Business of the House

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend raises a very important and detailed point. I recommend that he raise it directly with Ministers or at Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government questions on 23 July.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

The national lottery is not fit for purpose. How can it be right that, in the same year, Ashfield gets £900,000, while a city constituency a few miles down the road gets £64 million? May we have a debate in Government time on how to ensure that our former coalfield communities get their fair share from the lottery?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I would like to pay tribute to all those who buy lottery tickets and to the amazing achievements of the lottery in supporting good causes around the country. The hon. Lady makes an important point, and I suggest she seek an Adjournment debate, so that she can raise that matter.

Business of the House

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Antisocial behaviour is a big issue in my constituency. The vandalism, nuisance neighbours and repeated aggressive behaviour are often described as low level but they can make life a living hell for the victims. May we have a debate on whether the existing tools are tough enough?

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Lady is exactly right. Antisocial behaviour is a real blight on people’s lives and I am sure that we have all had constituency cases involving people who simply cannot cope with these levels of antisocial behaviour. A lot has been done to give the police more powers to tackle this, but I encourage her to seek an Adjournment debate or perhaps a Backbench business debate, so that all Members can share their views with Ministers.

Business of the House

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I will happily take that point up with my right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary. Next week’s debate will enable colleagues to make key points about the quality of rail transport and I encourage my hon. Friend to attend it.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

May we have a debate in Government time on the injustice of the mineworkers’ pension scheme, which has seen Government coffers swell by billions of pounds due to the unfair 50:50 surplus split? More cash needs to go to ex-miners and their widows.

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Lady will know that this has been debated a number of times in Parliament. There was a long-standing agreement on sharing the surplus, but if she would like to write to me, I will happily take up the issue again with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

Parliamentary Language

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Wednesday 17th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is a delight to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Riordan. I do not think that you say that at the beginning of every debate, so I feel a little admonished already.

“Erskine May”, the volume that governs how we behave in Parliament and dictates many of the rules that are not written up in the Standing Orders of the House of Commons, must be one of the most regularly ignored books in the history of English literature. Members will perhaps be surprised to know that it says:

“All Members should maintain silence.”

I do not know how often there is silence in the Chamber when somebody else is speaking. It is pretty rare, although on occasion the mood of the House can change on a sixpence. “Erskine May” also says that

“Members must not read any book, newspaper or letter.”

I have often seen Members signing Christmas cards in the House of Commons while a debate is going on, so I gently suggest that “Erskine May” is often ignored. I suspect that one of the reasons is that it is not generally available to the public—it costs £260 to buy. I believe that it should be available online and I cannot see any earthly reason why it should not be. All the Standing Orders of the House and everything else that dictates the way that we do our business are available online.

I know that some members of the public might think that there was a golden age when all MPs sat in the House of Commons and listened to one another carefully and attentively, only ever voting according to their consciences and not according to any party Whip, and that there was never any unruliness. In fact, the modern era has probably been one of the most ruly in parliamentary democracy.

On 24 July 1911, Tory MPs completely and utterly refused to allow the Prime Minister—Mr Asquith—to speak for the best part of 20 minutes by literally shouting at him at a very important point in his attempt to resolve a row between the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Then, when F. E. Smith was going to speak on behalf of the Conservatives, the Liberals, who believed that Smith had orchestrated the shouting at Mr Asquith, all shouted at him until the Speaker had to suspend the sitting before eventually adjourning it for the rest of the day. It is the only time that I have found that the Prime Minister was literally unable to get a single sentence out and on to the record; I suppose that is what happens when there is a Chamber dominated by Conservatives and Liberals.

In 1920, things got even worse. On 22 November that year, a Conservative, John Elsdale Molson, attacked an Irish nationalist, Joseph Devlin, when Devlin raised the matter of the Croke Park massacre, which had happened the day before. Indeed, things got so bad that the Conservative dragged the Irish nationalist over the top of the Bench and started pummelling him on the Floor. A Liberal actually shouted out, “Kill him,” and obviously the sitting had to be suspended.

Likewise, on 11 April 1923 the Speaker suspended the sitting because the Government had lost a vote the day before and Labour MPs were insisting that they should therefore change their policy on ex-servicemen. At that point, Robert Murray, a Conservative politician, and Walter Guinness, a Labour politician, ended up in a fist-fight and the rest of the day’s business was lost.

I mention all those incidents because people sometimes have this glorious image of a perfect, pacific past in the House of Commons. Sometimes we romanticise the past too much and I would argue that “Erskine May” has also entrenched some of the archaisms of the past that are no longer necessary.

