Hunting Trophies (Import Prohibition) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Lord Spellar

2nd reading
Friday 22nd March 2024 Commons Chamber

[John Spellar]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point and for highlighting the level of support. Of course, that was reinforced by the Government themselves in January in their response to the petition instigated by Mr Peter Egan, which said:

“We will continue working to deliver our manifesto commitment to ban the import of hunting trophies from endangered animals, which has overwhelming support from MPs and the public…We recognise that this is an issue that the public feel very strongly about, and over 85% of responses to our consultation supported further action. In the previous Parliamentary session, the Government fully supported the Hunting Trophies Bill during its passage through Parliament. The Bill passed the House of Commons in March 2023, with strong support from MPs, but did not progress through Committee stage in the House of Lords. We will continue working to deliver this important manifesto commitment.”

I hope the Minister will be able to back that up further in her contribution later on. That was reinforced in a reply at the end of January to a letter from a number of Members across the House that the hon. Member for Crawley organised, in which the Minister once again said that there is considerable debate, and that the Government support the Bill and shared the hon. Member’s disappointment that it did not pass through the Commons. It is absolutely clear that whatever our other divisions, we are united in support of a ban.

There is one particular aspect that I want to highlight. We have talked a lot about hunting in the wild, but there is the even more deplorable business of so-called canned hunting, where animals, especially lions, are bred in an enclosure to be shot by depraved individuals who want a trophy. I pay tribute to Lord Ashcroft—again, someone with whom I might disagree on other issues—who has spent a considerable amount of time campaigning on and instigating research into that appalling trade. I hope the Bill will help reduce the attraction to such trade. One firm involved in that dreadful trade advertised that

“Your hunt is never complete, until you receive your animals at home for you to reminisce and re-call your experiences for the rest of your life.”

Do we really want to be associated with people who take that sort of attitude?

I have taken a fair amount of time and a number of interventions. We could go on a lot longer and in a lot more detail, but I recognise that the House will want to make progress, and that colleagues will want to make what I hope will be brief contributions.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman take us through the clauses of the Bill? Clause 4 was incorporated as a result of the acceptance of one of my amendments when this Bill was last debated. Clause 4 has not yet been explained, and I would be interested to know whether the right hon. Gentleman supports it, and how he thinks it will work in practice.

[John Spellar]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, who sits with me on the British-American Parliamentary Group; we are joint officers. I consider him a parliamentary friend. I thank him for highlighting the fact that the Bill was amended to take account of various views. It was carried forward without dissent in this House, and was forwarded to the Lords. That is precisely why the Bill should be voted on again, sent back to the other House, and incorporated into the laws of this land.

Liaison Committee

Debate between Christopher Chope and Lord Spellar

Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Since I objected to this motion going through on the nod the other night, I am surprised that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is moving it formally instead of trying to explain the background to this move. We have always had the system in this House that the Liaison Committee comprises those Members who have been appointed by the House to be Chairs of Select Committees, and those Chairs meet together to comprise the Liaison Committee.

The Liaison Committee is set up under Standing Order No. 145. An appointment was made in this Parliament by the former Member for Uxbridge, Boris Johnson, who as Prime Minister listened sympathetically to representations made by my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), saying that he had not been appointed successfully to be elected to a Select Committee, and would it not be wonderful to break with precedent and create a new post for somebody who was not already a Select Committee Chair, but who would become Chair of the Liaison Committee.

I have no objection to the decision that the former Prime Minister took in appointing my hon. Friend as Chair of the Liaison Committee, but I am concerned that now, with his having been appointed to that Committee, we are engaged in a bit of mission creep. Standing Order No. 145 specifies:

“A select committee shall be appointed, to be called the Liaison Committee”,

and its role shall be

“to consider general matters relating to the work of select committees, to give such advice relating to the work of select committees as may be sought by the House of Commons Commission, and to report to the House its choice of select committee reports to be debated on such days as may be appointed by the Speaker in pursuance of paragraph (15) of Standing Order No. 10 (Sittings in Westminster Hall).

The committee may also hear evidence from the Prime Minister on matters of public policy.”

