Debate on the Address

David Drew Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

It is great to have this opportunity to contribute to this afternoon’s debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I assure you that I will not outstay my welcome.

I want to make a few remarks arising from the community consultation that I have just finished with people from across my constituency. I do this every September during the recess, and this year almost 1,000 people were involved in one of 37 events over three weeks. More than 1,000 shared their views by completing a survey that I circulated. They set out their concerns and the issues they wanted me to raise, and today’s debate provides a first opportunity to put some of those on the record.

Inevitably, Brexit dominated, and in the survey that formed part of the consultation, 71% of people said they wanted a further public vote; only 18% were against the idea; 77% said that they would vote to remain; 15% said they would support leaving with a close relationship; and only 8% wanted to leave without any agreement. That was reflected in the meetings, too, and it was reflected even more strongly among young people. The Government need to recognise that if they lead this country to a damaging Brexit on a false prospectus, there is a rising generation who will never forgive them.

For that young generation—and, indeed, more widely across all age groups—there was a real concern to see stronger action to address the climate emergency, on which they felt they had been failed over the past nine years and about which they will see little comfort in today’s Gracious Speech. I was interested to hear the Prime Minister’s comment that we lead the world on addressing carbon emissions, and that comment has been echoed by a number of Members during the debate. I have taken the opportunity—on the odd occasion when I was not paying attention—to google every survey I could find, and none of them indicates that Britain is leading the world on this. Other countries—Sweden, Morocco and many others—are playing a leading role, and there is much more that we can do. We also have a responsibility to do much more, given our historical contribution.

A wide range of different issues were raised across the meetings and events that I organised, but there was a common theme. I heard how difficult it is for carers to access the necessary respite, without which their lives are challenging. There was frustration that the Government have failed to meet their post-2017 promise to bring forward proposals to tackle the crisis in adult social care and, indeed, to meet the needs of young carers. Domiciliary care workers told me about how their capacity to care had been eroded by 15-minute appointments, poor support, poor training and inadequate supervision. During the consultation I was conducting, one local residential home announced its closure due to inadequate funding, and we all know that many more across the country will follow that path. There was a real sense that we need a complete paradigm shift on how we meet the challenges of an ageing population and how we provide the resources to support that change.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing up that group of young people and for talking about carers. I made a point at a meeting that the continual contracting out of services causes so many problems for voluntary groups. Does he agree that the Government ought to pay attention to that?

[Paul Blomfield]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend, and I shall return to that point later in my comments.

On health, I was told about the difficulties in securing timely appointments with GPs, sometimes acute difficulties with waiting times in A&E, and difficulties in accessing other services. Young people told me about the pressures that are contributing to the rise in mental health problems, on which the system is failing them badly. Schools told me that they were dipping into teaching budgets to provide support for students in mental health crises. Teaching budgets are there for teaching, but that money has been diverted to cover the crisis in young people’s mental health. We need even more support and substantial investment in child and adolescent mental health services. Young people told me that waiting times of 25 weeks between first diagnosis and a referral to the first opportunity for help are the norm, not the exception, but early intervention is critical to tackling mental health crises.

Parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities told me heartbreaking stories of their struggle to get education, health and care plans that met their children’s needs. Parents also talked about the challenges that schools face in delivering the plans once they are in place because of the lack of resources. We know that our schools have been hit by an 8% real-terms budget cut, but the particular failure to address special educational needs and disability funding is causing an enormous crisis.

Young people were increasingly worried about crime, talking about knife crime in particular. They made the case for the out-of-school activities that used to be common before the cuts, which have had a disproportionate impact on our local authorities and have led to a collapse in youth services. In other meetings, people highlighted how we miss Sure Start and the difference that the centres made in supporting families during the crucial early years. They talked about how school exclusions, driven by the lack of resources to support the most difficult children, are feeding gangs with recruits and sucking young people into knife crime.

A big worry across all ages and among all parts of the community was the rise in homelessness, rough sleeping and street begging. At a meeting on housing, we talked about the rising number of people in temporary accommodation without a permanent home of their own, the rise in sofa surfing, and the increasing dependency on friends and relatives for accommodation. People were clear that the only solution is a concerted programme of building affordable social housing. The problem of rough sleeping and street begging is clearly more complex, and we talked about mental health and alcohol and drug dependency problems that need intensive interventions to support people into getting off the streets and rebuilding their lives. There was a huge willingness from people in statutory services and the voluntary sector to resolve such problems, but there was also a real sense that the problems had risen over the past nine years as a consequence of the cuts that had affected statutory services’ ability to support and work with the voluntary sector in a way that has a real impact.

Those are all different issues, but there is a common theme. Nine years of cuts have sapped the capacity of our public services and much of the voluntary sector to meet the needs of those who need them most. Austerity has corroded the quality of too many lives, but it did not have to be like that. Such decisions were not forced by necessity, but by political choice, and those choices need to change. The Gracious Speech offers a few convenient headlines, but there is no real recognition of the scale of the change that we need: the fundamental new direction for our country that my constituents spoke about and which this Government clearly cannot provide.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am delighted to take part on the first day of our consideration of the Queen’s Speech, which was more about a political programme for the forthcoming general election than about how this country is going to be governed. Sadly, the Brexit morass that will envelop us all will carry on, regardless of what happens on Saturday and whatever happens by the end of this month. I wish, however, to start on a conciliatory note and something I am pleased to add my comments on. I refer to the commendation of our late friend Paul Flynn. Paul helped me enormously. He always said I would become an MP and he proved to be right, and he came over to Stroud to help me on numerous occasions. I owe him so much and he is clearly someone we all miss on this side of the House, and I hope the whole House will feel the same.

