Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 25th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Temporary Chair (Mr Gary Streeter)]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. I am sure that his comments have been heard by those on the Treasury Bench and the House is grateful to him for his assistance.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Streeter. I have participated in many of the debates on this Bill, but it has been drawn to my attention that the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) suggested that I had earlier today requested that there be fewer hours spent scrutinising this Bill. What I specifically said was that there should be fewer hours after 10 pm spent scrutinising this Bill, and we would have been able to achieve that had he and his colleagues acceded to the Opposition request for an additional day to debate it.

[The Temporary Chair]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. That is not a point of order for the Chair, but I am sure that she is pleased to have put the record straight.

New Clause 7

Variation in limit of number of holders of Ministerial offices

‘(1) The House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 is amended as follows.

(2) For section 2(1) substitute—

“(1) The number of holders of offices specified in Schedule 2 to this Act (in this section referred to as Ministerial offices) entitled to sit and vote in the House of Commons at any one time, whether paid or unpaid, must not exceed 95 if the number of constituencies in the United Kingdom is 650.”.

(3) After section 2(1) insert—

“(1A) If the number of constituencies in the United Kingdom decreases below 650, the limit on the number of holders of Ministerial offices entitled to sit and vote in the House of Commons referred to in section 2(1) must be decreased by at least a proportionate amount.”.

(4) In subsection (2), after “subsection (1)”, insert “or subsection (1A)”.’.—(Mr Charles Walker.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

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[Mr Walker]

The hon. Gentleman makes his usual sparky intervention.

Rafts of leading academics and political commentators have recognised for a long time that there are far too many Ministers in this place. Sir John Major, the former Prime Minister, has argued that we could easily do as well with a reduction of 25% to 30%. Lord Turnbull, the former Cabinet Secretary, told the Select Committee on Public Administration earlier this year that the number of Ministers could be cut by 50%. Professor Anthony King has argued the same, as has Lord Norton of Louth.

Of course, those academics and political commentators are in good company. Our own Deputy Prime Minister argued in January that the number of Ministers should be reduced.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Has the hon. Gentleman spoken more recently to the Deputy Prime Minister, because it is my impression that he is not likely to say today the things he said in January?

[Mr Walker]

The Deputy Prime Minister is a man of great integrity. I recognise that this is his Bill, and once he has heard the force of my argument he will rush here and demand a rethink from his Front Benchers.

Speaking at the Institute for Government in January, the Deputy Prime Minister called for the House of Commons to be reduced to 500 and for the number of Ministers across both Houses to be cut to 73. The Government’s demands are much more moderate. They are talking about reducing the size of the House to 600, but if we reduce it to 600, following the Deputy Prime Minister’s logic, we should reduce the number of Ministers by 15. That would tally with his mathematics, but, as I said, my new clause is modest. I am not calling for a reduction in the number of Ministers by 15. I know that many Members are demanding that I do that, but I shall not hear it. I am simply demanding a reduction in the number of Ministers by eight.

Many people here have argued privately in the corridors that there is no link between the size of the House of Commons and the number of Ministers. That is total nonsense. We know that as far back as the Bill of Rights of 1689 this House expressed concerns about the Crown having a presence here in the form of Ministers. The 1701 Act of Settlement tried extremely hard to remove Ministers from this place, because the politicians of that time wondered how one could serve the Crown as well as one’s constituents. Unfortunately, that never saw the light of day because the Executive got their way in 1706. As recently as 1926, if someone became a Minister of the Crown, he was required, in between general election periods, to resign his seat so that his constituents could decide whether their Member of Parliament could serve two masters—the interests of the constituents and the interests of the Crown.

That is where I am coming from. I am arguing for a modest reduction in the number of Ministers. We have had enormous ministerial inflation since 1983. Margaret Thatcher—we all remember her, that great lady—had 81 Ministers to run this country in 1983. We now require 95. Is the world so much more complex? I say to those who argue that it is that since 1983 we have privatised a large number of previously Government-owned industries and we have allowed Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to have their own devolved Assemblies. The number of Ministers has still risen inexorably.

I do not want to try your patience, Mr Streeter, by straying off new clause 7 and talking about inflation in the number of Parliamentary Private Secretaries, but we are now seeing 50 PPSs adding to an already burgeoning payroll. Although these people are not even paid, they are called the payroll vote. As far back as the 1960s, one could be a PPS and vote against the Government without danger of losing that role, but that is not the case today. The civil service code of conduct says that a PPS is required always to support their Government.

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[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I had not intended to speak in the debate, although I support the proposal in the new clause. I am quite certain that our most important role in this place is that of representing our constituents, and I agree with the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) that that relationship between the Member and our electors is the most special thing about my job. That is what most Members of Parliament think.

The problem is that that relationship is not sufficiently rewarded by the structures of this place, and in some ways the new clause goes to that issue. It challenges a reward system which says that success is achieved only by being a Minister. I have history here, because I am one of the very few people who, when they were a Minister, asked the Prime Minister to stop making me a Minister because I had had enough. I wanted to jump off that gravy train, for a number of reasons. One of them was that I believed that my responsibilities as a Minister interfered with the relationship that I had with the people of Slough whom I have the privilege to represent.

I have been complaining about late-night debates on the Bill and I did not plan to intervene until the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle spoke. We need to listen carefully to what he said, because his speech was not just about the new clause. It was not just about the number of Ministers. It was an analysis that showed that the Bill is looking down the wrong end of the telescope. The Bill protects the interests of those in government—in power—at the expense of those who put us there. It is not sufficiently focused on the electorate of Britain, on the masses whom we have the privilege to represent, and it is too focused on those who have scooped up the power in what he calls a coup d’état.

In a way, the hon. Gentleman is entirely right. I do not quibble with the fact that the result of the election required a coalition to be created. I am also of the view that the coalition had to be created between the largest party and a partner. But I quibble with the kind of constitutional change that the Bill seeks to bring about, not prefigured properly in any party’s manifesto, being rammed through the House of Commons without proper consideration.

That speaks to us about the consequences of not having a written constitution. There are some merits in not having a written constitution. It can create some flexibility and some opportunities to be imaginative and to solve problems as they arise, but it has risks, and today we are in the middle of one of the biggest risks. Without a written constitution, people can take liberties with the constitution. That is happening right now. Liberties are being taken, and those taking the liberties are those in government, who see the reward of elections—the highest thing that they can achieve—as Government office, not representing the masses.

Those of us who think that representing the people of Britain is our highest achievement should say that we will support the new clause and that we will not accept a situation in which a third of those on the Government Benches are on the payroll. That is not acceptable. It is not satisfactory and it creates huge cynicism among the electorate of Britain. I cannot blame them for thinking that politicians are rogues. Most of us in this place know that most are not, but when the system means that people cannot say what hon. Members and I know they think because they are on the Government Benches and they have to just suck it up, that makes people think that politics has no authenticity and that it is dishonest. That is damaging to democracy.

[Chris Bryant]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her splendid speech. I had not realised that she was going to end so swiftly.

We have had excellent contributions. The hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) said that he lacked ambition. That is clear, I suppose. That has been underlined with three lines from the Whips, but I praise the motion that he tabled. It puts into a new clause the question that I asked the Deputy Prime Minister some few months ago: if the Government plan to cut the number of seats in the House of Commons and do not plan to cut the number of Ministers, surely that will increase the influence of the Government—the Executive—over Parliament. I wholeheartedly support the argument that the hon. Member for Broxbourne made this evening.