We know that that is essentially the high-profile role of the Liaison Committee—to try to hold the Prime Minister to account. My hon. Friend, as Chair of that Committee, played a significant role in trying to hold the former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, to account.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will correct me. Is it right that we have a joint strategic Committee—I cannot remember its exact name, but if I had known this subject was coming up I would have looked it up—which I think is chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett)? Surely strategic issues, and strategic security and so on, should be within the remit of that Committee under our current structure.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. We are not short of Committees in this House, and the purpose of Standing Order No. 145 was to set up a Liaison Committee—whether that is a useful exercise is for others to judge. It was approved and set up in the Standing Orders, but now, without vigilance on our part, we will find that that Liaison Committee is becoming almost like a Select Committee in its own right, and carrying out its own inquiries—inquiries that could be carried out by any of the other individual Select Committees. Now, in the motion on the Order Paper, it is seeking funding for the appointment of special advisers to facilitate its work. It seems to me that the case for this measure has not been made. I am sorry, as I said earlier, that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House did not make the case at the beginning of this debate, instead of waiting to respond to the debate later.

Referring again to Standing Order No. 145, it states:

“The committee shall report its recommendations as to the allocation of time for consideration by the House of the estimates on any day or half day which may be allotted for that purpose; and upon a motion being made that the House do agree with any such report the question shall be put forthwith and, if that question is agreed to, the recommendations shall have effect as if they were orders of the House.

Proceedings in pursuance of this paragraph, though opposed, may be decided after the expiration of the time for opposed business.”

Sub-paragraphs (4) to (6) of that Standing Order state:

“The committee shall have power to send for persons, papers and records, to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House…and to report from time to time.

Unless the House otherwise orders, each Member nominated to the committee shall continue to be a member of it for the remainder of the Parliament.

The committee shall have power to appoint two sub-committees, one of which shall be a National Policy Statements sub-committee.”

The Standing Order then sets out what that sub-committee could be comprised of and what it would do. I am not aware of any such sub-committee on national policy statements having yet been appointed, but if I am wrong about that, I am sure I will be corrected by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. The Liaison Committee also has the power to set up another sub-committee if it so wishes. Each sub-committee has requirements about a quorum and the fact that it needs to report minutes of evidence and so on.

It is clear from reading that Standing Order that the Liaison Committee has a limited remit. It is particularly designed to ensure that, because the Prime Minister does not answer and will not give evidence to other Select Committees, he comes along regularly to the Liaison Committee and he is held to account there.

That is all very well, so why have we ended up where we are today? On the Order Paper, the motion states:

“notwithstanding the provisions of Standing Order No. 145”—

the one to which I have been referring—

“the Liaison Committee shall have power to appoint specialist advisers”—

in the plural—

“in relation to its inquiry on Strategic thinking in Government.”

It may well be that there is a shortage of strategic thinking in government and that that inquiry into the shortage of strategic thinking is required, but I am surprised that that inquiry is being conducted by the Liaison Committee, when any of the other Select Committees would be able to inquire into that issue in relation to their remits.

The Liaison Committee has set up that inquiry on strategic thinking in government, and it wants to have special advisers appointed, and I imagine paid out of the public purse, to provide advice to the Committee, which is, as I emphasise, a Select Committee in name, but not by nature. This is an example of mission creep.

I had the privilege of speaking earlier to my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex, the Chairman of the Liaison Committee, who drew to my attention the press release issued by the Liaison Committee on 22 June this year. It states:

“The Liaison Committee is launching an inquiry into select committee scrutiny of strategic thinking across Whitehall.”

In other words, it is trying to find out whether Select Committees are up to the task of scrutinising strategic thinking across government. That would be fair enough, one might think. However, when one looks at the small print, the Chair’s comments and the terms of reference, one finds that, far from being an inquiry into Select Committee scrutiny of strategic thinking across Whitehall, this is an inquiry into strategic thinking across Whitehall—nothing to do with the Select Committees, for which the Liaison Committee has been specifically established.