The Queen’s Speech is significant not so much for what was in it—as I said, there was a lot of politicisation—but, sadly, for what was not in it. It contained no mention of the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign, whose tragedy this whole House has to face up to at some point. It contained no mention of housing, which is the key issue for many of us in terms of how public service has to deliver much better. It did contain a mention of animal welfare, but it was minuscule compared with where we need to be going on animal welfare. A genuine animal welfare Bill is required, yet we are now talking about trophy hunting just as we talked previously about ivory bans, both of which are important in their own right but not what we should be doing, which is looking for a much more comprehensive approach. Many of our constituents vote on the issue of animal welfare and they feel we should be taking things forward much more quickly and radically.

[Matt Western]

My hon. Friend is making some powerful points. I believe he is alluding to the fact that this Queen’s Speech seemed almost tokenistic, in that it was almost like a shopping list of ambitions and touchpoints of things that the Government and Prime Minister felt to be important. How can there have been no mention of something as crucial to what is needed out there as housing, given that we have homelessness and rough sleeping at record levels, with people desperate and dying on the streets?

[Dr Drew]

That is what we should have been prioritising in this Queen’s Speech, along with the abolition of universal credit, which has proved to be a monumental mistake. There was nothing wrong with the concept, but the delivery of UC has caused such hardship, in all our constituencies, and it is beyond reform. We have to get rid of it and start with something different.

The Prime Minister, in defence of the Queen’s Speech, talked a lot about one nation. I know the Conservatives like to talk about themselves as the one nation party. Sadly, the way things could turn out means we could be facing one nation, because the other three parts of the United Kingdom, for various reasons, no longer seem to want to be part of this one nation. I really worry about the level of English nationalism, which is now driving the Conservative party. We have a fundamental problem and I agree with the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) that we need radical constitutional reform, and that includes devolution in this country of England, where we have failed to do anything to deal with the centralisation of power. That is a fundamental reason why people voted for Brexit; they did so because they feel disconnected from the way in which decisions are made. That comes into the need for a fundamental rethink, with votes at 16, electoral reform and unitary authorities, to which she alluded. As someone who spent 28 years on a parish and town council, I am pleased to say that that means taking power to the first level of government—it is not the lowest level. That is important, because people can then see what is happening in the communities.

Brexit has caused huge divisions, but it has also led to this Government wasting the past year. I regret and resent the fact that we will not be having the Agriculture Bill and the Fisheries Bill back—we did not even get as far as the environment Bill. All those are fundamental pieces of legislation that should have been enacted over the past year. We may disagree about what was going into those Bills. We had a critique in Committee, but, sadly for those who served on it—I led on behalf of the Opposition—the Agriculture Bill disappeared last November, never to be seen again. That does nothing other than cause disillusion. Farmers are asking, notwithstanding the uncertainty over Brexit, what policy is going to be in place if we crash out. More particularly, even if we do not crash out, we will need an agricultural policy that is understood and that takes account of the idea of public money for public goods. We need to see that in practice and see how it will work. At the moment, we just have a huge void.

I welcome the fact that the issue of mental health is in the Queen’s Speech, and hopefully a Bill will subsequently come forward, but there is a problem. Like many other Members, I go around my local schools—I have been to 40 schools in the past year—and besides funding and staff stability, the third issue that all schools raise with me is their children’s mental health. It is now at a stage where it is a crisis. We must not underestimate how bad things are. Of course, it is about not only the children but their families. We have a significant problem, even in Gloucestershire, with off-rolling. A lot of it has to do with parents who do not believe that their children can get special needs provision in the normal system, but it is also about the way parents can take their children out of school into so-called home education. There is nothing wrong with home education in theory, but they are not then educating their children, who are being taken out of school more as companions than in the context of a parent-child relationship. That should be addressed by proper investigation and, in due course, the putting in place of a proper legislative context.

My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies), who is sadly not currently in the Chamber, talked about air quality as a key issue. I hope that will be addressed, either through the environment Bill or in its own right. I shall just add to what he had to say the significant issue of incineration, which leads to small particulates that have an enormous impact on the health of children in particular. We have never investigated it, and it should be paramount in the way we try to drive up air quality. Yes, of course traffic is seen as the major cause of the huge issue of our deteriorating health standards, but there are other parts to it. The disposal of waste through appropriate means by getting rid of it in a non-polluting manner is crucial, as is not creating it in the first place.

That brings me to the biggest loss in the Queen’s Speech: the failure to address climate change properly. The target of 2050 is far too late. Earlier this evening, I had the opportunity to go along to a meeting of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, at which three experts, including the former chief scientist Sir David King, basically argued that we are not anywhere near meeting the obligations in this country, let alone in the wider world. Warming of 2° will cause climate change catastrophe. We need to understand that, which is why I am proud to stand by my constituents. As many Members know, Extinction Rebellion came from Stroud. Many of my constituents are out there at every moment in time, and I am happy to help them wherever I can. I also pay due regard to Polly Higgins, the creator of the campaign on ecocide who latterly became a Stroud constituent. We need to look at ecocide and the implications—there is an opportunity for Members to come to a briefing this week—of how we can pass a law that means we will not leave a worse situation to our children and particularly our grandchildren. We should feel desperately keen to avoid doing that at any cost. Let us listen to the scientists and the campaigners, and let us do something in this place, rather than talk about it.

