House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill
Christopher Chope Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Dan Byles
My hon. Friend tempts me down a route that I shall avoid.
What is the status of those peers who have been granted leave of absence? Is it possible to replace them? Arguably not, because we could replace 43 peers who, it appears, have now chosen to leave the Lords, but all 43 could come back in five years’ time. So it is a compromise that has gone some way towards addressing the problem, but it is not an elegant or permanent solution.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
Is it not the case that in 2011 an informal voluntary retirement scheme was introduced, enabling those peers who so wished to apply and receive voluntary retirement?
Dan Byles
My hon. Friend has me at a disadvantage. My understanding is that there is no permanent way of leaving or retiring from the House of Lords. I am not sure what mechanism he is referring to, but I have been assured by the Clerks of the House and by the Leader of the House of Lords that there is at present no method to leave the Lords permanently.
Dan Byles
Absolutely. I think we will leave individuals out of the debate for the time being, but it is an interesting point that I would be willing to discuss further.
I want to make it absolutely clear that the three principal elements of the Bill have already been agreed by the House of Lords, but the provisions have unfortunately faltered on their introduction to this House. Today I invite Members of this House to provide those of the other with the opportunity that they have repeatedly requested to make specific but necessary reforms that will contribute to their enhanced reputation and integrity. The cessation of membership measures will be an important step in enabling those who wish to leave the House of Lords to do so, and in removing non-attending Members. By doing so, the measures will assist in a small way in reducing the burgeoning number of Members of the House of Lords and in enhancing its reputation. The provisions to ensure that membership of the Lords ceases should a Member be convicted of a serious offence will also improve the integrity of that House and of our legislature as a whole.
Dan Byles
There is the wider issue that the other place is too large, but one can only achieve so much in a private Member’s Bill. The Bill is simple, modest and clear and would bring into effect three measures that the other place has already voted for and persistently asked us to allow. Perhaps a future Bill tabled by my hon. Friend could address the over-large number of Members of the Lords.
Some people criticise this House for taking recesses that are too long, but others criticise us for spending too long here legislating, as they feel that less legislation is more.
Greg Clark
Of course my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) takes a great interest in these matters and I have the greatest respect for the contributions that he has made on that. My remarks are about the Bill before us. It is not the Government’s Bill; it was presented by my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire, and my comment is on the provisions in the Bill.
I think my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough knows well the Government’s position. There is a commitment in the coalition agreement to bring forward reforms to the House of Lords but it was not possible to make progress with it. I suspect that it was in the light of those developments that my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire introduced these provisions today. Of course, as Mr Speaker says, it is open to hon. Members to air the wider questions, but if the Bill proceeds to Committee, it is to consider the specific measures that my hon. Friend is proposing. The Government are prepared to support the Bill today and to see it go into Committee because it provides for the introduction of some sensible, specific and relatively small scale changes to the House of Lords.
Mr Chope
Will my right hon. Friend explain a little more why the Government think this is such a good Bill? Do they think it is such a good Bill because it would enable the House of Lords to be smaller? If so, why are the Government so busy appointing new Members to the House of Lords?
Greg Clark
My hon. Friend will be aware that the coalition agreement makes it clear that the Government, pending further reform of the House of Lords, will continue to take steps to make it reflective of the result of the general election, in terms of the representation of parties. On the measures that have been proposed, there has been a degree of concern that the provisions, for example, on the consequences of criminal convictions, are out of line in the other place with those in this place.
The Select Committee, on which my hon. Friend serves, has reflected on the leave of absence provisions and has noted that they have not been very effective in providing a mechanism for Members to retire. So the support that the Government are willing to give specifically reflects concerns that have been expressed beyond this House, but also by Committees of this House, and this is a way to facilitate the correction of those aspects, if not the wider aspects that we have debated from time to time.
Emily Thornberry
My apologies to the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman).
I congratulate the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) on introducing the Bill. He has been lucky to be drawn so high in the ballot, and he has shown great judgment in deciding to bring this Bill before the House. It is modest, it is wholly sensible and it is needed. There has been some talk from the Minister of the Bermuda triangle of House of Lords reform. I hope that the hon. Member for North Warwickshire, with his history as an Atlantic rower, will be able to get us out of the Bermuda triangle together and safely.
I also compliment the hon. Gentleman on the way he dealt with the matter today. At first he rather reminded me of a man trying to swat an irritating fly away from his modest sandwich, but then I thought that was unfair to him, because he was being so polite, deferential and respectful to hon. Members. He seemed more to be saying, “Honourable Fly, please take a seat. You may think that this piece of cucumber is good for you, but let me assure you that cucumber is very bad for flies.”
The hon. Gentleman also showed that he has done his homework by answering fully all sorts of points, some of which I had never considered, and those points that he was unable to answer today he hopes to be able to answer in Committee. I can assure him at this early stage that the Opposition will be supporting his Bill.
The House of Lords is too big. I understand that it currently has 825 Members, although that figure might be out of date already, because it goes up all the time. The Minister talked about the decision, set out in the coalition agreement, that the other place should reflect the results of the general election, and it seems to me that a strange kind of arms race is beginning. If we appoint Members to the other place after every general election in order to reflect the result but have no means by which they can leave, we will of course end up with a House of Lords that is far too large.
I have heard all sorts of tales from friends in the other place about having to get to the Chamber 25 minutes before a debate begins to ensure that they get a seat, and there are all the other difficulties that result from there simply being overwhelming numbers in the other place. I think that the continual appointment of large numbers of Members to the other place is undermining its ability to function properly and is to be regretted.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
It is, as always, a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), who made, as usual, a very illuminating speech on the matter of Lords reform. I was one of the 91 hon. Members to whom he referred. However, on this Bill I do not start from the same position as I started from on the gargantuan House of Lords Reform Bill, because although this Bill’s title contains the word “Reform”, anyone would have to accept that it is not in the same league as the previous Bill.
I congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) on his courage in dipping his toes into the deep and turbulent waters of House of Lords reform. As an adventurer of world-record-breaking renown, he is no man to shirk a challenge. It is certainly a challenge to try to steer any House of Lords measure through this House, but no one is more capable of doing so than him. He should be congratulated on his bravery in picking up this issue. When he announced that he was introducing this Bill, he wrote on his website:
“Lords reform has been a difficult and controversial subject”.
Few would dispute that statement. It is a topic that has caused problems for many before him. Whatever the merits or otherwise of the Bill, he should be congratulated on introducing it.
Although the Bill’s short title is the House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill, it is fair to say that it is not in the same league as the Government’s own blockbuster House of Lords Reform Bill, which hit the rocks and then sank without trace in the previous Session. It is nevertheless a reforming measure. I would take slight issue with my hon. Friend when he said that there was a “slight hint of constitutionality” about it. I would venture to submit that, on any measure, it must be construed as a constitutional Bill, albeit, I accept, a modest one. I wonder whether the private Members’ Bill route is the correct one for bringing legislation of a constitutional nature before this House. This Bill is certainly not typical of a private Member’s Bill.
I urge the Government to consider the merits of putting the Bill over to a Committee of the whole House rather than sending it to be dealt with upstairs, as would be normal for a private Member’s Bill. As I said in my intervention on the Minister, had the Government introduced a House of Lords reform Bill along these lines instead of the leviathan they did introduce, there would be no need for my hon. Friend’s Bill. The matter could have been dealt with in the normal way as a Government Bill, and that would have gone some way towards assuaging the feelings of those who would like more far-reaching House of Lords reform measures. At least, for them, it would have been some measure of progress.
My own approach to constitutional reform, which is particularly appropriate in relation to reform of the House of Lords, is that if it is to be done at all, it should be done on the basis of evolution rather than revolution. I accept that the aims of this Bill are fairly modest, but let us recognise that they have the potential to have a fairly radical effect on the membership of the other place. Because of the nature of the Bill, one can only surmise what its true effect would be. For example, if a statutory retirement scheme were to be introduced, we would have no way of knowing whether there would be a sudden rush of Members of the other place wanting to take advantage of it.
Mr Chope
Does my hon. Friend agree that the number of people who might take up such a scheme would depend on what the incentives were? One of the proposals that I made in my modest Bill is that there should be an opportunity for those who seek to retire from the other place to exchange their life peerage for a hereditary one.
Mr Nuttall
I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for that suggestion, which he says is contained in his Bill; obviously I have not yet reached that provision. That would be an innovative way forward. As the law stands, it would exclude people from membership of the House of Lords, but they would be entitled to stand in any by-election that arose among the hereditary peers and would thus have a potential route back, should they so desire.
According to last Friday’s edition of The House magazine, dated 11 October, the current membership of the House of Lords is as follows: 220 Labour peers, 219 Conservatives, 184 Cross Benchers, 98 Liberal Democrats, 22 bishops, 21 non-affiliated Members, two members of the Democratic Unionist party, two members of the Ulster Unionist party, two members of the United Kingdom Independence party, two members of Plaid Cymru, one Green party peer, and five others. I am not sure where those others come from after such a long list of other parties, but there are five of them. Eight peers are currently disqualified. I understand that disqualification comes through perhaps being a judge, which prevents people from being members of the other House. As has been said, 43 peers are on leave of absence.
That gives a total of 829 peers, or 786 if one excludes—which one usually does—those who have taken leave of absence. Of those 786, roughly two thirds—537 or 68.3%—come from the three major parties: Labour, Conservative and the Liberal Democrats. The rest are the Cross Benchers, the Bishops and members of the various other smaller parties.
I understand that the average attendance is in the region of two thirds of the total, which means that it is a little over 500. That is not that dissimilar to this place. The argument for House of Lords reform is invariably made on the grounds that it is too large and unwieldy. As my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) has said, it is somewhat ironical that over the years Governments of all descriptions have rushed to appoint new peers. The previous Labour Government created 408 peerages when they were in power, which led to an enormous increase in the size of the House.
The Bill would not have much effect—except in the case of the occasional, perhaps forced, expulsion of a Member who committed a serious criminal offence—on the numbers turning up to take part in the day-to-day work of the other place. No one should kid themselves that the problems of overcrowding would be eased that much by the Bill.
The Bill essentially has three different aspects and I will consider each in turn. The first is the retirement or resignation of a peer, the second the removal of a peer for non-attendance, and the third the removal of a peer after conviction for committing a serious criminal offence. I am inclined to agree that it is absurd that a Member of the other place should be required to remain a Member if they no longer wish to do so, but there is already in place a procedure that enables them to take leave of absence. Last Friday, The House magazine stated that 43 noble Lords have taken such leave of absence. Roughly 5% have taken advantage of the process, so it must be fairly widely known and it seems to be working. There is a list on the Parliament website of those Lords who have taken a leave of absence. I will not read it out, but what I will say is that 10 Members of the other place applied for leave of absence and were granted it in the first month of this Parliament back in May 2010. Those 10 knew straight away what the situation was and that they would not be able to attend, so they applied for a leave of absence.
