Tributes to Nelson Mandela

Gerald Kaufman Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

For an exhibition that it was planning to mount, the National Portrait Gallery asked me to nominate the three greatest figures of the 20th century and the reasons why. I nominated Winston Churchill for saving this country in the second world war, Mikhail Gorbachev for ending the cold war and Nelson Mandela for being Nelson Mandela.

The first time I met Nelson Mandela was when he visited Sweden after he had been released from prison. He said that Sweden was the country that had done most to help him be released, so he visited it first. It gave a grand state dinner, to which Neil Kinnock, as leader of the Labour party, and I as shadow Foreign Secretary were invited. The next day, Neil and I organised a private lunch for Nelson Mandela and his wife and friends.

Not long before that, during the first session of Prime Minister’s Question Time after Mandela’s release from prison—he was released on a Sunday, and in those days we had Prime Minister’s questions on Tuesdays—my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) rose and started her question with the words, to Margaret Thatcher,

“If the Prime Minister had just spent 27 years in prison”.—[Official Report, 13 February 1990; Vol. 167, c. 140.]

I was sitting on the Front Bench, and I murmured to Roy Hattersley, “As she should.” The microphones caught my remark, and the entire House heard it. On the Conservative side, not surprisingly, there was extremely loud outrage. On our side, there were the best cheers I think I have ever had in the House of Commons.

At the lunch in Stockholm, when we were being introduced to our guests, Oliver Tambo’s wife came up to me and said, “You are the man who said that Margaret Thatcher should be in prison for 27 years.” At the end of the room was Winnie Mandela, and when Winnie heard that, she rushed over to me, hugged me, and said, “You are the man! You are the man!” As a result of that, Nelson Mandela very kindly gave me the following inscription:

“To Gorton Labour Party, with our comradely compliments and best wishes, Nelson Mandela”.

Apart from all his other virtues, he had the most beautiful handwriting. Added to that inscription was:

“Thank you for your solidarity.

Much love

Winnie Mandela”.

That remained on the wall of Gorton Labour club for many years, until Winnie became renowned not so much for hugging as for putting burning tyres around the necks of her opponents, and it was taken down. It is on the wall in my house now.

At the lunch, Neil Kinnock asked Nelson Mandela about the visit to South Africa by a rebel English cricket team. There was a sporting and an entertainment boycott of South Africa at the time, but a group of very well-known English cricketers went there to play. Neil asked Nelson Mandela, “What do you think of the English cricketers who are in South Africa now?” Nelson Mandela said, “I admire them.” Neil said, “What? You admire them? Why? How can you?” Nelson Mandela said, “Because they are very brave. They knew before they came that there would be demonstrations outside the cricket grounds because they were there and breaking the boycott, and they came all the same.”

Somewhat later, when I was lunching with Nelson Mandela, I asked him—among a number of other things—what he had learnt in prison. He said that one of the things that had kept him going had been reading the memoirs of Menachem Begin, who started out as a terrorist—which Mandela did not—but became Prime Minister of Israel and made peace with Egypt. He was the last Prime Minister of Israel to make peace with anyone. I asked, “What did you learn from Menachem Begin’s memoirs?” He said, “Menachem Begin was in prison for a long time, and his book said that the most important thing to do if you were in prison was to sustain your values.” I do not think that Nelson Mandela needed to be taught that lesson, but—as has been said so widely in the House this afternoon—he certainly did sustain his values. He never, never, never took revenge of any kind. That was not because he was a softie. He was a tough man—you cannot get through 27 years in prison without being a tough man. But what he knew was that you can solve a huge political problem by being generous, forthcoming and reconciling, and that is what he did.

When I was shadow Foreign Secretary, I visited South Africa, then under apartheid, as a guest of the South African Council of Churches. I met Africans and I visited the townships, and I was followed wherever I went by the South African secret police. At a lunch in Durban with leading people, including Mbeki, I said, “I hope you’re not going to pick up the worst of the apartheid regime, and that you will be better than the apartheid regime ever could be when you, as you will, eventually achieve power in South Africa. In particular, I hope that you will not keep the death penalty, and that you will have liberal judicial policies.” Under Mandela, they did that, and it is hugely to the credit of Mandela and the ANC.

