Bill of Rights

David Heath Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Paul Flynn]

I could, but it would be an unsatisfactory way of conducting the debate. There is a principle involved. Can we, or can we not, discuss the conduct of minor members of the royal family? That is what I want to do. To do it under a device here, where I would be limited to what could be discussed, would seem to be futile. What I want to challenge today—

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

On a point of order, Mr Bone, it might help the hon. Gentleman to know that there is nothing to prevent him from bringing such a matter forward on a substantive motion. The problem is that he cannot do so, according to “Erskine May”, in the context of another debate, or other than in the context of a substantive motion. That is a very clear way in which he must proceed if he wishes to carry on with the comments that he wishes to make.

[Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)]

I say again that the way the hon. Member for Newport West was speaking just now, when he was talking about the principle and the convention, is absolutely what this debate is about. What we cannot go into, because of that convention, is the detail of what he wants to do. By all means, the hon. Gentleman should carry on and talk about the principle and whether he thinks it is right or wrong, but we cannot actually go into the substance because we are not allowed to.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

I am pleased to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Mr Bone. Let me start by congratulating my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) and for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) on securing this debate. This is the second time in recent weeks that I have participated in a Westminster Hall debate that was initiated by the Backbench Business Committee. I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) for her comments, most of which I entirely agreed with. As she said, this is not a party political issue; it is a matter of Parliament standing up for the privileges of our constituents, who are so important to our process.

The debate has focused largely on the right of constituents and others to approach their own MP to share information with them lawfully, without fear of reprisals, and the right of hon. Members, having received that information, to raise any matter in the House, without fear of legal action. It is those two issues that I wish to address this afternoon. References have been made to specific cases during the course of the debate. Like the hon. Member for Warrington North, I do not propose to comment on them today, as it would not be proper to do so in a general debate of this kind. In particular, I am mindful of the risk of contravening the House’s resolution relating to matters sub judice, and I know that hon. Members will understand why I will exercise extreme caution in everything that I have to say about the relationship between this House and the courts.

Article 9 of the Bill of Rights applies only to proceedings in Parliament, and its protection is absolute. The meaning of “proceedings” in this context is open to interpretation, but the House has never sought to assert that it should apply to dealings between Members and their constituents or other members of the public. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley asserts that it should and I am simply stating the fact that it never has. However, the courts have regarded the communication of information to a Member of Parliament by a constituent as enjoying qualified privilege at law. Similarly, a Member who passes on a constituent’s concerns in good faith to the proper authority, such as a Minister, will not be protected by parliamentary privilege, but is likely to be protected by qualified privilege. Qualified privilege provides protection in certain situations where a person, acting in good faith and without any improper motive, makes a statement about another person, which is in fact untrue and defamatory. According to the case of Adam v. Ward in 1917, qualified privilege arises in situations where

“the person who makes a communication has an interest, or a duty, legal, social or moral, to make it to the person to whom it is made, and the person to whom it is made has a corresponding interest or duty to receive it.”

That point was clearly made during the debate. There are other cases, such as Rivlin v. Bilainkin to which my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley referred, where the courts held that it was not lawful for a person to pass on information if they were not seeking to bring to the attention of a Member of Parliament something which was his duty to pass on to another authority, but was simply making a point. In that case, a woman was making a point about her former husband, and it was held that that was not proper use of the facility and did not benefit from the qualified privilege that would otherwise apply.

The issue of passing on correspondence to a Minister is important and it was referred to by the hon. Member for Warrington North. As I have said, at the moment that does not have absolute privilege—parliamentary privilege—but it has qualified privilege. However, there is the very important case of Beach. In that case, an MP passed on a constituent’s letter that complained about a local firm of solicitors to two third parties, the Law Society and the Lord Chancellor, and the firm of solicitors took action for defamation against the MP. The court held in that case:

“1. MPs have an interest in receiving correspondence from constituents bringing matters of concern to their attention;

2. MPs have a consequential interest or duty in “passing the complaint on to the proper quarter”;

3. The Law Society and the Lord Chancellor both had an interest in receiving complaints about the conduct of solicitors;

4. Consequently, a qualified privilege was made out in this case which acted as a bar to an action for defamation”.

That is a very clear illustration of where qualified privilege assists an MP in the exercise of their proper duties and in the sort of action that we would expect any hon. Member of this House to take on behalf of their constituents.

[Helen Jones]

The Deputy Leader of the House is quite right about the case that he has just quoted. However, does he think that it is now time to consider whether an MP who is carrying out their proper duties should be subjected to a case in court and have to defend it with qualified privilege, or should we consider enshrining privilege in statute?

[Mr Heath]

I am certainly open to the suggestion that we should consider that issue as part of the privilege Bill that we intend to introduce. I will discuss that Bill in a little while.

[Mr Cash]

What the hon. Lady has just said raises the question of who would actually interpret the statute. So we are back to the courts in that event. What we need to do is entrench a procedure into the privilege Bill, when we pass it into law, that might, for example, prevent such a case being taken to court, or that at least would ensure that if the case went to court a judge would have a kind of pre-trial opportunity to consider it. It is probably a procedural question, but we cannot avoid the fact that even if privilege is put into statute it will still be open to interpretation.

[Mr Heath]

I think that we would be in the same position that we are in now, with the present interpretation of the absolute parliamentary privilege that we enjoy in the comments that we make in this House. I do not see that there would be any difference if we were to extend our statutory interpretation of proceedings to include correspondence in the way that the hon. Lady suggests. However, let me not attempt to pre-empt a serious debate that will inevitably need to happen in preparing the statute on which this Bill will be based, both in terms of the pre-legislative scrutiny and then our scrutiny of whatever is proposed.

[John Hemming]

I may not be right but I am thinking of the Strauss case, which was about a letter from a Back-Bench MP to a Minister about cables. I believe that at the time the Standards and Privileges Committee recommended that the House should consider that case to have privilege, but the House voted—albeit not unanimously—not to treat it as being privileged.

[Mr Heath]

My hon. Friend brings me on to a very important point about the attitude of the House to date. He is eager to change that attitude, but the House has not yet shown a predilection, to use his own word, to do so, because in the past the House itself has not regarded attempts to interfere with or to frustrate a constituent’s communication with their MP as a breach of privilege. “Erskine May” records cases where threats have been made against a constituent by his employer in respect of communications with the constituent’s MP and either the House has declined to refer the matter to the Standards and Privileges Committee or the Committee has found that the actions alleged did not amount to a breach of privilege.

My hon. Friend addressed the situation in Australia, where the position in the state of Victoria is slightly different from that here. There was a 2006 case in the Parliament of Victoria, in which the Parliament upheld a privilege complaint from Michael Leighton, the Member for the electoral district of Preston. In that case, the complaint was that a constituent who provided information to Mr Leighton relating to an issue that he had previously raised in the Parliament later received a solicitor’s letter threatening legal action if Mr Leighton repeated certain allegations in the Parliament. That illustrates that there might be particular circumstances in which interference with communication between an MP here and a constituent might be regarded as a contempt of the House, although it does not demonstrate that communications between MPs and constituents should generally be regarded as being protected by parliamentary privilege.

However, there are two points that we must remember about the Victoria case. First, the threat to take legal action against the constituent was specifically in respect of any allegations that might be repeated by the Member in the Parliament of Victoria and it was therefore an indirect attempt to constrain the Member’s freedom of speech in the Parliament. I have to say that that bears some level of similarity with my hon. Friend’s case against Withers, where the House acted quite properly in his defence, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that it acted in defence of his constituent.

The second point, or rather the second difference between the situation here and the situation in Australia, is quite important in the context of this debate. It is that parliamentary privilege in Australia is defined in the Parliamentary Privilege Act 1987, so Australians do not rely on the Bill of Rights as we do. In addition, there is a definition of “proceedings” in that Act, which is

“all words spoken or acts done in the course of, or for the purposes of or incidental to, the transacting of the business of a House or of a committee.”

I think that my hon. Friend is arguing that we ought to have some similar provision here and we will need to look at that issue when we consider the matter of parliamentary privilege more widely.

[Mr Bacon]

I am listening with great interest to the Deputy Leader of the House. There is an article 13 point here, which is that the Bill of Rights says that Parliament should “frequently” meet

“for redress of all grievances”.

Is it not an axiom of that, in effect, that Parliament can only do its job of redressing “all grievances” if MPs know about “all grievances”, and therefore that communications that are intended to ensure that MPs do know about “all grievances” are inherently bound up with the Bill of Rights?

[Mr Heath]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says and I have some sympathy with what he says. However, I have some difficulty with the interpretation of article 13 of the Bill of Rights. I say that not as a constitutional lawyer, but as someone who is making the simple observation that article 13 of the Bill of Rights is headed, “Frequent Parliaments”, and therefore it seems to me to that article 13 is inherently about the frequency of Parliament rather than the reason for holding Parliaments frequently, which is

“for redress of all grievances”.

It is the emphasis within article 13 of the Bill of Rights that I am addressing. Having said that, we are talking about a 1688 Act and it would be very surprising indeed if it was construed in 1688 in exactly the same way that modern eyes construe it. Therefore, I do not want to replace centuries of jurisprudence on the subject with my lay observations today. However, I hear what the hon. Gentleman says.

I want to move on to Parliament and the courts, because a lot of what my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley had to say was about the relationship between Parliament and the courts. Yet again, I enter the caveat that as a member of the Executive I need to be careful about what I say about that relationship and I hope that hon. Members will understand that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley referred to circumstances in which parties to court proceedings are forbidden to talk about them, either because of a specific injunction to that effect or, as in the case of certain family court proceedings, because proceedings are conducted in private, for example in the family court or the Court of Protection. That would not prevent a Member from raising in the House matters that it would be a contempt of court to raise elsewhere. We saw that in the recent Trafigura case, in which I had an interest. I was clear about what Parliament’s position should be, and I am happy that that was supported by others. If proceedings had been concluded, the House’s sub judice resolution would not necessarily prevent such matters being referred to.

