Local Government Reform

Debate between Christopher Chope and Andrew Turner

Tuesday 6th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) on securing the debate and on his paper.

I believe we need reform, and I welcome this debate, but there are a couple of proposals with which I disagree. First, I do not believe that the role of councillor should be a full-time position with a full-time wage. On the Isle of Wight there is an all-purpose council. There are currently 40 seats, and the council is led by an independent group with a small majority. The basic allowance for a councillor on the Isle of Wight is £7,700 a year. Last year, the average received by 39 councillors—not the leader—was £10,800. Under my hon. Friend’s proposal a council leader would earn £74,000 and the basic salary would be £37,000. I fear that would create a purely economic incentive to stand for the council, and in my view we should not lose the long tradition of the incentive to become a councillor being someone’s dedication to the community they serve.

Secondly, I disagree that one councillor should represent 15,000 residents. That reform would bring down the number of councillors on the island from 40 to seven. One person would represent the entire western area of the island and a ward in the south. For those unfamiliar with our geography, that is a physically large area for one councillor to cover. Having one councillor who represents 15,000 people might be appropriate for an urban situation, but I do not believe it would work well in rural areas. The benefit of having smaller wards is that constituents feel closer to their representative. Many know him or her personally, so their councillor is better positioned to represent them. That is especially important for under-represented groups. An example of that is a ward that is generally one of two represented by the Labour party. I believe that reducing the number of councillors and paying higher wages would disconnect councillors from constituents, and I fear that the effect of my hon. Friend’s proposal would be to turn well-known, devoted, grassroots politicians into more remote and distant figures.

Thirdly, in difficult economic times some proposals that would never be considered in other circumstances might seem tempting, but when looking at reform we must look beyond the short term and find sensible plans that will work long into the future. We are, in fact, already facing local government reforms through the devolution agenda. The Isle of Wight Council—a small local authority with unique challenges—is in a very difficult financial position. Unsurprisingly, a proposal for a mayoral combined authority, with promises of more funding, has tempted the ruling group on the Isle of Wight, but the council leader has told me that he feels we are being pushed into the Solent deal by the Government.

The Isle of Wight now faces the possibility of being combined with Southampton and Portsmouth in a Solent authority. The line being peddled is that the Solent authority would join the councils together, when in fact it would separate them. The situation and needs of the two cities and the island are disparate. The suggestion is that spending plans for the new authority would require unanimity, but what would happen if they could not reach unanimity? I fear that the views of the island council would be overruled and the island would lose out.

[Mr Chope]

Surely the Government have assured us that if individual councils do not go along with a consensus, they effectively have a veto. Indeed, hon. Members of Parliament do as well.

[Mr Turner]

Well, so they say, but the council has been advised that if unanimity fails, two out of three will do. That is what I am told on the Isle of Wight.

I would welcome clarification from the Minister on stories that have been circulated over the summer about the change in Government thinking on directly elected mayors, which may make other, more suitable options possible. I also ask for a commitment to sit down with the Isle of Wight Council to look at how the underlying problems might be resolved until a fairer funding formula is in place, together with an assurance that it will not be pushed hell for leather into a structure that will not suit the long-term interests of the Isle of Wight.

Many cities that decided they did not want a Mayor in 2012 now face one being imposed. There is no single clearcut answer to what form local government should take, but I am sure of one thing: we should not rationalise by making local government bigger, but we should deliver what the people want.

London Local Authorities and Transport for London (No. 2) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Christopher Chope and Andrew Turner

Wednesday 11th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

My hon. Friend raises an important point, but the proposal addresses someone who might be not stealing electricity, but using it unlawfully. In such circumstances, they would have paid for it.

[Mr Chope]

I look forward to hearing my hon. Friend’s speech on the amendments because I am not sure that there is a distinction between using electricity in an unintended way and stealing it.

[Mr Turner]

I am not suggesting that the person has not paid for the electricity. He could have paid for it, but acted unlawfully under the clause.

Collective Ministerial Responsibility

Debate between Christopher Chope and Andrew Turner

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[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.

European Union (Approvals) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Andrew Turner

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

The background to this, as right hon. and hon. Members will know, is that a reduction in the number of EU Commissioners was proposed, but the Irish—among others—said that that would potentially be very unfair on them. They wanted to be guaranteed the right to have a Commissioner and, as part of the compromise deal that was done to try to win the support of the Irish people in a referendum, the concession was made. They were told, “Don’t worry, every country can have an EU Commissioner.” We are now being asked to give approval to the decision relating to the number of EU Commissioners.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Can my hon. Friend explain why it is felt necessary that each country should have a Commissioner?

[Mr Chope]

It is difficult for me to speak for them, but perhaps some countries feel that only if they have a Commissioner of their own will they have sufficient patronage to distribute. It is within the patronage of any Government to appoint an EU Commissioner. For example, we have heard rumours that the way out for the Deputy Prime Minister will be to be appointed the next UK EU Commissioner.