Business of the House
David Davis Excerpts(3 months ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
I thank the right hon. Lady for again diligently raising this matter. I met the Paymaster General yesterday to get an update on progress. Progress is being made, and I know that the Paymaster General will want to come to the House to make a statement on that. I know that he will do so as soon as he has something substantial to say, but I can assure the House, which I hope knows my interest in this area, that he is working to ensure that justice is served as swiftly as possible.
Sir David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
Some time ago, the Scottish Government refused an instruction from the Information Commissioner to publish written evidence from the Hamilton inquiry into the conduct of the former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. Last month, I attended the Court of Session hearing at which the Scottish Government were humiliated, at great public expense, in their attempt to reject the request. Despite a unanimous ruling against them by the highest civil court in Scotland, the Scottish Government still refuse to release that information. That extraordinary behaviour would appear to be in breach of the ministerial code, the civil service code and, indeed, the rule of law. May I ask the Leader of the House whether the rule of law in Scotland is at risk and whether we can have a debate and a statement on this matter?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank my right hon. Friend for raising this matter and the disturbing issues surrounding it. Although there is a debate about whether the court decision is binding or is binding in a particular way, we consider it to be a matter of accountability to the Scottish Parliament. I am sure that the Scottish Parliament will be asking questions of their Government in relation to those very serious matters, which my right hon. Friend has raised today.
Points of Order
David Davis Excerpts(11 months, 1 week ago)
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Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Next week, the BBC’s economics correspondent will publish a book and release whistleblower testimony, telephone recordings, emails and documentary data on a number of serious miscarriages of justice in the LIBOR scandal that emerged in 2012. It will show that British and US authorities covered up state involvement in LIBOR rigging, and the scapegoating of 37 low and middle-ranking bankers, some of whom spent years in jail.
In this evidence, there is a prima facie case to believe that state agencies coerced individuals into perjury that led to false evictions. I will write to the Metropolitan police asking them to investigate any potential perjury, but, more importantly in this context, I am also greatly concerned that the Treasury Committee may have been misled by state agencies about the knowledge and involvement of the state in setting false rates.
This is a big and complex issue with hundreds of pages of evidence. I have written to the Chair of the Treasury Committee suggesting that the Committee might want to look into the issue. Can you confirm that that is the appropriate mechanism to deal with this serious matter, Mr Deputy Speaker?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order and advance notice of it. It is a very serious issue that he has raised. He has put his point on the record and shown that he is experienced enough to take appropriate steps even without any advice from the Chair.
Privilege
David Davis Excerpts(1 year, 4 months ago)
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Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
I beg to move,
That the matter of the actions and subsequent conduct of the hon Member for Ochil and South Perthshire in relation to correspondence from the Speaker on a matter of privilege be referred to the Committee of Privileges.
I have been advised by the Clerks that this is a very narrow motion, so I will stick strictly and exclusively to the matter at hand. Before I come to the substantive motion, however, I want to say something to those members of the public who may think that this is an arcane or even abstruse issue.
Ever since Speaker Lenthall told King Charles I that
“I have neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak in this place, but as the House is pleased to direct me,”
the Speaker has been the spokesman, champion and protector of the Members and institutions of this place, as well as being the impartial arbiter of our proceedings. If hon. Members think that that is just a piece of ancient history, they ought to consider more recent times. Mr Speaker’s more recent predecessors have been criticised on issues of impartiality or for failing to protect Members: for example, Mr Speaker Martin’s failure to protect my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green) was highly controversial at the time and very important.
As for upholding the rights of Back Benchers and Opposition Members, we need only look at Mr Speaker’s fierce criticism of the Government during the statement yesterday, when he upheld our rights. It is therefore vital for Members to protect the integrity, impartiality and apolitical nature of the Speaker’s office. That point is clearly recognised in “Erskine May”—hardly a polemical document—at paragraph 15.14, which states that
“reflections on the character of the Speaker or accusations of partiality in the discharge of their duties”
are a punishable offence. “Erskine May” also recognises that a Member’s behaviour and conduct outside this House count towards that.
