Repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011
Debate between Edward Leigh and William Cash(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
On my hon. Friend’s remarks about the coalition, I have read his piece on the “ConservativeHome” website, and perhaps he would be good enough to look at mine, because I very much agree with him. The problem is not just the question of institutional issues; it is also the practical reality of the Liberal Democrats having the capacity, in relation to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act and in other respects, to frustrate the government of this country by a Conservative majority.
Sir Edward Leigh
It is not for me to speak for the Liberal Democrats—unfortunately they seem to be absent from the Chamber. May I say that I always read my hon. Friend’s speeches with the closest possible attention? Both he and I were, of course, in coalition in our beloved Conservative party with a social-liberal leadership. I sometimes think that the Conservatives on the Treasury Bench would rather be in coalition with the Liberals than with the likes of me. If that is true, it is no surprise if party membership is under stress.
The contrary system to ours involves a host of smaller parties combining in smoke-filled rooms—although they are probably smokeless now—in order to make deals and hash out a coalition that may be contrary to voters’ wishes. That is often the continental system.
Of course, the Act we are talking about today moves against the spirit of the idea that one Parliament cannot bind another. That is rubbish anyway, because if somebody gets a majority in the next Parliament, they can simply repeal this Act in an afternoon. All the checks and balances are meaningless in any event, because one Parliament cannot bind another.
So, looking to other parliamentary democracies outside the Westminster system, we see that fixed terms are a rarity. Often they are based on the peculiarity of local circumstances, such as in Germany or Switzerland. France, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands all provide for early Dissolution more easily than is envisioned under this Act.
One highly esteemed political scientist, Juan Linz, described in 1994 the capability for an early Dissolution as a critical antidote to the temporary rigidity of presidential-style systems. Linz was wise to point out that the power of Dissolution allows for stronger Governments who are more capable of responding to emergencies or to changes in democratic expression. He wrote that the fixed tenure means that the
“political process therefore becomes broken into discontinuous, rigidly determined periods without possibility for continuous readjustments as political, social and economic events might require.”
Indeed, I think the whole idea of fixed-term Parliaments has a Blairite feel to it, in a fawning admiration of the American style of government.
While a long line of thinkers, not least Russell Kirk, have been keen to point out the British roots of the American system, in fact, as you will know, Mr Speaker, it is very different from our own. Our daughter-Parliaments in Ottawa, Canberra and elsewhere have grown up in a very different way from the American system. The United States does not even have general elections, with different portions of both its Houses being elected in fits and starts every two years.
There is also another factor in the American system which we must avoid importing to these islands—this is an important point, which we have seen in this Parliament. With America’s fixed terms, the first half is spent legislating while the second half is spent in campaigning and raising money for the coming election campaign. The fixed date of the election is inherently conducive to that kind of mentality.
Sir Edward Leigh
Yes, that is true, but we all know—my right hon. Friend has been a Minister as have I—that the moment the election is called, civil servants do not allow Ministers to do anything. In theory, we still have Ministers in charge, but in practice we do not have a Government who can do anything. It is worrying that under this Act of Parliament we could have such a long period of, effectively, no Government.
Sir William Cash
Yes, indeed. With respect to the role of the civil service—of Lord Gus O’Donnell specifically—in putting this coalition together, an extraordinary amount of power was exercised by civil servants in relation to the coalition discussions, which included the proposals for this Act.
Sir Edward Leigh
I did not know about that, but my hon. Friend raises a good point, and I am very worried about it. Frankly, this coalition shows us that coalitions are a bad idea. It would have been much better to have had a minority Government. We could have gone to the people after a year or 18 months to seek a proper mandate. That has been done twice by Labour in the 1960s and the 1970s. There was no constitutional outrage, debate or scandal about it. Harold Wilson did it twice and nobody seemed to worry very much. People said that it was necessary to have a coalition to deal with the deficit. Leaving aside the fact that we have not yet properly dealt with the deficit anyway, a Conservative Government could have got on with dealing with the deficit from day one. They had the mandate to do so, and they could have renewed that mandate after a year or 18 months, and we would now have a much stronger Government.