Too many other countries that have gained their freedom have nevertheless imposed penalties of the worst kind on their opponents. They were not saints who took over in South Africa, but they were good, sensible politicians, who knew that the best way of winning is by reconciling. That came so much from Mandela. His autobiography, “The Long Walk to Freedom”—I reviewed it and was proud to have my name on the dust cover—was written by him, not ghosted, and his personality comes out from every page. It said that people should be realistic and sensible in their politics and, at the same time, be forgiving and reconciliatory. We shall not see his like again.

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Gerald Kaufman Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)]

I listened in the most charitable manner I could to the Leader of the Opposition explaining why he cannot support the motion. Given that the Government responded not simply to his request but to those made by Members on the Government Benches to wait until the inspectors had completed their task and to enable the Security Council to consider the consequences, we and the country can only conclude that the right hon. Gentleman is incapable of taking yes for an answer.

I want to use the short time available to me to concentrate on one set of words—a reasonable phrase—in his amendment: the need for “compelling evidence” of the Assad regime’s responsibility for the chemical attacks. We should be clear what “compelling evidence” means. Nothing could ever be proven 100%. Someone charged with murder before our courts can be convicted if the jury is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt. That does not require someone to say, “I saw him pull the trigger.” Sometimes—usually—that is not available.

When we look at the situation in regard to the use of chemical weapons in Syria, what we know for certain—it is not in dispute—is that chemical weapons were used. The Assad regime themselves admit that. We know that such weapons were used in the middle of a sustained artillery attack by the Syrian Government forces on the very suburb in Damascus where the chemical attacks then took place. We know that the Syrian Government are the only state in the middle east that has massive stocks of chemical weapons, and we know that there cannot have been any ethical objection on the part of the Assad regime to using chemical weapons, not just because they have probably used them before, but because any regime that slaughters 100,000 of its own citizens clearly would have no compunction about using chemical weapons as well.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

When the right hon. and learned Gentleman says that we know that Syria is the only country in the middle east that possesses stocks of chemical weapons, will he draw attention to the use by Israel of illegal chemical weapons in Gaza—white phosphorus? Surely Israel, too, has such weapons, and we should take that into account in looking at the spectrum.

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

Let us use another occasion, if we may, to debate these important allegations. The issue is that the Syrian Government themselves do not deny that they have massive stocks of chemical weapons, and therefore the issue is whether there is any credible argument that on this particular occasion, in a district controlled by the opposition, the opposition somehow had both the capability and the will, and indeed did carry out this attack.

The inspectors’ reports will be helpful in two respects, I hope. First, they will give confirmation of the scale of this chemical attack. If only three or four people die, it could be argued that somebody could have been carrying around a bag of chemical agent and dispersed it, as happened in the Tokyo underground a good number of years ago. But when there are not just 300 people dying, but more than 3,000 people treated by Médecins Sans Frontières, clearly this was a massive chemical weapons attack which required rockets and a capability which, as we have heard, no one else in Syria has now or is likely to have in the short to medium term. Against that background, the inspectors could provide us with some helpful additional information.

The question then becomes, what is the purpose if military action is taken? It is not only going to be limited, as the Prime Minister has rightly said, but it has one overwhelming purpose, which has to be to deter further acts of the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime. Let me be emphatic about this—I hope no one would argue otherwise—that at this very moment, the Assad regime in Damascus is watching very carefully to see whether it will get away with what it has done. If it gets away with it, if there is no international response of a significant kind, we can be absolutely certain that the forces within Damascus will be successful in saying, “We must continue to use these whenever there is a military rationale for doing so.” There is no guarantee that a military strike against military targets will work, but there is every certainty that if we do not make that effort to punish and deter, these actions will indeed continue.

The other point that must concentrate all our minds very comprehensively is that a failure to act is not in itself an absence of a decision. It has profound other consequences, not just the ones I have mentioned, and most profound for the United Nations itself. The League of Nations effectively collapsed in the 1930s when Germany and Italy effectively prevented any sanctions or other action being taken against Italy for the invasion of Abyssinia. That, together with other similar acts of aggression which the League could not handle because of the absence of unanimity, created a chaos which led to the second world war. So if we can take action that has the support of Arab states and of the bulk of the international community, far from suffering, the United Nations and the concept of international institutions and the international community acting to deal with such acts of aggression will be boosted in a way that would not happen through any other course of action.