The crux of the issue is the degree of legal protection offered, not to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley were he to raise the matter in the House—as he has done this afternoon—but to an individual who discloses information to their Member of Parliament. The extent of that protection is less clear, as in many cases it depends, as we have heard, on qualified privilege. In family proceedings, the Family Proceedings (Amendment) (No. 2) Rules 2009 include certain exemptions about the disclosure of information, including in rule 11.4(1)(d), which provides that a

“party or the legal representative of a party, on behalf of and upon the instructions of that party, may communicate information relating to the proceedings to any person where necessary to enable that party…to make and pursue a complaint regarding the law, policy or procedure relating to a category of proceedings to which this Part applies.”

However—that is a significant “however”—I emphasise that that is a general rule, which is subject to any direction of the court, and the court may direct that such disclosure, though generally allowed, should not be allowed in certain cases. That, I think, is the circumstance to which my hon. Friend refers.

I agree with the many Members who have said that an individual’s right to approach his or her MP should be regarded as an essential part of the democratic process. However, we need to consider how to deal with cases in which one person’s right of access to their MP could interfere with the rights of others, including the right to a fair trial and the right to privacy. There is no point in Parliament making laws conferring decision-making powers on the courts, if an individual Member can vitiate those decisions by disclosing on the Floor of the House information that might fatally undermine their purpose. For example, if a court orders that the identity of a party to legal proceedings should not be disclosed—usually because it would render the proceedings nugatory—Members should think very carefully before using the auspices of parliamentary privilege to subvert such a judgment.

The guiding principle must be one of comity: the House and its Members will respect the jurisdiction of the courts, and the courts will not trespass on to territory that is properly occupied by Parliament. If Parliament collectively believes that some injustice arises from how the courts apply the law, it is open to Parliament to change the law. There is no need to use the blunt instrument of parliamentary privilege as a battering ram with which to beat the courts.

If there are deficiencies in family court proceedings, my hon. Friend ought to seek to amend those rules, in the first instance, or the statute under which they operate, if he feels that they are ineffective in allowing him properly to represent the interests of his constituents.

[Mr Cash]

I appreciate that I am intruding somewhat into this rather narrow debate about parliamentary privilege and the Act. The Deputy Leader of the House referred to family law. As such matters are absorbed into the broader context of the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, the manner in which the courts respond to them within the framework of the law will be interpreted by that Court. I fear that some of the assumptions being made, including that we will be able to legislate in line with the kind of principles that the Deputy Leader of the House has referred to, will not be applicable, because it will not be a matter exclusively for our courts.

[Mr Heath]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says. He talks about the European Court of Justice. I thought that he was going to talk about the European convention on human rights, because it could be argued that the way these matters operate is outwith ECHR provisions, other than the fact that we are using the licence within the relevant article in the convention, which allows for specific items—the interests of minors are mentioned—to be excluded from the general rule of open proceedings in court. We must bear that in mind. I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, and I have no doubt that we will discuss the matter on many other occasions.

Coming back to what my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley was saying, I think that he is particularly exercised about the office of the Official Solicitor. He seems to have an interesting relationship with the Official Solicitor, in the pursuance of his various interests in the cases in which he has been involved. He essentially asks where the Official Solicitor’s supervision and accountability are, in the exercise of his duties. My hon. Friend knows that the antecedents of the office go back a long way, to its origins in the Six Clerks Office, which was mentioned by Pepys. This officer of the court has a long pedigree, and he acts on behalf of those who were originally defined as paupers, including lunatics and infants, and needed protection under the law. The office is an ancient one, but it has always been an office of the court.

Under the most recent legislation, the office is a statutory office of the Supreme Court, and we have been very clear in the House, by statute and otherwise, that we respect the independence of the Supreme Court, and that we will not seek to interfere with the activities of the Supreme Court, as a legislature. We have to be very careful in expecting something of an officer of the Supreme Court, who I suppose is answerable in extremis to the Lord Chancellor in the exercise of their duties. It is not a matter for normal, democratic control, any more than a judge sitting in the High Court is a matter that should be under the control of the House.

[Mr Bacon]

I have listened to the Deputy Leader of the House with great interest. He said that we should not seek to interfere with the operation of the Supreme Court as a legislature. Did he mean that we should not, as a legislature, seek to interfere with the operation of the Supreme Court? There is a fundamental difference.

[Mr Heath]

I meant that we, as a legislature, should not seek to interfere with the activities of the Supreme Court. There was a comma, which the hon. Gentleman did not, I think, hear. It was there; I assure him.

[Mr Bacon]

I regret that I did not hear the comma, but does the Deputy Leader of the House not agree that this goes to the heart of what my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) was talking about? Although the late and much-lamented Lord Chief Justice, Tom Bingham, made it extremely clear in his recent book, “The Rule of Law”, that he thought that the Court should ultimately defer to the democratic will of the elected legislature, my hon. Friend the Member for Stone says that there is abroad—“abroad” is the wrong word, although it is also true—around the place, including here and also abroad, a kind of judge who does not take that view. That is a source of great concern.

[Mr Heath]

I understand the concern about what is normally described as judicial activism, and about the judiciary perhaps wishing to extend its role beyond what has been the traditional separation between its role and that of the House. We have to be extremely wary about that. Nevertheless, I maintain that it is not and never has been the role of Members of Parliament to decide whether officers of the court are behaving properly in the exercise of their duties. Our role is to create the statutory environment in which they work, and that is a very different matter.

[Helen Jones]

It is a difficult area, but does the Deputy Leader of the House agree that while we would not wish to see Members of Parliament interfering in the judicial process—we have both probably had experience of telling constituents that we cannot do that—a constituent who feels that they have not received justice or due process ought to be free to raise that with a Member of Parliament? There are two different issues.

[Mr Heath]

The hon. Lady puts it very well. There is a distinction, and we are right to make it.

I share the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley about the growth of the super-injunction, and what he described as the hyper-injunction. I was concerned when the issue arose during the Trafigura case. I am also concerned that we have allowed a whole new jurisprudence to develop without any real consideration of where it will end, or the consequences for our judicial process.

Happily, the Master of the Rolls, who has a proper role in the matter, has recognised the public concern. He established a committee in April last year to examine the use of injunctions that bind the press, including super-injunctions. He brought together a committee of the judiciary, the legal profession and the press. I anticipate that it will report soon, and we in the House should have particular concern about what it says.

Such injunctions have an impact, potentially, on what we do in the House, and certainly on the interests of our constituents. Personally, I look forward to seeing whether the Master of the Rolls wishes to bring into effect any significant changes to how the courts interpret the whole role of super-injunctions, and what he has to say about the position that has been established whereby my hon. Friend, as a Member of Parliament, cannot know that his constituent is even involved in a case, let alone get involved in it, because his constituent is injuncted by a super-injunction to prevent him passing on that information. My hon. Friend’s concern is perfectly legitimate and I am glad he has had the opportunity to express it today.

[Mr Bacon]

Many people, including the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly), who raised the Trafigura case, have had concerns about super-injunctions. Does the Deputy Leader of the House agree that such people should also be concerned about what my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley has identified as another category, hyper-injunctions, whereby a court makes an order not to refer to the existence of proceedings? Is that not simply a step far too far?

[Mr Heath]

I am not sure that I understand the distinction that my hon. Friend was making between a super-injunction and a hyper-injunction, because what is called a super-injunction is an injunction that requires a particular course of action to be taken, including not reporting that the injunction in place is proceeding. It is an injunction squared, or a self-referring injunction. I am concerned about it, as are a lot of hon. Members, but we must wait and see what the Master of Rolls has to say on the subject when he—or, rather, his committee—reports.

I want to conclude by talking about the draft parliamentary privilege Bill.

[Mr Cash]

I realise that I asked a much broader question than was intended for the debate, so I do not ask the Deputy Leader of the House to go into any detail, but in general does he take on board my point about the hierarchy of laws and the necessity to ensure where the final jurisdiction lies? The issue has come up in various forms in exchanges on the draft parliamentary privilege legislation and its proposals. The Supreme Court and other courts in the European dimension are claiming greater jurisdiction than previously over what we do, indirectly and, sometimes, more directly. That is an innovation, which was certainly not around five years ago. I ask the hon. Gentleman to do no more than take into account the fact that these points are not just the emanations of those who are concerned obsessively about such matters; they need to be taken very seriously because the process is on the march.

[Mr Heath]

I was going to come to the hon. Gentleman’s points at the conclusion of my other remarks, but I will answer them now.

I am loth to usurp the authority of the Lord Chancellor, which I suspect would be lèse majesté on the part of a junior Minister. Therefore, it would not be appropriate for me to second-guess the Lord Chancellor’s views, in particular as he had the opportunity recently to set out some concerns in a Committee, as the hon. Gentleman said.

The hon. Gentleman knows that the Government are setting up a commission to look at the case for a UK Bill of Rights. He knows that the announcement has been made and that that will happen. He knows what is in the coalition agreement in respect of the issue, and I do not need to remind him of that. He also knows, because I heard him recently ask the question of my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe, that the Government strongly support reform of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. There is a package of considerations and I will not pre-empt any conclusions, but I hear what the hon. Member for Stone has said. I am sure that other colleagues in the Government will have heard his comments as well. It is probably safest if I leave it at that. He understands that there is a limit to how far I can expand on the subject.