Although the mechanism set out in the Bill is one way of dealing with this—and perhaps we can consider it in more detail if the Bill gets to Committee—it might be better if, rather than starting up a new system, we built on the existing mechanism of a leave of absence and made a provision for something that might be called a permanent leave of absence, whereby peers could simply say that until they write again they do not wish to be bothered by receipt of the writ of summons.
Mr Chope
Is that not exactly the system that is in place? A permanent leave of absence system was established in 2011 and I think that three noble Lords have taken advantage of it. The only respect in which it is not permanent is that it entails at the beginning of a new Parliament that each peer, even when in receipt of a permanent leave of absence, receives a writ of summons.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a good point. I am not aware of the minutiae of the two schemes, but perhaps the informal voluntary scheme, which was introduced in 2011 and which allows a Member to write to the Clerk of Parliaments indicating their wish permanently to retire, has not been given a chance to work. It has not even been in operation throughout an entire Parliament yet. As my hon. Friend says, in its first two years of operation the scheme has attracted only three Members to take advantage of it, two of whom had been non-attenders for several years.
The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee helpfully produced, only this week, its ninth report of Session 2013-14, “House of Lords reform: what next?” The Committee took evidence during its inquiry and the broad consensus in the written evidence it received was that the current voluntary retirement scheme has not been effective and that it has had no notable impact. That raises the question of the extent to which the scheme has been publicised to their noble lordships. How many of them are aware that it is in place?
I think I am right in saying that my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire said during his excellent opening remarks that, at present, six Members want permanently to retire. If that is the case, it would be interesting to know—perhaps we will find out as the Bill moves through its various stages—why they have not availed themselves of the present voluntary retirement scheme, which, as I have said, was introduced back in 2011. Do they know that the scheme exists? If they do, why have they not taken advantage of it?
Mr Nuttall
I am extremely concerned about the desire to offer an incentive scheme. The danger is that, far from this being a cost-saving measure, it could end up costing the taxpayer a great deal more than the present system.
I accept, as a ballpark figure, that the scheme might involve several dozen Members of the other place who, for whatever reason, are not regular attenders. However, because peers receive an attendance allowance only if they turn up, all those who have taken a leave of absence or who simply do not turn up are not costing the taxpayer anything. If we offer their noble lordships an incentive to retire, we will enter an arms race of incentives. Although some Lords might accept the incentive, others will say that it is not enough, so people will say that we ought to make the incentives more generous. There are dangers in going down that road.
I can understand why peers might want to retire. As I have often said, a peer who is appointed in middle age or at the end of many years in another career will want to spend 10, 15 or 20 years in the other place. However, many of them will feel obliged to keep soldiering on out of a sense of duty to the other place and to the country. Of course, many of them do so.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes an important and worthwhile point. There will be noble Lords in the other place who feel that they have an obligation to continue. One suggestion is that there should be a formal retirement ceremony to mark the service of a peer. There is, after all, a formal ceremony to introduce new peers into the House of Lords. We saw that ceremony only yesterday, when two new peers were introduced. That demonstrates that the figures that I gave from last week’s The House magazine are already out of date because of the new peers who were announced over the summer.
It is reasonable that new peers are introduced from time to time. Inevitably, the numbers will fall over time by reason of death. When there is a diminution in the number of working peers—those who regularly attend and take part in proceedings—because peers have died, it is right that the party leaders should replace them. What is not right—we saw this all too often under the last Government—is the creation of new peers for party political purposes. Currently, the Conservative party has nowhere near a majority in the other place.
The 2011 Leader’s group report, which my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire mentioned in his opening speech, suggested that it should be considered whether a
“modest pension, or payment on retirement”
would provide peers with an incentive to take up voluntary retirement, while also providing an overall saving to the taxpayer. I am not sure that it would provide an overall saving to the taxpayer. To be fair, such a payment is not suggested in the Bill, but I hope that it is not the thin end of the wedge. We should make it clear that there will be no inducement for Members of the other place to retire.
Mr Nuttall
It would have been helpful if there had been explanatory notes to the Bill that dealt with that issue. I have not seen any explanatory notes.
Mr Nuttall
My hon. Friend makes a valid point. I need to make it absolutely clear that no one is suggesting, and I am sure that none of the hon. Members who have intervened is suggesting, that any noble Lord is taking advantage of the facilities of the other place without playing a full part in proceedings. What we are doing is looking at hypothetical cases that might happen, which is right and proper when we consider legislation of this nature.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is being too generous, if not naive. In his evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, Lord Cormack said that
“it is difficult to say this but it has to be said. There are those who attend very regularly indeed and do precisely nothing. They do not speak; they do not take part in committees; they vote.”
Mr Nuttall
That is evidence straight from the other place. If that is the case—we have no reason to doubt that it is not correct—the situation we are discussing might not be as hypothetical as I have just ventured to suggest. I still express the hope and desire that it is not widespread. If it is happening, it raises questions about whether we need the provisions in clause 2. My point, which is that there will always be people who try to play the system, is applicable.
Finally on the non-attendance provision, what if someone was in a coma as a result of tragically being involved a road traffic accident, and so unable to apply for leave of absence or attend? I appreciate that it is up to the Lord Speaker to issue a certificate, but I wonder whether someone suffering from ill health ought to be protected by being excluded from the clause.
Under clause 3, a Member could be excluded from the House of Lords if they were convicted of a serious offence and
“sentenced or ordered to be imprisoned or detained indefinitely or for more than one year.”
To get straight to the heart of my concern, human nature being what it is, there is a danger that those involved in sentencing, knowing the accused to be a Member of the House of Lords and knowing that were they to hand down a sentence of 12 months or more they would lose their membership of the other place, might think, “Well, we’d better not give them 12 months, because we don’t want them to lose their membership”, or, “Well, we’ll give them more than would otherwise be the case, because we think they ought to lose their membership.”
I do not know which of those two evils is the worst; they would both be equally unwelcome, so I wonder whether we would not be better to leave the matter to a committee on standards and privileges in the other place to consider each case on its merits. It could then weigh up the different aspects of each case and decide whether it would be appropriate to expel the Member. I entirely agree that there is a danger, if the other place does not have rules in line with those in this House, that people outside will rightly think that there is one rule for some and one rule for others; and they would not expect those who have broken the law in a serious manner also to sit in the legislature making the laws. All we have to do is come up with a mechanism for dealing with that.
I am concerned about sentences handed down by foreign courts. I suspect that such concerns are the reason clause 3(6) provides that if the other place resolves that there are special circumstances, a Member of the other place convicted of a serious offence could still remain a Member of the House of Lords, if the conviction was outside the United Kingdom. Obviously, there could be many jurisdictions in which an offence carries a much more serious penalty than in this country, which is why this provision is in the Bill, and rightly so. I wonder, though, whether anything would be lost by removing the phrase “outside the United Kingdom” and leaving it open to the Lords in any case, even if the sentence had been handed down by a court in this jurisdiction, to waive in certain circumstances the provisions in clause 3(1).
The final three clauses deal with the effect of ceasing to be a Member, the detailed rules about the issuing of a certificate by the Lord Speaker and the short title, commencement and extent of the Bill, all of which I have no comment to make on at the present time. Although this is a relatively modest measure, it could have enormous constitutional consequences for the other place. I again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire on his bravery in bringing it forward and repeat my request that this matter is considered by a Committee of the whole House.
Sir Edward Leigh
I did know that. I share with my hon. Friend a certain interest in those matters. It would be perfectly possible to allow Members of the other place who were over 80 to attend and go on using the facilities, but not to vote. That would put them on a par with the cardinals. I believe that setting a sensible retirement age and placing a limit on the number of peers would solve many of the problems.
The importance of this very small Bill in terms of constitutional change is that, if by some miracle it gets through its Second Reading by 2.30—I hope that it does, and there is no reason why it should not—and if it proceeds through the House of Lords in the ordinary way, we will have established the principle that it is possible to make these small, incremental changes.
We have been talking about these matters for a very long time. We started with the Parliament Act 1911, after which came the Bryce commission, which was set up by Lloyd George following the interregnum of the first world war. The commission failed to agree on any proposals. It is interesting to note that most people then favoured a House of Lords with 246 Members, chosen by MPs, from different geographical regions. I have said that there is something wrong with the size of the House of Lords, but there is also something wrong with the geographical spread of its membership.
About 22% of Members of the House of Lords come from London, and 18% come from elsewhere in the south-east. Only 2.94% come from my region, the east midlands, and 2.2% come from the north-east. That geographical concentration on London is a problem, and the House of Lords has become the home of the metropolitan liberal elite. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) would agree that it is a sad fact that there are probably now more social conservatives in the House of Commons than in the House of Lords. Without wishing to get into the whole subject of gay marriage, we saw that, when that legislation was passed. The membership of the House of Lords is not spread widely enough, geographically. If it had more Members from the midlands and the north of England, we might get a more representative debate.
I have mentioned the initial reforms that attempted to achieve such a geographical spread, and the Bryce commission, which proposed those ideas in 1922. At that time, people were still talking about limiting membership of the House of Lords to hereditary peers, albeit with some kind of election by the House of Commons. All along, however, and even in those early days, and there was a determination not to upset parliamentary conventions, as does this Bill, which I like, so there was no power to amend or reject money Bills and the Parliament Act would not apply. The gradualist notion that my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire is talking about is important because it means that the fundamental conventions, which primarily ensure the supremacy of the elected House of Commons, are not affected. All those who take part in these debates must constantly repeat the point that no Bill should so radically alter the House of Lords or make it democratically justifiable in some shape or form that the supremacy of this House of Commons, which has been supreme now for over 100 years, would in any way be questioned.
The Marquess of Salisbury proposed a scheme based on the Bryce idea and that received a Second Reading in 1934, but again no progress was made. An inter-party conference on Lords reforms in the late 1940s agreed on nine principles, and I do not think any of them would be affected by this Bill, and none of them would fall foul of the notion of gradualism. They included the principle that no party should have overall control of the reformed House, that life peerages would be created, that women would be allowed to be Members and that allowances would be introduced. They at least had the right idea, therefore, which was that they should reform gradually.
