House of Lords Reform Bill
Debate between David Heath and Bernard Jenkin(12 years, 3 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Office of the Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Heath)
I do not think that any self-imposed injunction on personal and disparaging comments could have been breached quite so promptly as it was by the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) just then, with her reference to my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister. Nevertheless, this has been a good debate, in which 36 Back Benchers have had the opportunity to speak so far—and of course, it is only half-time.
There has been good support for the Bill—some qualified and some wholehearted—and it has been expressed by many. We have heard good speeches from my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (John Thurso), my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr Kennedy), the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain), and the hon. Members for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field), for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), for South Thanet (Laura Sandys), for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) and for Carlisle (John Stevenson). Let me single out for special comment the exceptional speech by the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), who made the important point that what we have before us builds on what the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) started and what Robin Cook produced in conversation with other parties, which is the bedrock of the consensus—which I hope we can still reach—on reform of the House of Lords.
There have also been speeches against the Bill. I am afraid that some have erected straw men so as to knock them down, mentioning things that have simply never been suggested by the Government, but which hon. Members nevertheless felt the need to speak against. However, some speeches were well argued. I would like to single out the hon. Members for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady), for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) and for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray), who I know will have had difficulty making the comments she did today. We can disagree with people but still respect the arguments they put forward. Of course I do not agree with them in opposing the legislation, but I respect the way they put their arguments.
Some Members are simply against an elected House. I respect that, although of course I do not agree with them. It is not what their respective parties put before the electorate—it is not what they said in their manifestos—but it is frankly a pointless endeavour trying to bash round the head someone who is committed to unicameralism, such as the right hon. Members for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) or for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), or the hon. Members for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) or for Lewisham West and Penge (Jim Dowd). Someone who believes that there should be no second House will not support proposals for reform. I understand that: it is a perfectly proper argument.
Many others appear to think—this is a view shared by many appointed peers—that any system that appointed such exemplars of legislative acuity and perfection as themselves must be an exceedingly good system indeed. I do not necessarily share that view. I have great respect for the quality of much of the work of the present House of Lords—and, indeed, for the quality of many individual peers. However, that is not a sufficient argument for a system that, I believe, is simply not sustainable.
Many Members—particularly, I have to say, those sitting on the Government Benches—are those who I remember railing against the prospect of a House of cronies when we last debated this subject, but they seem content with the idea of a fully appointed House. It is not a view I share.
Mr Jenkin
I remember the hon. Gentleman railing against Governments who impose timetables and guillotines when he was in opposition, so how can he now come to this House and guillotine a constitutional measure—which would have been unthinkable under Winston Churchill, incidentally—which is not going to be subject to a referendum and may be Parliament Acted, so that when it is being scrutinised by the other place, he will have no option but to propose that the same damaged and inadequate Bill go back to the other House, as he tries to force it through?
Mr Heath
I will return to the issue of the programme motion in just a moment, but let me deal first with the rather familiar arguments that have been marshalled.
There are those who say that they are for reform, but not yet. They say it is too precipitate and that there has been insufficient scrutiny. This process has been about as precipitate as the reckless progress of a particularly arthritic slug. We have had what I would describe as pre-legislative scrutiny on this for 101 years. This is not a quick process.
Backbench Business Committee
Debate between David Heath and Bernard Jenkin(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
No doubt my hon. Friend has seen the evidence submitted by Dr Meg Russell to the Procedure Committee, in which she expressed her view that to go down the route he has chosen
“would be very much contrary to the spirit of what the Wright Committee intended.”
Is not the answer that the Backbench Business Committee is a special committee, not like an ordinary Select Committee, and that its Chair should be selected in the same manner as the Speaker and represent the whole House, as indeed should its members? That is what Wright intended. Why is he departing from Wright?