Returning to a perhaps slightly safer area for which I do have some responsibility, the Government intend to bring forward a draft parliamentary privilege Bill. As we have heard this afternoon, it is a complex subject. We have the report from some years ago to which the hon. Member for Warrington North referred. We need to revisit it, to ensure that it meets all our present circumstances, but we hope that we will soon be able to provide a draft Bill on which every hon. Member will have the opportunity to comment. In particular, I hope that Members involved in this afternoon’s debate will make their views well known as part of the consultative process, because they will have the opportunity to shape the content of the Bill.

I was intrigued by the suggestion of the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) that we should do away with “privilege” altogether and call it something else. I make no commitment that that will form part of the Bill, but “privilege” is sometimes misinterpreted, deliberately or purely by ignorance, and assumed to mean that we somehow place our interests, and ourselves, above those of other people, rather than what it does mean, which is that it enables us to do our job on behalf of the people we represent.

Such interpretations were perhaps exaggerated by the recent court cases involving former Members of the House. The proposition before the court was that parliamentary privilege somehow prevented them from facing due criminal proceedings in the courts. Of course, privilege did not do that; we said so at the time and I am pleased that the courts held it to be the case. However, that message simply must go out: parliamentary privilege is not about privileges for Members, it is about privilege for our constituents to have a Member of Parliament who can stand up and speak without fear or favour on their behalf in the House, and to do so on whatever terms that Member feels fit, and without the threat of court action or the actions of the Executive preventing them from acting in the fullest capacity as a Member of Parliament. We intend to produce the draft Bill by the end of this Session, in spring 2012. That will provide us with a further opportunity for these matters to be discussed.

I am grateful to you, Mr Bone, for chairing this sitting and to the Backbench Business Committee for providing us with the opportunity to debate the subject. I am grateful too to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley for bringing forward matters of considerable importance, which have now been given an airing in the House.

[Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)]

With the leave of the House, I call the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley.

Financial Services (Regulation of Derivatives)

David Heath Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require certain financial institutions to prepare parallel accounts on the basis of the lower of historic cost and mark to market for their exposure to derivatives; and for connected purposes.

I rise not as an expert in derivatives or derivative accounting, but as someone who has wrestled with the problems of the banking system in the company of experts, both academic and practical. I am persuaded that a parallel, more conservative accounting regime for derivatives would mitigate some of the worst risks in the financial system.

Even though banks are governed by overarching EU and Basel rules, it is for British regulators to approve the day-to-day activities of British banks. This is a profoundly important role. My Bill is a moderate proposal that seeks to improve accounting transparency to enable that role, because, as Mervyn King has said,

“banks are global in life but national in death”.

The Bill could be enacted within the current international regulatory framework.

To explain why this measure is profoundly important, I would like to share with Members an analogy of the banking system. Naturally, it will short-circuit some of the details, but even though it remains necessarily complex. Let us imagine that we discover a little-known territory within the EU on which to establish a colony. Let us call it Ruritania and allow its currency to be pounds. We will establish our fledgling colony with four people: a depositor, Alice, who arrives with £103; a builder, Bob—naturally—an entrepreneur, Matilda; and a banker, Mallory, with a colourful recent past in Iceland and Ireland. Interest rates are 0.5%. Mallory establishes a bank and persuades the other three inhabitants of the importance of a healthy banking system, so Ruritania’s constitution contains a limited guarantee from future taxpayers of £10 in favour of the bank. Under central European banking authority devolved rules, Ruritania classifies that guarantee as core tier 1 bank capital, meaning that there is no actual capital, just a taxpayer guarantee.

Alice, seeking to keep her money safe, deposits it in a demand account at the bank. Matilda, the entrepreneur, wants to start a business and approaches Mallory for a loan. The bank retains a supposedly prudent reserve of £3 from Alice’s deposit and lends to Matilda, at 7% interest, the remaining £100 of cash deposited by Alice. Matilda then employs Bob, who wants his year’s wages up front. She hands over the £100 to Bob, which he deposits in the bank. Let us set aside for the moment the fact that the bank just doubled the money supply of Ruritania, as that issue is dealt with in the Financial Services (Regulation of Deposits and Lending) Bill, introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell), which I was glad to support. The banker now has two liabilities: a deposit of £103 from Alice and a deposit of £100 from Bob. Offsetting those, he has two assets: a 25-year loan of £100 and cash of £103. So far, so simple.

Mallory wants a Ferrari today, which he can buy for £20. His compensation contract is 20% of profits, which is not unusual in banking. He therefore seeks to record an instant £100 profit for his bank, and he knows just how to do that under EU bank accounting rules. He phones an insurer active in the credit derivatives market—let us call it GIA—which agrees to write a derivative known as a credit default swap for a fee of 1% per annum. It is a guarantee of 95% of the loan.

The bank quickly establishes a new company, a special purpose vehicle, which buys the future loan cash flows of £275. The credit derivative is written directly with that new company, the SPV. The SPV finances its purchases by issuing two bonds: a 95% senior bond, rated triple A by two august rating agencies because GIA is so rated; and a 5% junior or equity tranche. The bank buys the two bonds with the £100 cash. The funds then flow back from the SPV to the bank to settle that purchase. That kind of circular flow of cash is commonly used. The result is that the equity tranche of £5 is a deduction from the bank’s £10 tier 1 capital. Members will recall that that capital is a future taxpayers’ pledge, not hard cash.

Under mark-to-market rules, Mallory, by holding the bond on his trading book, records an instant but unrealised profit of £105. After replenishing his tier 1 capital with £5, he shows that £100 clear profit. That profit has been recorded, even though the bank has not received any income from the loan, and that loan might never be repaid. Mallory the banker is not concerned about that, however; he has his Ferrari. Any shareholders are not concerned either, as the bank also declares an £80 dividend.

The banker and his shareholders have taken £100 of the £103 total money supply of Ruritania, declared it as profit and spent it abroad. Mallory likes mark-to-market accounting and seeks to grow his bank by making further investments. He cannot sell the bond on the open market, so he borrows against it through an arrangement with a central bank, known as a repo. He receives £205 in cash from the central bank, and the central bank has a mortgage on his bond.

Mallory uses the balance as collateral for further bets, such as derivatives with other banks and low-priced Irish bank-issued bonds, in the hope of more fast profits. Unfortunately, his bank becomes insolvent when Matilda misses a loan payment, and it cannot refinance the central bank’s funding, so the central bank takes ownership of the bond—Mallory’s bank’s one decent asset. Depositors ask for their funds, but the bank cannot pay. That could be the crisis of 2014.

On our Ruritanian bank’s liquidation, we find that two depositors have claims for £203, but there is only £6 in cash; all the rest had been pledged as collateral and the bank’s assets cannot be sold. There happens to have been another freakishly unlikely collapse. Stakeholders had not realised that the bank’s one decent asset had been repo’d with the central bank, because it remained on Mallory’s bank’s balance sheet right up to foreclosure. Mallory, of course, lives happily ever after.

Financial derivatives and certain other “synthetic” investments are governed by mark to market. Banks record a profit or loss in respect of each derivative by comparing the price of the asset or liability in today’s market with the value of the position on the last balance sheet date. What is wrong with that? Marking to market enables banks to record unrealised increases in value as profits, but that is not the case with loans. The arbitrage between the different accounting regimes for loans and for derivatives therefore incentivises banks to transact business in derivatives. The fundamental driving force behind the phenomenal growth of the credit derivatives market has been profit acceleration using that accounting arbitrage.

Regulators need to be aware of those exposures in order to help avert any future threats. That requires the publication of accounts with derivatives and other investments recorded at the lower of historic cost and their mark-to-market value. If my Bill becomes law, the ability to declare future hoped-for income as profit today and the rest of the absurd activity that I have described would be restrained.

If we want banks to refocus on stimulating the real economy, we need to change those incentives. I therefore ask the House to support this Bill and, in so doing, to correct one of the most damaging and misunderstood weaknesses of the current British banking system.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Steve Baker, Mr Douglas Carswell, Andrea Leadsom and Chris Heaton-Harris present the Bill.

Steve Baker accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 10 June and to be printed (Bill 162).

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The House will have heard earlier the point of order from the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) about the delay in responses to hon. Members’ questions from the Department for Education. The whole House should be concerned when there has been a delay, and you, Sir, have made clear your views on the issue.

I have now investigated the matter, and it seems as though there is a specific problem within the Department for Education in that there has been a technical failure in the IT system that it uses to track parliamentary questions. The problem has now been identified and fixed, and officials are working towards providing outstanding responses as quickly as possible. The hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) will today have received a letter explaining the delay in those terms. I hope, Mr Speaker, that normal service will be resumed as soon as possible, and I know that the Department would wish to apologise to any Member of the House who has been inconvenienced by the delay caused by these circumstances.

[Mr Speaker]

I thank the Deputy Leader of the House for what he has said. The situation is clearly both regrettable and unsatisfactory, and it is much to be hoped that it can be avoided in future. However, the speed with which he has investigated the matter will, I think, be appreciated by all right hon. and hon. Members.

Points of Order

David Heath Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

In the first instance, where Government time is concerned, that is a matter for the Government. Secondly, it could be a matter for the Backbench Business Committee. I was trying to think whether there was anything further in my mind on the subject, but I cannot recall off the top of my head any other plan. However, there are those two possible avenues, and I have a feeling that, if the hon. Gentleman is dissatisfied or if what he wants is not forthcoming pretty soon, he will renew his endeavours.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will wish to look at the Order Paper for Thursday 17 March.