The Life Peerages Act 1958 brought in life peerages, while the Peerage Act 1963 allowed all Scottish hereditary peers, previously subject to election as representative peers, as well as peeresses, to sit in the Lords in their own right, and we all know about the innovation of disclaiming a hereditary peerage, à la Tony Benn.
The Parliament (No. 2) Bill 1968 would have introduced various changes so that primary legislation was subject to shorter delays and so that the Commons had the power to override a Lords veto of statutory instruments. Harold Wilson dropped the Bill in order to allow time for more pressing Government business.
We are all familiar with what happened in 1999, so we do not need to rehearse it. That reform produced roughly the House of Lords we have today. What is interesting is the sheer number of reports that have followed it: the Wakeham commission of 2000, the White Paper, “Completing the Reform”, of 2001; the first and second reports of the Joint Committee on House of Lords Reform of 2002; the Government consultation paper, “Constitutional Reform: next steps for the House of Lords” of 2003; the Labour White Paper, “The House of Lords: reform” of February 2007; and its Green Paper, “The Governance of Britain” of July 2007.
These involved a wide variety of plans for mostly, or completely, elected Chambers. The point is that no consensus was ever found, and it is my contention that no consensus will ever be found, so let’s get over it. Perhaps we should send buses around London bearing billboards saying, “The House of Lords will not be elected: get over it,” because that is the reality. No consensus will ever be found in the House of Commons to create any kind of elected House of Lords, and that is why the approach we are trying to follow today is right and important.
The addition of any element of a reformed Chamber that includes directly elected Lords threatens the whole raft of conventions that have been carefully built up over 100 years, and which determine the relationship between the Commons and the Lords. These conventions are important and bear repeating: the Salisbury convention regarding Bills implementing manifesto commitments; the convention that the Lords do not usually object to secondary legislation; the convention that the Government should be able to get their business done in reasonable time; the financial privilege of the House of Commons; and the convention on the exchange of amendments between the Houses. These conventions are not unimportant. They are central to our constitution and I believe they have to be preserved because they conserve the supremacy of the elected House of Commons.
I am not in favour of these conventions being codified, because the lack of codification gives them a flexibility whereby they can adapt and change slowly over time. That is what we are doing with this Bill: we are slowly changing things over time. This adaptability and the ability to bend is a strength of the British parliamentary system and of our common law: it bends rather than breaks.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend is making an excellent point about convention. Does he accept that one of the problems with the Government bringing forward large numbers of new peers based on the vote at the previous general election is that that undermines the convention of give and take with the House of Lords, and that it would be much better if the Government just forgot about what had happened at the last general election and looked at what was best for the House of Lords?
Sir Edward Leigh
Yes, I think one of the key elements of traditional Conservative thinking is that we do not necessarily think that in order to be representative and to feel justified we have to have some direct relationship with what happens in a general election, particularly one based on proportional representation.
I therefore think that the Government should get all the extraneous and radical thoughts out of their mind. I know my right hon. Friend the Minister is a great thinker on these matters and he would much rather have extended his speech to include some of his thoughts on these wider constitutional conventions and ideas. I suspect he felt rather constrained—but that, of course, is in the nature of being a Minister.
Although the House of Lords is fundamentally irrational in many ways, it fulfils its central purposes. That is the point my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire was making. When we talk about House of Lords reforms, we focus far too much on structures. We should be focusing instead on this question: does it work? Does it do its job as a revising Chamber? The answer, surely, in terms of both quality of debate and its general ethos is that it does. That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset. It does not matter if somebody speaks in the House of Lords only once every year—or, I have to say to my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey), if they only speak once over 10 years—if they speak with sufficient knowledge from personal experience. That is what they are there to do. We are here in the House of Commons not to speak as experts; we are generalists. We are here to represent public opinion as we see it. Of course our own prejudices occasionally come into play, but we do attempt to reflect public opinion. The House of Lords is not there for that purpose. It is a Chamber of experts, and it does its job in those terms in an excellent fashion.
People should not criticise my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire by saying, “He’s had the opportunity of a whole day for his private Member’s Bill and he could have done something far more radical.” I am sure he could intervene on me to give me a dozen ideas of how he would wish to improve the House of Lords further. Perhaps, like me, he thinks that there should be some sort of retirement age and limitation on numbers, but he knows that if he takes one step too many—if he takes four or five steps, rather than one or two—those who are determined to kill off anything but the most modest of reforms would ensure that this Bill never made any more progress. So he has conducted himself wisely on constitutional reform.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). He spoke at length on certain other aspects that he wished were in the Bill but, like him, I agree that keeping it modest means that it has a reasonable chance of making progress in this House and the other place. I welcome the Bill and am pleased to put my name to it as one of the co-sponsors, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) for inviting me to do so.
When I was a candidate at the general election, one gentleman in Kelsale wanted to speak at length on constitutional reform, and that was the sole reason on which he would place his vote. As we all know, when we are canvassing it is difficult to get the opportunity to spend more than two minutes with an elector without going back to see them another time. May I say to that gentleman in Kelsale that this bit of my speech is for him? I hope he is listening.
This useful Bill takes on a number of recommendations made in the report published in 2011 by Lord Hunt of Wirral and a cross-party group of peers. As has been said, the Bill is modest, but it has an important aim of protecting and enhancing the reputation of Parliament. In short, it deals with people who do not show up and people who are crooks. Clause 1, in particular, gives a proper mechanism for those who no longer wish to serve as Members of the House of Lords to step down.
Dr Coffey
I will come to that point later, if my hon. Friend will allow me.
Repeated experiences, recently and stretching well back into the past century, show that small reform has more chance of being passed, and of being effective. I believe there is general consensus in this place and the other place that some reform is required, and I am pleased that a number of proposals that we are discussing were supported yesterday by the report of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, of which my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), and indeed our newly elected Deputy Speaker, are members.
There are 785 active noble Lords in the other place—considerably more than 10 years ago. It is not the right time to go into the ideal size of membership of the other place; that is a topic for another Bill and another day. But going to the nub of this Bill, clause 1 suggests that there is scope for a mechanism for effectively leaving the other place. As has been said, for the past two years there has been an informal voluntary retirement scheme, which involves peers being given permanent leave of absence, but not many people have taken that up. It was suggested that the lack of incentive to retire is stopping people.
I believe that providing a leaving payment or use of facilities for life would seem rather contrary to many people in the country. The European Parliament offers such benefits for former MEPs, but I suspect that that would not wash here. Judging by the reaction in the Chamber, the incentive suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and, I believe, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), that they should receive a hereditary peerage, although one up in the hierarchy, as it were, would lead to excessive head-shaking—and not up and down.
There is a lot of merit in the suggestion of a leaving ceremony. We already see such ceremonies in other forms of government, although perhaps not in this place, where people are recognised for the service they have given to their constituents as councillors, and there is something to commend that for people from the other place who wish permanently to finish their service there.
In short, clause 1 provides the mechanism for noble Lords to leave Parliament once and for all. I understand that one peer, from Suffolk—the county I represent—Lord Phillips of Sudbury, decided to leave in 2006 and came back in 2009. I am sure he has been a very helpful Member of the other place, although not always voting with our Government.
Clause 2 provides that noble Lords not attending the other place during a Session lasting over six months, and not having leave of absence for the Session, would cease to be a Member. I believe it deals with people who do not show up—one thing that brings the other place into disrepute. As a parallel example, a non-executive director of UK plc who failed to show up to any meetings would be likely to be turfed out at the next annual general meeting. I would expect them to be turfed out if they showed up but did not ask a single question or utter a statement. That is important for the good repute of the other place.
Non-attendance is also contrary to the obligations of a Member of the other place as set out in the terms of the writ of summons. In exchange for the honour of a peerage bestowed by the Crown, noble Members have certain duties to carry out. They agree that they will be personally present in Parliament to “treat” and “give counsel” to the sovereign. Looking beyond that perhaps archaic language, I believe that the settlement of the writ remains valid, and that when noble Lords take up their writ, they should be expected to honour it. When candidates for Parliament sign up to be elected, it is expected that we will have obligations: we will vote. The Government and other Members are seeking mechanisms to recall Members of Parliament in certain circumstances. I believe it is important that anyone who becomes a Member of the House of Lords should expect to attend and contribute either their expertise or the crown of silver wisdom that one gets after a few advanced years.
Dr Coffey
My hon. Friend may not wish to. I am a bit surprised that he does not wish to criticise him; I expect he did when he was in this House. I do think it was a disgrace that Lord Heseltine decided not to grace the Lords with his presence for so long. I am strongly opposed to the concept of Buggins’s turns—that just because a person has filled a particular post, they should expect to get a peerage. That is wrong.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend makes a helpful point. That is the nub of the matter: the courts can determine what is a proceeding in Parliament, and although proceedings in Parliament are exempt it is arguable that a certificate issued by the Lord Speaker is not a proceeding in Parliament and that it is, therefore, challengeable in spite of the wording of the Bill, which was questioned earlier, that the certificate
“shall not be questioned in a court of law.”
That has been tried before. I remember the then Home Secretary, now Lord Howard, introducing a Bill that said that a certain something could not be reviewed by the courts, but the courts did so and said that it was unconstitutional. We now have great difficulties in passing laws that deny the European Court of Human Rights and our own domestic courts access to determining things. Even if legislation says something, an appeal to a European court may overrule it. That is why it is important to try to keep as much as possible within the proceedings of the House, because those clearly and definitively cannot be challenged.
As I have said, the absence issue is ancient. Lots of people, when appointed or elected to Parliament, end up not wanting to come, and that has been true for centuries. They would rather stay in their constituencies. As has already been asked, where is everybody today? This House has procedures and mechanisms that we could use—they are ancient and, because of the whipping system, have tended to be allowed to lie waste in recent centuries—if we wanted to enforce attendance, which, in previous times, prior to the whipping system, we were much stricter about.
The House of Lords, of course, has a much weaker whipping system as well as Cross Benchers, who, inevitably, are particularly likely not to turn up on every occasion, because they are not payroll politicians. They are not there to provide a majority for either side or to try to disrupt business as Opposition peers; they are there to contribute what they know. Cross Benchers, modest Lords and Ladies that they are, realise that they do not know everything about everything, unlike Members of this House, who, I am glad to say, do know everything about everything, at least most of the time. Therefore, maintaining flexibility and trying to solve a long-standing historical problem that does not have much of a solution would be best left to their lordships.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Absolutely. My hon. Friend is right. Given the looser whipping system, Cross Benchers do not necessarily know when the votes will take place. I have heard from some Cross Benchers that they feel that the votes are often deliberately scheduled for the point at which most of them will have gone home, because the party Whips prefer to keep the votes mainly among themselves, rather than have too many pesky Cross Benchers interfering, but that is anecdotal and may not represent the situation fairly. Others may want to dispute it. I agree that the position of Cross Benchers is particular and that voting certainly does not mean attendance. It is a different requirement. Indeed, activity in the Lords can mean different things: it can take place in general discussion, in Committee or on the Floor. I think that that is a matter for the Lords to determine for themselves internally, not for legislation, because legislation is ultimately justiciable, and then the courts get involved.
