Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Edward Leigh Excerpts(14 years, 2 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
First, that is precisely the position now, as the hon. Gentleman knows. Secondly, he is viewing the Bill through a prism of—how can I put it?—suspicion, which really is not justified. It gives new powers to the House, and I hope that he will come to that view himself as it is examined on the Floor of the House, as it should be. The Bill is giving new powers to the House in addition to the powers of no confidence that do not already exist, which we are also strengthening in turn.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Will the Deputy Prime Minister confirm that if, God forbid, our friends and Liberals were to walk away from the coalition and if the Bill were passed, there is no doubt that our Prime Minister could call an immediate election? Is there any doubt about that?
Mr Straw
I am quite sure. I was in favour of September sittings and my hon. Friend will recall that they had to be abandoned one year so that the screen in the Chamber could be put up. When I tabled a motion the following year as Leader of the House to reinstate September sittings I was roundly voted down by an all-party alliance, including many Conservative Members. Both parties in the coalition are probably now regretting this September sitting, because it has done them absolutely no good. Long may that continue.
Mr Leigh
The right hon. Gentleman is being very unfair to our Liberal friends. Does he share my understanding that, if there were a crisis and the Liberals had to walk out of the coalition, the Conservative Prime Minister would be prevented from calling an election if the Bill had become law? If the Liberals were then to offer to join a coalition with the right hon. Gentleman, would he embrace them tenderly?
Mr Straw
I am not going to get into too many hypotheticals, but it is a matter of public record that, speaking personally, I was not too keen on the embrace when it was offered on or about 8 May. The hon. Gentleman might wish to take some comfort from that for the future. Aside from anything else, he should do the arithmetic as to whether there could be some stability from such a coalition.
As others want to speak, let me come to the crucial issue of whether the fixed term should be five years or four years. Most constitutional experts are agreed that four years is a more appropriate fixed term and would better reflect the constitutional position, historical practice and comparisons with other Parliaments. Professor Robert Blackburn has said:
“In the UK, there can be little doubt that the period between general elections should be four years...It was the period expressly approved of as being normal in practice, when the Parliament Act set the period of five years as the maximum.”
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Edward Leigh Excerpts(14 years, 2 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
She is aware of that, and I will remind her today.
Finally, the legislation underpinning reviews means that the number of MPs has crept up. We do not have a 650-seat House by design; it is simply a result of the flawed rules, which have a ratchet effect on the number of MPs. As a result, this House of Commons is now the largest directly elected Chamber in the European Union.
The Bill seeks to address each of those problems. New rules will demand that every constituency is within 5% of either side of a single size. Using the electoral register from last December, we estimate that this will be around 76,000 voters, as I have said. Subject to that strict requirement, the independent boundary commissions will then be able to continue to take into account the same factors as now: local geography, local authority boundaries and local ties. To guard against future misalignment of voter numbers in constituencies, boundary reviews will take place on a five-yearly basis.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I am sure that it is right that constituencies should be broadly the same size, and it may be right that there are too many MPs, but what is the point of wading through blood to reduce the number of MPs just to create second-rate elected Members of the other place?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I am not sure that I entirely understand the connection, but as my hon. Friend may well know, around the turn of the year we hope to publish a draft Bill, for the first time in decades—indeed, in generations—on how we will seek to reform the other place, a reform that escaped previous Administrations for a long time.
Mr Straw
I began my contribution at about 4.40 pm and, as Mr Speaker said, more than 70 hon. and right hon. Members wish to speak, so I am going to break the habit of 30 years and try to make a short speech. I therefore need the assistance of Members on both sides, but I give way.
Mr Straw
I am afraid I do not follow the hon. Gentleman’s argument. I accept and respect the fact that people have many different views on this matter. He and I may be on different sides on first past the post, but we are on the same side in opposing any idea of proportional representation, or such nonsense, for elections to this House. Those are issues that can be debated during the referendum campaign and it is for the people to decide.
Mr Leigh
I agree, as is so often the case, with the right hon. Gentleman on the necessity of having this vital referendum on its own day, but as a matter of interest, as a supporter of AV does he think it will be more likely to get through if the referendum is on the same day as other elections?
Oral Answers to Questions
Edward Leigh Excerpts(14 years, 4 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
As I said, I thought it right that this Parliament was the first to know about such a major issue. I simply do not understand why it is considered in any way a detraction from the Holyrood elections next May in Scotland that, at the same time, people across the United Kingdom should be asked to reply to a simple yes/no question on whether they want the alternative vote. It is disrespectful to the voters and people of Scotland to suggest that somehow they are incapable of making two decisions at once.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Notwithstanding the fact that my new and best right hon. Friend would, I am sure, now deprecate the fact that if we had had the alternative vote in 1997 the Conservative party would have been reduced to a pathetic rump of 65 MPs, does he not think that precisely because AV is not proportional, it raises complicated questions? It is extraordinarily dangerous, therefore, to have the referendum on the same day as other elections, namely the Scottish elections. We need a proper debate on the issue.