In conclusion, I am pleased that the Domestic Abuse Bill has been carried over and will hopefully see the light of day. Let us make sure that the legislation is not watered down and includes action such as banning sham marriages. We must make sure that it is not just linked to immigration and human rights but stands in its own right. The Opposition will debate the Bills as they come forward and seek radically to improve the legislation. We will make sure that there is an alternative. We heard earlier that it was all about the previous Government’s failings in power; I argue that austerity was a political programme. We are now coming to the end of austerity. It was such an unnecessary and punitive way for any Government to try to deal with the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. If we have come out of austerity, now is the time to see the real changes that are desperately needed, so that we have a more humane society that addresses issues such as housing, education and health, as well as trying to deal with the morass of Brexit. More particularly, we need to deal with climate change.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bill Wiggin]

That is a very good reason to have a better test and to win the battle against the disease, and then we will not need to do so many tests because the cattle will be clean.

[Dr Drew]

The hon. Gentleman is being very generous in giving way. There is even better news: there is now—within five years—the prospect of a cattle vaccine. Under the old enzyme linked immunosorbent assay test, we could not separate those that had been vaccinated and those that had not. I gather that that is now happening. Is that not much better than some of the things that are going on?

Brexit Readiness: Operation Yellowhammer

David Drew Excerpts

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Talks are taking place at a number of levels. I had the opportunity to meet the Tánaiste and other TDs recently, and the Brexit Secretary, the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister have all met representatives of the Irish Government and the Dáil over recent weeks.

One thing I want to emphasise is that, of course, negotiations over our future withdrawal agreement are taking place through the European Commission. The Republic of Ireland, as an EU member state, recognises that, but the strong bilateral links we have are critical. One thing we want to ensure is that not just through the formal relationship we have as a result of a new deal with the EU, but through a plethora of relationships, bilateral and multilateral, we do everything we can to recognise how close a relationship there is between Ireland and this country.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

With regard to the earlier exchange about veterinary medicines, which the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster knows a good deal about, it is all well and good saying he would give a guarantee if there was an emergency, but I am led to believe that two operators have already relocated to the EU. What priority will British farmers get not just in the event of an emergency but regarding the normal supply of veterinary medicines? Can he give some guarantees on that?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that. If we maintain effective flow at the border, there should not be any interruption. I would be interested to know from him—I would be grateful if he wrote to me—about the two companies he mentions, as I would want more closely to investigate the situation in which they find themselves.

Prorogation of Parliament

David Drew Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Westminster Hall

[Paul Scully]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We already have the odd addition of this fortnight, which, when coupled with the five weeks of Prorogation, smacks of, “Look busy, the boss is watching.” We are scratching around trying to find something to do. I do not dismiss the fact that scrutiny of the Government’s legislation and action is important, but I caution that actions need to match words.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have never known a Parliament where the business has collapsed so often, yet the Agriculture Bill, the Fisheries Bill and the Trade Bill all need to come back for Report and Third Reading, and to then go to the Lords. Where are those Bills? Why have they not come back? Why have we not used the time properly? It is quite disgraceful.

[Paul Scully]

The hon. Gentleman uses the word “disgraceful”; I have been in this place for only four years, but for three of them, I have sat here scratching my head, thinking, “I have some of the most intelligent people around me acting in the most stupid way.” I blame people on both sides of the argument equally; I am an equal opportunity critic. We should be talking about how we leave, not whether we leave.

Brexit is a big issue that divides parties, communities and families. None the less, we were asked a relatively simple question: do we leave or remain? Leave won, and it is not beyond the wit of man to give businesses, communities, EU nationals here and British citizens abroad the sense of certainty that they need and deserve. In the coming weeks, I hope that we move on and reach a resolution, so that we can get back to the domestic agenda that will be set out in the Queen’s Speech on 14 October.

We saw a lot of confected outrage, as the Leader of the House described it, when the Prorogation of Parliament was first discussed. People conflated two different sets of statements. When several Conservative leadership candidates said that it would not be good to prorogue Parliament to bring about Brexit, come what may, they were talking about a Prorogation that straddled 31 October, so that we would fall out of the EU without discussion. That is clearly not what is happening. The hashtag #StopTheCoup started to appear on Twitter and social media, but frankly, that would be the worst coup ever.

Parliament is coming back on 14 October, and on the week following that, we will debate the Queen’s Speech, which will no doubt involve Brexit, because that will clearly be a major part of it. We then have weeks after that, because a Brexit deal will come back to Parliament only if we get a deal on 18 October at the end of the EU Council. Hopefully, at that point we will achieve a deal and bring it back to this place; we can then discuss it. We will have something that we can all circle around, and that will allow us to say, “Nobody gets everything they want, but this is enough to allow us to say that we have respected the referendum, and to enable us to start looking at the opportunities that Brexit offers, rather than at whether we are leaving.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am delighted to speak with you in the Chair, Ms Ryan. I thank the thousands of people in my constituency who signed the petition.