I believe that what is being recommended and will come back to this House is not only overwhelmingly in the interests of innocent Syrian men, women and children, but is far more likely to boost the concept of international action to deal with gross atrocities and violations of human rights than simply wringing our hands, protesting at the action but failing to make any effective response to it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

Syria did not start having an evil regime last week or two years ago; it has had an evil regime for a generation. The murder of 10,000 people in Hama is evidence of that. The world did not criticise in any way whatever.

We are told that the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime, if proved, transforms the situation. It would certainly make the situation ghastly, disgusting and abominable. However, Syria is not the only country in the middle east to have used chemical weapons in warfare. Israel used white phosphorous in its attack in Gaza in Operation Cast Lead—I saw the consequences for myself when I went there—but Israel gets away with it because it is on the right side of what is regarded as civilised opinion.

There is selectivity right the way through. We are told that we are being bundled into this situation because of President Obama—the same President Obama who sends a stream of drones over Pakistan, violating its sovereignty and murdering its citizens. I have no time whatever for the Syrian regime, and I condemn the use of chemical weapons, but we are being selective. Reference has been made to Egypt, where two regimes have been overthrown in two years, without a whimper. In Libya, we were told we had to protect the citizens of Benghazi, and I voted in the House to do so. Western air forces—British and French—misused a UN resolution to achieve regime change, which was illegal, and resulted in the murder of Gaddafi, vile dictator though he was, whose corpse was dragged through the streets. I do not trust what is regarded as western opinion on the middle east and north Africa.

The motion states that the Government want a UN resolution

“to alleviate humanitarian suffering by deterring use of chemical weapons and does not sanction any action in Syria with wider objectives.”

Pull the other one: they do what they want and make all kinds of excuses to justify random, murderous activity that does not even cure the situation. I ask the Foreign Secretary, if he is to reply to the debate—

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)]

indicated dissent.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

Ah, the Deputy Prime Minister is to reply. In that case, we are on a higher moral level.

If action is taken, what would the action be? What would its impact be? How many casualties, including among civilians, would it cause? Would Assad say, “Oh, dearie me, I must be a nice boy now”? Anyone who has been in Syria, as I was when I was shadow Foreign Secretary and was trying to liberate our hostages in Lebanon, knows that this is not a nice regime that will behave as we want. The Foreign Secretary said he wanted to punish Assad, but an Assad punished would be worse than an Assad as he is now. I will vote against the motion and against military action.

Afghanistan and EU Council

Gerald Kaufman Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I think the overall prospects for talks between the Taliban and the High Peace Council—the right body in Afghanistan to hold these talks—are good. We have to recognise, however, that the way in which the Doha office was established, when it advertised itself as the Islamic emirate of Afghanistan, has caused a setback, and that is rightly deeply unpopular in Afghanistan. As I discussed with President Karzai, the sense is that it is in the interests of Afghanistan for all Afghans to see a Government and a future in which they can have confidence and for the Taliban to lay down their arms and stop fighting. That is in their interests, so although there has been a setback, the underlying logic of what needs to happen is still there.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

When the right hon. Gentleman was in Islamabad, did he discuss with our high commissioner the operation of the entry clearance office, which is currently preventing the mother of a constituent of mine who is dying of cancer from visiting him in Manchester before he dies? Did he discuss with Nawaz Sharif the American drone attacks on Pakistan, which violate Pakistan’s sovereignty, kill very large numbers of innocent people and are a war crime, violating international law?

[The Prime Minister]

I did not discuss any specific cases with our high commissioner, but I did discuss with him the important operations of our visa processing and the very important work that he does. I think this is a good moment for me to pay tribute to our high commissioner and to his hard-working staff.