The Deputy Prime Minister
About 84% of voters in England will be voting, or eligible to vote, next May. In Scotland and Wales everybody will be entitled to vote. About 39 million people will be invited to vote next May, and it seems to me that instead of asking people constantly to go back to polling booths to cast separate votes, it is perfectly right to invite them to have their say on a simple yes/no issue on the same day, at, by the way, a lower cost to the Exchequer—it will save about £17 million.
Debate on the Address
Edward Leigh Excerpts(14 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
I should like to express my gratitude to the voters of Wokingham for renewing their confidence in me and returning me to the House. It is particularly comforting that I got more than half the vote at a time when the idea of the alternative vote is in the wind. I am sure that colleagues will think long and hard about that as they look at their own electoral positions as well as the national interest.
During the general election campaign, my electors—I am sure like those in many other constituencies—expressed their deep sorrow that the Equitable Life victims had not yet been compensated. It is extremely good news to see a Conservative pledge—and perhaps it is also a Lib Dem pledge—honoured immediately in the Queen’s Speech. The compensation is the victims’ due, owing to the bad regulation of that business, and the pledge is that it will now be paid more promptly. We look forward to the statement that is to be made.
An even larger number of my electors in Wokingham were extremely worried about the impact of the very large amount of new housing that the former Government and their regional planning authority were imposing on my constituency. I argued long, and I hope clearly, that, were a Conservative Government to be elected, they should sweep away the regional housing targets and the regional planning system. I argued that the unitary Wokingham borough council should be allowed to make more of its own planning decisions, and my hope was that the new Government would allow the council to come to a wiser judgment about how many new homes should be made available.
Some new homes must be made available, but we must avoid building on floodplains or in back gardens. We must avoid the town cramming and all the other unpleasant features of the last 13 years that my electors had come to dislike. Again, therefore, it is very good news that the coalition has come together and that it has promised in this Queen’s Speech that there will be early action to deal with such matters.
Many of my voters were also extremely worried by the lack of progress by the Environment Agency and the relevant ministry in tackling problems of flooding. These problems have been made particularly acute in my constituency by the over-building in inappropriate places that has been determined by Government inspectors in recent years. I have seen the tragic sight of new homes being completely flooded six months after they were built and sold because they were put in the wrong place by a Government inspector who did not seem to understand the nature of a floodplain. I look forward to the planning system helping with that, but I shall also be calling on my colleagues who are now Ministers to see what else we can do to right the wrongs caused by homes being built in places without adequate flood defences.
I wish to concentrate on the central thrust of the Gracious Speech—the issue of the deficit. “There is no money left”: how kind it was of an outgoing Labour Minister to make that clear. What better independent authentication of all that we said in the general election could we want than that note from the outgoing Chief Secretary to the Treasury? He should know, although I do not quite understand his taste in jokes: none of the rest of us thinks that his remark is at all funny. It is poignant and sad, and it sums up the tragic end of the long Labour Government.
From what we have heard so far in this short debate, there are still Labour Members who do not seem to be able to distinguish between the deficit and the debt. We have already heard one say that he does not think that it is right to start paying down £6 billion of the debt this early. However, we are not talking about paying down—or paying off—£6 billion of the debt. We are talking about trying to stop the debt from going up by quite as much. We are talking about a debt that, on the outgoing Labour Government’s figures, is rising by £150 billion or £160 billion a year. So far, we have come up with a welcome but modest proposal to start to reverse the trend that is our ever-climbing deficit.
We meet as a new Parliament in very difficult and dangerous times, and I think that people have high hopes of us. I think that it was good that there was some democratic renewal in the election: more people wanted to vote, and they took the election seriously and wanted to express an opinion. However, Parliament must understand—as those of us who were in the previous one surely do—that we are on probation. It is up to us to prove to the public that this Parliament can be so much better than the last one, and that we can tackle the serious issues in a sensible way.
Of course, there must be robust debate and challenge to the Executive—and I suspect that that must come not only from those on the Opposition Benches. Of course, there will be periods of humour and light-hearted relief, and the speeches made at the start of this debate were notably good and humorous. However, we must restore the trust of the British people and ensure that they feel proud of their Parliament again. To do that, this Parliament must engage more actively with the Executive, thank and reward them when they get something right and make sure that they understand when they get something wrong. We must press and press the Executive until they get things right, for the sake of the wider public good and the wider national interest.