I am angry. I am a mild-mannered person, as most hon. Members would agree, but I never thought I would see this in this mother of Parliaments. We created parliamentary democracy, which works because the Government run Parliament—sometimes that is not as clear as it should be—and there is a degree of fair play between Government and Opposition. That has completely broken down, to the extent that there have been a series of guns to our head for a general election and for no deal, as if that is what Parliament should accept. If this were a banana republic, we would understand that a president might manipulate us, but this is the British Parliament. Today is a hard day for Parliament.

I am reminded of an episode of “Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?” I apologise to all those who are too young to remember that. There is a wonderful episode where they are trying to avoid the result of the England football game. They spend the whole day in and out of pubs because they do not want to know the score and want to watch it on the highlights as if it were a live game. They get to the very end, and they find the result of the game written on a beer mat. That proves to me that, with Prorogation, the Government can hide and they can run, but they will always be held to account somewhere. Prorogation is about trying to avoid being called to account over some of the most important things.

I bear a grudge, because I spent 37 hours of my time debating the Agriculture Bill as the Opposition spokesperson, along with other hon. Members. No matter how badly I did, I tried my best, and I will never get back those 37 hours. I might be fortunate enough to have another 37 hours, because hopefully the Bill will come back in some form. Why does that matter? If I am trying to plan my farm policy—trying to work out what I will grow next year and what animals I will keep—I need to know the system of agriculture, yet that is in abeyance. Yes, we can carry on with the existing common agricultural policy, but I thought we were trying to get out of it—that was one of the drivers for leaving the EU. That is bad enough, but I also spent a lot of hours debating statutory instruments, some of which will be out of date by now.

It was not our decision to have a two-year Session—that happened at the behest of the Government. Some of us feel it was a mistake, and that Parliament should have an annual programme, but this Government decided they would have a two-year programme. It has come back to haunt us. The Agriculture Bill left this place well before Christmas last year. Therefore, we have been waiting for it to come back for the best part of nine months. I understand through the usual channels that we were offered a deal—let it through and we will not say anything else about it. With the best will in the world, we had arguments against the Bill in its current form.

That is bad enough, but as two of my hon. Friends have said, the situation of fisheries is even more drastic. If we drop out with no deal, the scallop wars over the Christmas period will be just a foretaste. People will start taking the law—whatever that may be at this moment in time—into their own hands.

If we had not been debating this petition today, I would have been summing up for the Opposition in a debate about cages, animal sentience and so on. Again, all that is in abeyance. We do not have a clear statement of the law. The law does not exist anymore. We chose not to put it in the Trade Bill. We have an animal sentience Bill, but I do not know whether that will be carried over. Does that matter? Of course it does. If someone is trying to prosecute a person who has mistreated an animal, what law do they use? Do they use the law that used to exist or the law that could have existed if we had allowed it to go through? Those issues really matter. This is not Opposition Members just kicking off; it is about the way we are being prevented from doing our job.

I would have raised this as a point of order, but I have been told by various Departments—the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which I shadow; the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport; and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office—that parliamentary questions I tabled over the recess cannot be answered because of the Prorogation of Parliament. We could all go on about how wonderful Speaker Bercow has been, but one of the great things he has put in place is the ability to ask questions for answer during recess. That was a dramatic improvement on our not being able to do our job of holding the Government to account.

I now have three Departments telling me, in advance of Prorogation, while anything could still happen—we could choose not to prorogue tonight—that they will not answer questions. That does not mean they will answer them in the future; it means they will not answer them. The questions will fall. That is wrong—particularly for me, because I will have to table them all again. However, other Departments have answered questions, so will the Minister put on the record, on behalf of the Government, the process for determining whether Departments should answer a question when we are about to prorogue? Dare I say it, some civil servants seem to work very hard to get us an answer, but others just say, “Here’s a two-line thing. We’re not going to answer it.”

To me, a lot of this demonstrates how Parliament is not really running by the rules any more. The idea is that Parliament should hold the Government to account, but at the moment it seems that Parliament is being held to account by the Government, who say, “Well, we’ll answer when we want to, we’ll let you take part in debates if you have to, but really, this is subject to our whims.” My friend Graham Allen, as Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee—when we had one—looked at whether we should have a written constitution. I feel strongly, on the basis of the past couple of weeks, that we must. It is wrong that Parliament cannot hold the Government to account. We should have rules on when Prorogation should take place and on whether Departments should answer questions.

This really matters. As parliamentarians, whatever party we come from and whether we are in government or opposition, we must have the security and knowledge that our job cannot be undermined; otherwise, the people will increasingly lose confidence in Parliament, because they will think the Government just use it to rubber-stamp whatever they want. In a time of a hung Parliament—and of a very hung Government, for all sorts of reasons—it is important that we have a justification for what is going on and that that is put into some form of arrangement so the rules are much more transparent, open and fair.

What is going on is undemocratic; it is unconstitutional, given that we do not have a written constitution; and it is a mess. It is not easy trying to explain to our constituents what we are all up to at the moment. Sometimes, when I write an email, I think, “Do I understand what I’m writing?” It changes from minute to minute, and whether we are in government, opposition or whatever, it is very unclear what our stance is. Deep down, I think this is a shameful period for our Parliament. We should do something about it.

Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill

David Drew Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 19th June 2019 Commons Chamber

In highlighting where the work is going, the hope is that the project’s positive impact on the UK as a whole will be clear to the public. Unless we measure and monitor what is happening, people and businesses may lose out. I see that the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk) is in his place, and he made an excellent point in Committee that this would be a way of demonstrating the project’s value to the whole country and, therefore, of selling the project to the whole country. I have not forgotten his telling contribution in Committee.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am pleased to have signed amendment 6, the key part of which is the annual audit of companies. My experience, from a distance, was that Wembley started as an important national stadium—admittedly for England—but the endgame was that many of the companies involved did not have any local accountability. I am afraid that the Football Association lost control of the project, so it is important that this place has an annual audit to know who is building the project, what they are doing and whether they are doing it properly.

[Christian Matheson]

As a trade union official during the construction of Wembley, I have mixed memories of the conduct of that project, but my hon. Friend makes a fair point. Amendment 6 is not onerous, and it would allow for an audit that gave us the opportunity to keep a handle on where the work was going and how much of it was being spread around—no more, no less, but at least it would give us an opportunity to see what was happening.

Interserve

David Drew Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

Once again, I reassure the right hon. Gentleman that there will be no additional costs in respect of those contracts as a result of the corporate restructuring, as the company delivering the contracts remains wholly unchanged.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

On the back of the collapse of Carillion, I was told by someone who works in the business of two other companies that they would go the same way in due course. They said that the second company to go that way would be Interserve; I will not mention the third. What due diligence did the Government carry out on the implications for other service companies? If it was known in the industry, why was it not known by the Government?

[Oliver Dowden]

As I have said repeatedly from this Dispatch Box, the Government undertake appropriate contingency planning in respect of all our strategic suppliers. We have not had to invoke that contingency with Interserve because the companies delivering those services remain wholly unchanged; no jobs are lost, no pensions are affected and no services are disrupted.

Televised Election Debates

David Drew Excerpts

Monday 7th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I congratulate the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) on introducing the petition in a particularly objective way, even though he supports it. He covered many of the issues. I had not originally intended to engage in the debate and wanted to make only one point, but now that I have been given the opportunity to speak I will wrap that point into a wider speech.

From my perspective, the 2010 debate let the genie out of the bottle and, quite simply, it cannot be put back in. In both 2015 and 2017, when there was at least a precedent, it was bizarre that the Prime Minister of the day decided that debates were not appropriate for those particular elections—that is dangerous. I think that we give Prime Ministers far too much power and that there is a need for an independent voice on this issue. Responsibility should not rest with the Government of the day, let alone the Prime Minister.

My main point, which is the one I had intended to make, is that the broadcasting of politics is in serious need of investigation. I do not know if I am right—the Minister will no doubt put me in my place if I am wrong—but since my return to Parliament, I have been alarmed at the lack of regional coverage, certainly by ITV, which I do not think is meeting its obligations. The required amount of coverage is in statute.

That issue may differ somewhat from the question of whether we should have prime ministerial debates, but it is interesting that the petition was initiated by Sky, which is not subject to the same rigours as both the BBC and ITV, and it is disappointing that our mainstream media do not want to get as much as they should from the political scene. I do not believe that broadcasters should show debates at the peak time of 7 o’clock—there are reasons why that would go down badly with the wider electorate—but to my mind, the rules and regulations on how much politics should be shown at both national and regional levels are not being adhered to, which is why this debate is particularly apposite.

We should be able to remove the matter from party politics, implement an independent scrutiny arrangement and make sure that politics is properly covered in the media—certainly in the broadcast media, which have more control than print media. I hope that the matter does not end with the next prime ministerial debate and that we consider more wholeheartedly the way in which broadcasting is currently handled and ensure that sufficient time is given to politics. I do not expect the Minister to count every minute with a stopwatch—although perhaps she has time for that—but I think we are being short-changed, and we ought to pay attention to that.

The hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) may be on to something. He may come at the issue from a different angle from me, and he probably does not share my view—I am not sure he is convinced that this is how we should conduct our politics—but he certainly made the point that debates should be subject to some form of wider scrutiny, and I share that view. I think it is important to put that on record.

The debates have to be held in the fairest and most impartial way possible, which is why responsibility needs to be taken away from the Prime Minister. It cannot in any way be fair or impartial for one person to decide whether to go on television to defend their party’s policies—during debates, it is a party standing for election, not the Government—so that decision should be taken away from them.

Whether we like it or not, we all watch the US presidential debates, which always seem to be the centrepiece of the whole presidential campaign. I do not know whether votes are won or lost by those debates; Richard Nixon certainly lost some, but whether they are won is another matter. The fact is that that approach is built into the American constitution, because Americans have a President. I must make it very clear, however, that our Prime Minister is not a President, and we should constrain the role of the Prime Minister. Nevertheless, television debates are a way in which the public can find at least some comfort that the person who will lead the Government is able to answer questions in a format that they can access, so that they may make up their own minds.

The debate should be held earlier, as the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay has said, recognising that so many people vote by post nowadays. Given that we have the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 and we know when the next election should take place, I do not understand why we do not yet know how many days that election campaign will be held over. It would be good to regulate that as well, so that we know when during the campaign the debate will take place. That should all be laid down so that candidates can prepare for the debate and the public can be made aware of the timing. The question whether we should have two, three or only one television debate needs to be investigated properly and to be the subject of debate in the House. That is why we are in this Chamber today.