We find ourselves stuck in a lowest common denominator straitjacket, which no one voted for—
International Development (Gender Equality) Bill
Debate between Edward Leigh and William Cash(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Cash
It will not have legislative retrospectivity, but it will reinforce existing policies by adding a statutory duty, which, as those of us who are familiar with administrative law will know, is what makes it bite. The fact that it will be a legal obligation enhances it beyond mere policy making. My hon. Friend mentions our hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark), who of course is one of the Bill’s sponsors, as indeed is the Chair of the International Development Committee, along with Members from both sides of the House—their names are listed on the back of the Bill. I want to express my gratitude to them for their active support in pursuing these objectives.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Nobody could possibly be in favour of gender inequality, but can my hon. Friend assure me that this is not just another motherhood and apple pie Bill that will place a regulatory burden on the Department by pushing it in a direction which, according to common sense, it should be following anyway?
Mr Cash
I could not agree more. It is not a regulatory burden at all; it is an amplification by statute of existing policies. It will help to generate self-help, enterprise and productivity in the third world, because it is women who are driving forward the whole market programme and helping to create micro-economic systems of enterprise. It is precisely for that reason that generating all the advantages of enterprise through women in the third world, who do all the work in the marketplaces, in the slums and so forth, will increase all the things that my hon. Friend advocates. He knows, as I do—I certainly advocate those things—how important it is to generate enterprise in those countries, because that will effectively balance the amount of aid that is necessary. The Bill is about providing a means of promoting enterprise, not over-regulation.
Hindi Radio Service (BBC)
Debate between Edward Leigh and William Cash(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Leigh
That is absolutely right.
Let me read out a couple of quotations by ordinary people from an article in The Times:
“Vijay Kumar Pandey…every day at 6 am, takes his battered transistor radio and places it on a small table outside his house. Through the shortwave crackle a burst of familiar Indian classical music announces the beginning of a half-hour news bulletin.
Other villagers arrive to listen to the world’s most important events. They have been doing this since 1940, gathering at dawn and dusk to hear BBC Hindi’s twice-daily news programmes.
‘I am in shock,’ said Mr Pandey, a farmer in…Uttar Pradesh. ‘It’s like a family member departing from me.’”
The article continued:
“My life would lose its meaning if BBC Hindi stops its service,”
said Tarachand Khatri from Rajasthan.
“Can you imagine living with somebody throughout your life and, suddenly, that person is gone? BBC Hindi was a person; we used to interact with it through its programmes; we used to share our happiness, feelings, thoughts and concerns.”
The respected Indian news weekly Outlook reports that some villagers have threatened to burn David Cameron in effigy—something that we would all deprecate. Mohammed Hasnain Khan, a schoolteacher from Ghazipur, has threatened to immolate himself if BBC Hindi is shut. Ravindra Chauhan of Assam says that hearing that BBC Hindi will close was as if
“someone tells you that your parents will die in March.”
And so the arguments go on. This decision is an attack on people who have no way of hitting back, and I think that we should protect them, especially as the Department for International Development is set to continue funding the poorest states in India to the tune of £250 million.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
Given the BBC’s enormous revenue, which is something like £4 billion a year, and how many correspondents it sends across the world in batches, does my hon. Friend agree that this incredible waste—in respect of which he and I fought to bring the BBC’s accounts within the purview of the National Audit Office—is completely disproportionate to the value that is attached to this service? Lastly, he might be fascinated to learn that 10 May 1940—the day on which the service began—happens to be the day I was born.
Mr Leigh
It is a very notable anniversary.
At this precise moment the BBC is wasting hundreds of thousands of pounds on a regionalisation programme—a programme that involves moving the headquarters of “Question Time” to Glasgow, for instance, even though it will continue to move around the country—while it is cutting a valued service in India.
Protection of Freedoms Bill
Debate between Edward Leigh and William Cash(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
I welcome the Bill. How could one not support clamping down on the wheel clampers? Some of my constituents have had terrible experiences at their hands.