The country has very warm feelings towards the coalition. I welcome the coalition, as it was the only way we could go forward, given the nature of the election result. It is not for us to criticise the electorate for the judgment they made. Each individual made his or her judgment for good reasons, in good conscience. It is up to us to make the best of the result that they have produced. Looking at the arithmetic, even sensible Labour Members would agree that the only conceivable way of offering this country some stable government for a reasonable period was for the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives to find how many things they could agree about, and to agree to disagree about the other things and not to highlight them for a period while we offer stable government.
I am sure that Labour Members will play endless games suggesting that a Liberal Democrat said one thing and a Conservative said another before the election, but they should move on. It is not interesting. We all know that—we were fighting each other in an election. We still disagree about some fundamental issues—we have been open and honest about that—and that has not suddenly changed. But what we agree about is very important. We agree that this country is in a huge mess. We agree that this country needs stable government to start to turn it round, and we agree that the only conceivable combination that has the numbers to work is the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives working together. We also agree that the prime task is to start to tackle the deficit before it overwhelms us.
Many Labour Members still think that it is wrong to reduce public spending to reduce the deficit. Some of them mistakenly tell us that if we cut public spending—by £6.2 billion, to pluck a recent figure out of the air—it will take £6.2 billion out of the economy and will therefore help to collapse the economy further. The Labour party should understand that every £1 that is spent and borrowed by the Government has to come from the private sector. We are not printing money any more—that was the Labour idea for a year and even they agree that we cannot continue to do that. So every £1 that we need to borrow this year has to come from the private sector—from a company or individual who will lend it to the Government, but if they lend it to the Government, they cannot spend it or use it themselves. So it is not taking money out of the economy: it is just saying that we need a better balance in the economy.
If we do not get a private sector-led recovery, we will not cure the deficit, we will not prop up and develop the public services, and we will not have the increase in the tax revenues that we need to make a success of our large and expensive public sector. The only way out of this deficit crisis is a strong, private sector-led recovery.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
My right hon. Friend has spent many years in the private sector. Having also studied efficiency savings in the public sector, does he agree that £6 billion—or 1%—is just a start, and that huge gains could possibly be made, especially in IT projects and the general management of Whitehall?
Mr Redwood
I entirely agree. I have in the past been actively involved in British industry, and 3% per annum efficiency gains is a normal target. It is not done by undermining the product, reducing its quality or providing the customer with a worse service: it is done while giving customers a better service and raising the quality of the product, through technology, training and energising and motivating the work force through reward and incentive. We need to do that in the public sector now, on a large scale, because we have had 10 wasted years in which the Government made no progress and put too much money in without asking for enough back—doing too little for too much. We now need to create a public sector that does more for less in the important areas such as health and education, and does less for less in areas such as ID cards and the authoritarian state that Labour introduced.
We are meeting at a time of grave crisis for our European neighbours in the euro area. As one who campaigned strenuously and volubly against the United Kingdom joining the euro, I take no great pleasure in saying that all the things that we thought could go wrong with the euro are now unfortunately doing so, even without this country. I am very proud of all those who joined us in that campaign and kept sterling out. It is the one thing that the Government most recently ejected from office got right—they managed to stay out of the euro. That was a very sensible judgment on which I always congratulated them and backed them at the time. Had Britain gone into the euro, the state of British public finances and the different nature of the British economy and its founder currency, sterling, would by now have shattered the euro. Our great contribution to euroland unity was keeping our currency out, and I think that I could now find many German and French people and experts who would agree that we have made their problem a lot easier by not being in the euro.
When we used to say, “Beware of Greece! That is why we need to control our deficit”, the previous Government were always keen to tell us, “Oh, but Greece is in a totally different position.” Well they were wrong in this sense: if we do the figures properly, we see that total borrowing in Greece, in relation to its economy, is no bigger than total borrowing by the UK Government in relation to our economy. Colleagues have set out endlessly that the true debt and liability of the state in Britain is £3 trillion, not just under £1 trillion, as the previous Government used to say. Furthermore, our deficit is every bit as big as Greece’s, as we know from the awful figures that we have seen. So in that sense, we are just like Greece, and if the markets have got to the point with Greece where they are saying, “We will not carry on lending you money, because we think that you have over-borrowed”, we could get to that point in the United Kingdom too. It is that argument that has brought several Liberal Democrats round to our way of thinking, which is that we need urgent action. During the election we saw the Greek crisis being enacted at the same time as we were talking to electors, making it clear how dangerous the situation was.