see it as their way out.
That is intelligent commissioning at its best, and we want to encourage more of it. I remember visiting a social firm called Clarity that makes soap and liquids for cleaning hands. What differentiates this business is that, as I walked around the floor, I noticed that every single employee was disabled in some way—often in major ways. Again, this is an opportunity for them to build their own sense of worth and confidence, and to carve a different path that otherwise would have been shut to them. That is another opportunity for intelligent commissioning.
There are lots of other examples. In 2006, the London borough of Camden renewed its schools catering contract. At that point, there had been significant dissatisfaction with the quality and performance under the contract. There was a best-value service review prior to retendering, involving extensive consultation with parents, teachers, pupils and local social enterprise and voluntary and community stakeholders. The remit included consideration of wider social environmental and economic factors, and the new contract was shaped around the results of the review. As a result, the uptake of meals by children in primary and special schools rose by 10%, and teachers reported indirect benefits from the new contract. It has improved service and food quality without an increase in contractors’ margins. Again, that is intelligent commissioning.
Mr Hurd
I certainly will, and it is important to do so. This is largely about freeing people who work in the public sector to express themselves more and to explore their own ideas of how things can be done better. I remember vividly a visit to Merton, where one person working in the mental health field had recognised that the system was failing some people with multiple chaotic problems in their lives. He had shown leadership and pulled people round a table and said, “What we are delivering isn’t good enough.” Together, they produced a new system of support, and the people receiving that support came into the room to talk to me about it. Two of them burst into tears of gratitude. It is very rare for the public to weep with gratitude for the public services that they receive, and this was a direct consequence of one person’s ability to think differently. We want to encourage more of that, but it requires action to create the space and to send the message that, yes, it is okay to think differently and show innovation inside the public services. We need to unlock the potential to do things better.
Mr Hurd
It is a requirement to consider, where “relevant” and “proportionate”, and it does not compromise local authority autonomy in responding to the requirement. It is simply a requirement to consider. I do not see it as heavy-handed; it is simply designed to be a catalyst to encourage more people to think more intelligently about commissioning.
The need to support commissioners in this process was raised earlier. It is not just about sending a stronger signal on the requirement to consider, as there are also issues about how to measure social value and how to support commissioners. That is why the Cabinet Office has supported the measuring social value project to try to create a methodology and tools to make measures that are realistically capable of implementation. There is a clear need to advance and bring together some more standard and consistent methodologies in this area.
Furthermore, through the national programme for commissioning, we have trained well in excess of 2,000 commissioners across England and across a range of public service areas. All the commissioners have had the opportunity to receive specialist training in measuring wider social, environmental and economic value. I am delighted to say, following the comprehensive spending review, that we are going to continue this training beyond March 2011. I sat in on a session in Birmingham and it struck me that there are many commissioners out there who would like the chance to do things differently and to do more with the voluntary community sector and with social enterprises, but need some help—busting a few myths and getting some practical support. The process of engagement through the partnership improvement programme for commissioning is, I think, valuable. I am delighted that we can continue with it.
We feel that these policy interventions are important in supporting the objectives stated in our coalition programme, but we also feel that they will be insufficient without some legislative intervention to achieve the goals. That is why we support clause 3. Returning to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, we believe that these provisions are consistent with the Government’s wider localism agenda in three main ways.
First, the Bill will support the Government’s commitment to community empowerment as a fundamental element of localism. The Bill includes a requirement on commissioners to consider whether to consult the intended beneficiaries of the service in considering how to take account of wider social, environmental and economic value. Although that does not require commissioners to engage with their communities, it sends out a strong message about the importance placed by the Government on involving local citizens and communities in shaping the services they receive. This will inevitably improve community involvement in commissioning and help to ensure that it responds to the full range of communities’ priorities.
Secondly, while empowering communities, the Bill also respects the need to ensure the autonomy and flexibility of commissioners in responding to local needs. Commissioners retain the discretion to determine how social, environmental and economic value is taken into account. The Bill does not stipulate the methodology that should be adopted by commissioners, and it is right not to do so. Local autonomy is maintained.
Thirdly, the Bill does not impose an additional burden on contracting authorities. The specification that contracting authorities are required to take wider value into account only where it is relevant and proportionate means that authorities can use their common sense and avoid excessive costs or bureaucracy. It also allows them to use and draw on existing infrastructure and opportunities to consult their beneficiaries and make sensible decisions in the interests of the people they serve. For example, it is highly likely to be “relevant” and “proportionate” to consider the wider social impact of a service and to consult citizens when contracting for a citizen-facing service such as social care as opposed to a contract by councils for use by an authority’s employees. The Bill therefore requires a common-sense approach, with the authorities having appropriate discretion.
I have explained where we support the Bill and I would now like to spend a few minutes explaining what conditions we attach to our support. Although we support all the objectives, a number of conditions are attached. If the Bill goes into Committee, with the will of the House, we intend to table amendments. These will include the removal of clauses 1 and 2, which refer to a “national social enterprise strategy” and “local authority strategies”.
I am not theological about strategies. Having been in business for 18 years before entering Government, I think that on the whole it is probably a good thing to have a strategy. However, I believe that, particularly in this context, strategies should be governed by the need of the moment, and should be driven by conviction rather than by a requirement to comply with some bureaucratic process. I do not want the process of drawing up strategies to be bureaucratic. I do not want it to be simply an exercise in producing more glossy brochures that fill up the bookshelves in our offices, which are not read and which do not have real traction. Strategies must be driven by need and by conviction at the time.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I am very grateful to the Minister for the compliments he paid me earlier—I took them as compliments anyway. I congratulate him on having looked at this Bill in some detail, and on having reached not dissimilar conclusions to those that a number of my hon. Friends had already reached, and which were articulated earlier in the debate. There is no need for me to go over those concerns again as I presume that my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White)—whom I congratulate on having introduced the Bill—will be happy to accept the conditions laid down by the Minister. If my hon. Friend does not accept them, his Bill is obviously unlikely to make much more progress.
If my hon. Friend does accept the conditions, we will have a Bill that is far removed from the long title it had when it was first presented to the House on 30 June this year. It will effectively be a Bill about procurement for local authorities and public bodies. That covers a specific area, and what pleases me is that clause 3(2) states:
“The authority must consider how it might promote or improve the economic, social or environmental well-being of the relevant area by means of such a contract.”
That is different from the definition of a social enterprise in clauses 1 and 2, which confine it to being one
“that promotes or improves the social or environmental well-being”.
Economic well-being is vital to our communities up and down the land, and that is why I am pleased by the distinction drawn by clauses 1 and 2 on the one hand and clause 3 on the other. I understand why my hon. Friend the Minister is more enthusiastic about clause 3, because of the insertion of that element.
Earlier, I mentioned the exchanges that I have had with the Federation of Small Businesses, which I am sure will be equally pleased by the development, which will be surprising to some, in my hon. Friend’s announcement. The FSB is keen to point out that there are 4.6 million micro-businesses in this country, but only 16% of the value of public sector contracts currently goes to small and micro-businesses. The federation was worried that such businesses would be squeezed out by social enterprises.
Mr Hurd
Perhaps my hon. Friend will be reassured if I draw to his attention the Cabinet Office announcement in November of a series of measures designed to make it easier for small firms and organisations to do business with Government. They include measures to progress the Government’s aspiration to award 25% of Government contracts to small and medium-sized enterprises.
Mr Chope
I am sure that that will be greeted with great enthusiasm by small businesses throughout the country. To achieve that, we do not need legislation; all that is required is positive will on the part of the Government. There are many examples across the public sector of small-scale enterprises being squeezed out by larger organisations in the procurement process.
Richard Fuller
One of the objectives we hope to achieve through the Bill will result from its focus on local social enterprises. By its very nature, that will weaken the default position whereby contracts go to large, national organisations, with their inbuilt advantages in procurement. Does my hon. Friend agree with that point?
Mr Chope
I do. One of the amendments to clause 2 that I would have suggested is that social enterprises should be defined as small businesses with those objectives, because of the danger of ending up with some very large social enterprises that are, in many respects, not dissimilar from large public limited companies.