As for the second issue raised by the right hon. Gentleman, nothing was off the table during my discussions with Nawaz Sharif. I think that the right approach is to maintain a very tough security response to terrorism. There is no doubt that the presence of al-Qaeda in both Afghanistan and Pakistan has been radically reduced in recent years and that that has made us safer here in the United Kingdom, but we must ensure that such reductions are accompanied by the proper combating of terrorism in all its forms, which means ensuring that we deal with the underlying narrative on which the terrorists depend. It is with that combined approach that we will succeed.

Tributes to Baroness Thatcher

Gerald Kaufman Excerpts

Wednesday 10th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

I join in paying tribute to my old adversary, Margaret Thatcher. For many, of course, Margaret Thatcher was synonymous with “milk-snatcher,” and it would be idle to pretend that to us in the Labour party, and to millions of our supporters, many of her policies were other than anathema. But Margaret was much more complex than that, both as a politician and as a person, and her international significance was emphasised quite recently when, almost 24 years after she had stopped being Prime Minister, an actress in Hollywood could win the “best actress” Oscar for portraying her almost as well as she used to portray herself.

I served in the shadow Cabinet for 10 years when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. I saw her in action, and I often opposed her in action. After she left office—or rather, was ousted from office by some of her colleagues—I had contact with her from time to time.

Of course, as a Labour Member of Parliament, I deplored many of the drastic changes that she made in society. I was Labour’s Front-Bench spokesman during the coal strike, which she provoked, prepared for and won, although she was greatly helped by the stupid approach of Arthur Scargill, who destroyed the once almost revered National Union of Mineworkers by refusing to hold a strike ballot—a victory for her—just as Michael Foot, who has been mentioned this afternoon, contributed very significantly indeed to her greatest election victory in 1983.

It was my job to oppose her right-to-buy legislation, whose impact on the availability of social housing persists to this day, which is quite a charge sheet, not to mention the blunders that finished her off: the poll tax and “no, no, no” to Europe. But after all, she was a Tory Prime Minister and was not elected to implement policies that I or my constituents favoured. Unlike Winston Churchill, Harold Macmillan or Ted Heath, she broke the post-war consensus; that was her objective, and that was her achievement.

In personal relationships, and in some policy areas, Margaret Thatcher could be more than civilized—indeed, punctilious and cordial. I was a junior Housing Minister when she was shadow Environment Secretary, and I recall an occasion when one of her Front-Bench spokesmen violated the kind of across-the-Floor Front-Bench deal on which the functioning of this House depends. It was Margaret who sought me out to apologise and to say that she knew nothing about it, and would have stopped it had she known.

After she became Prime Minister, she baulked at railway privatisation. It was imposed by John Major, and its messy consequences we suffer to this day. Although she won her second and third elections with enormous majorities, she was always accessible. She announced that any Member of Parliament with employment problems in his or her constituency could come and see her at No. 10, and I availed myself of that offer when a computer multilayer board factory in my constituency was at hazard. We met in the Prime Minister’s study in 10 Downing street and I explained the problem. “But how are we to save it?” she asked. I suggested that it could be taken over by the National Enterprise Board, which had been created by Labour. Kenneth Baker, the junior Minister responsible for this policy area, was present, so she turned to him and asked plaintively, “Kenneth, what did I do with the National Enterprise Board?” I am sorry to say that the factory is now a blood transfusion centre, but, still, she meant well.

Margaret Thatcher was brave. In the parliamentary week following the Brighton bombing, in which terrorists tried to kill her and her entire Cabinet—and British democracy, by seeking to do so—she came here; she was present, bright and perky in the House of Commons, for the Government statement, to which I responded. She was also absolutely right on a considerable number of foreign policy issues. Against timorous nerve-trembling on both sides of the House and attempted international interference, she was utterly determined that the people of the Falkland Islands, who wanted to be British and who still want to be British today, should not be the victims of a fascist dictator. How some Labour Members of Parliament could actually want to water down a response to an aggressive fascist dictator, I could not understand then and I still do not understand today.