[John Spellar]

The hon Gentleman is generous in giving way once again. I have been listening to him expand on that point. Would it not be more appropriate for such an inquiry to be conducted by the Public Accounts Committee, which has inevitably undertaken similar studies into thinking because of the resource consequences that arise from strategic thinking, or the lack thereof? Was that not the appropriate route?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

That, in my view, would be wholly appropriate. Why does the National Audit Office, which feeds into much of the Public Accounts Committee’s work, not get involved if it thinks that this is a big issue? Incidentally, today, the National Audit Office reported on the Government’s hospital building programme, and I found in the small print that Christchurch hospital is no longer part of the 40 hospitals being built—it has been withdrawn from the programme and will be added to a future programme. That is rightly criticised by the National Audit Office, and that is a current example of why we need proper scrutiny.

To return to what the Liaison Committee says it wants to do in this new inquiry, the Chair’s comments are:

“Major events such as Brexit, covid-19 and Ukraine demonstrate the need for long-term planning and delivery across multiple departments and across the duration of several Parliaments, as well as the importance of successful collaboration with our international partners. As the pace of events over recent years have shown, the Government needs to be more agile in its ambition—and it should also be coordinated across departments and sustainable over time.

Select committees provide a mirror to Government policy and practice. Their work has demonstrated the value of cross-party checks and balances on departmental strategic thinking. This inquiry by the Liaison Committee will consider how select committees can improve scrutiny of strategic thinking in government as the UK confronts the major questions we face in the near and longer-term future. Better scrutiny of strategic thinking by Parliament will contribute to better strategic thinking within Government.”

I am sorry that I was not able to précis that, Madam Deputy Speaker; that is one of the issues we have, as a Parliament and with the Government—there is too much verbosity in these sorts of announcements—but be that as it may.

I then looked at the terms of reference, expecting that they would be exclusively directed to strategic thinking in Select Committees and the Select Committee’s control over strategic thinking in government, but the call for evidence—Members and others are told that they must send in written evidence by Friday 15 September—states:

“The Committee is looking for evidence on: Examples of best practice of strategic thinking in Government, including: how well Government identifies strategic opportunities as well as strategic risks and threats; how effectively Government uses internal and external challenge; how feedback loops”—

whatever those are—

“are used to ensure that lessons from delivery are fully considered when developing future strategic plans;”

and

“how No. 10 and the Cabinet Office should best lead on these issues across government”.

That is one item. The second item is:

“What government should publish or explain about its overall strategic concept.”

[John Spellar]

Surely, the section that the hon. Gentleman has just read out—there may be more of it—is in the remit of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Absolutely. I do not know—perhaps we will find out later—the extent to which the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee has been consulted on this and has agreed that, on Government strategic thinking, it will have its role usurped by the Liaison Committee. I am sure that all will be revealed in due course. If my hon. Friends want to intervene on these issues, I will be happy to take interventions.

The next item of the terms of reference is:

“What additional machinery of Government, knowledge and skills are necessary to support strategic thinking and effective strategy and delivery, both within individual departments, and across two or more departments, and how strategy and strategic thinking can be sustained by building consensus between the main parties”.

The fourth item on which evidence can be given is:

“Which governments around the world demonstrate best practice in strategic thinking”.

That is an opportunity for some overseas visits, no doubt, to go and see which Governments across the world are demonstrating best practice in strategic thinking.

The next item of the terms of reference—the sixth—contains the first reference to Select Committees:

“How Select Committees consider strategic questions, including any recent examples of scrutiny of Government strategic plans and/or their delivery; and elements of Government strategy- and delivery that are repeatedly identified by Select Committees as effective or as deficient”.

At least that item on which evidence is sought is relevant to the purported nature of the inquiry. The next item in the terms of reference is:

“The engagement of individual departments, and Whitehall as a whole, with Select Committees on strategic challenges, including through the provision of information necessary for effective scrutiny.”

The next one is:

“What additional resources”—

more taxpayer’s money is going into this, I can see—

“parliamentary procedure, knowledge and skills are necessary to support effective Select Committee scrutiny of strategic thinking and effective strategy-making, as well as monitoring implementation of any Government action in response”.

This is a great one:

“How other parliaments around the world are engaging with the strategic thinking of their respective governments.”

Well, what an inquiry. It could take years, could it not? Woe betide whoever is appointed a special adviser under the terms of the motion before us. They will need to be handsomely remunerated, will they not, for the time and effort they put into the inquiry? They will have a global remit.