On the retirement or resignation issue, I raised one of my concerns in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire, namely the ping-ponging of people from this House to the House of Lords and back again. I can foresee a circumstance in which a body of entirely professional politicians—people who have never done any work outside the political arena—stand for Parliament in a marginal seat and win one election but lose the next, upon which the party bosses put them in the House of Lords and then the week before the next election they stand down in order to stand for election in their former constituency.
That would be disadvantageous for a number of reasons. First, it would increase the patronage of the party leaders because they would be able to provide a steady stream of income for loyalists. Members of this House who are in marginal seats would be under great pressure always to vote along party lines, because they would see that they were at risk of losing their seat, but that there was a nice billet on the red Benches if they behaved themselves.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
It is a privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). His remarks should persuade anybody who has any doubts about the desirability of having this constitutional measure debated on the Floor of the House in a Committee of the whole House of the wisdom of that course of action, because this is a serious constitutional Bill. In the absence of a written constitution, it is this House and the other place that have to look after our constitution, and why should all Members of this House not be able to consider in detail the provisions and implications of this Bill, which could be done if there were a Committee of the whole House?
One of the advantages of the Government supporting any motion in relation to Standing Order No. 63 would be that the Committee of the whole House could meet to consider this not on a Friday, but on some other day of the week, so we could get an even higher attendance than we have been able to achieve today. We could then be sure that, if and when this Bill leaves this place and goes to the other place, it will have been properly thought through and all the constitutional implications will have been explored.
One of my roles in life at the moment is to be the representative of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe on the Venice Commission, which looks at written constitutions. Last week in Venice we were looking at the proposed Tunisian constitution, and the time before we were looking at the amendments to the Hungarian constitution. One of the problems with those written constitutions is their rigidity. We are fortunate in having an unwritten constitution, which is inherently flexible. Long may that continue to be so. That is why it is essential that, before making changes to our constitution, which we can do by a bare majority in both Houses, those changes should have been properly thought through in the way my hon. Friend is encouraging us to do.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) on introducing this Bill. It is a pity that he was not able to incorporate in it some of my ideas in the House of Lords (Maximum Membership) Bill, which is also on today’s Order Paper. Some of my Bill’s provisions dealing with retirement are perfectly apposite to his Bill. If his Bill reaches a Committee of the whole House, some ideas from my Bill may well be taken forward by him in the form of new clauses or amendments. I am grateful that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) made specific reference to his view that we should have a maximum number of peers and that it should be 650, which is exactly what is contained in clause 1 of my Bill.
My Bill sets out a retirement process for peers on a different basis from that proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire, but it does, as I mentioned in an intervention, deal with the issue of incentives for retirement. Clause 5 of my Bill refers to the ability to convert, whereby the title of someone seeking to retire becomes a hereditary one on retirement. That would provide an incentive, not an expensive one, and it would address the issue of a lack of incentive and of compensation, which seems to be very much at the forefront of my hon. Friend’s Bill.
As has come out in the debate, clause 4 of the Bill, which deals with the effect of ceasing to be a Member, is silent on the issue of any costs. Would, for example, severance payments be made? Could we ensure that there was no guarantee of, or no entitlement to, severance payments? I imagine that the issue of whether money should be paid out of central funds to compensate people who cease to be Members would be a matter for the other place. However, that should be specifically excluded from the provisions of this Bill, so that in no circumstances could a Bill which made provision for retirement from the House of Lords be an additional and significant charge on public funds.
As we recall, the Prime Minister has been very hot on the issue of reducing the cost of politics, although he was not able to reduce the numbers in this House because of the duplicitous way in which the minority Government party and the Liberal Democrat leader behaved. Meanwhile, however, the Prime Minister has been increasing significantly the numbers in the other place, and that has added significantly to the cost of politics. So the cost of politics, far from being reduced, is going up substantially. On the way back to this House yesterday, I was looking at the Daily Mail, which was forecasting that yet another tranche of new peers is going to be appointed very soon—perhaps the Minister wishes to intervene on that point. That will increase their number even beyond what we have now.
I do not know whether one reason for the visits to China by the Prime Minister and the Mayor of London was to see the Chinese second Chamber, which is the world’s largest. Our House of Lords is exceeded in size only by the Parliament of the Chinese Republic. Having regard to the relatively modest population in this country compared with that of China, I am not sure that we should be pleased that we have a Chamber of Parliament that is second in size only to that in the Republic of China. The case for reducing the number of people in the House of Lords through having a maximum number is very strong. Having said that, I am not sure that the way that the Bill goes about it is right in its present form.
Clause 1 refers to the issue of retirement or resignation. Essentially, those words have the same meaning. The long title of the Bill makes provision for retirement from the House of Lords; it does not refer to resignation. Obviously, those who were looking at the drafting of the Bill realised that the term “resignation” effectively came within the concept of retirement. The use of the word “resignation” rather than “retirement” is an issue of semantics rather than of substance.
However, I am concerned that clause 1 does not make it clear whether, and if so how, it applies to their lordships spiritual and to hereditary peers. At the moment, it seems to apply to all peers, but I am not sure it would be appropriate for the Bill to introduce rules relating to the retirement or resignation of their lordships spiritual or to hereditary peers. However, that is not spelt out in the Bill.
I am concerned also, in clause 2, about the issue of non-attendance. There are many ways of defining non-attendance and the Bill sets out some of them, but as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset made very clear, one may well be a Member of the other place but not choose to attend. For example, at the moment Baroness Ashton finds herself too preoccupied with trying to rule us from Brussels to be able to attend the other place. One might argue that, in that case, it would be a good idea if she was forced to resign, or indeed expelled, from that place, but that is a separate argument and it is not covered by the Bill. However, there is a wide range of reasons why someone might wish not to attend the other House.
Many of the witnesses who attended the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee discussions on these issues made the point that the relative number of people who would wish to retire at the moment is very modest, so because most of those who would wish to retire do not attend anyway, the provisions relating to retirement would have no significant impact on the numbers in the House of Lords. Those who are currently not attending would be faced under clause 2 with the threat that if they carried on not attending, they would be deprived of their membership, so those people might be given a perverse incentive to start attending. The Clerk of the Parliaments has said that the biggest problem with the other place is not the people who do not turn up, but the fact that so many people do turn up, with the pressure on resources.
Clause 2 is misconceived. It deals with a presentational point. Their lordships seem to think that if there is a suggestion that some people are not very regular attenders, that causes reputational damage to their lordships House. But as we have discussed, there may be any number of reasons why those people choose not to attend, and if, in any event, under the provisions of the Bill, they could receive a certificate from the Lord Speaker to the effect that, notwithstanding their lack of attendance, they could still carry on as Members of the other place, that undermines that provision of the Bill.
The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee took all that evidence, and we produced a report. Some people—even the Minister on the Front Bench today—said that they were wholly in support of everything that is in the Bill. I think that is going a bit far. Sadly, I was not able to be present at the meeting at which the Committee examined the final report and considered possible amendments. If I had been able to contribute at that stage, I certainly would have tabled some amendments.
Having said that, the report accepts that there is a case for dealing with some of the issues covered in the Bill. The strongest case relates to clause 3, on people who have committed offences, because it would bring the Lords in line with what happens in this House to a greater extent. Even on that clause, however, I have some concerns.
As soon as somebody was convicted of a criminal offence and sentenced to a year or more of imprisonment, he would automatically cease to be a Member of the other place. That would apply even before any appeals process had been exhausted. Someone might be convicted in the Crown court and wish to appeal against the sentence, but before the appeal they would lose their position in the other place.
If one wants to go along with the idea of clause 3, it would be much fairer to provide that a person ceased to be Member of the other place after they had been convicted and sentenced to imprisonment in excess of one year, but also after all their rights of appeal had been exhausted. That would still not cover someone seeking an appeal in future through the administrative process by which people can have their convictions reviewed, but the provision in clause 3 should apply only after the right of immediate appeal against a sentence has been utilised and proved unsuccessful, or after the person in question has chosen not to use it.
I agree wholeheartedly with what my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset said about convictions having to be from courts in the United Kingdom. Criminal legal services operate in contrasting ways in different countries, and if we are to deprive people of the right to be Members of our legislature, we should say that a conviction by a court overseas has no effect. We should not leave it to the Lord Speaker to issue a certificate on that issue.
As we heard in the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, the previous Lord Speaker, Baroness Hayman, and some others of their lordships, are keen to extend the provisions of the Bill into the area of expulsion of Lords who are guilty of conduct that brings their House into disrepute. The previous Lord Speaker, along with the noble Lord Goodlad and one or two other witnesses, told us that that would be a good idea. However, the points that my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset made show that we must be extremely nervous about what the impact would be if their lordships tried to extend the range of conduct—misdemeanours as well as criminal law offences—that they considered sufficient to deprive somebody of being able to be a Member of the Lords. Even in this House, we do not have the power to expel Members who have not been convicted by the criminal courts, and it is not sensible to give such powers to the other place.
Mr Nuttall
Does my hon. Friend think that clause 3(2) is unnecessary, and that the Bill could manage just as easily without any requirement for the Lord Speaker to issue a certificate? The Bill could simply say that if someone was convicted, they would cease to be a Member of the House of Lords, and still retain the provision in clause 3(6).
Mr Chope
Yes, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. This is another issue on which there might be amendments. I am concerned about how the Bill will proceed, assuming that it gets its Second Reading today, because if it does not go to a Committee of the whole House, it is quite likely that there will be so many amendments that people will want to move and debate that the Bill could end up taking up all the time available for discussion on Fridays; that is another good reason why it should go to a Committee of the whole House.
I should not sit down before commenting on what my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset said about the potentially ageist nature of the reference to retirement in the legislation. I have the privilege of representing the constituency with the largest proportion of residents aged over 65; the proportion is just over 35%. Obviously, that means that a much higher proportion than that are able to vote in elections, because those under 18 are excluded from doing so. I therefore have a particular reason for saying that it is important that the older generation be properly represented in this House and the other place.