Although I listened carefully to the shadow Home Secretary’s arguments, and although she made some fair points about DNA, one cannot, on civil liberties grounds, oppose removing the DNA of innocent people from the DNA database. It is a fundamental principle of British law that when people are found innocent by the courts, they are innocent.
My speech will be rather like the speeches that we used to have at Conservative party conferences, which said that the motion was fine, but did not go nearly far enough. Much of the Bill is, frankly, pretty unexceptional. Compared with the Deputy Prime Minister’s rhetoric last year about bringing in a Bill to
“protect our hard won liberties”
much of it is a bit tame. What happened, I wonder, to the 14,000 ideas that were suggested by members of the public via the “Your Freedom” consultation? It is like a scene from “Yes Minister”. An enthusiastic new Minister says, “I want to have a Freedom Bill,” and 14,000 replies come in. One can imagine Sir Humphrey, in his most mellifluous tone, advising the Minister that freedom can be a very incendiary device when it comes to Government.
I suggest that the Bill should go further, and I hope that I will get support not only from those on the Government Benches, but from Opposition Members. The Leader of the Opposition has admitted that Labour was
“too draconian on aspects of our civil liberties”.
Where can we go further? I am particularly worried about freedom of speech. I believe that political speech and debate, even in this place, are becoming very bland. There is a chilling effect on free speech, because people are discouraged from expressing unpopular opinions that do not fit with the winds of political fashion. Did not George Orwell once say:
“Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”?
I would add that the right to speak against received wisdom is the only way to make social progress, as I hope many Opposition Members would agree. We have to protect the ability to express widely differing opinions in strong terms in the public square.
One reason why I was worried about the Phil Woolas case, as I said at the time on the Floor of the House, is that if someone has a British National party candidate standing against them, for example, they have to be able to denounce them for what they are without fearing legal sanctions. We have a more and more active and activist judiciary, not just in the Supreme Court and the lower courts but in the European Court of Human Rights. Again, that has a somewhat chilling effect. We should examine some of the debates that there used to be during general elections, certainly 100 years ago but even 50 or 40 years ago. They were a lot more robust than they are now.
With that in mind, and in the spirit of warm and cosy friendship with my Liberal Democrat friends, I wish to try to persuade the Home Secretary to give some thought to adopting a Liberal Democrat proposal for inclusion in the Bill. It was made by Dr Evan Harris, who at the time was the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon. May I say how much we all miss him? Although I disagreed with him on virtually everything, he was a kind of foil to some of my arguments. In March 2009, he tabled an interesting proposal to amend the Public Order Act 1986. He wanted to delete the word “insulting” from section 5, because he was concerned that that section was being used to trample on free speech. As I have said, I did not agree with a lot of what he said, but I did agree with that.
European Union Bill
Debate between Edward Leigh and William Cash(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Cash
The group relates specifically to clause 18, and I shall explain a little of the amendments’ purpose.
Amendment 41 would insert at the beginning of the clause, which covers the status of EU law, the simple words:
“The sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament is hereby reaffirmed.”
Amendment 10 would add to the end of the clause the simple phrase,
“and not by virtue of a common law principle”.
The effect of that would be to prevent the courts from applying a common law principle, which has become entrenched in certain thinking in influential academic and legal circles, and in the Supreme Court. The explanatory notes suggest that it has also become entrenched in the Government’s thinking.
I understand that the explanatory notes may be in the course of being corrected, as the European Scrutiny Committee and one of its main witnesses suggested. However, precisely what effect that will have remains to be seen. Perhaps we can debate that this afternoon. After all, the explanatory notes may have been prepared to aid interpretation of the statute—statute law is open to interpretation by the courts—but will the removal of the relevant words necessarily have the effect of preventing those most distinguished and eminent Supreme Court judges from departing from principles and doctrines to which they have apparently become wedded?