Ben Gummer
Often, the problem for procurement officials is that the lowest-risk option for them is to choose a large, established organisation, because that protects their position. One can understand why they would do that. The Bill would empower procurement officials to consider the whole range of possibilities and to take a slightly more risky approach sometimes, which would be to the benefit of local communities.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a good point. He is right to emphasise the riskier approach, because sometimes there is a risk. For example, in my constituency, the local council decided to let the contract for the running of the local leisure centre to a charitable trust based in Poole. It became apparent that the trust was not delivering on what was set out in the contract, and after several years the contract had to be taken back in-house. Subsequently, a couple of other projects that the trust was running were found to be financially unsustainable, and that was the end of that, I think. We must not get into a frame of mind in which we think that anything that calls itself a social enterprise is, by definition, a good thing. Such bodies have to be run along business lines.
To take another example, people in Verwood—a town that is no longer in my constituency, sadly, but was until the time of the last general election—have set up a community enterprise called the Verwood Hub, which is a community centre. Unfortunately, it is becoming clear that they have not been applying business principles to the running of that centre, so they are having to go back to the local authority and say, “Please give us some more money.” The local authority is making it clear that it can go only so far in doing that, because there is a limit to how much it can be expected to use local taxpayers’ money to make up for the deficiencies in the business plan of what might otherwise be described as a laudable community enterprise.
Fiona Bruce
We must not let the example of one or two less successful projects restrict the opportunity for the public sector to enter into entrepreneurial projects with local groups. The spirit of enterprise does, of necessity, involve risk. We have seen that spirit in this nation over many decades, if not centuries, and it is the seed of the fruit of phenomenally successful community and commercial organisations. We can look back in the history of this nation at some tremendous businesses that have done social good, so it would be dangerous for us almost to sanitise public procurement, as we have done to a large extent,. It can never be risk-free. Without an element of risk, we will reduce the opportunity for those great potential benefits that have flourished in this nation in years gone by.
Mr Chope
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who made a powerful speech on the same theme.
People going into public procurement often say, “We’ve got to do it for the long term, with a five-year, a seven-year, or an even longer contract period.” If a relatively small and untested organisation is bidding, it will be a very big risk for it to sign up to a seven-year contract. Procuring on the basis of a one-year contract gives new organisations on the block much more of an opportunity to show their worth, and if they make a Horlicks of it after a year, they will not expect to be invited to re-tender. Some long contracts have been particularly damaging to the interests of small and social enterprises. Minimising risk for the procurer has made it much more difficult for new entrants to take on such contracts.
I hope that the FSB will be encouraged by the attitude of the Government. We are all proud when we have businesses in our local communities that flourish, no more so than those which start up with only half a dozen people, or even one or two, and then become national enterprises, perhaps ultimately getting a listing on the stock exchange.
I was worried that my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington suggested that businesses that are in it for profit are at odds with those that are in it to produce good for society. In my constituency, some of the businesses that have been the most successful in the marketplace have made profits that they have been able to use to help to support local activities in the community. For example, one of the most successful companies in this country, Tesco, puts a lot of money back into the community every year by enabling people to get vouchers that are then used to buy IT equipment, and other equipment, for schools. Every year for the past 10 years, I have had the privilege of presenting some of that equipment to the schools in my constituency because parents, teachers and supporters of those schools have been able to get those vouchers and then convert them into important and useful goods.
Richard Fuller
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and I have shared his experience of Tesco at one of the two branches in my constituency. He mentioned profit, which is often put in the same vein as people being rich. Actually, profit is what people reinvest in their business so that they can provide better services in their community. For social enterprises and charities, the ability to earn a surplus is important. Often, they find that they do not have enough of an earnings margin from local contracts to be able to reinvest in local projects, so that they can continue to provide services for five or seven years. Does he recognise that we need to go beyond the crass definitions of profit being bad and social enterprise good, and instead concentrate on the services that local businesses and social enterprises provide?
Mr Chope
Absolutely, and that is very much the theme behind the submission from the Federation of Small Businesses on the Bill, which a number of hon. Members will have received. It makes the point:
“The Bill describes social enterprises as businesses ‘carried on primarily for a purpose that promotes or improves social or environmental well-being’. While such organisations are undeniably valuable, micro businesses also serve such a function. What sets them apart from social enterprises however is that their primary purpose will be to make a profit and remain in business.”
That is the important part—remaining in business. They cannot do that unless they make a profit, as they are often unable to raise capital. That was the problem with the charitable trust that I mentioned earlier. It was not able to reinvest in the leisure centre, which as a result became rather dowdy and did not meet the needs of the customers.
Fiona Bruce
Staying in business may be the immediate aim of a micro-business, but there is often a greater end to that. The aspiration is that in time, it will be able to become an established small business and make a difference to its community and environment. We have to support and nurture micro-businesses in order for them to make that difference.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and we all have examples from our constituencies of businesses that started very small and have become quite large. One such business in my constituency makes organic baby food, and now supplies it to major national retailers. It was based on the idea of an entrepreneur who asked, “Why are we not ensuring that people can guarantee that their children are being fed wholesome baby food at the most nutritionally important time of their life?” That enterprise struck a chord with the consumer, hence its great success. There are a lot of other examples that I will not trouble the House with at the moment.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is encouraging me to trouble the House with more examples. In that case, I will choose an example on the other side of the argument. There are publicly funded organisations that, over a period of time, have shown themselves to be hostile in the extreme to small and local businesses. I say quite openly that I believe that Eaga is one such organisation.
Eaga receives a large amount of money from the taxpayer to help provide insulation and subsidies so that people can increase the energy efficiency of their homes and the appliances within them. A lot of work has been done showing that its contractors—often firms that are subsidiaries of Eaga itself—provide services at a much higher cost than local contractors would, and less efficiently. I have had public arguments with Eaga about that and been told, “Well, none of these small companies will be able to give us long-term guarantees that if anything goes wrong with their work, they will be able to put it right.”
Mr Chope
As my hon. Friend says, that is ridiculous. The previous Government were too obsessed with the fact that this organisation was based in the north-east of England and had grown significantly as a result of all the money that it had received from the public purse. I hope that the new coalition Government will introduce a bit more sanity and proportion into the way in which that money is spent so that we can ensure that relatively small local contractors can participate.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that what he suggests is a good way of moving towards the localism agenda? If something is local, it can be smaller and involve smaller, more community-sized businesses much more easily than it can if it takes a central, Big Brother, top-down approach.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Given time, I am sure that he would develop his argument in relation to north Somerset, as he has so ably on previous Fridays.
Localism is of great importance. When we talk about its importance, we should not be too fussed about whether we are talking about a local small business, a local social enterprise or a local charity. We must not create artificial distinctions.
Fiona Bruce
We must also not differentiate between a business being local and being big. It would be dangerous if we equated local with small. As a member of the all-party group on small business, I was a guest yesterday evening at an event at which one of the “Dragons”, Theo Paphitis, spoke powerfully about the impact of his chain of shops, Ryman. He took the group on when there were about 80 shops, and there are now about 260. He encourages local staff at each store to raise money for local community projects and he then matches it. Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be dangerous if we started defining too narrowly the scope of even the businesses with which we want to engage? Local does not necessarily mean small, although as someone who has run a small local business, I fully emphasise the importance of what small businesses bring to local community life.
Mr Chope
I agree absolutely. There are so many examples. The local community may be dependent on the local post office, but the Post Office is a national organisation with a national network. None the less, it is ever so important that the local branch of that national network in a particular village is maintained and viable. The same is true of the local pub. It does not have to be owned as a freehold by somebody local; it may be part of a national pub chain. That makes no difference to the important role that it will play in helping to maintain the local community. We could go on with lots of other examples.
I turn now to the “residue” of the Bill, and I should tell my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington that I do not mean that disparagingly—perhaps “a distillation of the Bill” would be a better expression. When we get to clause 3, we are left with a duty on local authorities not to do anything, but to consider something. My hon. Friend said that that does not offend against the principles of localism and that it is legitimate for the Government to require local authorities, and thereby councillors, to consider particular things.
Mr Hurd
Just to clarify, my hon. Friend is narrowing his remarks down to the local authorities, but clause 3 actually applies to public authorities that are contracting authorities as defined by the Public Contracts Regulations 2006. That is, the clause applies to bodies that are already subject to procurement law, which include Government Departments, local authorities and many other bodies.
Mr Chope
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that correction and I am sorry that I was concentrating just on the local authority side. Local authorities are independently accountable through their councillors to their electors for what they think and do, and that is localism, but I can understand that there is a stronger case for saying that unelected public authorities, such as hospital trusts or ambulance trusts, must consider something before they do it because there is a democratic deficit between the people and those organisations.