I turn to the substantive motion. Following an appearance by my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries) before the Select Committee on Digital, Culture, Media and Sport while she was Secretary of State, the Committee opened an investigation into several claims that she made, but ultimately it decided against any action. The Committee as a whole published a special report—[Interruption.] [Hon. Members: “He’s turned up.”] Oh, right.
The Committee as a whole published a special report, which said:
“we may have sought a referral to the Privileges Committee but, as her claims have not inhibited the work of the Committee and she no longer has a position of power over the future of Channel 4, we are, instead, publishing this Report to enable the House, and its Members, to draw their own conclusions.”
It is crucial in this matter to remember that the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (John Nicolson) sits on that Committee. He did not ask for a Division before the report was published; he did not vote against it; he did not publish a dissenting opinion on that report. Instead, he wrote to Mr Speaker asking him to give precedence to matters reported on by the Committee, even though the Committee itself was not seeking such precedence. As would be expected, Mr Speaker did the usual thing, and—in his own words—decided to
“respect the Committee’s assessment of the situation.”—[Official Report, 23 November 2022; Vol. 723, c. 291.]
After Mr Speaker had replied to the hon. Member privately, as is the convention with privilege issues, the hon. Member took to Twitter. He brandished a copy of Mr Speaker’s letter in his video. He broke all the conventions on the privacy of Speakers’ correspondence on privilege, and disclosed a partial and partisan account of Mr Speaker’s letter. He said on Twitter:
“He’s considered my letter, but he’s decided to take no further action.”
In doing so, he implied that it was Mr Speaker’s unfettered decision not to refer the matter to the Privileges Committee. Nowhere in his filmed statement did he tell his followers that Mr Speaker was following normal procedure by accepting the will of the DCMS Committee—I imagine that is why Mr Speaker described his action last week as giving a “partial and biased account” of the correspondence—and nowhere in his statement did he tell his followers that it was he himself who sat on that Committee and signed off the conclusions.
All of us in this House have a duty to uphold its rules and institutions, but by knowingly breaching the confidentiality of the Speaker’s correspondence, the hon. Member has done the opposite. This is a clear breach of our rules. The proper response after Mr Speaker’s censure of him for his behaviour last week was for the hon. Member to accept the seriousness of his actions, apologise properly to the House, and delete the offending tweets. If he had done so, I imagine that would have been the end of the matter; indeed, I would not have made my point of order on the day. However, he failed to apologise, and instead compounded his misdemeanour. Taking to Twitter once again, he claimed that he
“offered no apology as there was no misrepresentation.”
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr Davis
He claimed that he
“didn’t ‘release’ the Speaker’s letter. I summarised it entirely fairly.”
That is untrue. He misled the country by deliberately withholding the way in which this decision had been arrived at and his part in it. He also retweeted an account that was directly critical of Mr Speaker, saying that Mr Speaker’s statement had been merely “Ermine pursuing theatrics” and that Mr Speaker was placing his
“integrity above that of parliament”.
Mr Davis
The hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire had again compounded his misdemeanour by deliberately attempting to undermine the impartiality and integrity of the Speaker’s office. It is the role of the Speaker of this House to protect Members and stand up for its Back Benchers, and it is the Members’ duty, on our part, to uphold the dignity of the Speaker’s office.
Mr Davis
I do not believe any of this conduct to be appropriate for a Member of this House. However, that is not for me to judge, as a single, ordinary Member, which is why this is not a motion to condemn, but a motion to pass the matter to the Privileges Committee of the House of Commons.
Business of the House
David Davis Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I had proposed only to hear points or take questions to the Lord President from those on the Front Benches, but if the two right hon. Gentlemen who have caught my eye, the right hon. Members for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), are asking specifically about the narrow point that the Lord President has brought to the Chamber, I will hear them.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will resist quoting page 688 of “Erskine May” to the Lord President, but can he give us an answer to this question? He has told us about the financial numbers, but will we have an impact assessment on the number of lives lost as a result of this policy, and will the motion be amendable?
Madam Deputy Speaker
I will allow that question because it is very specific.