When Saddam Hussein seized Kuwait, she was actively part of the preparations to oust him by force. I was shadow Foreign Secretary at this time and had to seek to carry with me our Back Benchers, some of whom were spineless—[Interruption.] I am here to try to obtain a consensus. In the debate, I therefore told the House that Labour policy was based not on supporting the United Kingdom Government, but on implementing United Nations Security Council resolutions. She knew what I was up to, and she dug the Foreign Secretary in the ribs with her elbow and smiled a wry smile. She was also much more far-sighted than most United Kingdom Prime Ministers about rightward trends in Israel and in the middle east. When, as shadow Foreign Secretary, I visited Morocco, I was told by the United Kingdom ambassador there that she had given him a direct instruction to approach the leaders of the then substantial Moroccan Jewish community and urge them to exhort the sizeable number of Moroccan Jewish immigrants in Israel to vote Labour—Shimon Peres—in a forthcoming election.

Until her final debacle, she generally found ways of getting her own way. There had been a Lionel Bart musical called “Maggie May” and the saying went, “Others may not, but Maggie may”, and that was very much her watchword. I saw her from time to time after she had left office. On one occasion I attended a social event and when I came in she bustled over to me. I had recently had published in a newspaper an article about protecting children from pornography on TV and videos. She told me how much she admired the article and said, “I carry it with me everywhere in my handbag.” To be part of the contents of Margaret’s handbag—what greater apotheosis could one possibly hope for, Mr Speaker?

Royal Charter on Press Conduct

Gerald Kaufman Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

For me, this day marks the end of a journey that began 21 years ago when I became Chairman of what was then the National Heritage Committee. Our very first inquiry was into privacy and media intrusion. At that time, we were particularly concerned not so much about what the press does to public figures—although sometimes what it does to public figures can be cruel and unjustified, but we are in the game and we know what we face—but about what the press does to private individuals who have never had any experience of a journalist knocking at their door or coming through their garden gate, and who suddenly, through no fault or initiative of their own, find themselves hounded and harassed by the press. We referred in that inquiry in particular to families of murder victims. We referred to families of soldiers who had been killed in action. They could neither control what had happened to their families nor in any way respond or cope with journalists looking for a story.

We made a recommendation that the remedy should be a privacy Act with a public interest defence. We were looking at parallels with the United States constitution, which defended the freedom of the press while at the same time defending the freedom of individuals. It is very sad that although the remedy that we proposed might not necessarily have been the most effective or the most appropriate, nothing was done. Nothing was done by the Government who were then in power; nothing was done by the Labour Government who succeeded it. We are having this debate today only because of the exposure of the scandal of phone hacking, particularly concerning the Dowler family, but also relating to a considerable number of victims of intrusion into privacy.

I congratulate all involved in arriving at the solution that has been put before the House today. When the Prime Minister made his initial announcement, I made clear, as I did in the subsequent debate, my opposition to statutory regulation of the press. I was a working journalist for nine years on Fleet street, and I was proud of the privilege of working in communications, establishing facts and investigating wrongdoing. Whatever we might think of some of the worst excesses of the press, a free press is indispensable to a free democracy. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that if the choice were between a corrupt and irresponsible press or a state-regulated press, I would—obviously with great reluctance and while biting my tongue—opt for the irresponsibility and corruption. I want a free press in this country, and I want it to be able to do what it does without fear or favour. Today we are getting the possibility that that can be achieved while protecting decent, innocent people from intrusion.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the leader of the Labour party. Other leaders of the party could have worked on this but did not, however much I admired them and however much they were my friends. I congratulate the Prime Minister, because his agreeing with my right hon. Friend to have a royal charter—I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman who thought that up, because it was very clever indeed—made what is happening today possible. I congratulate the Deputy Prime Minister, too, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), the deputy leader of my party, on her hard and detailed work.

What we have today is the possibility of proper regulation. All my experience of the Press Complaints Commission, both personally and as Chair of what became the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, showed me that it was a total waste of time. It was a façade behind which the most irresponsible parts of the press did whatever they wanted. Over the years, and even after publication of the Leveson report, they still dragged their feet and had many more drinks over the eight in the last chance saloon. Well, the last chance saloon is putting up its “Closed” sign today, which is a very important achievement.

Although no newspaper is faultless, I think that it is appropriate to pay tribute to the journalists on The Guardian, who worked very hard on this and were not stymied or deterred. That is important, because they demonstrated that in the middle of all the scandal and uproar, journalists could still do the job of a journalist.