I only wish that the South Western Ambulance Service NHS Trust had given some consideration to how it might have improved
“the economic, social or environmental well-being”
of my constituency before deciding on the procurement process for the hospital car service. If ever there was an activity that is best kept local, where it is most flexible and offers the best value for money, it is the hospital car service. It was run by the ambulance trust, which stopped doing that. However, instead of being given to a range of local providers, it was given to one particular taxi firm, thereby squeezing out organisations with volunteer drivers and imposing significant extra costs on many of the people being taken to and from hospital. That is only one example. If that particular organisation had thought a bit more, perhaps in accordance with clause 3, things would have been different.
Mr Gyimah
Does my hon. Friend think that the new version of the Bill should cover the qualifications to do with contracting? It is all well and good having a strategy that states that small businesses and social enterprises need to be considered, but the lengthy forms that they have to fill in and the qualification criteria are just as difficult a hurdle for them as being recognised in the first place.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. When Members make interventions, could they please face the Chair because it is sometimes difficult for me to hear what is being said? It is not a private conversation between two Members; it needs to be recorded for Hansard.
Mr Chope
I am sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. As a result of where some hon. Members are sitting, it may sometimes seem as though we are a cosy cabal, but we are not. We are trying to address our remarks to the wider world, and my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah) made an excellent point, which he also raised in his speech.
Under clause 3,
“The authority must consider how it might promote or improve the economic, social or environmental well-being of the relevant area”.
I am glad that that will not be defined because it should be left to the individual procurers. I am not so sure about the requirement in subsection (4):
“The authority must consider whether to consult the persons (if any) for whom the authority is making provision in the exercise of that function.”
Again, there is no requirement that authorities should consult—they only have to consider whether to do that. However, that could be important.
Ben Gummer
One matter that has not been drawn out in this debate—my hon. Friend is an expert on this and may wish to comment—is the interaction between the Bill and European tendering legislation. Such legislation is often thrown up like chaff by procurement officials, especially when they have got something wrong. They say, “Oh, it’s all because of European rules,” when most of the time it is nothing of the sort. Officials must consider a range of variables when making buying decisions, but that is completely in accordance with current European tendering legislation.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Anyone who mentions the European Union in the House immediately assures that more attention will be paid to what they have said.
I hesitate to give credit to the previous Government, who left our national finances in such a dire mess, but they were quite helpful in setting out clear advice to local authorities on what they could do under the public procurement requirements laid down in EU legislation. Contrary to what some suppose, that legislation allowed local authorities and other public procurement bodies to take into account social considerations—both in pre-procurement, to which my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey referred, and in the specification, selection and award stages—provided that the economic advantages for the contracting authority were linked to the product or service that was the subject of the contract.
That was quite helpfully set out in detailed advice by the previous Government, and it will be replicated and slightly amended in the forthcoming White Paper that the Minister has promised. I was involved in procurement as a local councillor. One of the most frustrating things is to be told by the solicitor or officer responsible, “You can’t do this because it’s not allowed.” Councillors, who often have a strong feeling for common sense, reply by asking, “Why can’t we do it?” As my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) said, when we look at the small print, we find that applying wider common-sense considerations to procurement is not prohibited by EU directives.
The hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett), who spoke for the Opposition, criticised Government Members on the basis that a large number of their speeches and interventions were slightly at odds with each other, but we should be congratulated on that, because it shows that we are engaged in a healthy political debate. In a brilliant intervention, my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) undermined the case for the Bill very effectively, and underlined the importance of keeping the state out of social enterprise as much as possible and trusting people to come up with the right results.
I hesitated to say anything at that time, but I know of a good example of the state getting it all wrong. We were assured by the previous Government that, as a result of changes in European law, only 16,000 new migrants from the newly admitted eastern European countries would come to participate in our buoyant UK economy. I forget whether that estimate was out by 100% or 1,000%, but why was it so significantly wrong? It was wrong because no Government can second-guess what ordinary individuals will do in a given set of circumstances. My hon. Friend therefore told the House an important cautionary tale.
When my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington makes his winding-up speech, which I hope will be shortly, he can rest on his laurels having brought to the House an important topic for discussion. Indeed, he put so much work into the drafting of his Bill that it could only be provided three days ago. For historians, it will be interesting to look back and compare the final version of his Bill—if it gets to Third Reading—with what was set out in the helpful research paper from the Library. It set out in 11 pages what it was thought the Bill would contain. Although it is now a much shorter and more focused Bill—and there is a case for saying that the title of the Bill should now be changed—it will be an important first for my hon. Friend if he gets it on to the statute book. Some of us have been in the House for more than 20 years and have never been successful in the private Members’ ballot. Even if I had been successful, I am not sure that I would ever have been able to emulate the success that my hon. Friend will soon enjoy of steering a Bill through to a successful Second Reading.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Christopher Chope Excerpts(15 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend accept that the problem identified by the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) is not one that applies to amendment 197, because it proposes a support threshold, rather than a turnout threshold.
Mr Cash
We were all much more in agreement about this in Committee. All I can say to my hon. Friend is that I believe very strongly, for the reasons I have given and because of the principles I have enunciated, that the 40% threshold is desirable. Incidentally, on the majority provisions prevalent in other democracies in the west, Denmark’s requirement on constitutional change is for 40% of registered voters and, as the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) implied, Italy has a turnout requirement of 50% of registered voters. Indeed, this country used something not similar, but parallel in the 1979 vote, when the requirement was for 40% of registered voters saying yes.
Mr Harper
Okay, but under our system of optional preferential, we are not forcing anybody to vote for anyone. Voters can vote for one candidate, all the candidates or any number in between, so the form of the alternative vote that we are putting to the electorate next year does not raise any of the concerns that my hon. Friend touched on. I am sorry if I overstated his argument.
The reason we have not specified a threshold in the Bill is, as a number of hon. Members said, that we want to respect the will of the people who vote in the referendum, without any qualifications. The argument against my hon. Friend’s amendment is that specifying a threshold for voter turnout—on this I agree with the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg)—is that it makes every abstention effectively a no vote.
People may choose to abstain, but the amendment would create an incentive for people who favour a no vote to abstain. So people would not campaign, as they rightly should, for only yes or no votes in the referendum. We would have people campaigning actively for voters not to participate. We debated this a little on Second Reading, and as I said in my speech then, I do not think that is right. We need to encourage participation in the referendum. We want people to take part, and putting in a rule that encourages at least one side to campaign actively for voters not to take part would do our democracy a disservice.
I am not concerned as some colleagues are about what the turnout will be. As we have said in previous debates, both in Committee and in the House, there are elections for the devolved Administrations—for the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly—but there are also elections scheduled next year for 81% of England. The percentage turnout in English local elections varies, but it is usually in the mid to high 30s at least. I am confident that with the additional publicity and the awareness of the referendum, and the fact that it is an important decision, we will indeed get a good turnout.
Previous referendums in this country have either had good turnouts or, where the turnouts have not been that high, they have produced decisive clear results from the electorate, so I do not share that concern. We should not go against our tradition and practice in this country by setting turnout thresholds.
Let me now focus on the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing). She is right to say that it proposes a completely different, outcome-specific threshold. It is worth saying to colleagues on the Government Benches who support the Government’s proposals and respect the coalition agreement that my hon. Friend’s amendment is not compatible with what we set out in the coalition agreement, which was a simple majority referendum, without an outcome-specific threshold. Colleagues who are reconciled to a referendum being held should bear that in mind if they are tempted to vote for my hon. Friend’s amendment.
Mr Harper
I do not think my hon. Friend’s point holds a great deal of water. I think I am right in saying that the decision of the Liberal Democrats, although I am not an expert on their internal party mechanisms, was unanimous or almost unanimous. That does not take us an awful lot further forward.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Christopher Chope Excerpts(15 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Jenkin
I rise briefly to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) on the spirited and coherent way in which he moved his new clause. I should also like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), who also made a coherent and spirited defence of the new clause.
It is not my intention to speak for very long. In fact, it had not been my intention to speak at all in this debate, partly because I am losing my voice, so this speech might not continue for long. In fact, it might be cut down in its prime. However, I have been watching the Deputy Leader of the House nodding at some interesting moments during this debate, when he seemed to be endorsing the past statements of his party’s leader. I am waiting with bated breath to see how he melds the previous position of his party’s leader with the present position of the Government.