Business of the House
David Davis Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
I think we might just get a passage from “Erskine May” now—I call David Davis.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
My right hon. Friend recommended reading “Erskine May”. I happen to have the 25th edition of “Erskine May” with me. Of course, what it makes clear is quite how difficult it is to amend an estimate, so much so that the last time that one was successfully amended was one century ago; he may remember—it was 1921. It makes it very clear that the Crown’s prerogative on the monopoly of financial initiative means that the only thing we can do in this House, unless the Crown acts differently, is to cut the bill, not increase it.
My right hon. Friend’s argument to the House is that we should do away with all the aid in order to get more aid. I am not quite sure that the public—or, indeed, the ambassadors, with their redundancy notices—would have quite understood that. It is rather sad that the Government are playing such games with this very, very important issue.
My right hon. Friend is a kindly man and he will know that, unlike most of the debates he is asked for, every day that goes by without this debate means that more people go without aid, particularly in places such as Yemen, where there is a famine right now. In the words of the United Nations Secretary-General, the ex-Prime Minister of Portugal, António Guterres, under famine conditions
“cutting aid is a death sentence.”
Can we please have this debate as soon as possible, so that we can change the Government’s policy for the better?
Mr Rees-Mogg
The problem with pre-prepared questions is that they miss out what has been said before, so I will reiterate it: had the estimate been voted down, not amended—I did not mention amending—the Government would have had to come forward with a new estimate by early August, otherwise the money would run out. It is a very straightforward mechanism that my right hon. Friend failed to use. That is rather surprising, when he is such an experienced parliamentarian. He has been in the House much longer than I have, as has my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell).
Our overseas aid budget must be what we as a nation can afford. We had our largest peacetime deficit in the last financial year because of the covid crisis. We cannot afford to be as generous as we once were, but we must ensure that the money we spend is spent as wisely as possible and on the alleviation of disasters, which is a fundamentally important part of our overseas aid budget.
Committee on Standards
David Davis Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment (a), in line 1, leave out
“be appointed as lay member”
and insert
“and Ms Melanie Carter be appointed as lay members”.
I thank the Leader of the House for finally tabling this motion, but I am extremely worried and concerned about what he has done today. I was in politics in 1987, and the reason that I am taking this personally and have tabled this amendment is that this sort of thing has happened to me. It used to be known as blacklisting. I was prevented from having certain posts because people thought I had a particular political viewpoint. I thought that we had moved away from that and that this country had changed—that it did not really matter what someone’s politics were, but was about the kind of job that they did.
I am deeply concerned that some of the conversations that we have had in the Commission are public. The Leader of the House has said in some accounts that he apparently knows why Melanie Carter joined the Labour party and why she resigned from it; he appears to know exactly what those reasons are. The difficulty that we face is that Melanie Carter is not here to defend herself. She cannot question the Leader of the House or state what he has said in public; she does not have a chance to do that. That is not right in any forum, not least the House of Commons.
As I understand it, Melanie cannot have resigned from the Labour party. I do not know who she voted for in the leadership election. I do not even know that she joined the Labour party to vote for a particular candidate. I have no idea and I do not know where that has come from. I understood that she had resigned because she had applied for a post. I do not know where all this information is coming from. Is it tittle-tattle, gossip or just politicking? It really is unbecoming of the Leader of the House.
The Leader of the House failed to answer the question from the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin); he failed to say how the process was at fault or how it was flawed. Let me take hon. and right hon. Members through the process, because it is important for the House to know that there were 331 applicants. There was a sift and 10 applicants were interviewed. Those 10 applicants were actually whittled down through questions and an interview. That was all done by other impartial people, away from politics.
The applicants then went before an experienced panel that included Jane McCall, who is an external member of the House of Commons Commission. There was also my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), who chaired the Committee on Standards at the time. She had resigned because she had been given a new post, but we agreed that she would stay on even though my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) was the new Chair of the Committee. The other members of the panel were Mark Hutton, the former Clerk of the Journals, and Dr Arun Midha, who is a lay member of the Committee on Standards. The top two applicants were chosen: Melanie Carter and Professor Michael Maguire—in that order. I thank the panel all for their hard work, because sifting through all those experienced applicants is not an easy task. We should be pleased that all those people applied for the post.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
I am interested in the impartiality. Was there guidance to the candidates and to the selection committee about whether being a member of political party would disqualify a candidate?