[Mr Bradshaw]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that as well as The Guardian, the Financial Times, The Independent and the Mirror Group deserve credit for having last week agreed with the Labour and Liberal Democrat versions of the charter?

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

I do agree. Of course, I am always ready to pay tribute to the Mirror Group in view of the fact that it paid my wages for nine years and I wrote leading articles for it.

We now have a chance—the equivalent of a public interest defence. With luck, but with far more than just luck—with an enormous amount of detailed consultation and work—we have got to this position today. When I spoke in the debate on the previous occasion, I said that when I was a working journalist I was proud to be a working journalist. The House of Commons, working as a British Parliament should—it does not all that often do so—has now made it possible to restore the pride in being a journalist, and that is a great achievement for all of us.

Leveson Inquiry

Gerald Kaufman Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Time after time we were told that my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Mr Hunt) was backing the bid, not adjudicating on the bid. All sorts of allegations and smears were made. It is important that colleagues can read the report and see that he took the right decisions in the right way.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

I declare an interest as someone who was a Fleet street staff journalist for 10 years. As such, I am instinctively opposed to statutory regulation of the press. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that if that Rubicon, as he says, is not to be crossed, it will be up to the press to accept the recommendations of Leveson, to do that in full, to do that fast and to do that with all the proprietors involved? What happens next will of course be a matter for this House and the political parties, but above all it is a matter for the press.

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The pressure should be on the press to take the steps that everybody now knows are necessary and that are set out in huge detail in the report. That is the best way to avoid the statutory regulation that Leveson does not want to see, that no one in this House should want to see, and that would make our country less free. He speaks very clearly about that issue.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Gerald Kaufman Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

I was a member of the royal commission on the House of Lords, an all-party commission that, after many months of consideration and consulting a large number of witnesses throughout the United Kingdom, decided unanimously that

“we could not recommend: a wholly or largely directly elected second chamber”.

In the years since then I have come upon no evidence to dissuade me from that view. This Bill is a botched mess that seems to have been drafted on the back of an envelope, and it is based not on principle, but on a series of deals between the two parties that comprise the Government.

The principle, if one can grace it with such an epithet, behind the Bill is not how to secure the better governance of this great democracy, but how to gratify the whims of the Liberal Democrat party, which has been determined to distort our parliamentary system, first, through the alternative vote and, now, with this rubbish in an effort to wangle more Liberal Democrat Members of either House or both Houses.

Significantly, what concerns the Liberal Democrats, to the extent of their threatening the stability of the Government, is not what concerns our constituents, such as jobs, the health service, schools, pensions, law and order, housing, but their own party self-interest.

One issue that has always troubled me about even a part-elected second Chamber is the conflict between Members of such a Chamber and the rights of the House of Commons and its Members. This Bill is imprecise to the point of vacuity on the relationship between the House of Commons and the new Chamber that it seeks to create. What is clear, however, is the certainty of conflict and collision between Members of the House of Commons and Members of the second Chamber in the areas where their membership coincides.

If a Member of the House of Commons and a Member of the revised second Chamber both take up the same individual case, or take up a position on the same issue, chaos could result, and the rights of the elected Member of the House of Commons could be eroded or undermined, particularly given the different lengths of membership of each body and the fact that Members of the second Chamber will be unaccountable because they cannot be re-elected.

I was not thrilled with the proposals for a second Chamber in the 2010 Labour party election manifesto, but at least they started with a referendum to legitimise any subsequent action. That difference being so strong, I am bewildered by the decision of Labour Front Benchers to support the Bill’s Second Reading. In 42 years in this House I have voted only once against the Labour Whip, but I shall certainly disregard it tomorrow evening. Perhaps it will set a precedent. I shall vote against both the Second Reading and the programme motion.

On whipping, let me say this to hon. Members in the Conservative party, although from what I have heard in this debate so far I do not believe that they need to be told it. I have a considerable personal regard for the Government Chief Whip, but on this issue he is not McLoughlin but Machiavelli. His job is to manipulate to get the result that he needs to deliver.