Quite a lot of people see it as their objective in life to try to bring in, directly or indirectly, a restriction on the age until which people can participate in our democracy in a representative capacity. We should be hostile to those moves. That is another reason why I have always been against the idea of a retirement scheme for their lordships that is based just on age. The proposal in the House of Lords (Maximum Membership) Bill, to which I referred earlier, would not require people to retire based on their age; retirement would relate to the date when they first became Members, which can be a completely different kettle of fish.
As my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire said, the Bill is, on any view, a modest measure, but many modest measures have been brought before the House. Some of the Bills in my name further down the Order Paper are very modest measures—two clauses at most—but that does not mean that they will find favour with the Government Front Benchers.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Just to help, if the hon. Gentleman were to finish speaking now, we might be able to get to those modest measures.
Mr Chope
I am not that naive; there are two Bills after this one before we get to any of mine. The Government have already indicated that, although the House of Lords (Maximum Membership) Bill has received the Queen’s consent, that does not mean that it has their support. I live in hope, but as I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans), who is in charge of the next Bill to be discussed, nobody’s performance or career in this House should be judged on how many private Members’ Bills they have been able to get on the statute book.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Does my hon. Friend think that a contribution to the House should be judged on the number of Bills an hon. Member stops getting on to the statute book?
Mr Chope
I am not sure about that, in those blunt terms. It is often not clear how a Bill is stopped in its tracks. We know that the House of Lords Reform Bill was stopped in its tracks not by dealing with the issues of substance, but by a procedural device in relation to the programme motion. It may well be that when a vote is called shortly, I hope, on the proposal from my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset, we will see how many Members are here who wish to participate.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am sorry to disappoint my hon. Friend. If fewer than 35 Members participate in the Division on the committal to a Committee of the whole House, that does not have the same effect as if fewer than 35 had voted on Second Reading. It will have no effect, ultimately.
Mr Chope
We can test it in due course.
The Bill, albeit modest, would need a great deal of change before it would be worthy to go on to the statute book. Once again, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire on introducing it. This debate sends out a warning shot to those in the other place that if they send to this House Bills relating to their own House which they want us to endorse, we will not do so unless we have had a chance to consider them fully.
Dan Byles
With the leave of the House, I should like to sum up. I was not aware before I moved Second Reading that I would be rowing into the Bermuda triangle, as I was told earlier. It has been noted that I have in the past rowed across the Atlantic ocean in a wooden rowing boat in 101 days, so I like to think that if any of us can navigate our way through this particular Bermuda triangle, I will have as good a crack at it as anybody.
I thank all the hon. Members who have taken part in the debate for their thoughtful contributions. One of the features of Friday sittings is that those who come to take part are often the most knowledgeable about these matters and therefore perhaps make the most helpful contributions. I have listened carefully to many of their contributions, and I thank them for the positive tone. Everybody has been gracious about the purpose behind the Bill. I do not detect that any of those who intervened with legitimate concerns and issues have done so with the intention of undermining or killing the Bill. They are genuinely raising points that they feel will make the Bill better and I thank them for that.
It remains my intention to find the best path forward to achieve the measures in the Bill. I remind the House that these are measures that, in one form or another, the Lords have voted on and called for. No Bill starts out perfect. I very much hope that the Bill will progress to Committee and that I will be able to learn the lessons of much that has been discussed here today, table some sensible amendments in Committee to put at ease the minds of colleagues who have spoken, and enable them to support the Bill as it moves forward.
I want to respond to one or two points that were made. Rather than respond in an intervention, I have made a note of them. I am conscious of the ping-pong concern of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), which is an interesting point. It is probably not an easy point to get around. Unless one were to bar former peers from standing again for the House of Commons, which would remove for life a right that every other non-peer in the nation has, I do not think there is an easy solution. I would be interested to look into whether a time bar solution could be achieved and would be legal.
The ageist point is interesting too. Between my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset, I am between a rock and a hard place. Apparently, to resign is sordid and nasty and one should not even consider resigning from the House of Lords, yet to retire is ageist, so quite what the right word is I do not know. I come back to my perhaps naive plea earlier that we should be grown-ups about what we are seeking to achieve without being too pedantic about the wording.
Dan Byles
Absolutely. I believe that Lord Steel, on his fifth attempt, started using the term “cessation of membership.” Perhaps they have had these discussions as well and that might be what we do.
My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset suggested that no peer was ever removed for idleness—
Dan Byles
I am very sensitive to that view and understand it. We face an interesting dilemma. I would like the Lords to be able to regulate themselves much more in those ways, yet there are constraints on what they can do in that respect, and they have asked us for those measures previously by passing them in their own House and then sending them to us. Once again, we are between a rock and a hard place on the best way to proceed.
I am also very conscious of the concern my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) expressed about the possibility that we might end up seeing financial inducements and what they might look like. The Bill certainly makes no argument in favour of that.
I take issue with the suggestion from my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch made that the non-attendance issue is purely about presentation. He seemed to suggesting, “One can already have a leave of absence, and that does not cost anything, so what does it matter?” Actually, the status of a peer who is on leave of absence is a very grey area. They could be on leave of absence for 10 years and then come back, so can they be replaced? What if we ended up with half of all peers being on leave of absence? We could not replace them with new working peers because we would not know if any of them were ever going to come back. I understand his point, but I do not think that it is purely about presentation, because there are also practical implications. We need to know whether someone is a Member of the House of Lords or not and whether they are going to be taking part in business.
Dan Byles
I have a great deal of sympathy with that view. Again, so as not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, I did not include something on that in the measure. We might get on to my hon. Friend’s Bill later today, when we can discuss that point.
I will mention the foreign courts issue briefly, because it has been raised a number of times. I have discussed it prior to today with a number of hon. Members. I am very sensitive to the question of whether a conviction in a foreign court should deprive a peer of the realm of their place in the House of Lords. I do not think that it is as clear cut as saying, “Let’s simply make it UK courts.” It would be very difficult if a peer was convicted of an offence in Australia and New Zealand, or somewhere that has a relatively unimpeachable judicial system that compares to our own, and sentenced to two years imprisonment, if that offence would warrant a two-year sentence here. There would be no way to remove them, whereas they would have been removed if they had been convicted and sentenced for the same offence in the UK. Again, I am open to discussing whether the wording in the Bill is exactly right and seeing whether there is a better way of doing that. I am sensitive to people’s concerns about the foreign courts issue and have heard them loud and clear.
I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and colleagues and sincerely hope that they will be able to support the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
Tributes to Baroness Thatcher
Christopher Chope Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
It was on Monday, when I was in eastern Europe monitoring elections, that I heard the sad news of Margaret’s death. In a sense, it was appropriate that I was out in eastern Europe witnessing democracy in action. In my view, that would not have been possible but for the work Margaret Thatcher did in destroying communism and opening up eastern Europe to proper democracy.
We have heard brilliant tributes today, led by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, who encapsulated, as did the Leader of the Opposition, so many of the values we hold dear when we remember Margaret Thatcher. I was grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for reminding the House of the difference between consensus and conviction. That is the problem that many Government Members have—the coalition muddles consensus and conviction, which those of us who are conviction politicians find incredibly frustrating.
The theme I should like briefly to pursue is compassion, on which my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) spoke so eloquently. Margaret Thatcher was a passionate Conservative, but she was also a compassionate Conservative. When I first met her in 1976—I was then chairman of Putney Conservatives—she visited an old people’s day centre in Putney, where I saw her in action. She spoke to every single person in the day centre sitting room. She, as leader of the Conservative party, knelt down in order to be able to converse meaningfully with those who could not speak to her easily. That, for me, was a demonstration of her humility and compassion.
People have spoken about the way in which Margaret Thatcher would write letters to colleagues who had been bereaved and so on. A few years ago, my wife was in hospital. The flowers from Margaret Thatcher arrived before my own, which was rather embarrassing. That was the extent to which she was on the ball with her generosity and kindness not only to colleagues, but to their wives.
I agreed with Margaret Thatcher on almost everything. The only big issue on which I disagreed with her fundamentally was her decision not to stand in the second ballot in 1990. If she had stood, I think that she would have won and that the course of history would have been different. I am sad that those of us who went into her study that evening to persuade her to change her mind were unsuccessful. It was typical of her that she sent special notes to all of us who had tried to persuade her to stay on. It was a humiliating experience for that fantastic Prime Minister. Having been in that study and seen her condition, I would not wish it on anybody. Somebody who had served her country with such distinction and who had been a global leader in bringing freedom to much of eastern Europe was humiliated by people whom she thought were her friends and colleagues. I thought and still think that that was intolerable. May that sort of thing never happen again.
In 1997, Margaret came and supported my election campaign in Christchurch, where we were trying to overturn the majority of about 16,000 that the Liberal Democrats had won in the 1993 by-election. That was her first outing in the campaign. She was confronted by the press because one of our colleagues who was standing in Tatton had suddenly hit the headlines. Margaret demonstrated her ability to deal with the press with a phrase or, as in this case, a very short sentence that could not result in any follow-up. When asked about Neil Hamilton, she said, “Nobody is perfect.” In those three words, she closed down the conversation, because she was not passing judgment on his case, but saying something that applies to all of us. That is an example of how she was able to deal with the press and choose words that were effective.
Later on the same visit, we went on a private visit to the Priory primary school in Christchurch, where Margaret demonstrated other attributes: the ability to listen and the ability to speak her mind. She said to a nine-year-old, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” He said, “I want to be a musician.” She paused and stared with her wonderful eyes at this young man and said, “And what else do you want to be?” That demonstrated that she did nothing for effect. When she asked somebody a question, she was willing to listen to the answer and make a comment. She gave that person the benefit of her views, whether they liked it or not. I hope that that individual is now a successful musician. If he is not, I hope that he has a back-up, which is what she was saying he ought to have.
It is a fantastic privilege to have this opportunity to pay tribute to, in my view, the greatest Prime Minister of all time. Sometimes one sits in the Chamber and it takes a long time to be called, but it has been a privilege to gather together today and listen to every contribution. If the debate goes on until 10 o’clock, as I hope it will, that will be some compensation for the loss of this great lady.
Collective Ministerial Responsibility
Christopher Chope Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bayley. The debate is surprisingly topical. Only two hours ago in the Chamber, in response to an urgent question from the Opposition, the Minister responsible for press regulation, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, answered on behalf of not the Government, but the Conservative party, which I thought was rather bizarre. There followed a contribution from the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech)—who is not a member of the Government or part of ministerial collective responsibility—who purported to make a statement on behalf of the Liberal Democrat party. Surely the whole purpose of collective ministerial responsibility is to ensure that there is certainty outside about the Government’s view on a particular issue, so that they do not speak with forked tongue.