[Mr Speaker]

I am very grateful to the Deputy Leader of the House, because I did not have the Order Paper in front of me and could not recall that date. I had germinating in my mind the notion that something was brewing, but I did not know what. However, the Deputy Leader of the House has helped the hon. Gentleman, me and the whole House, so we are all extremely grateful to him.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Heath Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

1. What recent discussions he has had with the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee on means for that Committee to receive representations from hon. Members.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House meets regularly with the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee to discuss a range of issues relating to Back-Bench business. My right hon. Friend and I have attended meetings of what he calls the Backbench Business Committee’s weekly salon. We have been impressed by the work of the Committee and the quality of presentations by hon. Members.

[Julie Hilling]

With all the non-legislative debates being transferred to the Backbench Business Committee, does the Deputy Leader of the House recognise that hon. Members will want to make representations for more parliamentary time to be allocated to Back-Bench business, particularly given its popularity since its introduction?

[Mr Heath]

It is important that we get the right balance in the House between legislative business, which is the proper business of the House, and the debates that the Backbench Business Committee organises on behalf of the House. The Wright Committee made clear proposals on how we should allocate time to the Backbench Business Committee, which the Government have followed. The days have been transferred and I think that it is working extremely well.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I congratulate the Deputy Leader of the House on attending Tuesday’s Backbench Business Committee meeting. Will he make it clear to the House that the Committee can allocate only the time given to it by Her Majesty’s Government, and that the days on which Back-Bench business takes place are decided on entirely by him and the Leader of the House?

[Mr Heath]

It is the business managers who allocate the days that are made available, but that is done within a framework by which the number of days is allocated according to a formula, as the hon. Gentleman knows and the House understands.

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

Further to that answer, the Deputy Leader of the House is aware that the 35 days allocated to Backbench Business Committee debates at the moment is a minimum number, so given the popularity of those debates, will he increase that number from 35 to many more?

[Mr Heath]

At the moment, the hon. Lady’s Committee has 15 days of the allotted 35 days left, so we have not yet reached the allocation. There would not be a need for a change to Standing Orders to allocate more if it seemed appropriate to do so, but I stress again that for the system to work—I think it is working very well—we have to get the right balance between legislative time and time for other debates. We often hear calls for more time for Committee and Report stages of Bills, and we have to be aware that that takes time as well. If we restrict the number of days available for scrutiny of Bills, it restricts the opportunity for Back-Bench Members to have their say on legislation that is passing through the House.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Given the level of interest in Back-Bench business, does the Deputy Leader of the House think that the time has now come to allow Members to make representations in public by having questions to the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee on the Floor of the House? Does he agree that that would have two advantages? It would raise the Committee’s profile with the public, who may well have issues that they would like to see debated, and it would allow the Leader of the House to concentrate on requests for the use of Government time instead of having to refer many bids to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), as he does at present.

[Mr Heath]

As I said earlier, the public sessions that the Committee holds are extremely effective. As I heard on Tuesday, when the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) was unfortunately not chairing the session—it was elegantly chaired by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone)—they give people the opportunity to expand on the case that they wish to put. We are going to move to having a Committee for all business of the House, and we will then need to consider seriously the arrangements for the business statement and how we deal with business sessions, to ensure that everybody has the opportunity to bid for time in an effective way.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

2. What recent discussions he has had with the Chair of the Committee of Selection on the operation of that Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

3. What recent representations he has received on the consequences of the timing of Question Time in the House for the conduct of Committee business; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has received no specific representations on this issue, but he and I are happy to receive such representations from Members. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the Procedure Committee is looking at the issue of sitting hours, and he may wish to contribute to that inquiry in due course.

[Kevin Brennan]

I am a firm believer that Question Time and statements should be in prime time, and that Committees should not meet at the same time. We have a classic example of that not happening today. We will have a statement at 3 o’clock despite the fact that the Order Paper states that “Ministerial Statements (if any)” will take place after 11.30 am. Will the Deputy Leader of the House explain why people such as me—I am serving on the Education Bill Committee today at 3 o’clock, on a three-line Whip—will be unable to come here to participate? Why has that happened?

[Mr Heath]

First, Committees as a rule do not meet during Question Time in the Chamber, but obviously, it is not always possible to avoid a clash with statements. However, the same applies to consideration of Bills and all other business. Hon. Members sometimes have to make difficult choices on their priorities.

On the timing of business today, it is very important that, on one of the rare occasions when one of the minority parties has an Opposition day, we do not take up all the time available to it with a statement. That is why you, Mr Speaker, chose 3 o’clock today as an opportunity for that statement.

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

4. If he will bring forward proposals to provide for the publication in the Official Report of advice given by Government business managers on voting by hon. Members.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

I am devastated to disappoint the hon. Gentleman, but the Government have no plans to do so.

[Mr Bone]

In virtually every Division in the House of Commons, Members of Parliament do not make up their own minds how to vote, but are instructed by dark forces. The Deputy Leader of the House is a great parliamentarian who believes in transparency. I urge him—no: I beg him—not to go over to the dark side. Let us throw light on that advice and publish it.

[Mr Heath]

I know that the business managers sometimes give advice on voting, and that they sometimes express a degree of eagerness that hon. Members might attend on a particular day and vote in a particular way. It seems to me that the hon. Gentleman has never felt desperately constrained by that, although I am impressed that on no fewer than eight out of 10 occasions during this Parliament, he has supported the Government, which may come as some surprise to those on the Treasury Bench. He obviously takes very seriously the advice he receives, but I am not sure that placing such matters on the Order Paper adds value to it.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

5. How many questions for oral answer printed in the Questions Book Departments have subsequently transferred during the present Session of Parliament.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

Information extracted from the House’s Parliamentary Information Management Services database indicates that a total of 46 oral questions have been transferred this Session.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Will the Deputy Leader of the House look at a particular oral question tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) for answer by the Minister for Women and Equality? He asked about the equality impact of pensions policy and how men and women are treated differently in that respect. The question was selected for oral answer and was transferred to the Department for Work and Pensions and the Treasury. However, the equalities impact element of the question has, as far as I can see, never been answered.

[Mr Heath]

I am obviously concerned if the hon. Lady feels that a question has not been answered. It is for Ministers and Departments to determine which Department has responsibility for a particular question. As she knows, the transfer of questions has happened for a very long time. It is important that when a question is transferred, it is done promptly—an oral question should be transferred within 24 hours of it appearing in the notice paper, not of the day for answer, and it is a discourtesy to the House and hon. Members if they are not notified of that transfer. However, if she would like to give me further details of a question that she feels has simply not been answered, I will happily look into it.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

6. What recent representations he has received on the practice of the House of holding daily Prayers in the Chamber.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

The holding of daily Prayers is primarily a matter for the House. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House responded to a question for written answer from the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) on 10 February, and the hon. Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson) raised the matter during a debate in Westminster Hall on parliamentary reform on 3 February.

[Mr Leigh]

It has been suggested in debate that Prayers should either be abolished or moved from the main Chamber on the grounds that they take up a valuable three minutes of our time. Will the Deputy Leader of the House reject this notion, and say that, whatever one’s religious views—or lack thereof—apart from the fact that they are beautiful poetry, what is wrong with meditating on things other than politics for three minutes a day? Anyway, our wonderful Chaplain does them very beautifully.

[Mr Heath]

I know that many right hon. and hon. Members value the few moments that the House spends in prayer at the beginning of each daily sitting. I repeat that I do not think that it is a matter for the Government; it is for the House. I am sure, Mr Speaker, that you will have heard the point made by the hon. Gentleman.

The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, representing the House of Commons Commission, was asked—

Registration of Members’ Financial Interests

David Heath Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) on securing this debate about two modest but important improvements to the rules on the registration of Members’ financial interests and on the registration of all-party groups. I also congratulate my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, as the new rules relating to all-party groups were produced under his chairmanship of the Standards and Privileges Committee back in July 2009.

The Committee’s proposal to reintroduce a sensible de minimis threshold for the registration of income from employment will remedy a problem that arose with the rule changes that the House agreed to on 30 April 2009. Under those new rules, Members are required to register every single payment they receive for remunerated employment of any kind, however small its value. The problem is that, for the House’s purposes, “remunerated employment” means any benefit of any kind which a Member might receive in exchange for providing a service.

The test is not whether there is a formal employment relationship in law, or whether there is some kind of contractual obligation on either side, but whether the Member would have received the benefit if he or she had not provided some kind of service. This includes any small gift to a Member who addresses a school assembly, opens a village fete or makes, as the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) said, a speech at a constituency function. I am very sad to hear that he has never received any sort of thank you—not even a meal, from the sound of it. I find it extraordinary that he should go so unrewarded for his labours, but nevertheless any gift—

[The Vice-Chamberlain of Her Majesty's Household (Mr Mark Francois)]

A gift would be cheaper!

[Mr Heath]

The right hon. Gentleman says from a sedentary position that “a gift would be cheaper” than providing a meal. I cannot believe that in the case of the hon. Member for Mid Sussex.

Anyway, any small gift received under those circumstances must be registered, and that has led to a large number of registrations of things that most of us would regard as gifts—tokens of thanks for some small service. For example, my hon. Friend the Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) has been commendably thorough in her registrations, which include a Scottish Bible Society cloth bag worth £2.95, some branded pens and pencils from a local recycling company worth £5 and a Girlguiding centenary pencil to the value of 35p. No one will honestly feel that her judgment has been clouded by the generosity of those gifts, but nevertheless she has complied with the strict requirements that the House places on us all.