Personally, I find the whole business of calling somebody an “hon. Friend”, a “right hon. Friend” or an “hon. Member” rather unnecessary. I do not know why; it just makes us seem as if we are hung up on titles. Ordinary members of the public have no idea what the difference is between an “hon. Member” and a “right hon. Member”—indeed, often Members themselves do not know the difference. It just seems so ludicrous when one Member has referred to another Member as “honourable” and then someone else pipes up and says, “Oh no, he’s right honourable.” I just think, “Honestly, have we not got something better to obsess about than our own status?”

Similarly, it is a particular irony that we always refer to one another by our constituencies, not least because we can rarely remember each other’s constituency names. So we will go, “The hon. Member for…somewhere down in the south-west,” or something like that, and then somebody will shout out the constituency name and it gets corrected and tidied up by Hansard. The irony of it all is that Hansard will actually then put the name of the Member.

It is bizarre that we play this game of having to refer to one another by our constituencies rather than our names. I do not think that the fact that people in the Welsh Assembly or the Scottish Parliament call one another by their names means they are any less courteous to one another; indeed, they might actually be a little more courteous.

There are also a lot of inconsistencies about how the Chair sometimes rules in relation to specific comments that are meant to involve unparliamentary language. For instance, Eric Forth regularly got away with using the term “PMPs”. When he was shadow Leader of the House, he always referred to “PMPs” as opposed to “PMQs”, with “PMPs” meaning “Prime Minister’s porkies”. If that was not accusing the Prime Minister of lying, I do not know what would have been.

That was quite a direct accusation of dishonesty, yet Jacob Rees-Mogg—sorry, I am not allowed to call him that; I must call him “the hon. Member for somewhere or other down in the south-west”—did not get into trouble for using the word “flipping”, but Sally Keeble got into considerable trouble for using a word that begins and ends with the same letters as “flipping” but is slightly different in the middle, and that was because it was used in a quotation.

Members are not allowed to use quotations. It says quite clearly in “Erskine May” that Members are not allowed to use a quotation at all, at any point. No extracts from books, magazines or newspapers can be used, and yet we do it regularly—in fact, we do it all the time. On occasions in 2002, the current Secretary of State for Work and Pensions used quotations as a means of accusing Stephen Byers of lying, but he was not reprimanded by the Chair for doing so, even though it is absolutely clear in “Erskine May” that a Member is not allowed to use the fact that they are quoting somebody else as a means of passing off an imputation of dishonesty against another Member.

I cannot remember Tom Watson’s constituency, but it is somewhere in the midlands—West Bromwich east, north, south or west. He was told off for using the word “pipsqueak” on 8 July 2010, yet the words “stoolpigeon”, “hooligan”, “blackguard” and “idiot” have all been used at various times by hon. Members and they have never been told off for using them. So I simply say that it is time for a greater degree of consistency about what we consider parliamentary and unparliamentary language. Indeed, I would say that it is time for a full redraft of “Erskine May”.

In particular, Members may not know that they are not allowed to be ironical in a debate in the House of Commons. It was a ruling of the Speaker on 25 August 1860, when he spoke to a Member:

“I should have informed him that to discuss any matter in the House in an ironical sense is unparliamentary and out of order.”—[Official Report, 25 August 1860; Vol. 160, c. 1827.]

When I have heard people make ironical comments in the House, I have often wondered whether those comments should be put in italics in Hansard, so that everybody catches the drift of what the person was really saying; sometimes it looks as if they are saying exactly the opposite of what they really mean. However, the ruling is still in “Erskine May” as a result of that decision in 1860.

I have already referred to the fact that “Erskine May” says that extracts from newspapers or books, and paraphrases of or quotations from speeches and so on, are not admissible. I think that that ruling is out of date and it is

“more honoured in the breach than the observance”.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

I am sorry to have to use the term “my hon. Friend”; in fact, I will just say “my Friend.” Does my Friend agree that some things cannot be put in “Erskine May” and that there should be some guidelines that just mean that we lead by example? For instance, when I have been going round the country asking people why they hate politicians, they say that one of the primary reasons is that they do not think that we answer questions put to us. We may think that senior politicians might lead the way on that issue, but the Prime Minister demonstrated the opposite today in an answer—or non-answer—to the question that my Friend put. That is the kind of thing that infuriates voters.

[Chris Bryant]

I will come later to what the Prime Minister said this afternoon, but to be honest I think that it was pretty scandalous. The whole point of Parliament is that Members are sent here on behalf of their constituents to be able to hold the Government to account, and that must surely require the Government to answer questions. Indeed, the ministerial code of conduct, ironically enough, was written by the Prime Minister in May 2010. It says absolutely categorically:

“It is of paramount importance that Ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament”.