The two new clauses are directly relevant to clause 18 to ensure parliamentary sovereignty in view of the continuing trend towards judicial interpretation along the lines that I have already expressed. It is a matter of grave concern to many of us—far more than may turn up in the Lobbies today—that the courts, on a range of matters, have accumulated greater and greater influence, and, indeed, action, in relation to their judgments on Acts of Parliament. I refer not merely to interpretation or construction of the words but the underlying judicial activism, sometimes of a quasi-political nature. That has caused a great deal of concern, which has arisen particularly in the case of the Human Rights Act 1998. Although we are not discussing that today, there is an analogy because the charter of fundamental rights, which mirrors the Human Rights Act, is part and parcel of the arrangements under the Lisbon treaty. In that area of law, if there were any inconsistency between legislation—many centuries old and based on well established democratic principles—passed in this Westminster Parliament, would the judiciary presume to make judgments about the nature or legal effects of parliamentary sovereignty?
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend deal with the canard put around by Foreign Office lawyers that if his amendment is passed and we add talk of sovereignty to the statute, judges will be given a chance to intervene because it is not mentioned elsewhere? Surely the issue is clear: Parliament is sovereign, so why do we not just pass this amendment?
Mr Cash
My hon. Friend is right and I am grateful to him. Indeed, I suspect that many other colleagues, not only on the Back Benches but among the ministerial ranks, agree with me strongly. I also suspect that many Opposition Members feel exactly the same way. I hope, although without too much confidence, that one or two Liberal Democrats might take a similar view, although I would not wish to over-egg the pudding on that score.
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Debate between Edward Leigh and William Cash(14 years ago)
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Mr Cash
That is an interesting idea, but that is not what the Bill says, although I am not criticising my hon. Friend for that. The Bill simply says that
“on a specified day the House passed a motion of no confidence in Her Majesty’s Government (as then constituted)”.
I described in an earlier debate the shenanigans of the 14-day period after a day had ended without the House having passed any motion expressing confidence in any Government of Her Majesty. What happens next is that all these people get together in a huddle and then rush up and down Downing street and Whitehall going to see the Cabinet Secretary and receiving some instructions about what they should do, in his view, if they want a stable Government. The net result is that we have a completely chaotic situation driven by behind-the-scenes, unknown negotiations that are then announced—
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend remember—happy days—when we were Maastricht rebels? We defeated the Government on the paving motion, and they then brought in another motion that was related to a no confidence motion, and we were all brought to heel in that way. Although I would not want to encourage that sort of behaviour, at least it was clear, was it not? The Government were saying, “This is where we are—we stand here.” At least that made for strong government.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Debate between Edward Leigh and William Cash(14 years ago)
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Mr Cash
We were all much more in agreement about this in Committee. All I can say to my hon. Friend is that I believe very strongly, for the reasons I have given and because of the principles I have enunciated, that the 40% threshold is desirable. Incidentally, on the majority provisions prevalent in other democracies in the west, Denmark’s requirement on constitutional change is for 40% of registered voters and, as the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) implied, Italy has a turnout requirement of 50% of registered voters. Indeed, this country used something not similar, but parallel in the 1979 vote, when the requirement was for 40% of registered voters saying yes.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
All these amendments on thresholds are eminently sensible, but does my hon. Friend agree that there is no chance of their being accepted because the Government will not accept them and that is because there is such profound apathy about this measure among the British people that if any kind of threshold was in place, there would be no chance of the proposal in the referendum being accepted? That is the reality.
Mr Cash
I understand what my hon. Friend is saying, but the problem arises if he simply takes the view that, for one reason or another, either in this House or outside it, there is apathy. I simply refer him back to all the great constitutional problems that have arisen in the past 150 years, when there has also been a problem of apathy, because the constitutional arguments are difficult to get across. I think of this on the basis of, for example, the preference arrangements where a person votes for only one candidate, which will mean that a large number of people will, in effect, be disfranchised—they might be very concerned about that. Some 1.5 million people voted for the UK Independence party and the British National party, and one might say that they may well not vote for anybody else. The other thing, which goes with that, is that if one is faced with a choice of Liberal and Labour, there may be an increased likelihood of people voting Liberal Democrat.