Although I welcome the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith), who will respond to the debate, I am rather disappointed that the Prime Minister is not here in person, because it was primarily his failure to answer my written questions on how he exercises collective ministerial responsibility that caused me to request the debate.
I started asking questions about the subject in December. I asked the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr Maude)—to whom my question to the Prime Minister was transferred—about the number of occasions on which collective ministerial responsibility had been set aside in this Parliament. I received a non-answer. I then went to ask some questions directly of the Prime Minister, but again my questions were not answered. Some of those non-answers are referred to in the briefing that is available to hon. Members. I will not go through those answers, because they are not answers. I could not understand why the Prime Minister was so reluctant to be accountable to Members of Parliament and put a straight answer to a straight question on how many occasions collective ministerial responsibility had been set aside.
After the set of answers—or non-answers—from the Prime Minister, I asked specific questions about what had happened in relation to the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill last month. During consideration of Lords amendments, the Leader of the House of Commons announced that collective ministerial responsibility had been set aside—the first time that we have heard officially that that has happened—and, in answer to my intervention, explained that that was the Prime Minister’s decision. Following that, I asked the Prime Minister on what day he had set aside ministerial responsibility in relation to the Bill and the reasons for that. I have had no answers to those questions; in fact, I have had a deliberate refusal to answer. I cannot understand why, because I thought that the Government were interested in transparency and openness and that they would want to put their answers on the record.
My last stab at trying to get some answers from the Prime Minister was in the form of questions, which were answered on Monday this week. I asked,
“what the arrangements are for informing Ministers of the setting aside of collective ministerial responsibility in respect of votes in the House”
and
“on how many occasions a formal Cabinet decision has been made to set aside collective ministerial responsibility in the last 12 months.”
The answer I received was:
“It has been the practice of successive Governments not to disclose information relating to internal discussions”—
I did not ask about internal discussions, of course—
“information or forums in which decisions are made.”—[Official Report, 11 February 2013; Vol. 558, c. 462W.]
Apparently that is the Government’s policy.
However, that does not fit in well with a report in The Daily Telegraph on 15 January, by Tim Ross, about the “revolt”—as he put it—in the upper Chamber by six of the seven Liberal Democrat Front Benchers, who voted against the coalition Government on the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill. He wrote:
“Downing Street said Prime Minister David Cameron would seek to overturn the amendment in the Commons, but without an overall…majority the parliamentary arithmetic is against him. The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg had formally agreed to suspend the convention of ‘collective responsibility’ which applies to all Cabinet ministers on Government decisions. No. 10 said the decision to suspend ministerial responsibility, agreed before the Lords vote yesterday, was ‘the first time it has happened under this Coalition’.”
In a sense, a No. 10 spokesman was giving answers to my parliamentary questions, which the Prime Minister himself had refused to answer before the House. I find that extraordinary.
The situation was compounded. The article continued:
“Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, witnessed and recorded the agreement between the Tory and Lib Dem leaders yesterday and ruled that the approach was permissible under current rules governing the ministerial code.”
Where does that fit in with the non-answer that I received from the Prime Minister, saying that it is not the practice to disclose information relating to internal discussions, information or forums in which decisions are made?
The article continued:
“‘Having consulted the Cabinet Secretary they (Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg) have recorded their agreement to set aside collective responsibility on this occasion,’ the spokesman said.”
My concerns are, first, to see whether we can get the issue of collective ministerial responsibility out in the open, and secondly, to chide the Government and the Prime Minister—I have to name him, as head of the Government —for not following the policy that he has said he would follow, which is to promote transparency in government.
In a speech the Prime Minister made on 26 May 2009, titled “Fixing broken politics”, he said, under the sub-heading of “Transparency”, that
“there’s one more item on the agenda: transparency. Ask most people where politics happens and they’d paint a picture of tight-knit tribes making important decisions in wood-panelled rooms, speaking a strange language. If we want people to have faith and get involved, we need to defeat this impression by opening politics up—making everything transparent, accessible and human. And the starting point for reform should be a near-total transparency of the political and governing elite, so people can see what is being done in their name.”
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for spelling out his argument. Before the upper House broke ranks, as it were, when some Liberals voted with the Labour party and most Conservatives voted with the Government, was it clear that that would happen? Those of us who just read the newspapers were told that it was a surprise; we were not told that it was planned in advance by the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a good point, because the revolt was on primary legislation, whereas the only issue on which the Deputy Prime Minister had given notice that he would lead his troops in the opposite direction to the rest of the coalition was when, in August, he said he would withdraw his support for any Boundary Commission proposals put through the House via a statutory instrument. The revolt must have come as a bit of a surprise, but back in August he was giving public notice that he himself would set aside collective Cabinet responsibility, with or without the Prime Minister’s consent. In light of the information I have set out, it seems as though there was no consent at that stage to set aside collective ministerial responsibility.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend express a view in his narrative on whether the principle of collective ministerial responsibility is being applied rather capriciously? I have in mind those Parliamentary Private Secretaries who had to resign their admittedly very junior Government positions because they were in favour of an in/out referendum on Europe, which is now such a mainstream policy that the Opposition are being taunted about whether they, too, subscribe to it. Does he know whether those people have been offered their jobs back and on what definition of collective responsibility they were deprived of them in the first place?
Mr Chope
That is a telling point. All I know is that, for one Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Private Secretary who voted against the Government on tuition fees and consequently was forced to resign her position, it was only a few weeks before she was reinstated, and she has subsequently reached ministerial level. That is the rule that seems to apply to minority members of the coalition. As far as those on the Conservative side of the coalition are concerned, I have no information that suggests any Parliamentary Private Secretary who has been forced to resign has subsequently been reinstated, even if their reinstatement would coincide with a change of Government policy.
On the face of it, double standards seem to be operating, which is why transparency on the rules that apply to Parliamentary Private Secretaries is important. I hope my hon. Friend the Minister will be rather more forthcoming than the Prime Minister has been so far, because collective ministerial responsibility is a developing subject. We have already heard the Prime Minister, having initially said that he has not made up his mind, publicly say that, in the event of an in/out referendum in the next Parliament, which we all welcome, it would not be possible for members of his Government to vote for us to leave the European Union if he, the Prime Minister, were of the opinion that we should stay in the European Union. Collective ministerial responsibility apparently will not, therefore, be set aside on that very important issue, on which divisions within the Conservative party, and indeed across parties, go very deep.
Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)
If the Prime Minister were not to achieve the great repatriation of powers that he expects, and if he were to choose instead to lead the campaign to leave the European Union, would the same provisions for collective responsibility apply?
Mr Chope
I do not know, but it is a good question. Unfortunately, the only way to receive an on-the-record response to that question from the Prime Minister is by tabling a parliamentary question. So far, there are no responses to such questions on the record, but perhaps the Minister will be able to enlighten my hon. Friend with an answer.
Obviously, a lot of people are saying, “If we are to have a renegotiation, we should wait to see the outcome before deciding whether we wish to leave.” That view is taken, for example, by the Mayor of London, and it seems odd to announce at this stage that in the future, irrespective of how much or how little is clawed back as a result of renegotiation, no one will be allowed to vote against the Government by voting to leave the European Union, without giving up their ministerial position. Of course that is different from when we last had a referendum on the European Union, when it was possible for members of the Government to campaign on either side of the argument.
Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)
My hon. Friend referred to Parliamentary Private Secretaries resigning over European votes, even though what they resigned over is now effectively Government policy, but what about casualties of the vote on House of Lords reform? The interpretation of many Conservatives, including me, is that they were not voting against their Government because the coalition agreement simply stated that a committee would be established to bring forward proposals, yet they lost their jobs. Just a few months later, they see Liberal Democrat Ministers walking through the Lobby to vote against coalition policy although there was not a comma between the reform of parliamentary boundaries and the alternative vote referendum.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend makes a good point that demonstrates the inconsistency, and the feeling of unfairness, or even injustice, that it generates among parliamentary colleagues. That is why I hope for clarification on to what extent, if at all, the Government have altered the concept of collective ministerial responsibility. It seems to many, including from a number of comments made by Liberal Democrats, that notwithstanding what is said in the coalition agreement and the guidance for Ministers, there has been a change in the approach to collective ministerial responsibility.
One of the problems is that the Deputy Prime Minister cannot differentiate between collective ministerial responsibility and collective responsibility. He sees everything in terms of coalition, and thinks that Back-Bench Members of either the Conservative party or the Liberal Democrats have responsibility equal to that of members of the coalition Government, which is palpably wrong.
At oral questions yesterday, I asked the Deputy Prime Minister whether he would
“make it a priority to introduce transparency into collective ministerial responsibility, which seems to be being set aside without any proper accountability to the public or the House”.
He replied:
“As the hon. Gentleman and I have discussed before, collective responsibility prevails where there is a collective agreement and a collective decision on which collective responsibility is based. It is not easy, and certainly not possible to enforce collective responsibility in the absence of a collective decision taken first.”—[Official Report, 12 February 2013; Vol. 558, c. 697.]
I think A-level English language students will in due course be asked to interpret that. By muddling up collective ministerial responsibility and collective party political responsibility, the Deputy Prime Minister demonstrates a lack of understanding of the significance and importance of the concept of collective ministerial responsibility; its importance is that it gives certainty to people outside who want to know about Government policy.
The Liberal Democrats have a history of speaking with forked tongue. They often enunciate a different policy for different groups of potential electors, or electors in different parts of the country, because they think no one will check on the inconsistencies between policies. It seems as though their attitude towards speaking with forked tongue is tainting the whole Government.
I worry that a lack of intellectual rigour is being brought to the issue. That goes to the heart of the governance of our country. It is not just an academic topic to be discussed in essays; it bears on how the Government operate, the predictability with which they operate and, most importantly, the information available to people who rely on Government decisions. As I said at the outset, the situation today is that nobody knows the Government’s view on press regulation, because all that we had in response to the urgent question were statements in the House from party spokesmen. The issue will develop further in future, which is why we need proper accountability.
In a debate on 29 January, I asked my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to tell us who had set aside collective responsibility and, if it was the Prime Minister, why. He said:
“My hon. Friend will be aware that the Prime Minister has responsibility for the ministerial code. Indeed, when ministerial collective responsibility is explicitly set aside, it is the Prime Minister who makes that decision”—
the Prime Minister alone, not the Deputy Prime Minister. The Leader of the House continued:
“He is clearly doing it, as the House will understand, in the context of coalition government.” —[Official Report, 29 January 2013; Vol. 557, c. 807-8.]