While he is preparing his remarks, I hope that he will reflect on the fact that the very office of Deputy Leader of the House is, in itself, rather a modern invention. I think that it was invented during the previous Labour Government. I do not know whether it ever existed before—I look to my hon. Friend the Father of the House—because it had never been deemed necessary for there to be a deputy to the Leader—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) was the embodiment of the invention. The post reflected the desire of the Executive to create more jobs for the boys—if I may put it that way—than existed before.
There is a simple test that we need to apply to this Bill, and to new clause 7 in particular, which is: does it strengthen the House of Commons? It was axiomatic before the election, and in the aftermath of the expenses scandal, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, that every party leader should speak in grand terms about the need to strengthen the accountability of Government and to strengthen the House of Commons. Can the Bill do that? It cannot, unless we reduce the number of Ministers pro rata to the reduction in the number of MPs. I should point out that my remarks are not some manic attack on the power of Government. There are plenty of ways in which Governments can appoint people to jobs in order to get things done. Indeed, I should say to the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), who spoke just before me, that it is possible to appoint more Members from the other place. It is also possible to appoint more special advisers—and let us face it—we have a rash of special advisers in Government these days compared with what we used to have. There are all kinds of ways both of ensuring that there are ambassadors for the Government in office and people to implement the Government’s policy and political direction, and of ensuring that the Government remain accountable to the House.
Ministers do not need to be Members of the House in order to be accountable to it. It is worth reflecting on the fact that as we have grown the number of Ministers in this place, we have left Whips and even Parliamentary Private Secretaries to speak for the Government in the other place, because Governments are so interested in filling ministerial offices with Members of Parliament, to secure their influence in this place. However, if there were more Ministers in the other place, there is no reason why they should not be invited to the Bar of the House to answer questions. That reform is long overdue. There are plenty of alternatives.
I should like to reflect on the term “the new politics” that has crept into political parlance. I am not quite as old and wise as my noble Friend Lord Heseltine, who sat for many years in this place, and who I saw opining, at the very formation of the coalition, that there was no such thing as the new politics; there was only the old politics, and politics would always be the same. That is of course true, but if the new politics is going to mean an increase in the domination of the Executive in the House of Commons, that would seem to be the antithesis of what those who coined the phrase were seeking to convey.
In fact, politics is changing. When I was first elected in 1992 there was still quite a strong element of deference in the House of Commons towards authority and the Whips. Members who were first elected in the 1950s would have served in one or both of the world wars, and virtually every Member of Parliament at that time had done national service of one sort or another. That Edwardian deference has gone from today’s politics, however, and Governments will have to accept that the House of Commons is becoming more assertive. An example can be seen in the whole expenses debacle. I refuse to call it a scandal, because what the newspapers uncovered was much less a scandal in respect of individuals and much more a scandal in terms of the system that had developed, in which the press itself had connived. The outcome of the expenses debacle sent a message to everyone that it was time for Parliament to reassert its role, and it seemed that the party leaders took that message up. What really came through in that episode was how useless Parliament had become.
What is Parliament’s job? It is to ensure that the laws of this country are fit for purpose, to stand up for the liberty of the citizen and to control the supply of money to the Government. Looking at those three tests, we can see that the House has performed miserably over the past decade. More and more legislation, particularly secondary legislation, is passed that is unfit for purpose and not scrutinised properly. The House has completely failed to control the massive growth in public expenditure that has led to the deficit crisis that we now face, and as for protecting the liberties of the individual, I am afraid I think that most of our constituents would feel that the House has been found wanting.
If we are to improve the way in which we do our job, will we be helped if we allow the Government, of whichever party, to have patronage over and to give hope to a wider and wider group of Members, and to instil into the principle of politics in this House that the be-all and end-all is ministerial office? Would that be conducive to a more accountable system? We do not have the separation of powers in our system, but we nevertheless rely on a degree of separation between the Executive and the legislature. I submit that the new clause is exactly the signal about our determination to hold the Executive to account that the House needs to send not only to the Government of the day but to the people at large. We must send this signal that we take our jobs seriously and that we are not going to be seduced, cajoled or flattered into accepting the Executive agenda more and more.
I end with this point. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne, who moved his new clause so ably, is a member of the Public Administration Committee, which produced the report “Too Many Ministers?” in the last Parliament. I am afraid that I have to inform the Government that we have already launched a new inquiry, asking “What do Ministers do?”. That might seem a cheeky question, but at this time when there are so many Ministers, we know from the revelations in various biographies that Parliamentary Under-Secretaries have jobs and activities created for them to keep them busy.
When it comes to the Foreign Office, I have no doubt that the hon. Member for Rhondda is right to say that we need ambassadors for Britain, representing both Parliament and Government, but I simply do not believe that to be true of all Departments. Do we need more Ministers to represent the Government in this House? It was suggested to our Committee that Whips speak for the Government in the other place, so why cannot Whips speak on behalf of the Government in this place? Why do they have to remain mute and silent here, as if they had no views of their own and no speaking purpose in a House of whose being speaking is the very essence?
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
Is my hon. Friend aware of the irony that his Committee is carrying out this inquiry, but the Government are using that fact as a reason why our hon. Friends should not vote against the Government position tonight—because it is all going to be sorted out in the future by my hon. Friend and his Committee? Can he put my hon. Friends right, and tell them that they need to be in the Aye Lobby for this new clause?
Mr Jenkin
I can put them right. As Chairman of that Committee, although I do not act as Chairman in this capacity, I will be in the Aye Lobby myself on new clause 7. As my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne said, it represents a very modest maintenance of the status quo. That is what this is about—checking an advance or a further incursion of the Executive into the House of Commons. It is a holding position, while my Committee completes its work.
Mr Heath
No, not for the moment because I have just said that I want to set out some of the reasons I have difficulties with the new clause.
One point worried me slightly, and I have to say that the hon. Member for Broxbourne and I may have an honest disagreement about it. He appeared to be advocating a complete separation of powers.
Mr Heath
But it was suggested in the speech moving the new clause. The hon. Member for Broxbourne seemed to give the clear impression that he personally would favour a separation of powers, meaning that there would not be this country’s current parliamentary democratic system where we have Ministers drawn from this elected House. Rather, he would prefer Ministers to be drawn from the ranks of those outside the House, which is much more akin to a presidential democracy. [Interruption.] I may be misrepresenting the hon. Gentleman, and if so I apologise. However, if that is his view—and it is a perfectly respectable view—it is not one that I share. [Interruption.] I see other Members nodding because it is their view, and I understand that to be the case.
My second point is that this is not simply an issue about Ministers. It is an issue about patronage and the extent of the patronage of the Prime Minister and Government of the day. That is what we need to address, rather than the narrower issue of Ministers in this House.
My next point is that there is not a simple arithmetical relationship between the number of Members of the House and the number of Ministers: to suggest that there is is to reduce the argument and to take it beyond what is reasonable. Ministerial responsibilities must reflect what the Prime Minister and Government of the day feel they need in order to do their work effectively. There is a relationship between the number of Ministers in this House and the number of others in the House whose positions are created by patronage and both the perception and the reality of the independence of this legislature. That is a perfectly proper comment to make, but there is not, I suggest, a simple arithmetical relationship.
Mr Chope
Before the Deputy Leader of the House gets carried away by what my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), who is a PPS, said, will he correct the impression that he has given—that the previous Labour Government had the maximum number of Ministers, which is 95? In fact, they had only 90 at the most. It is only this Government who have gone up to the maximum number of Ministers. Will he explain why that is so?