Mr Heath
As I said when responding to the debate on the original motion to set up the Backbench Business Committee, Wright is not holy writ and should not be treated as such, not least because there are internal contradictions in the Wright report, just as there are sometimes in holy writ. Therefore, the House has to take a view on what is in the best interests of its procedures. That will be for the House to decide. I simply contend that it is a strange situation where the biggest party represented in the House can override the interests and decisions of other parties in deciding who its representatives on the Committee will be. I would have thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex had confidence in the ability of his own party’s procedures —I am afraid I have no specialist knowledge of them—to make a proper determination of who should serve on the Committee on its behalf.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex that different considerations apply to the Chair of the Committee, as he set out, which is why we propose that the Chair should continue to be elected by the whole House, with one proviso: we think that the Government should not provide the Chair, for perfectly obvious reasons. The situation is exactly analogous to that of two other Committees—the Standards and Privileges Committee and the Public Accounts Committee. There is a strong argument in favour of the Committee’s decisions not being seen as the result of some sort of internal collusion between the Government and the legislature, and I think that the clearest way of indicating that they are not is to ensure that the Chair comes from a party that is not represented in Government.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
It is a good thing that Chief Whips are not required to speak in these debates. We have heard some full tributes to the work of the Backbench Business Committee from the Deputy Leader of the House and his shadow, and I would be very surprised if the Government Chief Whip would be able to utter the same words of praise and thanksgiving for the work of the Backbench Business Committee, because the Committee has been an utter pain for the Government Whips Office. It is no good the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) nodding her head, because the Committee has been bringing to the Floor of the House issues that very often neither Front-Bench team wanted brought here—they wanted to suppress them. That has been the great strength of this Committee.
If the coalition Government have a problem with who was elected to the Backbench Business Committee or how it was elected, they have nobody to blame but themselves, because some posts went uncontested. That shows a remarkable lack of assiduousness, given how the Whips Offices usually try to influence such elections. We should have no doubt that this operation today is an exercise designed to reduce the accountability and responsiveness of the Committee.
Let us briefly consider the detail of the motion. Most important is the proposal that the regularity of elections will reduced: they will be held once per Parliament. If this motion goes through, the election in the new Session will be the last this Parliament—
Mr Jenkin
I beg my hon. Friend’s pardon if I misunderstood things, and I stand corrected.
The motion is also determined to reduce the way in which the membership of the Committee reflects the views of the whole House, on the basis of the spurious idea that parties voting for Members of other parties have a malign intent. The Chair is to be chosen from the Opposition, but that will reduce the Chair’s authority. The great authority that the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) has is that she was elected as much by the votes of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats as by the votes of the Labour party. She was not a choice predetermined by the Standing Orders of this House and it was not a predetermined choice that she was chosen from her party.
For all those reasons, we should want to defend the existing system, not least because the Wright Committee intended the election of the Backbench Business Committee and its Chair to be carried out on a different basis from the elections to the other Select Committees. The Deputy Leader of the House keeps saying that he has given a reason for needing to pre-empt the findings of the Procedure Committee. He may have given a “reason”, but it is an excuse and a motive; it is not a justification for pre-empting the findings of the Procedure Committee.
I wish to conclude by making a brief point. Those of us from the previous Parliament who went through—how shall I describe it?—the purifying fire of the expenses debacle came out of it determined that things should change in this House, that politics should change and that at least some of what happens in this House should be taken out of the ghetto of the Westminster political parties talking to themselves. Are we now seeing this House reverting to type? Are we seeing the vested interests beginning to reassert themselves? I urge this House to be ever more vigilant to make sure that that does not occur and ever more vigilant because we are seeing today how determined the forces of darkness in politics can be.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between David Heath and Bernard Jenkin(13 years ago)
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Mr Speaker
From that hon. Member we can now hear; I call Mr Bernard Jenkin.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
May I thank my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House for that answer?
Publication of Information about Complaints against Members
Debate between David Heath and Bernard Jenkin(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Heath
That is a very helpful intervention, and of course the landscape has changed since a year or so ago. We now have the compliance officer in the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, who is responsible for investigating some matters. Having that memorandum of understanding seems to me a very positive way forward.
I mentioned the time that investigations sometimes take and the adverse effect that that may have on a Member’s reputation. As I said, it would be sensible for the commissioner to be open about the process of an investigation, such as when it began and where a Member had reached in the queue, to ensure that we have a more transparent approach. It is also important that Members know at the first opportunity that a matter relating to them is under investigation. It should never be the case that a Member hears that from the press or from a political opponent.