My last point reinforces what the hon. Gentleman said: the debate on a so-called debate on the meaningful vote degenerated into a farce—including whether it would be on the BBC or ITV, what format it would take, who would be interviewing, and whether members of the public would form part of the panel—and that did not help us in this place. It looked like our self-interest always comes to the fore. If we genuinely want to reach out to people, we have to accept impartial rules for how a debate is conducted.

I hope, therefore, that any commission would have a wider range of responsibilities than those relating to a prime ministerial debate. Any crucial issue should be subject to rules regarding who will be interviewed, how they will be interviewed, and at what time. All that should be laid down in advance, rather than be subject to a Dutch auction between the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister that makes it looks like it is about which one of them blinks first. That does none of us any good in the long run.

This has been a useful debate. I think that most of us would support revisiting the issue and it being dealt with properly by Parliament and the Government of the day. Anything that adds to people’s interest in politics has to be a good thing. Of course, it has to be managed properly and we have to strike a balance with regard to the participating parties. That will be difficult, given that so many parties are represented in this House, not to mention those outside it. There must, therefore, be a de minimis level, based on the previous general election, to decide who is entitled to take part; otherwise, people would invent themselves as party leaders just to get a free hit on the television.

All those things need to be looked at, and the only way in which we can do so is to have an independent commission with the powers and duty to ensure that it is done properly and in a way that enhances, rather than belittles, our democracy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bone]

I understand that the Minister is making a strong Government speech—very little of which I agree with, I have to say—but I am here to help her.

[Dr Drew]

As always.

[Mr Bone]

As always. The proposal does require primary legislation, but not Government legislation. That is why I have taken the private Member’s Bill route, and all I ask the Minister is whether she would allow that debate to get a fair hearing, with no objecting, no filibustering, and no putting up people to stop it. Let us have the debate and a vote. Would she be open minded to that?

Oral Answers to Questions

David Drew Excerpts

Wednesday 18th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

As a Government we stand with persecuted Christians all over the world and will continue to support them. It is hard to comprehend that today we still see people being attacked and murdered because of their Christianity, but we must reaffirm our determination to stand up for the freedom of people of all religions and beliefs and for them to be able to practise their beliefs in peace and security. I am very pleased that I have been able to appoint the noble Lord Ahmad as the Government’s special envoy on freedom of religion or belief, and he will certainly be doing what my hon. Friend suggests: working with other countries to encourage them to recognise the importance of allowing people to have the freedom to practise their religion and beliefs in peace and security.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q3. In view of the fact that schools in the Stroud constituency are telling me they are forced to use core funding to cover the additional requirements of special educational needs and that special schools in the constituency are having to meet considerable rising costs, will the Prime Minister look at the national funding formula with the aim of helping those schools, to make sure they are fully inclusive and that we help those who are most vulnerable because of their special needs?

[The Prime Minister]

I have long championed the need for children with special needs to be able to be provided for in the setting that is most appropriate for them. For some that will be a mainstream school; for some it will be a special needs school. We have of course changed the national funding formula to make it a fairer distribution across the country, but, as I have said, I recognise the need to ensure that children with special needs are provided for in the most appropriate setting.

Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill: Committee Stage

David Drew Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will be mindful of your injunction and try hard to stick to it.

I am going to do something radical—I will try to stick to the motion—but first, since this is a debate, I want to deal with a number of points that Members have made. I should declare my interest as a member of the Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Public Bill Committee. We spend very pleasant Wednesday mornings in Committee Room 11, where civilised discussions take place between the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan), myself and the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) for the Scottish National party. We gambol around the issues as far as we are able to, staying in order of the motion to adjourn. It is certainly not purgatory.

I will repeat, albeit at greater length, what I said in an intervention on the shadow Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz). We have received a message from the Boundary Commission for England. I received it as a Member representing an English seat, and I presume that the other boundary commissions will write to Members who represent other parts of the United Kingdom, if they have not already, to confirm the process that they have undertaken. The Boundary Commission for England carried out a consultation that was widely publicised. It received more than 35,000 individual responses, which represents a great deal of interest from members of the public. The commission has confirmed that it will report its recommendations to the Leader of the House on or shortly before 5 September to give her the opportunity to lay the report in Parliament before the conference recess. I raise that point because it sits squarely with the timing issue.

I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), but I have to confess that even when I was the Minister taking through the Bill that became the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, I was not overrun by constituents grabbing me to discuss the finer details of that legislation. Clearly his constituents are different, taking a massive interest in these constitutional matters, but it was not my experience that people were hanging on to every detail of such matters.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my near neighbour for giving way. If his constituency was emasculated, as mine was, a different number of issues might have been raised by those said constituents.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, but the point about the Boundary Commission review is that there has been clear public consultation, with 35,000 responses from participants, meaning that this was a democratic process. The Boundary Commission has undertaken a clear process in coming to its conclusions.

People outside the House may think that September is a long way away, but it is only four full sitting weeks away, so it is sensible that we do what the Government suggest and wait for the Boundary Commission reports to be produced, for the Government to have an opportunity to introduces Orders in Council, and for the House to make a decision. I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire, who did not take an intervention from me, but he was factually wrong in saying that a motion in the House should trump what the boundary commissions are doing. I fundamentally disagree, because the commissions obey an Act of Parliament—the law of the land passed by both Houses of Parliament. I know that he does not accept the other end of the building as a legitimate part of Parliament, but it is until that is changed. Parliament passed an Act and that is the law of the land. That is what the boundary commissions are following, and a motion of the House does not trump an Act of Parliament; only another Act of Parliament can trump it. Fundamentally, I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman’s premise.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

I hear what the hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) says, but I do not agree with her. However, I do agree with the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double). The problem is that the House needs an early indication from the Government of what they propose to do with the boundary review’s proposal, as laid by the Government, to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600.