Oral Answers to Questions
Christopher Chope Excerpts(15 years, 5 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me notice of his question. I will arrange for the Minister for Immigration to look urgently at this case. The point is that we have consulted business and other interested parties on how the limit should work. We have also asked the Migration Advisory Committee to consult on what the actual limit should be. The consultations are closed and we will announce the findings in due course. The reason for an interim cap is that it was important to have a temporary limit to ensure that there was no closing-down sale, as it were, before the final limit was introduced. I will make sure that the Minister for Immigration gets in touch with the hon. Gentleman about this case.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
Q5. May I ask my right hon. Friend a question of which I have given him prior notice? Will he tell the House why he believes that the first-past-the-post system for election is far fairer than the alternative vote system?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend tempts me into answers that will not delight everyone on this side of the House. I am clear that I have always supported the first-past-the-post system. I like to have the individual link between constituency and MP. In some cases, the alternative vote would have led to even more disproportional outcomes in national elections. Let me thank my hon. Friends who I know have misgivings about this referendum for allowing the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill to go through. I think we should make this argument in the country rather than try to wreck the Bill in the House.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Christopher Chope Excerpts(15 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I beg to move amendment 62, page 5, leave out lines 9 to 11 and insert
‘but no preference beyond the second may be indicated.’.
It gives me great pleasure to move amendment 62. It goes to the heart of what we mean by “the alternative vote system”, because there is more than one AV system. I am very much in favour of first past the post, so it is with a heavy heart that I know that we are about to get into the detail of what we mean by an “alternative vote”. Were my amendment to be carried, it might make it easier for those who want to secure a yes vote in the referendum—that is the irony of my amendment—because it will actually make the system much simpler to understand.
Effectively, my amendment would provide for the choice of replacing the first-past-the-post system with the first-or-second-past-the-post system. In other words, it would not be possible for somebody to be elected unless they had either the first or second largest number of first preference votes. Under the AV system proposed in my amendment, candidates who had come third, fourth, fifth and so on would be eliminated after the first round and the second preference votes of those who had backed them redistributed. After that redistribution, the candidate—either the first or second-placed candidate—with the most votes would be elected. So the qualifications for election would be that, first, a candidate would have to have been one of the first two people past the post and secondly, they would have to rely on the second preference votes of those who had backed candidates lower down the batting order in terms of success in the first round.
Mr Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
If the Committee were to accept my hon. Friend’s amendment, would it not mean that the candidate with the broader base of support among the community he or she was seeking to serve might not be elected?
Mr Chope
That is a defect of all alternative vote systems. One reason I like the first-past-the-post system is that it is clear for people to understand. The most popular candidate wins, and we do not get into this business of having to go for the lowest common denominator.
My amendment would put into the Bill the only AV system already operating in our country—it operates in London and the rest of England for mayoral elections.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Is not the hon. Gentleman proposing almost a semi-alternative vote, given that it would be a restriction on the whole concept of AV? Surely, it is up to electors. If they decide to list only two members among their favourites, that is their decision. Why does he seek to restrict the choice of voters? It is very uncharacteristic of him.
Mr Chope
That is what is done in London at the moment, and in mayoral elections in towns and cities the length and breadth of the country. That system is less satisfactory than the first-past-the-post system. However, it is a lot more satisfactory than the full alternative vote system, which is what is proposed in the Bill at present, because under that system the person who gets the third or fourth highest number of first preferences—or, in some scenarios, even the fifth highest—might end up being elected, because he has got the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth preferences of other candidates. That leads to a very undesirable system, in which not even the person who came first or second past the post is elected, but instead somebody who came much further down the running order, all on the basis of the lowest common denominator, which is the wrong way to choose representatives to this House.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is being absolutely straightforward in saying that he does not really agree with his own amendment, but does he agree that it still does not get over the fundamental flaw in all AV systems, which is that they effectively give people two votes, and particularly people who support minority parties such as the British National party?
Mr Chope
Exactly. I agree with the hon. Gentleman and my amendment attempts to mitigate the terms of the Bill, under which some people might have three, four, five or six votes. For example, somebody might put the BNP first and the UK Independence party second, and then vote for some other nationalist party or whatever. All those candidates would never get anywhere near the top of the poll, thereby making it possible for that person to cast a large number of votes. Thus, some people will get a large number of votes, whereas others will not; indeed, they will get only the one vote. One way of explaining the virtues of the first-past-the-post system is to say that it is one person, one vote, which is something that everybody understands.
Mrs Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest) (Con)
The hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) made a good point about some people effectively having three, four or five votes. However, is it not the case that the meaning of the word “alternative” is “one of two”, from its true Latin derivation, “alter”? My hon. Friend’s amendment is therefore technically and linguistically absolutely correct. If the system is to be called the alternative vote system, the sense of “one of two” must come into it somewhere, not the sense of “one of four or five”.
Mr Chope
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that point. She and I have not colluded on this, but I took the precaution of looking up the definition of “alternative” and its usage in the “Shorter Oxford English Dictionary”, which says:
“Some traditionalists maintain”—
I think that she and I are both in that category—
“from an etymological standpoint, that you can only have a maximum of two alternatives (from the Latin alter ‘other (of two)’) and that uses where there are more than two alternatives are erroneous.”
However, the dictionary then says:
“Such uses are, however, normal in modern standard English.”
More is the pity, but that is the factual situation as described in the dictionary. However, the sense that I have described is how those of us who are traditionalists, as well as a lot of other people, understand the word “alternative”. Indeed, although I am reluctant ever to criticise a word that he says, earlier on we heard the Prime Minister use the word “less” when he meant “fewer”.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
The hon. Gentleman is giving us a lecture on the difference between prescriptive and descriptive grammar. However, in a previous general election—in 1992, I think it was—the Inverness seat had four candidates on roughly 25% each. How were those voters allowed any power or given any alternatives to express their further preferences, rather than having the winning candidate get only roughly a quarter of the votes?
The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Before the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) intervenes, may I remind the Committee that we are not discussing AV versus first past the post? We are debating a particular form in this amendment, and we are now drifting away from that a little. Perhaps we could come back to it.
Mr MacNeil
I do not think that the hon. Gentleman is talking about an exact parallel. At an election, there is a division of votes, but there is no division of time in a race: everyone is striving to achieve the shortest time. That is different from a division of votes among candidates.
Mr Chope
Speaking from my personal experience, when I was first lucky enough to get elected to this House in 1983, I got 41.5% of the vote. When I was defeated in 1992, I got more than 45% of the vote. I did not complain about that because all my constituents could understand that the person whom they most wanted to be their MP was no longer me. That is what we understand with the first-past-the-post system. As soon as we complicate the matter with alternative systems, we get complexity. In the amendment, I am trying to reduce that complexity and mitigate the problem as much as possible.
I want to draw another analogy. If the alternative vote system proposed by the Government in the Bill were adopted, people would be encouraged to rank the number of candidates from one to however many, in order of preference. I think that a lot of our constituents have difficulty in being sure about the relative merits of one or two candidates, yet we would be expecting them to list perhaps nine candidates in order of preference. If we tried to rate fast-food outlets in order of preference, we would need not only to work out which one we liked the most, but to rank Starbucks, McDonald’s, Subway, Café Nero, KFC, Burger King and Pret A Manger in order of preference. It is quite complicated for people to rate, say, one as their sixth preference and another as their seventh. Such a voting system would be demanding and result in people having to spend a lot more time in the polling booth poring over the information about the candidates. Indeed, they would need to get a lot more information before they could exercise an informed choice.
Mr MacNeil
I am not sure about the constituents of Christchurch, but the constituents of Na h-Eileanan an Iar certainly have no difficulty in getting beyond the No. 2, even when it comes to fast-food outlets, which we do not have many of in the Outer Hebrides.
Mr Chope
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point.
I refer the Committee to the evidence submitted to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee by Professor Patrick Dunleavy in the 14th written submission on page 205 in the third report on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. In his important paper, he asks what the alternative vote means. Were the Bill to pass, and were there to be a referendum in which the question on the alternative vote appeared on the ballot paper, many members of the public would ask precisely that question: what does the alternative vote mean?
The Second Deputy Chairman
Order. That might be in people’s minds, or it might not, but the hon. Gentleman must come back to his amendment, which covers a particular version of the system. I would be grateful if he would stay focused on that point; it is quite a narrow one.
Mr Chope
It is indeed.
The effect of my amendment would be to adopt the system that Professor Dunleavy describes as London AV, rather than the three alternatives—classic AV, Australian AV and London AV—also set out in his document. The amendment has obviously been selected for debate because Mr Speaker recognised that there is more than one system of alternative votes. The system that I am describing can be described as the supplementary vote system, but there is also one known as the Australian system.
Mr Knight
Listening to my hon. Friend, I have reached the conclusion that the strongest argument in favour of his amendment is one that he has not yet advanced—namely, that of consistency. If there is one form of AV currently operating in the UK—the one that he describes as London AV—it would make sense that any system introduced be identical to that system. Have Ministers given him any reason why they propose a totally different form of AV from the one that is currently in force in London?