Valerie Vaz
As my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston said earlier, it was very clear that it was not in the criteria for disqualification, and it cannot be. It reminds me of when Brian Redhead was on the BBC. I think he was accused of voting in a certain way, and he said to the now Lord Tebbit, “How dare you know how I voted? Nobody knows how anyone votes when they go into that booth with that pencil. It is a private matter—nobody knows.”
Let me go back to the way interviews were done. I want to thank all the panel for finding these two excellent candidates. This came to the Commission for discussion, which I will not go into, but concerns were raised. I will not say who the concerns were raised by. The panel members were asked to go and ask questions of the candidates again, and so they did. They did the due diligence and they came back. That is the process.
If Members are asking about impartiality, let me just set out exactly what Melanie Carter is. Her current role is senior partner and head of the public and regulatory law department at Bates Wells solicitors. She is an independent adjudicator for the Marine Stewardship Council. She is a tribunal judge. She is a founder member of the Public Law Solicitors Association. She has previously worked as a partner at DMH Stallard and a solicitor with Bindmans, as director of standards and deputy registrar with the General Optical Council, and with Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw solicitors. She also worked for the Government Legal Service. Her previous public appointments were as an independent member of Brighton and Hove Council standards committee, as the legal chair of the Adjudication Panel for England and as a magistrate on the south-west Bench in London.
Melanie Carter qualified as a barrister and a solicitor. As solicitors, we owe a duty to the court first. We have to uphold the truth and the rule of law. She does all that, and she does it independently. That is why the panel recommended her. Let me tell hon. Members exactly what the report says, through the Commission:
“The two candidates represent a combination of experience and qualities which should reinforce public confidence in the independent element in the House’s disciplinary processes.”
This House is now saying to all those highly qualified people who sat on the panel, “You are talking rubbish. We don’t agree with you. We don’t agree with one part of what you say, but we agree with the other part.” That is absolutely outrageous.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
I am afraid that the 203 votes that the Deputy Chief Whip casts on behalf of Members have become 202.
The process is flawed in four ways. First, it is a breach of natural justice. This lady applied under terms that were explicit. They did not exclude her being a member of a political party. If my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter), who is a member of the Committee, thinks that should have been different, he should have changed the rules at the beginning. It is a breach of natural justice.
Secondly, it is a failure of judgment. The term “beyond reproach” has been used, in not being a political party member. I do not think being a political party member is a matter of reproach. It is a matter of pride for all of us and it should not be seen as necessarily undermining our ability to make a judgment. The argument does not work there either.
Thirdly, in terms of impartiality, if it really is the case that membership of a political party automatically corrupts judgment, there should not be a single hon. Member on the Committee because, by definition, they are members of a political party.
Finally, this is a matter of House business. One of the tests is how it would feel if it was the other way round. I would be outraged if I was on the other side of this argument. I say that with some knowledge, because I was on the other side of the argument through all the Blair years, when House business was not treated as House business. I am afraid that I propose to support the amendment.
Proceedings During the Pandemic (No. 4)
David Davis Excerpts(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
I am going to disappoint the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) by breaking the consensus. It is a paradox that one of the great champions of Back-Bench rights, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), has been forced, now that he is Leader of the House, to introduce measures that massively undercut Back-Bench rights.
I have been in the House for 33 years; to call this arrangement sub-optimal is to use a very delicate phrase. This is the weakest House of Commons that I have ever seen. It does not do its job. The House of Commons, at its best, is far greater than the sum of its parts. It is an organic entity that reflects our constituents’ interests and pushes the Government to do better, govern better and make the right decisions first time, not after several preliminary attempts. It has been bled dry—I am being as delicate as I can about what others would call U-turns—and it gives Ministers a pathetically easy time. That is actually not a benefit to Ministers. Having to stand at the Dispatch Box to defend their case, and think through before they arrive all the weaknesses that might be in it, is a way for our Government to improve their case. Those who have been special advisers or Ministers in the past know exactly how the process works. It is one of the things that makes our Government, our Parliament and our democracy better than almost any other in the world.