My examples would not be complete if I did not mention that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has registered a gift of a pair of hand-knitted, yellow socks, which I am very sad to see he is not wearing today. He was given them when he opened a wool shop in his constituency, and I understand that the owners even went to the trouble of contacting his office to establish his shoe size.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

I am quite awed by the thoroughness of many right hon. and hon. Members, but will the hon. Gentleman help me? I do not drink wine—I tried it once and did not much care for it—but when I addressed The Spectator dinner just before Christmas the organisers sent me half a dozen bottles of wine. I have not the faintest idea how much they are worth, so how does one find the price if not of a Scottish Bible Society bio-recyclable-degradable bag, then of things like a bottle of wine? Can the hon. Gentleman give some advice or assistance to those of us who are innocents in the area?

[Mr Heath]

The rather straightforward and dull response to the hon. Gentleman is, consult the registrar if in doubt. The registrar has an omniscience that transcends any normal Member, in that they know the value of all things. They will I am sure be able to find out the value of that wine gift, which I suspect, being from The Spectator, is a rather fine half case of wine. I am sure he fully deserved to be paid in such kind.

[Nicholas Soames]

The hon. Gentleman is himself beginning to stray—I am sure without realising it—into an area where common sense has completely departed. Surely it is important that common sense is exercised in all such matters, but it is absolutely impossible to codify the situation without it looking completely ridiculous.

[Mr Heath]

It is because there is a danger of the situation looking completely ridiculous that the right hon. Member for Rother Valley and his Committee have come up with the proposed changes. There clearly is a gradation. If the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) were, in response to his speaking at an event for The Spectator, given several cases of Chateau d’quem, it might well be considered that that would have an effect on his judgment, whether he consumed them or not—but a half bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale might not be considered to have the same effect.

There is a need for common sense. That is precisely why the right hon. Gentleman has come forward with the proposal for a sensible de minimis requirement worth about the £65 mark. Most people can judge whether what they have received is likely to be in that region. Judging from my experience, I am very rarely given a token that comes to anything like that value. I think that if I were given something of more than that value, it would suggest that I was involved in paid employment of some kind—doing it for some remuneration—and that it should be declared. One must use a level of common sense.

I do not want this debate to become merely an insight into the life of a constituency MP. The purpose of the register is to provide information about any material benefit that a Member receives and which might reasonably be thought by others to influence his or her conduct in the House. The trivial nature of these registrations and the effort and expense involved in registering them does nothing, I would suggest, to contribute to the purpose of the register. I welcome the Committee’s proposal to introduce a sensible de minimis threshold of 0.1% of a Member’s salary, which currently works out at about £65. That is a sensible compromise between ensuring clarity and accountability while not over-encumbering the register with things that are frankly of little or no concern to any reasonable member of the public.

Turning to the rules on all-party groups, this motion implements recommendations made by the Committee in July 2009. I will not repeat the details of the rule changes, which the right hon. Member for Rother Valley has already outlined to the House. The Government welcome these proposed changes. The House will be aware of the valuable work that is done by all-party groups on a vast range of issues—for example, the armed forces, the BBC, beer and cider, clean water, underground space and shipbuilding. There can scarcely be a country in the world, nor—as the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) told a debate in Westminster Hall last week—a condition of the human body that is not covered by an all-party group. As the House will be aware, some groups are campaigning bodies, some are concerned with building relationships with other countries, and some are essentially social groups. The examples that I have here suggest that the parliamentary choir and the rugby club might fall into the latter group, although I have my doubts as to whether they do not also, to an extent, have a campaigning purpose.

I would not wish for one moment to frustrate the work of these groups or to place unnecessary obstacles in their way. However, it is important for the House to have robust registration requirements in place in order to protect its reputation, the reputations of hon. Members, and those of the groups themselves.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

Although the recommendations are entirely worthy and should be supported, the one issue that remains—the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) may be able to reflect on it when he winds up—is that groups often appear to be overlapping or duplicating, and we are always spawning more groups than we can manage properly to attend or service. Might it be possible, informally if not formally, for the registrar to ensure, when somebody seeks to register a group, that the activity is not already covered somewhere else, so that we do not end up duplicating activities?

[Mr Heath]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that comment. He is absolutely right to say that there is a degree of overlap and proliferation among all-party groups. It would certainly be helpful if the registrar were able to give guidance on where there is any likely overlap. I would not be happy for the registrar to be in a position to veto the formation of a new all-party group that might have a different view or complexion as regards a particular matter, but knowing that somebody already deals with a specific subject might be helpful at an early stage in a group’s formation in order to prevent duplication.

[Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)]

I declare an interest in that I am chairman of the all-party group on Georgia, having been asked to take it over from my good friend Bruce George, the former right hon. Member for Walsall. Apart from that, I am not really active in any of these groups. Several colleagues are, however, and they have to overlap; otherwise, the group dies because if it does not have its officers it ceases to exist. Yet they are pilloried in the press as junketeers and all the rest of it. Is there any mechanism that allows them to send a statement to these reptiles that in fact an all-party group for no-man’s land somewhere can be of importance—that these groups can help our ambassadors, chambers of commerce and investment? How do we push back this endless sneering that any involvement with any country outside Britain is something that no right hon. or hon. Member should take part in?

[Mr Heath]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for making that point. All-party groups that deal with overseas countries are often of huge value in increasing understanding and maintaining contacts with parliamentarians in those countries and, indeed, their civil societies. He mentioned that Members are often members of several different groups. That, to me, is not duplication. It is not an obstacle; it is simply showing a breadth of interest. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) was referring to the situation where more than one all-party group has an overlapping interest, which is not quite the same thing.

All-party groups, particularly some of the overseas groups, are of value. But—and there is a but—there is a need for transparency in the way that they operate and the degree to which they may or may not provide benefit to Members. First, many, but by no means all, groups provide a forum for commercial interests and campaign groups to lobby hon. Members. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that in a free society, and lobbying is one of the routes by which hon. Members can come to a better understanding of some of the policy issues that confront us in this House. However, the public rightly expect to know who is lobbying whom, and on whose behalf and with what outcome. That is the crucial aspect. That is why the Government are working towards increasing transparency and openness in the activity of lobbyists by introducing a statutory register. These proposals also contribute to that objective.

Secondly, as the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane) said, Members receive hospitality, including in some cases overseas travel, through some of the groups. Of course, Members are still under a duty to register any registrable interest personally, but there is a legitimate public interest in the publication of full details about the groups under whose auspices such benefits may be received.

Finally, although all-party groups are independent of the House, they carry something of its brand. They can use the word “parliamentary” in their titles, and they have access to the facilities of the House. I am sure that in the public mind, the distinction between an all-party group and a Committee of this House is unclear, at best. The House therefore has a legitimate interest in ensuring that the groups observe the highest standards of transparency.

I should like finally to touch on an issue of drafting. The motion refers to Members who are from the same political party as the Government and those who are not from the Government’s party—singular. I have been advised by the Clerks that this is already being interpreted in motions relating to all-party groups, as it is in other resolutions of the House, as meaning all those parties making up the Government in the situation of a coalition. This is the advice that has been given to Members since the start of the Parliament by those operating the system, and it is working without any problem to date. While it would have been possible to amend the motion so that it reflected more accurately the current position of the coalition Government, it would have put it at odds with other resolutions in use around the House. For that reason, the motion is not being amended and is being put to the House in a form consistent with other resolutions of the House.

On behalf of the Government, I thank the right hon. Member for Rother Valley and other members of the Standards and Privileges Committee for their work. I am pleased to support the motions and commend them to the House.

Parliamentary Reform

David Heath Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

It has been a great pleasure to listen to this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on securing it.

I am pleased that so many new Members have come along and contributed. The hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) hit the nail on the end when she said that there is a brief moment before we become institutionalised by this place where we actually see things as others see them. It is important that we have that perspective and make use of it.

I also say that this is a triumph for the Backbench Business Committee, and I am so pleased that the Leader of the House has been able to sit through the debate. I hope that he is here not to ensure that I do not say something completely out of order but because he, like me, shares a zeal for reform. The best thing that we have done so far in this House is create the Backbench Business Committee, which we argued for in opposition, which the Wright Committee proposed and which we now have doing its job. Without the Backbench Business Committee, we would not have had the two well-subscribed, relevant debates in the main Chamber today and this debate happening here. We can contrast that with the lacklustre, so-called topical debates that we had in the previous Parliament, which were chosen by the Leader of the House. Those debates were neither topical nor debates, because Members were not really interested in them, so we have made a huge stride in the way in which we work. Of course, there are many other things that have happened, such as the election of Committees and their Chairs, which is directly relevant to what the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) has said. She is able to be a member of the Health Committee because she has the confidence of her colleagues rather than the patronage of the Whips, which is an important distinction.

Two themes underlie our debate. One is how we make this House more efficient in the way in which it does its job, so that Members of Parliament can do their jobs better. The other—this picks up the point that was very well made by the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart)—relates to making this House fit for purpose, which is both relevant and a matter of good governance. I agree that we reached a nadir of parliamentary performance a couple of years ago. It coincided, as it happened, with the expenses scandal, and amplified it because the general public were saying, “These people are abusing the system, and what use are they anyway, because Parliament is not doing the job for which we elected it—holding the Executive to account?”

Making the House more efficient and improving good governance are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the situation is the reverse, because they are complementary. The key word—it has been used many times—is balance. There are countervailing balances all the way through the proceedings. For individuals, it is how they use their time—in their constituencies, in the Chamber and with their families, which we often forget as part of the equation. There are competing pressures on their time when they are actually in Parliament. There are Select Committees, Public Bill Committees, the main Chamber and this place. The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) had to leave this debate to be in another debate in which she has a keen interest, which demonstrates how we have to balance those pressures.