I speak as a member of two Select Committees—the Procedure Committee and the Environmental Audit Committee. The Environmental Audit Committee is cross-cutting and looks at the effect of the Government’s environmental policies across a whole range of areas. The Liaison Committee seems to be creating a new cross- cutting Select Committee covering public administration, strategic thinking, oversees democracy and so on. I want to hear the justification for that, what the cost is likely to be and how this idea ever got a start. Was it discussed by the Liaison Committee? Did it agree those very wide terms of reference? Did it think through the implications? In supporting the motion, has the Leader of the House thought through exactly what that strategic thinking is all about?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Absolutely. That is why I am worried about the mission creep. We have the Liaison Committee proposal set out in the press release to which I have been referring, but it bears little resemblance to the motion on the Order Paper, which states that

“the Liaison Committee shall have power to appoint specialist advisers in relation to its inquiry on Strategic thinking in Government.”

Its inquiry purports to be on the ability of Select Committees to scrutinise strategic thinking across Government, which is completely different. As anybody who has been listening to the terms of reference will know, it is not limited to strategic thinking across our Government, but restricted to strategic thinking across all Governments that are members of the United Nations. So it has an enormously wide remit.

I must say that I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex, the Chair of the Committee, on his imagination and breadth of vision. He could have a job for life fulfilling this important role. But our job in questioning matters like this, which are put on the Order Paper and would otherwise go through on the nod, is to say, “Well, hang on a minute, what are we about? Have the members of the rest of the Select Committees thought about the implications, the costs and the dangerous precedent that is being set?” It is only in this Parliament that we got the exception to have a Chair of the Liaison Committee who is not already a Chair of another Select Committee, but how will the members of the Liaison Committee be able to give their time and devotion to this particular subject?

[John Spellar]

For example, I am a member of one of the Committees that very much deals with strategy and strategic thinking: the Defence Committee. I am not aware—I may have missed it—that there has been any reference to that Committee on whether it thinks this move is appropriate or not.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Well, there we have it, Madam Deputy Speaker. And I see my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex, the Chair of the Liaison Committee, at the Bar of the House. I do not know whether he intends to participate in this debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am all in favour of more strategic thinking, and I know that my hon. Friend is a great exemplar of it. He has deployed that talent over many years in the House, and continues so to do. But I am disappointed, in a sense, that in his intervention he did not address the issue of mission creep, and why this subject cannot be dealt with by the Public Administration Committee or by other Select Committees that have already been set up under the rules of the House. He did disclose to us that he is a member of the Liaison Committee, although he did not say how enthusiastic he is about being able to participate in the evidence gathering and the consideration of the evidence that is gathered in conjunction with this particular remit of setting out the inquiry on strategic thinking in Government.

It often happens that towards the end of a Parliament the Government are trying to think beyond the next general election, and perhaps, in proposing this motion, my hon. Friend the Chair of the Liaison Committee is thinking beyond this Parliament to the next. Perhaps he is thinking that the Liaison Committee in that Parliament may have some unfinished business in relation to its inquiry on strategic thinking, and that the specialist advisers will be champing at the bit, wanting their remuneration to be extended to an inquiry that will continue—dare one say, ad infinitum? Maybe; I do not know. But I think that something like this should not go through the House without Members having been alerted to its potential consequences and implications, which is why I have spoken about the motion in this way.

[John Spellar]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again; he is being very generous. According to his reading on the background of the Committee, does it intend to hold hearings and evidence sessions, and would that mean that all the Select Committee Chairs would have to attend weekly sessions in order to hear the evidence and then prepare the report?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

That is a very good point. The Committee is specifically calling for written evidence. Normally, when Select Committees call for written evidence and that evidence comes in, they decide that the most compelling evidence should probably be supplemented by oral evidence from those who have submitted the written evidence. It is, I presume, implicit in the fact that the Committee has invited written evidence that it will also receive oral evidence and will cross-examine, or question, some of the people who have submitted that written evidence, whether it be from Members of the Australian Parliament, the Canadian Parliament or the Hungarian Parliament. Who knows, but I imagine that they will be holding oral evidence sessions. As the right hon. Member for Warley (John Spellar) implies, if an oral evidence session is not within the remit of the one of the specific Sub-Committees of the Liaison Committee, to which I referred earlier, there will be a need for a quorum and for people to be there paying close attention to the evidence.