That is particularly true given that, in late March, under the coronavirus emergency legislation, we gave Ministers huge powers, which were exercised almost straightaway to go into lockdown, and almost straightaway ran into problems because the Government had not had to face this House over several hours to talk about what would happen if somebody’s constituent has a disabled child or a mother they could not look after, or about all the other small, detailed things that make legislation work properly, keep it effective, and keep the confidence of the public.
Frankly, I am not bothered by the performance of the House in the next month, because it is September and we are not doing many very, very important things, but the House, the Government and the country face three massive sets of decisions. Decisions on the recovery of the economy will be critical before the end of October. That is when the various funding schemes run out and we face the brick wall in our economic future. We have Brexit still coming, and October will be the key month there—that is when the rubber is going to hit the road. And of course there is covid-19 running into winter; again, October will be the key time.
Unlike the hon. Member for Glasgow North, I do not think 3 November is a good date. We have to think about the decisions that this House and the Government will have to make during October.
Patrick Grady
That is the whole point: if we get into a second wave in the winter, and there are more local lockdowns and more people who are ill or have to stay at home and shield, that is all the more for reason for people to be able to participate virtually.
Mr Davis
I will come back to participating virtually. I do not disagree that people should be able to participate virtually, but we have the worst of all worlds. At the moment, we have a Chamber that does not work. I have watched my colleagues in this Chamber make incredibly powerful speeches that would have moved the whole House under normal circumstances, and yet they have exactly the same effect as an Adjournment debate speech. That is what is missing; that is the problem. We are in the middle of some of the biggest problems this country has faced in peacetime, and we have a House of Commons that is not functioning. Parliament is not working.
I want the Government to look at ways of making it possible to use the Chamber better. There are small things we can do, like using the Galleries, but I think we should be testing every MP every day so that we can be sure that we can operate properly. People say, “But what about our constituents?” Well, that is what they want; I have had any number of communications in the past couple of weeks saying, “Why aren’t you going back to work? Where are you?” It is very important to do that. We do not have to do away with electronic voting, proxy voting and protecting the vulnerable—by the way, I count as a vulnerable Member in these circumstances—but we can make the House work.
My plea to the Leader of the House is this: by all means carry on for the next month, but before we get to November, when we have to make the decisions about covid—not after covid either has or has not blown up—about the next stage of the economy and about Brexit, we must ensure that we do it with a full and properly functioning House.
Mr Rees-Mogg
I am very keen that more Members should be present, and I would say that these motions are permissive—they are not compulsory; people do not have to appear remotely. However, it seems sensible to keep the opportunity for remote participation, because some Members may prefer to appear remotely if the area they represent is in a local lockdown. They would not be obliged to, because there is an absolute right to attend Parliament, but they may prefer that in those circumstances, and that ought to be facilitated. It ought to continue until we are confident that there will not be further local lockdowns. That is a reasonable position to have. It may be that the House will think that it should be more tightly drawn, but I do not think that is the consensus of the House at the moment. Members do not have to appear remotely, and I certainly encourage them to be here in person.
Mr David Davis
I do not think for a moment that we should do away with the ability of vulnerable Members to take part remotely, be it through voting or taking part in debate—it is too soon for that. There is no doubt about that. However, I wish to come back to the point about spontaneity and controversy in this House. Everything my right hon. Friend said before, resting on Public Health England and other “august” authorities, depended on ignoring what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) and I have said about testing. If this House undertakes proper testing—it is now technically possible to test, in 90 minutes, every Member of the House every day, if need be—this House could return to being what it was before, in short order.
Mr Rees-Mogg
The problem with testing is that it tells us only whether someone has this virus; it does not tell us whether someone is in the process of developing it. Therefore, as I understand it—I am not pretending to be the Health Secretary—if someone tests negative in the morning, they may, none the less, have caught it the night before and be positive by the vote at 10 pm. Therefore, much as I wish that what my right hon. Friend was saying were the case, I do not think it is as straightforward as that.