I know that enough Conservatives feel unhappy with what the proposal implies. It was always going to be controversial, notwithstanding the fact that the Government thought that they had the majority of the House behind them. My contribution will be short, because I just want the Government to test the will of the House to see whether they have the support to reduce the number of MPs to 600. I do not believe that they have that support. It would be much better to clear that matter out of the way and avoid the boundary commissions ending up in a stramash, with them feeling that they have wasted a lot of time in trying to take forward something that is unacceptable to the House. I hope that they will be able to start again and carry out a process that they would find a lot easier without being under the imprimatur of having to reduce the number of MPs by a ridiculous amount.

The boundary review could not achieve the 600 figure without doing things to my seat and to that of the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay whereby we would end up with something that is fundamentally flawed. The House has always understood that the constituencies are based on not just number, but location.

[Steve Double]

rose—

[Dr Drew]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, who may help me.

[Steve Double]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s comments. I used to feel very much like him, but does he agree that we are now so close to the boundary commissions’ reports—only four sitting weeks—that we as may well wait? Voting on the commissions’ submissions will be the test that he talks about.

[Dr Drew]

That might well be true but, to be fair, the boundary commissions must to some extent try to pre-empt things and read into what has happened in successive debates and discussions—not necessarily just in the Chamber, but as result of what has happened in the Chamber. We should have an early vote and clear away some of the unnecessary disagreement.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) said, this is entirely based on the idea that we can just chop 50 people out of this House without making a difference, but that is fundamentally flawed. This is either gerrymandering for party political advantage or it is just about cost saving. As I said on Monday, the easiest way to save costs would be to get rid of the other place. That might be controversial, but it would be more democratically acceptable to many of our constituents who feel that this primary Chamber should be protected. Some of our constituents will unfairly end up in a constituency that they do not know, despite coming from one in which they had at least some idea of what the location meant, with the knowledge of who their MP was and that they could feel some confidence in them.

Let us get on with it and have an early vote, let us dump the notion that we can just chop 50 MPs, and let us go back to 650 MPs. We can then move forward. Whether we do that through the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) or some other device, let us do it. That is the fair approach, and I think it is what the vast majority of our constituents want.

I hope that the Government will take notice and that we can have a clear system in which we stick to 650 MPs, with constituency boundaries that mean something, rather than what we would end up with if we went to 600 MPs. I think that everyone would be largely satisfied with that.

House of Lords: Abolition

David Drew Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I am pleased to say that I agree almost entirely with the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), but I come at the issue from a completely different perspective. We may come to the same conclusion, but we have different reasons for wanting the abolition of the House of Lords.

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was here in 2003—he may have avoided that—when we had the vote on the future of the House of Lords. A White Paper offered seven options, all seven of which the House of Commons voted down. We do not have a terribly good track record of addressing the issue. We looked again in 2007—I think the hon. Gentleman was with us then—and made some progress. Surprisingly, the Commons came to an agreement that we wanted our Parliament to be bicameral, with an elected upper Chamber and that hereditaries would be abolished. Sadly, the Government fell in 2010, and for the last eight years we do not seem to have made much progress.

It is about time we revisited the issue, because it is pretty obvious that this petition strikes a chord. People do not sign in such numbers—169,000 and mounting as we speak—unless they feel quite strongly about an issue. The petition may have been brought on by Brexit and people’s antagonism towards the Lords for the way it has performed, but the debate goes much deeper than that. As someone with an awful lot of friends in the Lords—I may have fewer after this speech—I think it is time that we looked at what we want to be done, not just by the Lords but by the Commons.

I think I voted in favour of an elected chamber last time around, but I now believe we must abolish the Lords. Why have I come around in favour of abolition? Quite simply, it is because I do not believe we will ever do anything unless we abolish the Lords. We would have to put something in its place, but we must start with the nihilistic approach, if I can put it like that, of getting rid of what exists. We cannot carry on in the way we have been going. The latest attempt at reform by the Lord Speaker’s Committee demonstrates why we cannot let the House of Lords reform itself. The proposal is minimalistic and unacceptable, and I am sure it will never get through the Commons, so I do not know why it was even brought forward.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I agree that we need to abolish the Lords and start again, but we have seen that we need a bicameral Parliament. The Lord Speaker’s Committee has broad agreement in the Lords, so it should be seen as a starting point. If we made a radical proposal, the Lords themselves would vote it down and we would not get any further. To quote Voltaire, I do not think we should let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We need a proposal that can get through both Houses.

[Dr Drew]

That may be true, but I am an idealist, and I believe that we ought to seek out the best solution. Otherwise, we will always end up compromising—although compromises may well have to be allowed along the way.