Where are we going? This is essentially a new Select Committee that is being expanded to cover everybody else’s areas of responsibility so that it can have a grandiose role. It is not sufficient for it to be able to hold the Prime Minister to account and allocate questions to the Prime Minister among Liaison Committee members—now we are getting into the whole area not of the role of Select Committees in holding the Government to account on their strategic challenges, but of the strategic challenges in toto.

In summary, what I am really saying is that I despair. I despair that this proposal has reached the stage it has. I look forward to hearing an explanation from the Leader of the House about why she thinks this is a good move. I hope that she will be able to explain how our fears and concerns about dangerous precedents can be allayed. Strategic thinking is perhaps just the start of a takeover bid by the Liaison Committee of almost all the other subjects that are the remit of individual Select Committees at the moment. Who knows? In the absence of any contribution from the Chair of the Liaison Committee himself, we depend on the knowledge that the Leader of the House has gained from the briefing that she has no doubt received, as I did, from the Liaison Committee.

I am all in favour of strategic thinking and of scrutinising the Government’s strategic thinking, but I do not think that this is the right way forward.

BBC Licence Fee Non-Payment (Decriminalisation for over 75s) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Lord Spellar

2nd reading
Friday 21st October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I am grateful to all colleagues who enabled a little time at the end of today’s sitting to discuss what continues to be a topical issue. People will have heard a report today that some 8 million people in our country are struggling with their bills. My view is that one bill that they should not be struggling with is the bill for the TV licence fee, which I would like to be abolished. Before we can get to that stage—the licence fee is guaranteed under the BBC charter until the end of 2027—we can try our best to mitigate its impact. This Bill is part of my ongoing campaign to try to persuade my Government to decriminalise the non-payment of the BBC licence fee. On the basis that it is better to try to deal with such issues in bite-size proportions, I have started with the group of people aged over 75 who always thought that when they reached that esteemed age, they would not have to pay the licence fee.

Because of some double-dealing on the part of the BBC when it was negotiating with the Government, we ended up in a situation where, contrary to people’s expectations and, apparently, to the Government’s wishes, the BBC insisted on keeping the BBC licence fee for all those aged over 75 who were not in receipt of benefits. We therefore have a situation where that group of people are vulnerable to being prosecuted for TV licence fee non-payment. I will tell hon. Members what is said by some of the experts in this area.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He has made clear his salami-slicing tactic and his attack on the BBC, which has been ongoing for some years. Did he notice in the meantime the BBC’s massive audiences during the events following the sad demise of Her late Majesty and the funeral? In the UK and around the world, people saw the immense quality of the BBC, which is a great British institution. Is this yet another example of the wrecking ball tactic used by some Conservative Members against the fundamental things that make this country great?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

No, that is not my motivation at all. The coverage of Her late Majesty’s funeral was brilliantly carried out by all the broadcasting media, including the BBC. I have nothing but praise for the way in which the BBC dealt with that.

To take a topical example of why a number of people feel that the BBC is not being true to its charter, today we heard the sad news that the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) has been put in a situation where he has been suspended from the House for many weeks and, I understand, has chosen to resign and cause a by-election. Has that been prominently featured on the BBC news channels? I fear not. That is a topical example of the way in which some people feel that the BBC is rather selective in the way it deals with its news. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns), when he was at the Conservative party conference and in the days following, found himself on the receiving end of some public criticism, which was featured prominently on the BBC airwaves. The contrast between those two cases is an example of people’s concerns.

[John Spellar]

I did notice the rather significant difference that one was a Government Minister and one was a Back Bencher.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

They were both Members of Parliament. One of them has been suspended from sitting in this House for a recommended 10 weeks, I think, and one of them has not been suspended—there was no charge against my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West at all. In a sense, the right hon. Gentleman makes my point for me.

To return to what TV licensing prosecutions do, Tara Casey of the legal charity APPEAL says:

“TV Licensing prosecutions are the perfect example of the criminalisation of poverty. This has got to be wrong, particularly during a cost-of-living crisis.”