Mr Chope
My right hon. Friend makes a good point, and that subject was going to form my peroration. I tabled the amendment because I have failed to receive a straightforward answer from the Minister about why the Government want to go for the particular form of AV set out in the Bill, instead of the form that we have already experienced in London and in other elections across the country.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
It is not true to say that there is only one form of AV operating in this country. There are different forms in different electoral systems. It is not true that there is only the system used for electing the London Mayor. In London, there is also a list system, and there is a different system, in which people choose between party lists, in Scotland and elsewhere.
Mr Chope
The hon. Gentleman has misunderstood the purpose of my amendment. We are talking about alternative vote systems. He is describing alternative voting systems, which could embrace proportional representation, but they are not covered by the clause or by my amendment. I shall not respond further to his intervention, because I am sure that I would be ruled out of order.
Sir Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
Would not the hon. Gentleman’s proposal put the voters in London in a difficult situation? If all this were to go through, next year, there would be one system of alternative voting for them, but in the mayoral elections the following year, there would be a different one. Is it not the case that there would be two AV systems available to the people of London?
Mr Chope
That would be the case if the Bill remained unamended, if there were a referendum and if the yes vote in that referendum were successful. That is a lot of hypotheticals and I hope that we shall not reach that ghastly outcome, but it is better to be wise before the event rather than to complain afterwards. In anticipation of the difficulties ahead, including the inconsistency that would result from having more than one type of AV system operating in this country, I believe that there is a lot to be said for ensuring that any system put forward in a referendum is of the same type as the one that has already been experienced by many electors. I hope that the Minister will tell us why we are going for a different system from the one that is already operating in London. Up to now, I have heard no justification for that decision.
Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
My heart leapt when I saw “AV variant” on the selection list, because I though that it might refer to AV-plus. That system was recommended by the Jenkins commission in the early years of the last Labour Government, and it is one that I support. However, the hon. Gentleman is now talking about a London variant. I have to say that I am always suspicious of anything described as a London variant. First, it sounds sexual and, secondly, coming from the north, I do not think that there should be any variants for London. If he is talking about choosing variants, will he allow for the inclusion of AV-plus in his amendment?
The Second Deputy Chairman
Order. We are not discussing AV-plus. Can we get back to the amendment? We have a lot of business to get through over the next two days, so I would be grateful if all hon. Members—in their interventions as well as their speeches—focused their comments on the amendment.
Mr Chope
I am most grateful to you, Ms Primarolo, for trying to ensure that we stick to the amendment. I am a bit flattered in that my amendment is being debated on its own. The best thing for me to do now is to sit down so that I can listen to what the Minister has to say in response to my question: why is the form of AV set out in the Bill preferable to the other form of AV already available in this country, which has been experienced in London and in other cities?
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), but I shall not support his amendment. I disagree with it first and foremost because no provision was made in any party’s manifesto for this version of the alternative vote. When the Labour party said it wanted a referendum on the alternative vote system, we certainly meant a full alternative vote system in which people could continue to express their preference, as long as there was a preference still to be expressed.
Originally, the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto had nothing to do with the alternative vote, but if they had proposed a form of the alternative vote it would have been, as we saw in their negotiations with the Conservative and Labour parties after the general election and as was commonly understood, that under AV the voter was allowed to express a preference all through the system. The hon. Member for Christchurch might object that AV was not in his party’s manifesto in any shape or form. That is why I have a slight suspicion that his amendment is intended more as a wrecking amendment, although to be generous I shall suggest it is a probing amendment. The hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing)—in rather elegant turquoise, if I may say so—said that AV gives some people two or even three votes. That is not the case. People have one vote, but are allowed to keep on expressing it as a preference while the process continues.
Mr Chope
It appears that my hon. Friend will not address the following question: if my amendment does not achieve the purpose of introducing, for the sake of consistency, the London AV system, would he be in favour of an amendment that did achieve that being brought forward on Report? If not, can he answer this question: why does he believe we should have more than one AV system operating in this country—the London AV system plus the AV system he is introducing through the Bill?
Mr Harper
I will try not to stray too far outside the terms of this debate, and I will not get into a debate from the Dispatch Box on the merits of different electoral systems. The Government are proposing this referendum with the choice between first past the post and AV, and the Government are neutral on those two electoral systems. That is a matter for the yes and no campaigns, and for the Members campaigning in them. The Government will not express a preference from the Dispatch Box. I will, however, take my hon. Friend through both his argument and the reasons why we support putting to the voters the system proposed in the Bill.
If I have rightly understood my hon. Friend’s argument—I am sure he will correct me if I am wrong—he was putting forward the supplementary vote system used in London. That has two features. First, voters have only two choices: they can express only two preferences, which is also what his amendment proposes. Secondly, if no candidate gets over 50% of first preference votes—I think I am right in saying that no candidate has done so since the system was put in place—only the top two candidates stay in the race. All other candidates are eliminated, and the second preferences of those who voted for those eliminated candidates are redistributed, and we then discover which of the top two wins. That is the piece that my hon. Friend’s amendment does not insert into the Bill, however. My hon. Friend’s amendment could lead to a situation that I think he said he would find undesirable, in that it would still be perfectly possible for a candidate who had not finished in the top two to be the winner if they received a significant number of second preference votes from those who were first eliminated.
The Second Deputy Chairman
Order. The Minister is addressing very clearly a number of complex points, and I realise that he is looking behind him because he wants to be as helpful as possible, but we need him to face forward so that Members in all parts of the Chamber can hear his comments.
Mr Chope
Can my hon. Friend answer clearly whether he believes the London system—which I have described as the London AV because that is how it was described by Professor Dunleavy—should be applied nationally and therefore should be put in the referendum, or does he believe the referendum choice should give people the chance to have both a supplementary AV system and his version of AV? If so, we could end up with two different forms of AV in this country’s electoral system.
Mr Harper
We have put a version of AV in clause 7, so that is clearly the system the Government believe the voters should have a choice on. They should choose between that system or the existing system of first past the post. We considered the London supplementary vote system, but we did not choose it because we wanted to give voters the maximum amount of choice. As my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central set out, we wanted to give voters the opportunity to select from the range of candidates instead of just giving them two choices.
Mr Chope
If the Minister is saying that the coalition Government are against the AV system used to elect the London Mayor, is he also saying that the coalition Government are minded to change that system to the AV system proposed in the Bill, if that system is supported in a referendum?
Mr Harper
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman.
I am conscious, Mr Gale, that the Chair will permit a stand part debate, so I will conclude my remarks on the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch. As I say, I fear to point out to him that it is technically defective—it does not do what he intends it to do—so I request that he withdraw it and allow us to debate the clause as it is; we can then see whether the House is content to let the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr Chope
This has been a useful debate, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for what he said. I thank everybody who has participated; we have had some interesting insights. I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms) because he brought up important points about the need to give equal weight to votes and the way in which that principle is undermined by the principle of the alternative vote system.
It is semantics to say that people have only one vote, but some people’s votes may be counted more than once; that is the equivalent of saying that some people have several votes and some have only one, but if that is how the proponents of AV wish to try to campaign in the AV referendum, so be it.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Sir Stuart Bell) for his intervention, and I notice that he has an amendment on the amendment paper that effectively seeks to introduce the French system. I must say that when he told the Committee and me that the noble Lord Plant of Highfield and the noble Lord Campbell-Savours supported my amendment, I immediately got rather cold feet about its wisdom.
The purpose of the amendment was to try to draw out a discussion and get from the Minister a justification—whether it is satisfactory is another matter—of why the AV system put forward in the referendum is different from the AV system in London for the election of the London Mayor.
Mr MacNeil
I often hear Conservative party members, in particular, talking about first past the post or even advocating the form of AV that he might be advocating at the moment. Would he ever advocate that for the leadership of the Conservative party, which, as I remember, seemed almost to be AV for slow learners over the two or three weeks that it took?
Mr Chope
Actually, it was a very sensible system, not dissimilar to the one operated in France. Basically, there is one election and the person who gets the fewest votes drops out and there is a completely fresh start with a fresh ballot. For example, when Mr Michael Portillo sought to become the leader of the Conservative party, he had the largest number of votes—
The Temporary Chair (Mr Roger Gale)
Order. With great respect, we have moved an extremely long way from the purpose of the original amendment.