House Business during the Pandemic
David Davis Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Harper
My right hon. Friend is exactly right and makes that point very well. What is unique to us is that, even if a Member can send their children to school as a key worker, the children may go to school in the constituency, so if they cannot access paid childcare or family, the Member cannot perform their duties here. As I said, the Prime Minister himself accepts that that is a perfectly valid reason for not being able to attend. Such Members need to be able to participate in this House virtually and to vote by proxy.
The last point I wanted to draw to the attention of the Leader of the House is about legislation—the coronavirus regulations, which are the greatest restriction on liberty that we have seen in this country outside wartime, and perhaps ever. I accept that the first set of regulations were made by the Secretary of State using emergency powers under public health legislation and were not voted on by this House before coming into force, but those regulations have now been amended three times, and I do not think the urgency provision can really be brought into force, although the Secretary of State says it can. We have the absurd situation now where there have been two sets of amendments and the regulations have been amended a third time before this House has even had the opportunity to vote on the second set of amendments.
The importance of that is illustrated by the events of the weekend. Under the third set of amendments, which have not yet been debated and voted on by this House, any gathering of more than six people is unlawful—it is against the law. So every single person who attended one of those demonstrations at the weekend was committing a criminal offence. The point about the debate in this House is important because I suspect many of those people were not aware that they were committing a criminal offence and this House has not had the opportunity to decide whether restrictions on protest are acceptable—
Mr Harper
I will not, because I have only 30 seconds left. The House has not had the opportunity to decide whether the restrictions on protest are a proportionate mechanism for dealing with the coronavirus. So I ask the Leader of the House to make sure that these two sets of regulations are debated and voted on by this House at the earliest possible opportunity. May I also suggest that, if the Secretary of State makes any further amendments, he does not use the power to do so without this House having had the opportunity to take that decision itself?
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
I will start by saying that I agreed wholeheartedly, and almost entirely, with the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), who opened the debate, and with every word of the remarks by my right hon. Friends the Members for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley) and for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper). I agreed with the Leader of the House when he said that democracy is not an optional extra, or words to that effect, but the operation of democracy today, as we observe it in the House, is more enfeebled than I have seen it in 33 years here. That is a tragedy of the Government’s making, and one that we need to fix as soon as possible.
The aim of the House is to hold the Government to account, but also to drive the direction of policy. If the Leader of the House wants to see how that is not working properly, an example was given earlier: the six-person limit on gatherings, which has not been enforced of course, and truthfully cannot be enforced in a democracy. That would never have happened had the measure had to go through the proper procedures of this House. Similarly, the daft quarantine regulations we now have would never have survived the normal procedures of the House. Democracy is critical to good government, and that is not what we are seeing here today. I know it has always been an ambition of the Leader of the House to make the European Parliament look great,. Well, he has succeeded today.
I have one controversial point to make, which comes down to this: this House has no life. It does not challenge Ministers properly. It must be the easiest thing in the world—I have done this a few times—to come to the Dispatch Box and deal with this House as it currently stands. A large part of that arises because of the 2 m rule, and the fact that we can have only 50 people in the Chamber. The atmosphere, drive, ferocity, and the mood of the House just does not exist.
We have to think about how we get back to normal, and how quickly we can do that. Clearly, we have to do it in a safe way, both for ourselves and as an example to our constituents and the country. I can think of only one way that could be done. According to Government numbers, we currently have a surplus of 80,000 tests a day. So we are not short of tests anymore. We may not be exercising them all, but we have that surplus. Austria, at Vienna airport, manages to carry out tests in two to three hours, from test to result. Will the Leader of the House consider instituting that here? Every morning between 8 am and 9.30 am, and perhaps if we start late until 12.30, every person who comes into the Chamber could be tested and then we would not need the 2 m rule anymore. Then we can suddenly have back the Parliament that was, and is, the envy of the world.
Business of the House
David Davis Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the tone and the interest of his proposals. Everybody is open to ideas as to how things might be done differently and what the needs are on attendance. Mr Speaker received a letter from the Chair of the Procedure Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), that sets out options for how Select Committees may be able to carry on with their important business without meeting in person. Parliament will consider what steps can reasonably be taken to allow things to be done remotely. It may be difficult to recreate the Chamber remotely, but there are certainly options with Select Committees and they are being considered.