How many people are being prosecuted for TV licence fee non-payment? The latest figures that I have are that 49,144 people were prosecuted last year, 92% of whom were convicted. These prosecutions were dealt with in the courts, thereby creating public expense through the court hearings and a great deal of distress for the people—92%—who were convicted.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am so sorry. In that case, the hon. Gentleman is even more welcome to his position. It is hard to keep up with some of the changes that are taking place on the Front Bench at the moment.

This issue needs to be addressed, and it is good to know that the Government are still considering it, but another year has passed and there is not much indication—not much that I have received, anyway—that the “active consideration” of the issue of decriminalisation is reaching any conclusion. In the meantime, as I have said, people are being prosecuted up and down the country, and people aged over 75 who thought they were going to have a free television licence are particularly vulnerable to such activity.

This is an important issue. Apparently a mid-term review of the BBC charter is taking place this year. We are told that the licence fee will remain at £159 until the beginning of April 2024. That means that if there were to be a general election after that, in 2024, people would be asking, “Why has the BBC licence fee just increased?” I am not sure it is very good timing, but that is the plan. The BBC is expected to receive £3.7 billion in licence fee funding this year. Why are people not more exercised about this? It is a television tax, and it is more than twice the cost of reducing the top rate of tax from 45p in the pound, about which there was a big argument at the Conservative party conference.

Putting it all in context, and as a party in favour of supporting hard-working families, I would have thought we would be taking action to commit ourselves to doing away with the television tax and, in the meantime, doing away with the criminalisation of those who do not pay the television tax.

[John Spellar]

Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that, under a Labour Government, the over-75s got their television licence for free? George Osborne took that away, and it is the only reason why the over-75s are having to pay.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

The right hon. Gentleman and I agree on a lot of things. I am not sure I would put it exactly like that, but the substance of what he says is correct. We used to have free television licences for the over-75s, and then, with a bit of smoke and mirrors, we suddenly found the system no longer applied. It was done under a Conservative Government, and he refers to George Osborne, who I am sure is prepared to take responsibility.

Public Sector Exit Payments (Limitation) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Lord Spellar

Friday 13th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am sure that the issue does happen in Scotland, and I hope the measures will apply across the whole country, although the latest consultation document that the Government issued indicated that there might be different treatment in different parts of the United Kingdom.

The matter has reached the stage of being a public scandal, because money is tight and the Bill is a means of recovering £200 million a year for the taxpayer, both locally and nationally. It is unfortunate that, as a result of answering questions from me, successive Ministers have had words put into their mouths or put on the record that have now proven to be completely untrue, I am afraid. What more can one say? The current Chief Secretary has assured me that he will not fall in the same trap as his predecessors.

The regulations could be issued pronto. Why have they not been? We were told that there needed to be a consultation. After a lot of pressure, the consultation was issued in April 2019, and the responses had to be in very quickly by July 2019. Have the Government yet issued their response to those responses? No, they have not, because it is all so complex.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is rightly drawing attention to a significant problem. Is there not another aspect to it, which is that many of these individuals, quite frankly, should not be being given any payments, because they should actually be being sacked for failure to perform their jobs? They are taking sums of money and then transferring to other parts of the public sector, where they will have a repeated pattern of failure. Is there not a need for a real change in culture inside the public sector, particularly, I regret to say, inside management levels of the national health service?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about that. That is why organisations such as the TaxPayers Alliance are trying to work with the general public to raise the profile of these subjects. What is happening is a concerted fraud upon the taxpayer by these officials, who are cosying up to each other and ensuring that they are the only people who do not suffer as a result of their own incompetence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am not sure that that is an adequate excuse. It could be a justification for everything, but in the Treasury it is an issue of priorities. There is no reason why, if hon. Members are given a promise that something is going to be done on a particular date, that promise should not be honoured.

[John Spellar]

The hon. Gentleman should come down a bit harder on that explanation from his hon. Friend, who is fundamentally saying that the Government are incapable of chewing gum and walking at the same time.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am not sure that my hon. Friend would have put it quite that way. The House needs to have a mood of intolerance of serial incompetence, if not a conspiracy of silence and inaction among people in the civil service.