If one picks up a newspaper or turns on the television, one encounters all kinds of lurid warnings and threats: “boundary changes may be in danger”; “the very future of the coalition may be at stake”. Boundary changes crop up every few years and will continue to do so. I have survived four sets so far, and perhaps I will survive the next as well. Governments come and Governments go, but the new Chamber proposed in this Bill will be irreversible. Once we have it, we will not be able to get rid of it.

This nation’s parliamentary system of government has evolved over nine centuries to make the United Kingdom, for which under this Bill there will be different electoral systems in different countries, the greatest and most stable democracy in the world. There has been change, but it has been evolutionary change. A Liberal Government asserted the primacy of the House of Commons under the Parliament Acts more than a century ago; a Conservative Government created life peers and introduced women peers; and a Labour Government began the end of the hereditary system in the House of Lords.

We, unlike other democracies, do not have a constitution, and that is because we do not need a constitution. The Queen in Parliament is all we need. Let us uphold British democracy tomorrow night. Let us vote no in both Divisions and be done with this pernicious threat to what has made the United Kingdom a great democracy.

G20 Summit

Gerald Kaufman Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. It was the Conservative Opposition who warned that it was a bad decision to allow unencumbered access to British labour markets from countries such as Poland. We well remember being told, “You can’t talk about these things”, that it is somehow racist to discuss immigration, and all the rest of it. Year after year we had to put up with that nonsense, and to get a half-baked apology now is simply not good enough.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

It was interesting to see that the Prime Minister treats correspondence from the President of Argentina in the same way as he treats correspondence from Members of the House. Will he make it clear beyond any equivocation that not only is the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands not open for negotiation, but it is not open for discussion in any forum whatever, and that the wishes of the people of the Falklands to remain British will prevail?

[The Prime Minister]

I can certainly give the right hon. Gentleman that assurance. The referendum of the Falkland islanders will help us to deliver that in practice as well as in theory. Let me say to the right hon. Gentleman that if he writes me a letter, I shall try to respond to it very speedily.

G8 and NATO Summits

Gerald Kaufman Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. When I say “active monetary policy”, I do not simply mean a central bank that engages in quantitative easing, or whatever. We need to ensure that all the monetary institutions of a country, including its banks, are properly capitalised and properly working. Around Europe, there is a lot of work that needs to be done on that.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

With regard to the Prime Minister’s discussion with the President of Pakistan, does he deplore Barack Obama’s offensive discourtesy towards the President, the sovereignty of whose country the United States has violated with deadly effect? Will he confirm that Britain stands shoulder to shoulder with our Commonwealth partner in defying American colonialism?

[The Prime Minister]

I have to say that I would not put it like that. We need to work very closely with our American allies, within our special relationship, to try to deal with the terrorism that has come out of Afghanistan and is still coming out of parts of Pakistan. It is in our national interest to do that, but I always urge all international friends and partners to show patience and understanding with Pakistan because it is the biggest victim of terror of all. It has complex politics, and it needs to be given the space to resolve some of those issues. It also needs to know that its friends, such as Britain, will not leave it after the Afghan conflict is over, and that we are there for long-term partnership, friendship and support.

Party Funding

Gerald Kaufman Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I agree that it is essential that there should be a cap on donations, and we agreed in the previous discussions that an appropriate level—[Interruption.] Actually, all three parties agreed that the appropriate level was £50,000. There is room for discussion about that, which is fine. Sir Christopher Kelly also said, absolutely unequivocally, that the other side of the coin of a cap on donations was an increase in state funding, and I doubt whether anyone in the House wishes to go out to hard-pressed taxpayers at the moment and claim that the first call on their funds should be additional funding for political parties.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

Is it not a fact that before the election the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), now a member of the Government, complained to the Standards and Privileges Committee that the Leader of the Opposition—the leader of the Conservative party—was using his office in the House of Commons to meet the members of The Leader's Group, and that the Committee upheld the complaint? It stated:

“Mr Cameron was in our view ill-advised to link directly…the issues of access to his office and party fund-raising.”

If that was an offence for the Leader of the Opposition, how much worse an offence is it for the Prime Minister to use No. 10 Downing street? He is the leader of a Government who are incompetent, arrogant, extreme right-wing and corrupt.

[Mr Maude]

I used to have a lot of respect for the right hon. Gentleman: no longer.