Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Daniel Kawczynski Excerpts

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I am afraid I completely disagree with the Minister’s interpretation of events over the past few months. I wholeheartedly congratulate their lordships on the process they have engaged in, and I make no apologies for the fact that Labour MPs have been holding the Government to account in this House, or for the fact that in the House of Lords there are people who were elected previously and who are able to bring a degree of expertise to the debates when discussing elections.

I note that yesterday Sky News was reporting that the Prime Minister, David Cameron, would take revenge on Labour peers. Bring it on. In legislation on the reform of the national health service, the reform of schools and public services that everybody depends on, Labour peers down the other end will do as robust a job as they have done on the Bill. If there was anything that showed that the Government have not been acting entirely in good faith, it is today’s programme motion, which allows only four hours for 104 amendments to be considered, including the time taken for votes.

I am not sure that my interpretation of what has happened is the same as the Government’s. I say to all hon. Members in all seriousness that I fear that many Members who end up voting for the Bill will regret the day that they did so. The Government have bulldozed their way through every convention so far, ludicrously combining two pieces of legislation that should never have been in one Bill—only because that was a way of keeping the coalition together—pushing forward with no pre-legislative scrutiny of a measure that had no electoral mandate, curtailing debate in this House, for the first time ever threatening the guillotine in the House of Lords, then packing the Lords with pliant new Conservative and Lib Dem Members every day and suspending all the normal rules in the House of Lords.

We will rue the way in which the Bill was pushed through and the legislation itself, because we are not legislating on the basis of long-term democratic health for this country, or on the basis of sound principle, but solely so as to meet the partisan needs of the coalition.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman seems to be suffering from a certain amount of amnesia. When his party was in office in the previous Parliament, there was guillotining all over the place.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman sometimes suffers from amnesia himself. I was talking about guillotines in the Lords. It has been a fundamental principle of the constitutional settlement in this country that the House of Lords is a self-governing House and never has a programme motion.

When there was a Labour Government of just one political party, we never had a majority in the House of Lords. By virtue of how the Government are progressing at the moment, with a large number of new peers being appointed—117 since the general election—they are approaching the point at which they will have an absolutely majority in this House and the other House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Daniel Kawczynski]

The hon. Gentleman is being cynical. If the people of Acton Burnell, who are in my constituency, wish to remain there, they can feed that information through to me and I will put that view at the public meeting.

[Chris Bryant]

I am impressed by the hon. Gentleman and I am sure that all views expressed by anybody in his constituency should undoubtedly, at all times, be expressed solely through him. However, there is another version of democracy, whereby sometimes people disagree with their local Member of Parliament and might want to adopt a different position.