Let me concentrate for a moment on the Commons. I have always argued that one of the problems with the Commons is that we pass too much bad legislation and we rely on the Lords to get it right through scrutiny and revision. If we got it right in the first place, we would not necessarily need another Chamber to do that. Again, that may be idealistic, but I feel strongly that the Commons must do its job better. There are all sorts of reasons why we cannot do our job satisfactorily: we are all too busy, so we all multi-task too much. We have Westminster Hall as a second debating chamber, which is great—those of us who argued for it thought it would open up debate for Back Benchers—but we are now criticised all the time by the public for never being in the main Chamber, and no one ever listens to our debates. We have to try to box and cox—we must realise that there is no perfect solution, but that there are solutions we can help along the way.

One of the reasons I would get rid of the Lords is that we have a fundamental problem with this building, which we will have to vacate sometime soon. Now is the time to look at what sort of structure we want. It would be daft to have that debate after we came back into the new building—it will be new, because it will in effect be rebuilt from the bottom up—whatever form it takes. It would be sensible to have it now and to establish what the second Chamber should look like, if we want one.

The one thing I disagree with the petitioners about is their assertion that the decision should be handled by a referendum. Anyone who read what I said last week will know that I do not agree with referendums being used for anything at the moment, given what happened with Brexit. It is about time Parliament reasserted its authority and decided what it wants to do. We would then face the consequences, because the electorate would either vote for us or not. As I said in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), I am not happy with what the Lord Speaker’s Committee has come forward with, which seems like a temporary solution—an aberration—when we need a radical overhaul of the way our Chambers operate.

If I do not want the second Chamber to continue as it is, how do I see it operating, and how do I see that situation being arrived at? Its role should be to scrutinise and to take an overview of legislation. The Lords does that well at the moment, but I do not want a second Chamber that in effect replicates the Commons. I was told many times while Labour was in government, “The Commons won’t agree to this, but don’t worry—we can get it through in the Lords.” That always made me look pretty stupid, because I would argue the case in the Commons and lose, only for that decision to be overturned in the Lords, where common sense prevailed. That may seem a jolly good reason for having the Lords, but I think it is a negation of what should happen in the Commons. We should take authority, debate and deliberate on things and then pass legislation, but we should do a better job of that.

I am not in favour of an elected second Chamber. I would make it a selectorate, keep it to about 200 people and allow those people to be representative of different ethnic groups, regions and interests. How would that be arrived at? I think Select Committees should interview appropriate people. I do not know whether hon. Members remember the people’s peers. I think we created about six and then the whole idea died a death. That was a daft idea—it was one of new Labour’s “Let’s share it with the people” compromises—but in a sense it is about time the Commons decided who is an appropriate Member of the second Chamber. I would make those Members’ period in office time-limited, and they should rotate so there is always some expertise but people move through. People should apply for the role, as they do in other walks of life, and Select Committees are the obvious bodies to interview them. Again, that would put the onus on Members of the Commons.

I am basically saying that we should take the politics out of the second Chamber. That may be idealistic, but I want expertise in that Chamber. I want people who know about science and the arts—people who know about the finer details of legislation, including the law, religion and so on—but who will not challenge the Commons. That is the problem—in effect, we have two Chambers challenging each other. We see that in the attrition over Brexit, but it has happened time after time, because traditionally the Lords has championed opposition to the Government. In normal circumstances—this is not the case at the moment with a hung Parliament—the Government believe they can get their legislation through. Abolishing the Lords would put the onus on the Commons to get that legislation right. If it did not, the Government would pay the consequences.

In conclusion, I feel that this is the right time to have this debate, so I welcome the petition, although I do not want a referendum—I want the issue to be decided by Parliament. That may be where the Lords comes in with its blocking role, but that is for it to decide. It would lose its credibility completely if it were seen to stand in the way of efforts to evolve what I think is the proper bicameral arrangement, in which one element of Parliament is democratically accountable and the other provides expertise and helps the process of the elected people.

My final point is that whatever money we save from the House of Lords should be given to MPs—not in pay but to run our offices. We are all overwhelmed with constituency work. That work gives us our grounding, and it is why we are different. We know what is going on in our constituencies because our constituents tell us. The problem is that we need additional resources to do a decent job, but our resources are capped. I would therefore put the money we saved from the Lords into running our offices, which would allow us more time to do our job in the Commons as we should.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Drew Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend raises an important issue, and the experience of passengers of Govia Thameslink and also Northern as a result of the change in timetables and the way that was done is simply unacceptable. It is important that they improve the services, and they have plans in place. I think, for example, that Govia Thameslink is introducing a new timetable that is better than the pre-May timetable and will have 200 more planned journeys. But of course passengers want to feel that they can travel in trains that are not too crowded, and I am sure that Govia Thameslink will be looking at that issue very seriously. The Department for Transport is working with that company and Northern to ensure that we can provide the services that people deserve; they pay for a ticket—they book a ticket, they pay for a season ticket—and they deserve to have a decent journey.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q6. The average length of time that a Stroud constituent has to wait to go to the Gloucester and Cheltenham centre for a PIP appeal is now 41 weeks, and the wait for an employment and support allowance appeal is 31 weeks. During that period of time constituents are now losing Motability cars and suffering enormous hardship. Will the Prime Minister promise to get a grip on this and make sure this hardship is not endured any longer?

[The Prime Minister]

Of course it is important that people are able to have their appeals heard in a timely fashion. My right hon. Friend the Work and Pensions Secretary is looking at exactly this issue to see what can be done in the tribunal system to ensure that people get a more timely result.