When I asked the Prime Minister about that, all I got was a reference back to what the Leader of the House had said, even though according to the Leader of the House, the Prime Minister is solely responsible, and therefore accountable for the policy.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. Cannot the entirety of what he is saying be summed up in one sentence? I speak with some experience from Northern Ireland. When political parties and philosophies in a coalition are diametrically opposed, inevitably we will end up with the problem that he is trying to rationalise.
Mr Chope
I submit that we should not necessarily end up with that problem. We know that one of the disadvantages of coalition government is that it leads to indecision, lowest common denominator decision-making and so on, but lowest common denominator decision-making does at least have a lowest common denominator. What we seem to have is a Government who take two parallel decisions at the same time and pick and mix.
That is evidenced further by the answer given yesterday to complaints about the change in the Government’s approach to inheritance tax. The answer, given by the Secretary of State for Health, was that there is an important difference between promises made by the Conservatives while in opposition and pledges made after the coalition agreement:
“That commitment on inheritance tax was a Conservative manifesto commitment. It’s not in the coalition agreement, so there is an important difference”.
It is not in the coalition agreement, but it is not specifically ruled out of the agreement either. Now the coalition and the agreement are being used as excuses for basically ripping up any policy that the Government do not like and replacing it with another. That is creating a lot of confusion among people outside, who are wondering where that leaves manifestos. We vote for parties on the basis of manifestos. If at the next general election a lot of people vote for the Conservative party on the basis that they will get an in/out referendum, and we then find that we do not have an overall majority and enter into some sort of coalition agreement, the manifesto pledge on which we got so many millions of votes will be torn up.
Dr Julian Lewis
I am afraid that I am surprised that my hon. Friend has taken so long to realise that the creation of the coalition automatically meant the ripping up of the manifestos, except in so far as the manifesto policies were identical to those in the coalition agreement. Wherever they were not, all bets were off. That is what is so undemocratic about coalition politics.
I have a question to put to my hon. Friend. Let us say that our starting point is what was in the coalition agreement, forgetting about the manifestos. What does he think should happen under collective ministerial responsibility if one of the parties to the coalition agreement decides that, after all, it is not going to abide by a particular policy to which it signed up? What sanction would the Prime Minister have, for example, if the Deputy Prime Minister decided to renege? Would he basically sack the entire Liberal Democrat party from the coalition? Can we live in hope of that?
Mr Chope
I know that my hon. Friend and I come from a similar position on this issue; neither of us was an enthusiast of the coalition in the first place. I certainly went on record as saying that we would have been much better off having a minority Government untainted by the Liberal Democrats.
To answer my hon. Friend, that is a question for the Prime Minister. He is solely responsible for collective ministerial responsibility. If he had chosen not to set aside collective ministerial responsibility in relation to the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill, it probably would have been the end of the coalition. He would have ordered the Deputy Prime Minister to resign on the basis that he had breached collective ministerial responsibility, along with all the other Liberal Democrat Ministers who had done so. Then he could either have carried on with a minority Conservative Government and given people such as my hon. Friend the opportunity to join the Government as a Minister. Or, if there had been a subsequent vote of no confidence, we would have had a general election.
However, we cannot carry on like this, gradually eroding the principle of collective ministerial responsibility without anybody being held properly to account. Either the coalition Government stick together on the basis of collective ministerial responsibility or they break asunder, leading to an early general election, which I would certainly favour; that is my personal view. Otherwise, we face two years ahead during which there will be an increasing amount of muddle on these issues. We have only seen the beginning of it so far.
I am delighted that other hon. Members have come along to participate in this debate, as it is important. Although I would have been happy to have a half-hour Adjournment debate, it demonstrates that a much wider audience is interested in the issue, including colleagues from all parties.
Sir Nick Harvey
It is certainly not for me to speak for the Prime Minister or the Government, because I am no longer a member of the Government. However, my hon. Friend is right: the question is about the nature of the agreement made. At the outset of a five-year term, an attempt is made to agree a coalition agreement that is to run for the five years. Such an agreement was novel territory in UK politics. We had not seen one for a long time. There were pressing economic circumstances in May 2010, as there still are today, and the judgment was made by both sides in the negotiation that speed was of the essence. However, if historians draw any lessons from this experience, they will surely come to the view that we may have something to learn from the experiences typical in continental Europe, where coalitions are negotiated over weeks, or even months.
Agreements reached in a matter of a few short days, however comprehensive they seek to be, cannot by definition possibly take account of every twist or turn that current affairs or political life will take in the five years that follow. There are, of course, “Events, dear boy, events.” Governments will have to take a position on issues that they had not anticipated at the start of a five-year term; that is inevitable. Collective responsibility, in the sense in which we have understood it, can exist only where there is a collective view, a collective agreement and a collective decision between the two parts of the coalition that they will proceed in a certain way. Where something breaks down or has not been anticipated, or something new arises on which the two parties are unable to reach agreement, it is inevitable that we will not be able to apply a traditional doctrine of collective ministerial responsibility. We should not fret about that or worry ourselves unduly about it.
Transparency has been mentioned. On the point that the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) made with reference to Northern Ireland, when there are two parties in a coalition, the world can see, recognise and understand that there are differences of view because there are different underlying philosophies. That is healthy and transparent. In Labour’s years in office, there was the running soap opera of the view in No. 10 and the view in No. 11 Downing street. I should have thought that the differences of view between the wings of that Government were every bit as large as those within the coalition, but there was no transparency there—nobody could really see or understand the debates. We relied on the columns of Mr Andrew Rawnsley and others, who provided us with a running commentary on what they thought was going on. It is far more transparent when two parties with acknowledged differences are conducting a debate. There will always be occasions when the two parties are not able to reach an agreement. Therefore, inevitably, the doctrine of ministerial responsibility cannot be applied.
Mr Chope
My hon. Friend has enunciated a perfectly reasonable proposition, but unfortunately it does not fit in with the express provisions of the ministerial code, which was revised immediately after the general election to take account of the coalition. Why is he enunciating a proposition that is not reflected in the exact words of the ministerial code?
Sir Nick Harvey
I am not saying that the ministerial code is perfect in every detail—I do not think for one moment that it is—but I am not entirely sure that it is as deficient or inapplicable in the circumstances that I have been describing as the hon. Gentleman suggests. He said that the responsibility is very much at the top, with the Prime Minister carrying the responsibility for the way that the collective ministerial responsibility provision operates. That is quite correct.
During my short spell in government, I was surprised at the extent to which more or less all Government business seemed to be escalated to No. 10 and the Cabinet Office, and seemed to be resolved on the desks of the Prime Minister and, in most cases, the Deputy Prime Minister. If we recall the provisions of the coalition agreement at the outset, they were that documents passing the Prime Minister’s desk were also to pass the desk of the Deputy Prime Minister.
The hon. Gentleman’s assertion that responsibility for setting aside the ministerial code, where it is set aside, lies with the Prime Minister is basically correct. Given the way the Government conduct their business, things seem to end up either in a one-to-one negotiation between the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister or in the quad—the quadrilateral meeting that brings into play the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. It is at the absolute top that the conclusion has to be drawn that agreement cannot be reached on a particular matter.
Effectively, responsibility for setting aside the collective responsibility provision lies with the Prime Minister. He faces a choice. He must decide, in discussion with the Deputy Prime Minister, whether there is a collective view on the subject matter at hand. If there is not, he must conclude whether that is so serious and fatal to the ongoing continuity of the coalition that—this is precisely the choice that the hon. Members for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), and for Christchurch, hypothesised about—the coalition must be ended, or whether it is just a tiresome irritant that will have to be taken on the chin, with the overriding work of the coalition continuing, regardless. It is always open to the Prime Minister to arrive at that judgment.
I completely understand that some Conservative Back Benchers are not great enthusiasts for the coalition, but I should not have thought that a day when the opinion polls showed Labour at 41% and the Conservatives at 29% was quite the optimal moment to aspire to an early general election.
I urge the hon. Members for Christchurch, and for New Forest East, to have a jolly good look at the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, because it simply is not the case that ending the coalition, and the Government ceasing to be able to hold their own in a vote of confidence, results in a general election; it would have done previously, but, now that the Act has been passed, bringing about a general election is a very different proposition altogether. The removal of the Government requires a simple majority, but the early dissolution of Parliament requires a two-thirds majority in the House of Commons. Numerically, that can be achieved only if, on the same day, the Conservative and Labour parties feel they have an interest in an early general election.
As a mental exercise, I often try to think of the circumstances in which the Conservatives and the Labour party could both, at exactly the same moment, think it was in their interests to have an early election. Even in the entirely improbable situation that the Liberal Democrat vote had seemingly evaporated to nothing, I cannot see why the Conservatives and the Labour party would both think, at the same time, that it was in their interests to have an early election, so I have concluded that an early election is very improbable indeed.
The alternative to a Conservative minority Government is simply a Labour minority Government, which might appeal to the hon. Member for Christchurch as being quite helpful in the long term. However, an early election is simply not on offer with the ease that hon. Members believe it is.
We have a coalition, which brings together two parties. Where they can agree, we have collective responsibility; where they cannot, we have a free vote—that is, in effect, what happens when collective responsibility is set aside. The Conservative and Liberal Democrat Whips might then attempt a whipping operation to get the two parts of the coalition to vote in line with a party view, but, in Government terms, there is simply a free vote, which is what has happened on the occasions that have been cited.
Miss Smith
I would be only too delighted to engage in that discussion with my hon. Friend, but as he knows, I no longer practise the dark arts carried out by what are known as the usual channels. I regret that I would not be able to do that decision justice; nor could I report back to those who make those decisions, if I even tried.
On the ministerial code, it is important to note that there is clear precedent, as has been said several times today, for suspending collective ministerial responsibility on specific issues, when the Government of the day decide that it is appropriate. A notable example, which we have discussed, is Harold Wilson’s decision on whether the UK should continue to be a member of the European Economic Community. He allowed members of his Cabinet to speak and campaign on both sides.
Let me offer the Chamber a few other historical examples. Shortly after the formation of the national Government in 1931, an “agreement to differ” was agreed. The terms of that were published in The Times in January 1932, and in February that year, the Home Secretary began a speech by commenting on the doctrine of collective responsibility:
“The House will have an opportunity…of discussing fully the departure from the doctrine of collective responsibility which is marked by my appearance at this Box this afternoon”—[Official Report, 4 February 1932; Vol. 261, c. 316.]
It is also helpful to note that in 1977, James Callaghan, the then Prime Minister, said:
“I certainly think that the doctrine should apply, except in cases where I announce that it does not.”—[Official Report, 16 June 1977; Vol. 933, c. 552.]
That demonstrates that the terms, duration and enforcement of the arrangement are ultimately a matter for the Prime Minister.
