Edward Leigh
Main Page: Edward Leigh (Conservative - Gainsborough)
Mr Chope
In a section headed “Making Commitments on the Floor of the House”, paragraph 23.42 of the Cabinet Office guide to making legislation, published in July 2015, states:
“Parliament will hold Ministers to any commitments they make on the floor of the House which are recorded in Hansard. Ministers must, therefore, take care during debates not to make any commitments for which they do not have collective agreement”.
My point of order, Mr Speaker, is how can Parliament hold Ministers to those commitments that have been made on the Floor of the House?
Briefly, the background is this. In recent days, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), have told me, the leader of Christchurch borough council and the mayor of Christchurch that they do not regard themselves as bound by the commitment made by the Government to the House on 7 December 2015. On that day, I asked the then Secretary of State:
“Will my right hon. Friend give the House an assurance that amendment 56 will not be used by the Government to force change on any local authority?”
The Secretary of State replied:
“I will indeed.”—[Official Report, 7 December 2015; Vol. 603, c. 822.]
That is pretty clear, and my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) received a similar commitment. How can we hold the Government to account for the commitments that have been made?
Mr Speaker
As his point of order is on the same matter, and it is a case of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, I think that I will hear from the hon. Gentleman.
Sir Edward Leigh
I am a bit insulted to find that I am Tweedledee in your estimation, Mr Speaker.
This is a very serious topic. I have here a copy of the 7 December edition of Hansard. I, too, intervened on the then Secretary of State in column 822. Having raised issues concerning Lincolnshire and the desire of the county council and the Government to have a mayor and a unitary authority, I received a specific commitment from the Secretary of State that he would not use amendment 56 to force a unitary authority on Lincolnshire. I received that commitment in terms. All that the Secretary of State said to me was that he would force discussions—that is, he would not prevent discussions from taking place—but the commitment was absolutely clear. I hope that you, Mr Speaker, will protect the right of the House of Commons to hold Ministers to account.
Mr Speaker
I am very grateful to the hon. Members for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) for raising this important matter.
The Chair has no responsibility for the contents of a document or manual issued by the Cabinet Office. That is its interpretation of the responsibility and advised course of action of Ministers. However, the short answer to the hon. Member for Christchurch, who asked me how Ministers are to be held to commitments that they have made: is by interrogation, by scrutiny, and, potentially, if Members judge it fit and appropriate, by criticism, and hence by potential parliamentary or public obloquy in the event of the breach of a commitment made. That is the answer. There is no binding obligation on any Member to do exactly what he or she has said that he or she will do in addressing the House, just as there is no obligation on any Back Bencher.
That said, making a commitment from the Dispatch Box in response to a question or an intervention is a very serious and solemn matter. It is not something that should be treated lightly or cast aside. Nor is it in any sense acceptable for it to be argued—if it were argued—that there has since been a change in the ministerial team; government is, of course, seamless, and responsibility is collective. That is the situation.
I cannot possibly become involved in exchanges or debate about the future make-up of local government in Dorset. I have enough to contend with in trying to make arguments in relation to the structure of local government in my own county of Buckinghamshire in conversations with Ministers. What I will say, however, and it will doubtless be heard by Ministers, is that I know the hon. Member for Christchurch extremely well. I have known him since 1986, and I have known the hon. Member for Gainsborough since 1997. They are both extremely diligent and serious-minded Members of Parliament. If a Minister thinks that a commitment made can subsequently and lightly be abrogated without parliamentary consequence from Members of their calibre, I think that that Minister is, dare I say it, really rather misguided, as such Minister will probably soon discover. The mechanisms available include debates, and that includes Adjournment debates. So these matters will not go away. It is also open to Members to question Ministers, including very, very senior Ministers, about obligations that have been entered into on behalf of the Government.