The Government share the hon. Gentleman’s concern about people profiteering from the crisis and are aware that some people are behaving extremely well and others are using this as an opportunity. One has heard stories of people charging exorbitant prices for hand sanitiser, loo roll and so on, so the Government are aware of the issue and will act if necessary. As yet, it does not seem to be so widespread a problem as to require Government action, but we are not ignoring the point.
On universal basic income, the Government are willing to consider all ideas. Lots of ideas are coming in. The priority is to proceed with things that can be implemented rapidly and for which systems already exist. It may prove difficult to introduce entirely new systems, but I am sure that the Prime Minister, having said that he is open to meetings on this matter, will prove open to meetings on this matter.
As regards the week after next, the House voted for the recess dates, but it can obviously vote for new recess dates. We want to maintain flexibility, because I cannot make an absolute guarantee that all the emergency legislation that could possibly have been thought of is in the Bill coming before the House today. There may be other things that we need to legislate on, and there is also a demand for scrutiny, so we have to get the balance right. Nothing will be done without consulting the Opposition parties—I emphasise the plural.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
The Opposition have a serious point in terms of the duration of the debate on the emergency legislation, given that it appears that we will debate it only for one day. There is a qualitative difference between a single-day debate on major legislation and even a two-day debate. I know that the upper House has different constitutional arrangements, but can the Leader of the House tell us how much time he expects it to spend considering the legislation, before it sends it back to us?
Mr Rees-Mogg
I note my right hon. Friend’s point, of which the Government are aware. The Bill needs to progress with support in this House. Emergency legislation is best done and tends to go through successfully only when there is widespread consensus, so his point is important. Unfortunately, I cannot say what proceedings will be in the other place, and I do not think it would be right for me to try; it would be slightly impertinent of me to say what their lordships will do.
Business of the House
David Davis Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Sir Oliver Letwin
The idea that after all these years of many charming conversations with my hon. Friend that I would not accept that he might often have a very different view from mine is of course fanciful. I entirely accept that he might have a very different view from mine—he very probably would do.
On this particular point, I do not think that the Gina Miller case is relevant, because the decision by the Supreme Court in that case was in essence based on the question of individual rights. The argument, whether right or wrong, was that in invoking article 50 there was an attempt to use the prerogative power in a way that the Supreme Court believed would arguably deprive individuals of rights. No one can argue that seeking an extension of the existing position, which is that we are in the EU, deprives anyone of their rights. I therefore very much doubt that the Gina Miller case could be used as a means of injuncting the Government to seek parliamentary approval.
In this case, in any event, we have empirical proof. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dover pointed out, the Prime Minister has already sought an extension, and she did that quite properly without asking the approval of the House of Commons. Therefore, she and the Government lawyers on this occasion obviously agree with me. I accept that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) might well be right and the Government lawyers wrong, but at least I have some backing on the matter.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
I am worried about the process we are debating. My right hon. Friend knows that I concern myself with process and, indeed many times in government I fought his corner on process, unbeknown to him. The last time that we took such a controversial Bill through the House so quickly was actually on the day when he became the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill went through almost equally quickly with equally strong, powerful arguments. The hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Tom Watson), now the deputy leader of the Labour party, and I spent nearly a year and a half in court challenging the quality of the decision on that Bill. We won and in effect had it struck down. Does my right hon. Friend not worry about the quality of what he is doing today?
Sir Oliver Letwin
In a word, no. That piece of legislation was a serious one with effects on a wide range of our citizens so, good or bad, my right hon. Friend did indeed conduct an enormously impressive campaign at a time when he was an outrider of the sort that I have found myself, in an unaccustomed way, forced into being in the past few months. He was highly successful at it. This is a very different kind of Bill, because all it does—as the House will see when we come to consider it—is to enjoin Ministers to put propositions to Parliament. I do not think that that can possibly be regarded as a very dangerous or controversial activity. It might be one that some of my hon. Friends do not wish to see happen—a perfectly legitimate political dispute—but it is not a case in which in the interstices of the law lie questions of freedom.