Mr Chope
I am sorry, Mr Gale. I was trying to give a full answer to the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil).
My feeling is that the first-past-the-post system is best. I understand that the system in the Bill is similar to that used to decide the winner of the Eurovision song contest. If the Eurovision song contest voting system is the one contained in the Bill, I am sure it will find a lot of support with the people out there.
For my part, I think it would be better to withdraw the amendment and for us to think again about whether we want to bring forward an amendment on Report to introduce an alternative identical to the system used in London, for the sake of consistency. In any event, we should reflect on the pertinent points that have been made in this debate and seek to consider further whether we wish to adopt what used to be the old Labour party policy. That is the Achilles heel, I would be the first to admit, of my proposal, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The Temporary Chair
Order. Ms Primarolo has said that there will be a stand part debate, but she and I are agreed—and I have followed the debate very carefully—that the clause is very narrow in its remit. It sets out how votes are to given, how votes are to be counted and what information is to be given at each stage and no more. I trust that the stand part debate will address those issues and no others.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Christopher Chope Excerpts(15 years, 5 months ago)
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The First Deputy Chairman
Does this relate directly to schedule 3, Mr Chope?
Mr Chope
Yes, it does. Under the motion of the House, schedules 3 and 4, clause 4, schedule 5, and clauses 5 and 6 were to be debated this evening before 11pm. We now know that there is no time for debate on any of those parts of the Bill. May I refer you, Mr Evans, to the undertaking given by the Parliamentary Secretary when he addressed the House—
The First Deputy Chairman
Order. I intend to call Mr Chope, Mr Bryant and the Minister, and then that is it, and we will have fully exhausted the point of order.
Mr Chope
Further to that point of order, Mr Evans. In discussing the programme motion on 12 October, the Parliamentary Secretary said that
“we have taken steps…in the programme motion”
to ensure that
“the House will be able to debate and vote on the key issues raised by the Bill.”—[Official Report, 12 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 183.]
On Second Reading he also made it quite clear that we would have the opportunity to debate and vote on the key issues. Nobody is suggesting that the threshold is anything other than a key issue in the Bill. Even at this late stage, it is open to the Minister to tell the Committee that he will come forward tomorrow with an amendment to the programme order to ensure that we can start the business tomorrow with a debate on clause 6, rather than closing down debate on that clause, which seems to be the Government’s intent. I should also point out that unless we have a debate, it will not be possible for the Committee to take a view on the relative merits of amendment 3 as compared with my amendments 64, 65 and 66. In the European debate the other night the Chair was able to decide which amendments were more worthy of being put to the vote on the basis of the debate. Without a debate, we will not be able to do that.
Chris Bryant
Further to that point of order, Mr Evans. Several hon. Members have made the point this evening that there has not been time to debate significant elements of the Bill. In addition, the Government have today tabled 100 pages of amendments to the Bill, which they have proposed we debate next Monday, but they have already said that those amendments are incorrect and will have to be superseded by further amendments. At the moment, only two days are provided for Report. I would therefore ask the Government to consider providing a third day on Report, so that the issues can be fully debated. Otherwise, I am sure that their lordships would want to spend a considerable period of time looking at the legislation properly. Finally, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) rightly pointed out that votes normally follow voices in this House. That is to say that Members who shout aye have to vote aye, and if the Minister is going to shout aye in a moment, he should be voting in the Aye Lobby.
The First Deputy Chairman
I have listened carefully to the several points of order that Members have made. What the Government propose is orderly under Standing Order No. 83D(2), although it is, as some hon. Members have observed, somewhat unusual. I am sure that hon. Members will also have noted the opportunities open to them, as has been remarked, on Report. I should just remind Members of the rule on voice and vote. It is possible to vote against one’s own amendment, but one cannot shout “Aye” and then vote “No”. We now move on to clause 6.
Clause 6
Commencement or repeal of amending provisions
Amendment proposed: 3, page 4, line 28, after ‘“No”’, insert
‘and the number of electors casting a vote in the referendum is equal to or greater than fifty per cent. of those entitled to cast such a vote,’.—(Mr Harper.)
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Question negatived.
The First Deputy Chairman
Order. It is getting very late and I suspect that Members will now wish to see the conclusion of our proceedings.
Clause 6 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
The occupant of the Chair left the Chair (Programme Order, 12 October).
The Deputy Speaker resumed the Chair.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again tomorrow.
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Christopher Chope Excerpts(15 years, 7 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
I should like to thank the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), for its report on the Bill. The Committee has raised a number of important issues in its report that I shall seek to address one by one in my comments today.
The Bill has a single, clear purpose: to introduce fixed-term Parliaments to the United Kingdom to remove the right of a Prime Minister to seek the Dissolution of Parliament for pure political gain. This simple constitutional innovation will none the less have a profound effect because for the first time in our history the timing of general elections will not be a plaything of Governments. There will be no more feverish speculation over the date of the next election, distracting politicians from getting on with running the country. Instead everyone will know how long a Parliament can be expected to last, bringing much greater stability to our political system. Crucially, if, for some reason, there is a need for Parliament to dissolve early, that will be up to the House of Commons to decide. Everyone knows the damage that is done when a Prime Minister dithers and hesitates over the election date, keeping the country guessing. We were subjected to that pantomime in 2007. All that happens is that the political parties end up in perpetual campaign mode, making it very difficult for Parliament to function effectively. The only way to stop that ever happening again is by the reforms contained in the Bill.
As we hammer out the detail of these reforms, I hope that we are all able to keep sight of the considerable consensus that already exists on the introduction of fixed-term Parliaments. They were in my party's manifesto, they have been in Labour party manifestos since 1992, and although this was not an explicit Conservative election pledge, the Conservative manifesto did include a commitment to making the use of the royal prerogative subject to greater democratic control, ensuring that Parliament is properly involved in all big, national decisions—and there are few as big as the lifetime of Parliament and the frequency of general elections.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
Does the right hon. Gentleman recall that during the general election campaign the present Prime Minister said he thought it was desirable that were there to be a change of Prime Minister during the course of a Parliament there should be a general election within six months? Where has that proposal gone to?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I do of course recollect what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said during the general election campaign. What he said has been improved upon and superseded by this Bill. [Laughter.] Hon. Members may laugh, but it has been improved upon because it gives the House the right to decide whether it wants to dissolve Parliament for any reason that it wishes. If the House decides that it does not want to continue to express confidence in a Government when a Prime Minister has changed, the Bill will give it the right to dissolve Parliament and trigger a general election.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker). I agree with much of what he had to tell the House. I also very much agree with the two brilliant speeches that we heard earlier from my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox).
I became involved in this debate quite early on in this Parliament when I was lucky enough to be called to move the first Adjournment debate of this Parliament on 25 May on the subject of the Dissolution of Parliament. On that occasion there was a lot of ridicule of the Government in relation to the proposal for a 55% threshold and a binding motion relating to that. The Deputy Leader of the House, who is on the Front Bench now, responded to that debate and asserted that it was absolutely important to stick to the 55% commitment because it was in the manifesto, and so on.
I am delighted that the coalition had second thoughts, and I hope that it will have second thoughts about a lot of this Bill as well. But I am very concerned that a couple of things that the hon. Gentleman said on that occasion have not been borne out by tonight’s proceedings. He said that there would be a second opportunity, after the debate on the original motion, to consider the constitutional legislation. He said:
“Unlike what happened under the previous Administration, it will not be guillotined.”
We will see what happens at the end of two days of debate, but if at the end of those two days not all the amendments have been reached, the only consequence will be that it will be guillotined, and the only consequence that will flow from that is that what the hon. Gentleman said on that occasion will not be capable of delivery. I am happy to allow him to intervene on me now to put the record straight and say that if at the end of two days’ debate we have not covered all the ground, we will get extra time from the Government.
The next thing the hon. Gentleman said was that he believed that
“there is merit in listening to what people have to say about the legislation after it is published, rather than being too precipitate in moving from the motion, which will be debated…to the legislation in due course”,
and he sought to give some reassurance to the House. In response to an intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie), he went on to say:
“May I remove any view that the hon. Gentleman might have formed that I am reluctant to entertain the possibility of pre-legislative scrutiny? We have simply not determined the treatment of the Bill yet…but I hear what he says. There is a strong case for pre-legislative scrutiny, but I do not want to extend the consideration of this legislation into the following Session, because that would not be appropriate.”—[Official Report, 25 May 2010; Vol. 510, c. 147-152.]