The Government support the move to give the commissioner a power to initiate investigations, which, to an extent, ties up a process started by the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009. Without that power, the commissioner would not be able to act on referrals from the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority compliance office. That would clearly be unsatisfactory, because the House would not be able to take action against a Member who had knowingly submitted an improper expenses claim. However, this issue goes wider than that; it is absurd that allegations about a Member’s conduct can be splashed all over the newspapers, yet the commissioner is powerless to investigate unless he receives a complaint from a member of the general public. That is an unnecessary hurdle. If we can trust the commissioner to use his good judgment to carry out investigations, we can trust him to decide when to initiate them.
Finally, the Government support the principle, first advocated by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, that the Standards and Privileges Committee should be strengthened by the presence of lay members. Although that is ultimately a matter for the House, the Government take an interest, given the commitment in the coalition agreement to establish a right to recall Members who have been found guilty of serious wrongdoing. There is obviously a potential role for that Committee in the process of adjudication on recall cases, and the presence of members from outside Parliament will help to build people’s confidence in our system of internal compliance. In supporting that, we note the concerns expressed by the Clerk of the House, to which the Chairman of the Committee referred, that if lay members are given full voting rights, they might not enjoy the protection of privilege or their presence might compromise the Committee’s position based on privilege in respect of judicial review. The Procedure Committee will want to look particularly closely at that, while the Government will be taking a close interest as part of the ongoing work on the draft parliamentary privilege Bill.
Mr Jenkin
I am very grateful that my hon. Friend has addressed the question of privilege and lay members, and I am grateful for the Government’s measured and sensible response to this approach. However, does it not begin to advance the argument in favour of having a standards committee that is separate from a privileges committee? If there really are two functions that require lay members to be involved in one function and not the other, should we not have two separate committees, permanently? I shall discuss that in my remarks later.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Debate between David Heath and Bernard Jenkin(14 years ago)
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Mr Jenkin
I can put them right. As Chairman of that Committee, although I do not act as Chairman in this capacity, I will be in the Aye Lobby myself on new clause 7. As my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne said, it represents a very modest maintenance of the status quo. That is what this is about—checking an advance or a further incursion of the Executive into the House of Commons. It is a holding position, while my Committee completes its work.
Mr Heath
I think this has been an interesting and illuminating debate. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) for tabling his new clause and for the way in which he spoke to it. I am also particularly grateful to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), the Chairman of the Public Administration Select Committee, not only for contributing to this evening’s debate but for his Committee’s work—and that of its predecessor, which, as he rightly said, published the first report.
We have heard from a number of Members of all parties, including from the Father of the House. The hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) often gets criticised—or, perhaps, slightly cheesed—for his lapidary style, but I know from my experience over many years that he is well worth listening to on many issues. Although I do not agree with everything he says—I do not think he would expect me to—I always find listening to him a useful exercise.
The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), who is not in his place at the moment, intervened earlier and sought to persuade the Committee that the Republic of Ireland is the epitome of prosperity, which I am not sure is an argument that holds great water. The hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), who is also not in her place, was moved to tell us why during the last Parliament she asked to be a Minister no longer.
The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said repeatedly that the Government of whom he was a part were too slow to take on these issues. Too right they were! They never took on these issues one single bit; there was never the slightest attempt to reduce the size of government or to relax the grip of the Executive on Parliament. It is only since the present Government have been elected that we have been able to deal with some of these issues. He also said, in passing, that he was suspicious that Parliamentary Private Secretaries were not acquainted with the ministerial code. He is quite wrong on that; of course they are—they are given the ministerial code to sign on taking up their positions. That is as it should be. The hon. Gentleman will have to look at the websites himself.
Mr Heath
I will let the hon. Gentleman into a secret: I am not the Prime Minister. It is the Prime Minister who makes appointments. I am simply saying that I do not think we would improve the present position by putting more Ministers in the House of Lords. In the last Parliament, members of the Cabinet—Secretaries of State in charge of Departments—were in the House of Lords, and we had no way of holding them to account. That was an affront to this elected House, and I am pleased that we have put it right.
Let me explain why I cannot support the new clause, although I have a degree of sympathy with the view of the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker).
Mr Heath
I said that it was undesirable, and I believe that it is undesirable. I said that in the last Parliament. I called for Secretaries of State in another place to be brought before this House for questioning, because I think it is wrong for Members of the House of Commons not to have access to those who lead Departments. That remains my position, and I am not going to change it.