There is the further balance between legislation and scrutiny, which are both important. The key is time. Very often people make mutually impossible demands on the programme of the House. They say, “We want more time to scrutinise Bills.” At the same time, they say, “We want more statements before the House.” Then they say, “We want more opportunities to see Ministers in the Chamber, but we do not want the hours to be any longer, and we do not want the recesses to be any shorter. We want all these things to happen within the same short period that we have available as parliamentarians.” Sometimes, we have to strike a balance. Part of that balance is ensuring that legislation, which is a key part of this House’s work, is scrutinised effectively and that there is time for that to happen and for the Government to put forward legislation in a proper way.

[Mr Bone]

We are very lucky today to have the presence of three outstanding parliamentarians—the Leader of the House, the Deputy Leader of the House and the shadow Leader of the House. When we were in opposition, we were united in our opposition to programme motions and the reduction in time. I still hold that view, although I am not entirely sure whether the Leader of the House and the Deputy Leader of the House still do. Perhaps the answer to my problem is the introduction of a business of the House committee. What does the Deputy Leader of the House say to that?

[Mr Heath]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, we are committed to bringing forward a full business of the House committee. We will not do so until we have seen the way in which the Backbench Business Committee has operated, so that we can learn from experience. Certainly, the early experiences have been good. We should be able to move towards a sensible use of time in this Chamber even without such a Committee, but that needs a degree of co-operation and a bit of grown-up politics, so that when we provide more time for Bills it is used sensibly and not used exclusively by Opposition Front Benchers to the exclusion of Back Benchers. Such issues are important for the whole House. We should ensure that the issues that parliamentarians wish to address have sufficient time to be addressed properly. When we come to a sensible agreement, we should keep to it, because it benefits everybody. My plea is that we discuss these matters, both informally and formally, stick to agreements and try to find the right time for everybody to have their say.

I want briefly to deal with some of the issues that have been raised in debate. For many of them, I will simply say, “It is not a matter for Government.” I will be right, because it is a matter for the House. The House, in both my mind and the mind of the Leader of the House, has a key role to play. We have the Procedure Committee considering sitting hours. There are very strong views on either side of the argument. It is not a question of right and wrong, but a question of what is least bad for many Members. I am looking forward to the options that the Procedure Committee will produce for the House to consider.

As for electronic voting, when I was first elected back in 1997, we discussed whether the current voting system is sensible. The Modernisation Committee cogitated for six months before coming up with its conclusion, which was to do away with the two Clerks on high stools solemnly ticking us all off as we filed past and dramatically replace it with three Clerks on high stools ticking us all off, which was the extent of modernisation in this House. That was the decision of the House. The House wanted to keep to its system, because it was argued that that was the way in which Members could rub shoulders with Ministers. As an Opposition Member, I could never quite see when I would get to rub shoulders with a Minister. It is an issue that is perfectly proper for us to consider. I am struggling at the moment to persuade the Clerks of the House that they need to take a few people off the G to M section during a vote. [Interruption.] There are 20% more in our column than in the other two columns, so I have a partisan view on that.

[Sir Alan Haselhurst]

I refresh the Deputy Leader of the House’s mind that there was one occasion when the England football team were involved in a critical World cup match. A Division occurred in the middle of the match and it was accomplished in nine minutes. Where there is a will, there is a way.

[Mr Heath]

Yes, sometimes. Congestion is a problem—perhaps we should have a congestion charge in the Lobbies.

There are obvious arguments in favour of occasional deferred voting. However, there are also problems with sequential amendments, which were outlined by the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst). We need to look at how that problem might be managed if occasional deferred voting is to proceed, but that is another matter for the House to consider.

Regarding abstentions, it has always struck me as odd that we have no way of differentiating between an abstention and an absenteeism. There is no way of knowing that a right hon. Member or hon. Member is here in Parliament but has chosen not to vote for the options before the House. Of course, the results of votes are now recorded electronically and are sent around the country. Constituents believe that their MP simply was not there rather than that they were there, had listened to the arguments made in the debate and were not persuaded by either of the positions that were taken.

I hope that we will make progress on private Members’ Bills. As has already been said, the Procedure Committee is looking at that issue.

Regarding explanations for amendments, we had the experiment in Committee and I am certainly happy, as far as the Government are concerned, for that experiment to proceed. Perhaps we ought to look at having such explanations on Report, too. I have argued that occasionally there is room for rubric on motions, including the type of business motion that appears late at night before the House that is completely inexplicable to most Members of the House but is actually entirely benign. I think that we can speed up our progress, but I have been told by the Clerks that we cannot possibly put a bit of rubric on the Order Paper to explain why we are doing it. I do not know why that is the case.

Parliamentary language is an issue that we could debate all evening and I will not enter into it other than to say that we have heard the arguments on both sides.

The additional use of Westminster Hall is an important issue. The right hon. Member for Saffron Walden was one of the pioneers of its additional use. He is not an old fogey. He pioneered real innovation in this House in helping to create this Chamber, and if we can use it more effectively we should do so. We ought to look at that issue.

Regarding the legislative process, pre-legislative scrutiny is important, and this Government are committed to it. By the end of this Session, we will have subjected far more Bills to a process of pre-legislative scrutiny than the previous Government did in the final Session of the previous Parliament. It has not happened yet simply because we are a new Government, and inevitably with new legislation one has to start somewhere, otherwise the whole system grinds to a halt. However, we are certainly committed to that process, as we are to the process of post-legislative scrutiny. Indeed, some of the levers for that are already there in the hands of the Select Committees, if they choose to use them.

The issue of commissions of inquiry was raised by the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher). He might remember that, before I was in my present not-very-exalted position, I introduced a Bill to allow commissions of inquiry. There is a strong argument for them, and I am engaging with Ministers to see whether there will be a legislative opportunity for doing exactly as he wishes.

Regarding scrutiny of expenditure, we have already had the clear line of sight programme from the Treasury, which is important and which has allowed a degree of co-ordination in scrutinising expenditure, but we can go further in allowing the House to scrutinise Government expenditure more effectively. Again, however, the Select Committees have an important scrutiny role, which they have not fully exploited. As for lobbyists, we intend to introduce legislation shortly to deal with their registration. I agree that that is an important issue, too.

I will start to wind up now, Mr Benton, because the hon. Member for Leicester South (Sir Peter Soulsby), who will speak for the Procedure Committee—I am so sorry that the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight), the Chairman of the Committee, is indisposed today and is unable to be here—wishes to speak.

The problem that we had with the previous Government was their attempt to lead the House’s modernisation agenda themselves, by using the Modernisation Committee, chairing it and then effectively abandoning it in the final months and years of the previous Parliament. We are making real progress on a wide front in reforming Parliament, and where there is a need for legislation we will introduce it. The procedure and processes of the House are a matter for the House itself, and we are keen that the House takes the lead on those issues. We might have clear views, and we will express them, but as a Government we should not impose processes on the House.

[Ann Coffey]

Will the Deputy Leader of the House give way?

[Mr Heath]

Very quickly.

[Ann Coffey]

Part of the issue is that it is only business managers who can put motions before the House. Is the Minister saying that when the Procedure Committee comes up with recommendations, those recommendations will go to the House to be voted on?

[Mr Heath]

We have a new procedure that involves the Backbench Business Committee, which is why we are having this debate today and which is the really significant advance. However, I accept that there are different foci for reform in Parliament at the moment. There are the business managers, the Leader of the House and myself, the Backbench Business Committee, the Procedure Committee and the Liaison Committee. There are a number of people who have an interest in this issue, and there is a legitimate discussion to be had about whether the House has the right vehicle to take the debate about the issue forward. However, I am absolutely convinced that the debate needs to be taken forward and we, as a Government, will certainly make every attempt to support that view.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Heath Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

6. What recent progress he has made on the Government’s plans to link petitions to debates in the House.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

As the Leader of the House has said, the Government will move the online petition system to the Directgov portal soon—certainly before the summer. Officials are now working on an effective verification system to ensure that petitions become a useful tool for engaging with the Government, in contrast to the gimmicky approach of the previous Government’s No. 10 petition site. My briefing notes say that, at this point, I should use the pseudo-word “clicktivism”, a neologism as ugly as it is unintelligible. I have no intention of associating myself with it.

[Jake Berry]

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. He is, I know, aware that the rail line between Manchester and Clitheroe is in desperate need of improvement. If the requisite number of signatures were collected by a “clicktivism” or anything else, could it be debated in this House and, if so, what impact does he think it would have on Government policy?

[Mr Heath]

That is exactly the sort of issue that might well commend itself for a debate via the petition system. I commend my hon. Friend for his vigorous campaigning on the issue. Rather than wait for that to happen, he might like to pursue the option of having an Adjournment debate in order to debate the matter further.

[Richard Ottaway]

Can the Minister say what a “direct portal” is? As I understand it, petitions were made to No. 10, so I hope he is going to confirm that petitions will now go to the House of Commons and that the House of Commons will debate petitions to it, not to No. 10.

[Mr Heath]

Well, the petitions will be to the House of Commons, but the Government’s site will be used simply because it is there. The “Directgov” site is the common site for connexions via the internet to Government. I believe that the address is www.direct.gov.uk, so the hon. Gentleman might like to look at it and see whether it is a sensible portal to use—if he accepts the word “portal” at all.

[Henry Smith]

What will be the role of the Backbench Business Committee in government e-petitions?

[Mr Heath]

The Committee itself made it clear in its first special report that in determining what business should be taken, it would consider

“public petitions recently submitted to the House and petitions published on the Downing Street website—until such time as a system for electronic petitions to the House is implemented”.