It is most important to add that the current Government have decided to set collective responsibility aside on some specific occasions. That is a fact of life in a coalition, and it shows how our constitutional practice can evolve to suit new situations.
Mr Chope
The Minister is talking a lot about the history, but can she explain why the Prime Minister was unable to give me a straight answer to my question, asking why he set aside collective ministerial responsibility in respect of the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill, and on what date that decision was taken? Why could the Prime Minister not let me have a straight answer on that?
Miss Smith
I wanted to go on to say, in addressing what I took to be my hon. Friend’s central point—accountability for the decision, when taken, to set aside collective ministerial responsibility—that the key is that Parliament certainly ought to be informed in a way that is appropriate to the instance in hand. I will not comment on whether the Prime Minister did or did not do that for the hon. Gentleman in parliamentary questions, but in the instance of the Lords amendments to the ERA Bill, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House of Commons made such a statement to the House, explaining why he was speaking and how it was that collective responsibility had been set aside. I believe that the explanation has been offered in cases where such a departure has been outlined, and I think that that provides the kind of transparency and accountability that we are all seeking in this important area.
In conclusion, I note that the coalition agreement, in so far as it relates to the debate, sets out specific areas where the normal rule is not expected to apply. The citizens whom we all serve have had the chance to observe that in advance, and so hold us to account. Through that, there is no undermining of the coalition’s shared commitment to reducing the deficit and delivering a radical programme of reform that gets Britain back on track, after the catastrophic position in which it was left in 2010.
It has been possible in my short remarks to address only the notion of accountability for such decisions, but I want to finish by saying that it is vital that we are not distracted from our core task in Government at this time, which is to put right the mess that the Labour party made of Britain.
Oral Answers to Questions
Christopher Chope Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
As the right hon. Gentleman will know, the Commission on a Bill of Rights reported to me and the Secretary of State for Justice. Actually, quite a lot of good work was done on the reform of the European Court of Human rights—the so-called Brighton agenda, which we are pursuing across the coalition.
However, the right hon. Gentleman is right to acknowledge that there is a difference of opinion between those of us who believe that the basic rights and responsibilities offered to every British citizen in the European convention, as reflected in British law in the Human Rights Act, should be a baseline of protection for everybody, and others who wish to see that changed. That disagreement was openly, and in a perfectly grown-up way, reflected in the conclusions of the commission.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend make it a priority to introduce transparency into collective ministerial responsibility, which seems to be being set aside without any proper accountability to the public or the House?
The Deputy Prime Minister
As the hon. Gentleman and I have discussed before, collective responsibility prevails where there is a collective agreement and a collective decision on which collective responsibility is based. It is not easy, and certainly not possible to enforce collective responsibility in the absence of a collective decision taken first.
The Attorney-General
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s message. The view that I express is the view of the United Kingdom Government, and it is backed up by the advice of Professor Crawford and Professor Boyle. The overwhelming weight of international precedent is that, in the event of independence, the remainder of the UK would continue to exercise its international rights and obligations, and that Scotland would form a new state. In those circumstances, Scotland would have to apply to join the European Union.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
But is there not an alternative legal viewpoint, which is that if Scotland were to leave the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom without Scotland would itself have to reapply for membership of the European Union?
European Council
Christopher Chope Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
As I have said, this shows that we should have a very clear bottom line and set of objectives that we want to achieve, and that we must work very closely with partners and allies to try to build up our arguments and alliances. That is what we have done over the single market, where a huge number of countries are backing our view. That is what we are doing over the EU trade deals—I hope we can make further progress on those—and that is also what we must do with our EU reform package.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
May I thank my right hon. Friend for having listened to the House on this issue, and congratulate him on his good judgment in not taking the Deputy Prime Minister with him to negotiate? May I ask him to build on his success by organising an independent audit of the costs and benefits of our membership of the European Union?
The Prime Minister
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his support on this issue. As for the costs and benefits of membership, I think the balance of competences review that will be carried out by the Foreign Office will give everyone the opportunity to make their points about which areas of European endeavour are in our interest and which are not. We should allow that debate to take place.
Oral Answers to Questions
Christopher Chope Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
T10. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that the Cabinet Office keeps a proper record of all the circumstances in which collective ministerial responsibility is set aside, so that we can have some transparency in relation to that process?
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 6 February.
The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)
This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others, and in addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
Mr Chope
I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. I have given him notice of my question, which he may find particularly useful in the sense that it is fair and transparent and also very modern. In response to the many concerns expressed in yesterday’s debate, will he ensure that civil partnerships are open to heterosexual couples on an equal basis with homosexual couples?
The Prime Minister
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me notice of his question. I will obviously listen carefully to what he says, but frankly I am a marriage man. I am a great supporter of marriage. I want to promote marriage, defend marriage, encourage marriage, and the great thing about last night’s vote is that two gay people who love each other will now be able to get married. That is an important advance. We should be promoting marriage, rather than looking at any other way of weakening it.
Commercial Lobbyists (Registration and Code of Conduct) Bill
Christopher Chope Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Thomas Docherty
The hon. Gentleman is entirely right. If he will bear with me for a couple of moments, I will explain exactly how the Bill makes the distinction, and again I would commend to him the PASC report, which talks about that very issue.
A high-profile Bill on equal marriage is coming before the House next Tuesday. Like many Members on both sides of the House, I have received a number of letters from constituents and organisations about it. I will take one example. If my local parish priest were to write to me, either as a constituent or on behalf of his congregation, expressing a view either way, he would not be captured by this definition, because he would not be getting paid to undertake that activity. It would be in addition to his remunerated post. If, however, the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, the Roman Catholic Church or any other Church were to employ a public affairs officer to draft a letter or organise meetings, he or she would clearly be getting paid to organise, either directly or as an adviser, that lobbying activity.
Thomas Docherty
I have a delightful choice. I will give way to the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) first.
Mr Chope
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for trying to explain the distinction. I will give him another example. The noble Lord Mandelson is in receipt of a European Union pension and as a former commissioner is under an obligation to campaign for the EU. He has recently started a lobbying campaign against the UK leaving the EU. Is that commercial lobbying? It is certainly driven by the noble Lord’s financial interest as a former EU commissioner. Should that be registered as well?
Thomas Docherty
I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that example. He will see that we talk about peers in later clauses. With his indulgence, I would like to return later to the issue of peers undertaking lobbying activities later. On the principle, however, if we were to leave the European Union, the pension of the Deputy Prime Minister, for example, as a former euro civil servant, would not be affected. In the same way, that consideration would probably not apply in the case that the hon. Gentleman raises.
Thomas Docherty
There is already a voluntary code for the Association of Professional Political Consultants and for the UK Public Affairs Council, and I understand that a number of countries around the world have codes of conduct. Perhaps it will be helpful if I write to the hon. Gentleman after this short debate, sending him a full list. He raises the valid point that this is not a ground-breaking revolutionary idea.
Thomas Docherty
That is a valid question. I am nervous about answering, however, because I fear we might end up in a cul-de-sac. Under the current European rules, the employees of companies who operate in the UK would be open to sanctions, even if the company is not based in the UK. I hope the hon. Gentleman will forgive me for not getting drawn further into that cul-de-sac today, however.
One of the reasons why I am so passionate about the need for statutory regulation is that voluntary regulation has not worked. Let me give an example of poor behaviour, which I hope will illustrate why it has not worked. One could see it coming a mile off. The vast majority of individuals and organisations involved in public policy lobbying, particularly of Parliament, are credible and honourable, have strongly held views and enjoy the political process. It would be better if there were more people who were interested in the political process.
Let me take as an example the Bill before the House next Tuesday—the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill. There has been a good and lively debate, with representations overwhelmingly made by individuals and organisations in sensible and moderate terms. I know that many colleagues would agree that the language in that debate has been much more appropriate than many of us feared it would be, and the people lobbying on both sides of the debate have conducted themselves in the way that I think we would all want to see. There are, however, some individuals who do not conduct themselves in an appropriate way. I want to talk about one individual and one company of whom I have some knowledge—a company called Invicta Public Affairs and an individual called Mr Mark Cummings.
I first knew Mr Cummings because he was head of the office of the public affairs company where I started working in 2007, so he was technically the chap who hired me to come and work at that company. Mr Cummings left the company about five weeks later under rather a large cloud, partly because it was discovered that he was trying to set up his own business, which is a perfectly legitimate thing for someone to do, and partly because it was becoming apparent that he believed that lobbying should be conducted in a way that perhaps was not appropriate for a company with a long-standing ethos, such as the company I worked for. Let me give the House a couple of examples.
Oral Answers to Questions
Christopher Chope Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Miss Smith
It is the Government’s intention to proceed with the individual electoral registration programme, which will increase and improve the accuracy of the registers we work with. It is really important that we all continue with the support that there is across the House for those proposals.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
Can my hon. Friend guarantee that the next general election will be fought according to the new parliamentary boundaries recommended by the Electoral Commission, and that it will be fought with individual voter registration?
Miss Smith
I think that the answer to my hon. Friend is best given within the point that there will be a vote on those proposals, as I think he knows. On individual electoral registration, I can confirm that the programme is proceeding as planned, and I am happy to give him further details on that.
Votes for 16 and 17-year-olds
Christopher Chope Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Wayne David
For me, the bottom line is that, if a young person aged 16 can give full consent to medical treatment, leave school and enter work or training, pay income tax and national insurance, obtain tax credits and welfare benefits in their own right, consent to sexual relationships, get married or enter a civil partnership, change their name by deed poll—
Wayne David
I am just coming to the end. They may also join the armed forces and become a company director. Surely, if all those things apply, logically, why should voting be exempt?
Oral Answers to Questions
Christopher Chope Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Harper
Again, I remind the right hon. Gentleman that his party did nothing about this when in government. We will take one lesson from his Government: rushing forward with ill-considered legislation that then is not brought into force or which goes wrong when it is introduced and then has to be revisited is not a good way of legislating. We have published a number of Bills in draft so far, in the first Session of this Parliament, including the one dealing with electoral registration. That is a good way of legislating and it is generally supported across this House. It is better to get it right and do it well, rather than rush it and make a bodge of it.
Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
What is my hon. Friend doing to regulate that most destructive form of lobbying—that which comes from Liberal Democrat Back Benchers and is designed to undermine the economic recovery by arguing against the regionalisation of public sector pay and against the Beecroft report?
Mr Harper
Speaking for myself, I enjoy being lobbied by Back Benchers of all descriptions, be they Members from the Government parties or Opposition Members. I am very happy to listen to views. The Government will then move forward with their proposals on lobbying, based on the evidence and on the responses to our consultation.