In the light of what has been announced today, that gives us, on my understanding, about 18 months in which we can consider this Bill in detail. I am sure that the Deputy Leader of the House did not have that in mind at that stage, because this Government seem to think things up as they go along, but now he realises that there will possibly be a two-year first Session of this Parliament, would he like to intervene to assure me that as a result there will be more time to discuss this Bill?
I am particularly keen that there should be more time to discuss the interaction between the Bill and the proposed changes to the other place. If we were to have an elected Second Chamber, on what basis would we have those elections? When would they be held? How would they interact with the fixed-term Parliament arrangements that we are discussing? It seems as though, almost by design, the Government are legislating in a piecemeal fashion so that this Bill will be out of the way before we are able to ask any questions about the interaction between it and the proposals they are going to bring forward in the form of a draft Bill at the turn of the year. This is an extremely serious matter. I despair at the fact that the Government seem to think they can pull the wool over the eyes of hon. Members on both sides of the House.
This Bill is unnecessary. Why is the Prime Minister’s word that he will not go to the country until 7 May 2015 not good enough? It is certainly good enough for me; why is it not good enough for other people? As we heard in the evidence from the Clerk of the House, if there is a desire to give some sort of quasi-statutory backing to these proposals, that could easily be achieved by changing the Standing Orders of the House. The Bill challenges and undermines the historic right of this House to vote a Government out of office with a bare majority. In the Select Committee we heard evidence from Professor Blackburn, who was in favour of a simple majority in order to bring a Parliament to an end if that were the wish of the people. Why do we not trust Members of this House? Why do we not trust the people? I can remember when Ted Heath thought he was acting in his own self-interest and went to the people, and the people had a different view. That is exactly what happens if one trusts the people—why tinker with the constitution in this way?
I am very concerned about this Bill, and I am sorry that, for the second occasion in as many weeks, I will not be supporting the Government in the Lobby tonight. However, that is not a consequence of my failure to follow our manifesto—it is a consequence of the Government introducing legislation that was never in the manifesto. Indeed, in the middle of the election campaign the Prime Minister made a comment that was totally at odds with the current proposals. I could not follow what the Deputy Prime Minister said about how the Bill effectively builds on what the Prime Minister said on that occasion about having a general election within six months of a change of Prime Minister. That would be more popular and more understandable; perhaps we could make that amendment to the Bill. Instead, the Government seem to want to ensure that this Parliament continues not only for a five-year period but perhaps even for a couple of weeks beyond that. It is not justified, and it is completely over the top. In the end, this sort of behaviour by the Government—the high-handed procedural way in which they are trying to force this legislation through, and its content—will be their own undoing.
Nick Boles
One of the great champions has not been called, but he has certainly intervened many times, and we have heard from other great champions, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope). I thought that I would hear them make an argument for giving Parliament even more control over matters as vital to our democracy as the timing of elections, but no. We have been given an object lesson in that great phrase “looking a gift horse in the mouth”.
I just wonder what would have happened to the Government if they had come to the House with a proposal to abolish elections altogether or to abolish the role of the Speaker in deciding whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be dragged here to answer an urgent question. Imagine what our reaction would have been then. I listen to the criticism that has been made—that the proposal is somehow fragmentary and piecemeal—and I ask myself whether those critics have any education in the history of our constitution at all. I am the least historically educated person I know, but I know that this country has only ever made change fragmentarily, in a piecemeal fashion and for naked partisan political interests. We even invented an entire new Church—the leader of the Church from which we separated ourselves is about to come to this country, and we welcome him very much—just to enable our sovereign to marry somebody whom he fancied rather more than his wife at the time.
That was just the starting point for a whole generation of constitutional change, so let us not deny the value of fragmentary and piecemeal constitutional change. Let us instead take advances when we get them, and if they are in the interest of the Government proposing them, let us be grateful for the fact that that interest is so well aligned with the interest of this House.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Christopher Chope Excerpts(15 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
I was elected on the Conservative party manifesto, which states on page 67:
“We support the first-past-the-post system for Westminster elections because it gives voters the chance to kick out a government they are fed up with.”
That is the very opportunity that the Australians have been denied in their recent general election. An article in The Times about 10 days ago suggested that if a first-past-the-post system had been operating in Australia, the Liberal party—effectively, the conservative party—would have been able to regain power in Australia, thereby demonstrating the wisdom contained in the Conservative party manifesto. I regard the AV referendum as an expensive and unnecessary distraction from the Government’s main job, which should be to get the economy back on track. To spend £80 million to £100 million on the referendum is absurd.
I am also concerned that other aspects of the Conservative party manifesto are being disregarded in the Bill. Page 63 of our manifesto states that
“we plan to change Britain with a sweeping redistribution of power…from the government to Parliament”.
Sadly, the Bill does exactly the reverse. As my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) pointed out, the proposal is that we reduce the number of MPs but not have a corresponding reduction in the number of Ministers. This Government have a record number of Ministers—more than at any time since the 1975 legislation was passed. When I was first elected in 1983, there were about 83 House of Commons Ministers in Margaret Thatcher’s Government. We now have 95, five more than we had at the height of the last Labour Government. If this Government are intent on saving money, why has one of their first acts been to increase the number of Ministers?
It will not surprise you to learn, Mr Deputy Speaker, that the category of Minister that has been increased above all others is the Whip. The number of Government Whips is now at an all-time high. People outside the House may well find it extraordinary that we have so many Ministers, given that we have devolved Governments in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and therefore need fewer Ministers here to represent those areas. That, in my view, shows that we are entirely in breach of what is set out on page 63 of the Conservative manifesto.
I also object to the fact that the debate has been guillotined. Page 67 of our manifesto states:
“Because we are serious about redistributing power, we will restore the balance between the government and Parliament, by… allowing MPs the time to scrutinise law effectively”.
That is exactly what is not being allowed. Why cannot the House decide for itself how much time is needed to discuss all that is in the Bill?
Addressing the Conservative party faithful in February this year, the current Prime Minister ridiculed the lack of effective parliamentary scrutiny that existed at the time. He asked:
“How has the mother of all Parliaments turned itself into such a pliant child? If we are serious about redistributing power from the powerful to the powerless, it is time to strengthen Parliament so it can properly hold the Government to account on behalf of voters”.
I do not know whether the Deputy Prime Minister has read what the Prime Minister said in that speech, but I have found no consistency between what he said then and the attitude being taken by the Government Front Bench today, and I find that extremely depressing.
Why the big rush? It is, of course, because the Government want to push through the change in the boundaries and reduce the number of Members of Parliament. They realise that there is a justification for wanting to get on with that quickly. How can they find a justification for introducing an AV referendum quickly? By linking the two issues. I consider it a cynical exercise to link two separate Bills, and I think that the restriction in the guillotine motion is much too tight. Such an amount of time would probably have been sufficient for each separate part of this Bill. As the Prime Minister suggested back in February, why should we not look at the detail of the Bill and then decide how much time should be allowed for discussion?
I have many other concerns about the contents of both Bills. That is why I shall vote against Second Reading and also against the guillotine motion. I shall not do so with a heavy heart, because I believe that we must stand up in the House and vote according to what we believe in. I believe in strengthening the House and reducing the size of government, and I do not think that the Bill does that.
Oral Answers to Questions
Christopher Chope Excerpts(15 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
5. What recent representations he has received from trade unions on proposed changes to the terms and conditions of employment of civil servants.
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
I met the Council of Civil Service Unions yesterday. The main issue discussed was the proposed changes to the civil service compensation scheme, which I covered in my reply to the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Katy Clark).
Mr Chope
Did my right hon. Friend discuss yesterday a subject of great public concern: civil servants on average have higher pay, get better pensions, work shorter hours and have longer holidays than their private sector counterparts, and they also have lower productivity? What are the Government doing about that?
Mr Maude
Public sector productivity generally fell in absolute terms in the past 12 years, whereas private sector productivity rose by between 20 and 30%. There is therefore a problem with productivity in the public sector. However, I must tell my hon. Friend that median pay in the civil service is lower than that in the private sector, but pay in the wider public sector is higher.