We very much welcome the Committee’s continued interest in e-petitions as a source of debate, and we will work with it and with the Procedure Committee in making sure that we have a proper procedure for linking petitions to Parliament.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

I am very surprised that the Deputy Leader of the House has not followed the Scottish Parliament system for public petitions, given that that has been widely praised both by his predecessor and by hon. Members on both sides of the House. Will he briefly outline why there is such a divergence between the 10-year-plus Scottish Parliament system and this system?

[Mr Heath]

I do not think that there is a huge divergence. We looked at the Scottish system and at whether it was applicable. The Procedure Committee, as the hon. Gentleman knows, has also looked at the issue. We have the Directgov site in place, and we are keen for people to be able to put petitions before the House at the earliest opportunity—and this provides the earliest opportunity. As I said, I hope we can get it up and running before the summer. If the Procedure Committee has further views on how the system could be changed in the future, we would certainly be open to its suggestions.

[Mr David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

4. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the format of the pre-Adjournment debate held on 21 December 2010.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

May I say how much I welcome the decision of the Backbench Business Committee to retain the pre-recess Adjournment debate, which is a venerable institution, as indeed are the contributions of the hon. Member for Southend West (Mr Amess) to it, as they always provide a tour d’horizon of his constituency? We are always very pleased to know what is going on in Southend West.

[Mr Amess]

I congratulate the Backbench Business Committee and its excellent Chairman on their innovative work and I am delighted that all those who wanted to speak in that Adjournment debate were called, but does the Minister have any feel for whether the new arrangements have achieved the objectives on ministerial responses?

[Mr Heath]

I think that ministerial responses—I set aside my own efforts—were better than usual, simply because they were informed by a pre-knowledge of the topics that Members intended to raise.

Forty-five Members participated in the debate on 21 December 2010, compared with 23 in 2009 and 25 in 2008, and I believe that according to most measures that must be considered a success.

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

Not only did 45 Members speak, but every Member who wanted to speak was able to do so. The fact that six Ministers responded from the Dispatch Box made the occasion very popular with Back Benchers, and also ensured that they were much more able to hold the Government to account. The debate was in its usual slot, but does the Deputy Leader of the House welcome the fact that the Backbench Business Committee has done some innovating of its own?

[Mr Heath]

I think it is terrific that the Backbench Business Committee is prepared to consider new ways of doing things in order to establish whether we can improve the procedures of the House, and I can only congratulate it on doing so. I am particularly grateful to the hon. Lady for ensuring that I had sufficient time in which to address, at least briefly, the points raised in the debate.

I know—my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will announce it later—that the hon. Lady’s Committee has decided that there is scope for a debate on parliamentary reform, and I think that that too is extremely useful. We will work closely with the Committee in trying to do things better in future, and I hope that the hon. Lady will continue her good work.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

There is no reason why the end-of-term Adjournment debate need take place only at the end of term. It could take place on other occasions in the parliamentary timetable as well. Would the Deputy Leader of the House welcome that?

[Mr Heath]

I always welcome opportunities for Back Benchers to have their say on matters that concern them and their constituents, and I am always happy to make myself available to respond to such debates. I am sure that my ministerial colleagues would say the same.

The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, representing the House of Commons Commission, was asked—

General matters

David Heath Excerpts

Tuesday 21st December 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

But not before I have had a chance to try to respond to the debate.

The pre-recess Adjournment debate is one of the great parliamentary institutions, and I am very pleased that the Backbench Business Committee has decided to keep it going, albeit with a twist—a new format. I thank my ministerial colleagues for their contributions, especially those who are Ministers on the Treasury Bench but do not usually have the opportunity to speak from the Dispatch Box—the Assistant Whips. Members will have the opportunity to give feedback to the Backbench Business Committee and the Government on how the format has worked and on changes that they would like to see. I also thank the departmental clerks, who provide us with the information that we need to respond to hon. Members, and particularly those in the office of the Leader of the House and myself. We cannot answer everything, so some hon. Members will receive letters from Departments to deal with the details that they have raised.

I will start with the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz). Oddly, the first and last speeches of this debate mirrored each other, because they spoke of human rights, gender equality and the equality prospectus. They underlined that equality is an important facet of domestic and foreign policy. The hon. Lady mentioned the Ashtiani case, and she knows that the Government have made vigorous representations to the Iranian Government on that matter. She also gave sobering statistics on gender balance in some developing countries, to which everyone should pay attention, as they suggest that there is more than just discrimination against female children in those areas. We must keep banging on at such issues. This country has a good history of developing human rights and the awareness of them, but we can never be complacent, either in our country or abroad.

That was the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Stephen Gilbert). It is apposite that he should raise the issue today, because I gather that it is the fifth anniversary of civil partnerships in England and Wales. This is a timely reminder of the importance of the equality agenda. Like him, I pay tribute to Mr Speaker, to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and to all who were involved in the setting up of ParliOut. I hope that last night’s launch was the first of many successes that the group will enjoy. We need to put this issue at the heart of the coalition Government’s agenda. If we do not stand for equality, we do not stand for the basic human principles of decency. It is important that we do all that we can to make those principles a reality in this country. I cannot give my hon. Friend an answer on civil partnerships, other than to say that the matter is being discussed actively by Home Office Ministers, as I think he knows. We hope to come to a conclusion soon.

I will deal with a couple of points that hon. Members raised about business. The hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe), like me, has a small business background. It is of value for this House to have people who have worked in business, because they have contact with a world that often seems distant from politics. He made points about access to finance, red tape and scale problems—some things that work in large businesses are more difficult to achieve when there are a limited number of people in the work force. Those were extremely valuable points.

The hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) concentrated on infrastructure demands, and the need for railway and road connections to his part of the world. In fact, East Anglia has done rather well out of this debate. He mentioned the Beccles bypass and the Brandon bypass in a neighbouring constituency. I am pleased that he also mentioned the need for high-speed internet, because that will be crucial in many rural areas. We always think about infrastructure in its physical manifestations, but the internet will increasingly be the most important thing that businesses need to compete successfully.

The hon. Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) made a very good case for the development of the Hitachi works in Newton Aycliffe. He knows that I cannot give him an answer on the decision that the Government will take, but he also knows that the matter is being actively considered and that there will be an announcement early in the new year. As someone who needs great western rolling stock, I will take a great interest in whether it is built in his constituency or elsewhere. He rightly made a strong case for his constituents and mentioned Hitachi’s good record in cold weather, which ought to be at the top of people’s priorities at the moment. I am grateful to him and will ensure that the Secretary of State for Transport hears what he has to say.

The hon. Member for Watford (Richard Harrington) talked about how we create jobs, how we get people back into employment and the role of the voluntary sector, and he made extremely important points. He was rather sad that he did not have a race course in his constituency, although he said that he had Camelot there. I have to say that I have the original Camelot in my constituency, but we will let that pass.

We then heard a string of seasonally related speeches, starting with the hon. Members for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) and for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) making a strong case for winter tyres. I think that we now agree about exactly what we mean by winter tyres, which perhaps was not quite the case in the earlier exchanges between the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston and the Secretary of State, who I think was talking about studded tyres and snow chains rather than the tyres that she suggests.

The hon. Lady clearly made a sensible point, and we know that the Secretary of State has started an assessment of whether we are likely to see these very bad weather conditions regularly, and what changes to legislation or practice are needed to adapt to them. He will clearly have to take her point into account. Of course there are other matters on which we can engage people in good practice, such as tyre tread depth and pressure, but she made a very good point, from her own experience and in the wider interests of her constituency, about what many people will see as a sensible option.

To continue the seasonal theme, the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) made what I can only describe as a “bootiful” speech. She mentioned turkeys, which we associate with Norfolk, but I had not previously associated goats on the roof with Norfolk. She also mentioned the very good eating qualities of Norfolk apples, but I have to say that where the best ones come from depends on whether one thinks apples should be eaten or drunk.

The hon. Lady’s key point was that we do not say enough about the very good-quality produce that we produce in this country. We have superb brand names in our ancient counties. For instance, Norfolk has real associations with certain foods, as does Somerset. I am even prepared, despite the cream wars earlier, to accept that Devon and Cornwall have associations with good foods. I sometimes think that we do not make enough of those associations in marketing what we produce.

Still on the seasonal theme, I associate Boxing day with going to Wincanton races, and we heard two important contributions about the racing industry. I have heard of Newmarket, but Wincanton is obviously a very important race course, and some of the best trainers come from my constituency. The hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) mentioned Kauto Star, who was trained in my constituency. I had my picture taken with him a year or so ago, and he bit me, but he is a very good horse. I know that the hon. Gentleman unfortunately could not stay for the end of the debate, but he said that he was a jockey himself and that there was little demand for ageing politicians as jockeys. I seem to remember that my late friend Sir Clement Freud acted as a jockey very late in his political life, so all hope is not extinguished.

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about the future of racing, the effect of the levy and the diminishing value of the levy board contribution. We have got to get it right because racing is an important industry—it is not just the race courses, the trainers or the betting industry, but all those things put together, and all the downstream industries that connect with racing. I know that the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) has met the levy board and the racing and betting industries to discuss how we can get the levy reformed or possibly replaced. I hope that the Government will shortly make the right decisions for the industry.

Let us move away from seasonal issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Duncan Hames) initially raised the driver training centre at Trowbridge and said that he had campaigned on it. He may remember that, in the days when I could campaign about things in the House, I, too, campaigned for the retention of that centre, which served my constituency in Frome. I know that he knows that Ministers are considering the matter seriously, and I will pass on his comments. I can do no more than that from the Dispatch Box.

