Public Bodies Reform

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Not very much.

[Mr Maude]

The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) says, rather regretfully, “Not very much.” It sounds as though he wants us to be more regulated and bossed around—that is somehow in his nature.

The answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) is that some functions will not be carried out at all. The key point is that the presumption will be that where there is a state activity, at least he and the rest of the House will be able to hold a Minister to account for what is done. What people find so irritating is the sense that there has been incontinently set up, in large part by the previous Government, this huge amount of activity by bodies that are in no way accountable: no one can hold them accountable for what they do. That is what we are seeking to change.

European Council

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and it is one that we should, and do, make all the time in the EU and NATO. As he knows, one of the things we should push for is the reform of NATO, so that we get a common operational fund so that countries such as Britain that are making such a big contribution do not have to pay twice. So we believe in trying to do this. We should also be clear to other countries, which perhaps feel that they cannot do more in the front line, that there is huge amount of logistic support—helicopters, transport and other support—that they can do now and that is incredibly welcome.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Did the Prime Minister show a little bit of gratitude for the decisions of the Labour party conference and people such as Labour Members who decided not to join the eurozone many years ago, showing great foresight and calling on the then Chancellor to write out the five conditions that kept us out? There must be a little part of him that is envious of that.

[The Prime Minister]

I do not want to sound uncharitable, but I remember that the last Conservative Government negotiated the opt-out from the single currency that gave us the ability to stay out of the single currency, and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, who, in difficult circumstances, made the argument against the single currency. What I remember, when the hon. Gentleman was sitting on the Government Benches rather than on the Opposition Benches, is the then Government wasted about £30 million on preparations for joining the euro. I could have given them that advice for free: do not join it.

Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Winnick]

I would like to have the response of the chair of IPSA to my hon. Friend’s very important point about the Scottish Parliament.

Regarding submissions, if IPSA says that it is absolutely vital that the system is online, so be it, but I do not see any reason why that is necessary. Why can we not make submissions in writing, with all the documentation? Of course the documentation should be checked thoroughly—there should be no repeat of the embarrassment and shame that was brought on Parliament as a result of the abuses, although we should bear in mind that most of those involved in the abuses are no longer in the House of Commons—but no reason has been given why submissions cannot be made in writing. If approved, they could immediately be put on the IPSA website. In that way, those who cannot sleep at night unless they know what their MP is claiming can be satisfied. All the information will be on the website, so everyone will know the details immediately a claim has been submitted and approved.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Winnick]

I will give way to my hon. Friend, who does not usually like to get involved in controversy.

[Mr Skinner]

I think my hon. Friend is now at the kernel of the subject: the online system. We have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) that he reported a breach of security—that is what it was—when an e-mail was sent to him in error. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) agree that that is not an isolated case? I have a letter here that was sent to me on 2 June. It belongs to another Member of Parliament. I have sent it to IPSA and told it about the mistake, and I have heard that several other Members have had similar e-mails, not destined for them. That is a serious breach of security. We all know that three Ministers in the previous Government lost their jobs because of dodgy e-mails, and the IPSA system will end in tears if we are not careful. This debate is not about IPSA itself, as my hon. Friend said at the very beginning, or about its being an independent body. We all welcome that, and voted for it. It is about the fact that the system is not secure. Already, in just a few weeks, we have seen many breaches of security. IPSA must look for a different system to get the show on the road, and then everybody will be satisfied.

[Dr William McCrea (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions will have to be interventions, not speeches.

Constitution and Home Affairs

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

On the question of city seats, is my right hon. Friend aware that the first casualty could be the Deputy Prime Minister in his Hallam seat in the city of Sheffield—unless, of course, they try to manoeuvre the boundaries so as to try to save his neck, which would test the coalition?

[Mr Straw]

There is no doubt that the biggest net losers under the current proposals in the so-called coalition agreement would be the Liberal Democrats, for reasons that I shall spell out.

On election night, when the Deputy Prime Minister heard that people had been locked out of the polling stations and prevented from casting their ballots, he said:

“I share the bitter dismay of many of my constituents who were not able to exercise their democratic right to vote in this election…That should never, ever happen again in our democracy.”

Yet he now proposes a programme that could have the effect of disfranchising not only some hundreds in his own constituency, but some hundreds of thousands across the United Kingdom. I urge him to think very carefully about what is being proposed.

As for the proposal to cut the number of seats, we need not speculate about the Conservative party’s intentions because they are on the record. Just months before the general election, the Conservative Front-Bench team moved the most detailed amendments to cut the number of seats by 10% and to force the redrawing of the boundaries by rules requiring that arithmetical quotas trump all other considerations. I have a copy of one such amendment before me. It says that the electorate

“shall be as near the electoral quota as is practicable”—

only a 3% margin would be allowed—

“and all other special geographical considerations, including in particular the size, shape and accessibility of a constituency, shall be subordinate to achieving this aim”.

The scheme, therefore, is that arithmetic will trump all, so that history, geography, mountains, rivers, and even communities and the sea, are to be subordinated to arithmetical rules.

The effects would be extraordinary, especially in Scotland. The Orkney and Shetland electorate is 33,000. Under these proposals—official Conservative proposals—Orkney and Shetland would have to be jammed in with Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, which has an electorate of 47,000 in order to make a single seat exactly within the electoral average. The Western Isles, with an electorate of 22,000, is the smallest constituency in the United Kingdom. It would have to be jammed in with a vast swathe of the western highlands—of western Scotland, indeed. In England and Wales, too, long-established patterns of democracy would be destroyed in pursuit of the new Conservative formulae. How such changes, defying history and geography and people’s own sense of place, could possibly be said to strengthen our democracy I do not know. Perhaps the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam will be able to tell us whether he is comfortable with this scheme.