Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill: Committee Stage

Desmond Swayne Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

That is a salutary lesson from the hon. Gentleman. He knows and respects his history, and knows exactly what is being debated here and the impact that that type of speech has.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

This is not an area where I have expertise, but my understanding was that the money resolution enabled money to be spent in preparation for the Bill becoming law. So there is a financial implication of passing a money resolution, even if the Bill has not proceeded to Third Reading and Royal Assent.

[Pete Wishart]

The right hon. Gentleman is right that he is not an expert on this particular issue; he has just demonstrated that by what he said. There is no obligation on the Government to commit money in a money resolution. A money resolution would allow the Committee stage of the Bill to be given the authority that the Leader of the House suggests this motion would not allow. I looked today at some of the proceedings of the Committee. It is like “Alice in Wonderland” meets “Groundhog Day”, without any progress. The Committee seems to come together and adjourn; as quickly as it sits to consider some of the issues, proceedings are abandoned because there is nothing for the Committee to do. What an absolute and utter waste of time.

The key point is not Parliament’s responsibilities and the distinction between Government’s and Parliament’s roles in the House. The key issue is that the private Member’s Bills system is broken. It may be broken beyond repair. This is the fifth Parliament I have been involved in, and I have never known a Parliament to obsess so constantly and continually about private Members’ Bills. Usually they go through without any real issue or difficulty. The Leader of the House mentioned a couple of Bills under the coalition Government for which money resolutions were withheld. In the periphery of my memory, I remember those Bills, but that was about the first time in my 17 years in this place that the Government withheld money resolutions. We are entering a new sort of territory with this Government weapon to stop the progress of Bills that they do not particularly like. The House should consider deeply the increasing use of this method as a blocking tactic for private Members’ Bills before we continue down such an avenue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman, but he is not right. The previous Parliament passed an Act that remains the law until another piece of legislation changes it. That has not happened. A motion in the House has not in itself changed the law. I shall come on to the point about process.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

If my right hon. Friend will forgive me, I will make a little process because I am mindful of Madam Deputy Speaker’s injunction about trying to keep our remarks to nine minutes.

I want to gambol through some of the points made by the shadow Leader of the House, including what she said about numbers. As the Minister who introduced the original legislation, may I say that there is nothing magical about 600? I was asked the question at the time, and it was a manifesto commitment when we were elected in 2010 that we would reduce the size of the House to save money. It was a reduction of about 10%, but we settled on a sensible number rather than a random one. There was nothing magical about it. There was a huge suspicion among Opposition Members that that was some magical number with magical properties. It was not—it was a round number that was significantly lower than 650. The reduction would save a significant amount of money, but there was nothing particularly suspicious about the number.

The shadow Leader of the House mentioned the Opposition’s wish to move from boundary reviews every five years to every 10 years. There was a specific reason why we went for five. There is a choice to be made. My own view is that we can either have infrequent boundary reviews, which will be significant, because there will be a lot of population movement in between, or we can have more frequent boundary reviews which, by virtue of that fact, will be less disruptive because they take lesser population shifts into account. The decision made by the last but one Parliament was to have more frequent boundary reviews that individually would be less disruptive. Of course, the first one—particularly if moving from 650 Members to 600, and if there has not been one for 20 years—is clearly disruptive, but once that has taken place, subsequent reviews will be less disruptive. There is much to recommend in that approach.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rachel Maclean]

We have heard that a few times. Of course, I was not here at that time, but in my opinion, the arguments that have been brought forward today do not stack up. Did someone want to intervene on me?

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

I’ll have a go! The issue before us is that private Members’ Bills are determined by a queue which is the result of a ballot. The Government are accused of manipulating the queue by withholding money resolutions. Interestingly, what happened last Friday was an attempt by the Government to manipulate the queue by taking a Bill that was No. 8 and getting it a Second Reading on the nod, and my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) has attracted universal opprobrium for preventing that. That is the irony.

[Rachel Maclean]

Well, I think “Follow that if you dare” is an apposite comment. I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention, and I will proceed with my remarks.

The hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) is not in his place at the moment, but he is an honourable man and I respect his campaign on this issue. Of course he has garnered a lot of sympathy across the House. We have heard about the issues that our constituents have with boundaries, and they are valid concerns. It is right that we should be airing them in this House. However, the assertion seems to be that this private Member’s Bill is the best way of dealing with those issues, and I do not agree with that.