I will also pass on my hon. Friend’s determination for the railway service in Wiltshire to be improved, particularly that in Melksham, which is so appallingly served by the current franchise. The key will be the local authorities and the attitude of Wiltshire unitary authority in deciding whether they want to take that forward. I know that the Department will be keen to work with Wiltshire if it feels that that is the right way to ensure that the necessary rolling stock is available to operate a new service for the area.

The hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) raised a difficult subject, which we ought to discuss more often. He did not like the word “contact”, so perhaps “parent time” is better, whereby parents who are separated can share quality time with their children. I think that he has rightly drawn attention to the deficiencies in some parts of the family law system. He knows that the Government are conducting a family justice review to consider the family justice system as a whole, and to ascertain particularly how we can support better arrangements. As he says, that time is sometimes the subject of contact orders, which are sparingly enforced. That is one of the difficulties. I suspect that the answer may well lie in more mediation and—if he does not mind my using a cant term—a holistic approach to the relationships between children and their parents, ensuring that matters are examined in the round in the legal system.

The hon. Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker) discussed paying housing benefit directly to landlords. I am sure that he knows that we are widening local authority discretion to pay housing benefit directly to the landlords, if it will help customers secure a new tenancy or remain in their current home at a reduced rate. We are working closely with local authorities to ensure that the provisions are used in specific circumstances, when landlords reduce rents to an affordable level for customers. I am afraid that the Government do not intend to revert to the position whereby landlords demand direct payments as a condition of the tenancy because that was open to abuse, and we do not want to return to such a situation. Clearly, that will be examined with increasing closeness in the next little while to ensure that we have an effective system.

The hon. Member for Woking (Jonathan Lord) talked about the closure of the magistrates court in Woking. If I say that I have enormous fellow feeling for the hon. Gentleman, I hope that that will not be misinterpreted, but having seen the closure of Frome magistrates court and Trowbridge county court, which served my town of Frome and the surrounding area, I know exactly how he feels. He asked me for information about the rationale. I can tell him only what I have been supplied from the Ministry of Justice. Woking magistrates court is to close because utilisation of the courts in Surrey was only 72% and, taking a whole-area approach, Woking was the most sensible option for closure because, although it has good facilities and relatively high utilisation, if that work is absorbed by the remaining courts in Surrey—specifically, if work from Woking were transferred to Staines and Guildford magistrates court—the utilisation rate for magistrates courts in Surrey will increase from 72% to 89%. The Ministry of Justice also makes the point that all other magistrates courts in Surrey are co-located with a county court, which allows significant economies of scale, and centralisation of resources and types of work. He will want to ask the MOJ about those figures and argue his case further, which is of course his right, but that information might be helpful to him.

My hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) raised the effect of domestic violence and the hugely important work of women’s refuges such as the Colchester and Tendring women’s refuge. In the House and elsewhere, people sometimes duck away from that, but it is important that we do not do so. I believe that he said that that refuge houses 120 women and 194 children, which is a significant contribution to welfare in his area. He was very much supported by the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin).

My hon. Friend spelt out very clearly the social and economic value of such facilities. He spoke of the real contribution that that women’s refuge and others make—his views are shared by MPs in neighbouring constituencies. I hope that by putting those views on the record, he gives pause for thought to Essex county council, and that it considers carefully where its priorities lie in setting its budget for this and future years.

I should not be remotely surprised that my hon. Friend raised the issue of the armed forces, but I should like to add my voice to his in sending our very best wishes and grateful thanks to the members of the armed forces who are serving in Afghanistan. I wish them a peaceful—so far as is possible—and safe Christmas. We all look forward to their safe return in the new year. I hope the whole House agrees with that.

The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), aside from his advert for Devonshire produce, raised an issue that affects all in rural areas—the cost of fuel oil. I declare an interest, because my house is heated by fuel oil. Luckily, I have a fairly full tank at the moment, so I am feeling smug, but many are not because the price increases are substantial. I listened very carefully to what the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) said on that. Fuel oil and liquefied petroleum gas both fall outside the current regulatory arrangements, but he is clearly considering whether more needs to be done. The message is simple. If consumers feel that they are being unfairly treated, they should raise their concerns with the Office of Fair Trading. We asked the OFT to monitor the situation, and I hope that people use that opportunity so that it gets a clear picture of what is happening.

Last but not least, we heard the contribution of the hon. Member for Southend West (Mr Amess). A pre-Adjournment debate would not be complete without that—it is inimitable. In the space of just six minutes, he managed to mention the disability issues and sporting excellence of Joanna Cranfield; Mr West, who has problems with Equitable Life; his efforts on behalf of Steven Bristow, who has been in prison in Thailand for 27 years; Jackie Currie and the change in the status of prison visitors; Cherry Sholem and her child who has dyspraxia; and Ian Shirley, whose partner, Ida Hammond, has sadly passed away after suffering from dementia. He added Camp Ashraf to that and gave his best wishes to the ambassador to the Holy See on his retirement. His was a sterling performance, but I cannot answer all his points. I will ensure that those who need to hear them do so.

Lastly, Mr Deputy Speaker, I wish you and the staff of the House—particularly the Doorkeepers, and particularly Maxwell, who is retiring as a Doorkeeper after 17 years—very best wishes for Christmas and the new year. Yet again, it has been a delight to answer the pre-Christmas Adjournment debate, and I hope that I have answered at least some of the points that hon. Members have raised.

Standards and Privileges

David Heath Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

The right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) has clearly set out the basis for the complaints, the commissioner’s findings of fact and the Committee’s recommendations.

These debates are never easy. The House can take no pleasure in imposing sanctions on Members and former Members who have breached the code of conduct, but it is something that we must do if we are to have any hope of restoring and maintaining public faith in the House. For those former Members who have breached the code, the Committee recommends suspending their entitlement to a parliamentary photo pass for a period ranging from six months to five years. There are those outside this place who might argue that such a sanction is not tough enough. As the Committee has noted, however, the power of the House to discipline former Members once they have left this place is severely limited. In fact, the Committee is not aware of any disciplinary action having been taken against a former Member in modern times.

As these cases do not relate to the misuse of allowances, there is no money to repay and the removal of access is, in effect, the only sanction open to the House to impose. Such a sanction sends a clear message about the strength with which the House deprecates the breaches carried out in these cases. We should not lose sight of the damage that this episode has done to the reputations of the former Members who have breached the code, as they seek to establish new lives and new careers outside this place.

As the right hon. Member for Rother Valley has said, I emphasise that three of the six former Members about whom complaints were made following the clandestine recordings by The Sunday Times and “Dispatches” were cleared of any breach of the code by the commissioner. The motion makes no reference to those Members, because no sanction is required in their cases, but it is important that the record shows that not every Member who is subject to media criticism has, in fact, breached the code of conduct for MPs, however unwise their actions may have been.

In the course of these investigations, the commissioner identified three areas where he felt that the code of conduct should be reviewed. First, the paid advocacy rule prohibits a Member from being paid for participating in any proceeding or from lobbying Ministers or officials, if in doing so they would be seeking to confer an exclusive benefit on the organisation that is paying them. However, the commissioner is not confident that the rule as currently expressed has the effect of ruling out lobbying on behalf of a wider business sector of which the organisation paying the Member forms a part.

Secondly, the code of conduct does not apply to former Members, although it does apply to discussions Members have while serving in the House about what they might do after they leave. The commissioner is concerned about contacts between former Members and serving Members, Ministers and officials based on previous working relationships. An issue arose in the case of Mr Richard Caborn about the scope of the rules relating to contact with public officials. Although the rule itself refers to “Ministers and crown servants,” the guidance refers to “public officials.” That is another area the commissioner feels should be clarified. The Committee proposes that the rules regarding lobbying should be reviewed as soon as time permits. I understand that that will be a wide-ranging review conducted by the commissioner, who will report to the Committee. The Committee will, in turn, make a report to the House.

I remind the House of the measures that the Government have taken and will take to raise standards in public life. The coalition agreement sets out the Government’s commitment to introduce a statutory register of lobbyists. We intend to take as many views as possible of those who are interested through a broad consultation on the introduction of a statutory register of lobbyists, before publishing a draft Bill before the end of this Session. We will introduce legislation in the next parliamentary Session. When Ministers leave office, they will be prohibited from lobbying Government for a period of two years. They must also seek advice from the independent Advisory Committee on Business Appointments about any proposed appointments or employment they wish to take up within two years of leaving office. The ministerial code is also clear that former Ministers must abide by the advice of the advisory committee. In conclusion, on behalf of the House, I thank the right hon. Member for Rother Valley, other Committee members and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards for their work. I hope that the House will feel able to support its Committee.

Points of Order

David Heath Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. In keeping with his usual courtesy, the hon. Gentleman asked whether it would be in order to put this matter on the record, so I feel I should put him out of his misery and explain that, no, it would not be.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You will recall that the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) made a point of order last week, which was followed up by her and by the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop) in last Thursday’s business questions, regarding the transfer of oral parliamentary questions. My office took this matter up with the relevant Department and the questions have now been answered. However, in last Monday’s point of order, the issue of transferring oral parliamentary questions was also raised. Having checked with the Department, I am assured that the questions were transferred within 24 hours of being tabled and that the relevant Members and the Table Office were notified. That is in line with the guidance given to Departments that oral questions should be transferred as soon as possible after tabling and never on the day for answer. My office has issued a reminder to parliamentary teams across Whitehall to ensure that best practice is always followed in this regard.

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the Deputy Leader of the House for that. We cannot have an extended exchange on this particular matter, but because he referred—perfectly properly—to the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), who was jumping up and down, if she wants to raise a point of order, I am very happy to hear and respond to it.