It also says:

“Ministers should be as open as possible with Parliament and the public, refusing to provide information only when disclosure would not be in the public interest”.

People might think that that is just the ministerial code of conduct, and that the Prime Minister wrote it so he can ignore it. However, it is also a motion of this House —it was a resolution of this House carried on 19 March 1997. I cannot understand, and I do not think that our constituents will understand, why the Prime Minister should think himself able to declare that he will not answer a particular question from somebody, apparently just because he does not like them.

I happen to think that the Prime Minister did that because he had something to hide. He made it pretty clear that he chose not to deny the fact that there are additional e-mails between him and Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, of a salacious nature and embarrassing to him, which he refuses to publish. He could have chosen to deny that today. It seems absolutely clear to me that there is precisely such a stash, and he should, in the interests of democracy—and, frankly, in the interests of his reputation—publish them as soon as possible.

Incidentally, the Prime Minister said earlier this year that he was not going to reply to any of my questions, then he started replying to some of them and now he has gone back to not replying. I presume that today’s not-replying answer was precisely because I had asked a question that embarrassed him and because he had something to hide.

“Erskine May” also says that we are not allowed to ask certain kinds of questions:

“Questions which seek an expression of opinion, or which contain arguments, expressions of opinion, inferences or imputations, unnecessary epithets, or rhetorical, controversial, ironical or offensive expressions are not in order.”

That would rule out pretty much every single parliamentary question I have ever heard, certainly those on the Floor of the House; perhaps written questions are rather different. This seems to be yet another example of where we must consider changing how we write our rules.

Some of the issues are very specific, and I want to refer to how “Erskine May” says we are allowed to refer to other Members of Parliament, Members of the House of Lords, judges, governors-general of other territories, the Queen, the heir to the throne and members of the royal family.

It is absolutely right and proper that we should not seek to bring members of the royal family into our debates, and not seek to pray in aid a member of the royal family to try, in some way or another, to influence a debate—by saying, for example, “Princess Anne agrees with me” or “Prince Andrew disagrees with me.” However, extending that to mean that we cannot say a word about a member of the royal family is inappropriate, because we can write about them in newspapers. As Members of Parliament, we can say things on television, and in debates on “Question Time” or “Any Questions?” so not to be able to say the same things in Parliament, which is meant to be the fundamental place of debate in our society, seems misguided and wrong. It relies on an understanding from the late 17th century, which is archaic.

“Erskine May” also states, incidentally, that we are not even allowed to ask a question about ecclesiastical patronage. When the Prime Minister, in the next few days, gets two names suggested to him as next Archbishop of Canterbury, we will not be allowed to ask him which name he put forward to the Queen for appointment. One of the problems with the Church of England today is that the whole process of appointing bishops and archbishops is far too clouded in secrecy. It would be far better to have an open and transparent system, as we have for any other Government appointment. Why can we not ask questions about how patronage is exercised?

Similarly, and this strikes me as very strange, we are not allowed to ask questions about how the Prime Minister exercises his patronage in the granting of honours. That is particularly bizarre, because in 1922 a Conservative Member, Colonel John Gretton—as I am sure you know, Mrs Riordan, he won two golds in the 1900 Olympics—wanted to ask Lloyd George if he could give a definite assurance

“that no money or other consideration of money value has been paid, or passed either directly or indirectly, in connection with any of the honours recommended by the Prime Minister in announcing the list of honours on the 3rd of June this year.”—[Official Report, 27 June 1922; Vol. 155, c. 1842.]

The Speaker refused to allow him to ask the question, but it seems to me absolutely quintessentially important that we should know whether money has been handed over to a political party or an individual for the granting of an honour. The Speaker relied on the answer that had been given by his predecessor, Speaker Lowther, on 21 July 1907, when another MP, Hugh Lea, wanted to ask Campbell-Bannerman, another Liberal Prime Minister, about a knighthood he had given to Sir James Brown Smith. We know, in retrospect, that those were corrupt arrangements, but we could not have found that out through Parliament. If exactly the same were to happen today, we would have no means of establishing whether there was a corrupt arrangement.

I want to come to the matter of imputations of falsehood. Earlier this year, we had a debate about the then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, who is now the Secretary of State for Health—a bizarre promotion to my mind, but that is a matter for the Prime Minister’s conscience and not for anyone else’s. I made allegations about him in the debate, which had been made by other people in different terms, but amounting to exactly the same thing. I will not repeat them here, because that would be inappropriate. Members have to understand that when a motion specifically refers to the conduct of a Member they must be able to make an allegation about that conduct, and that also applies to Members of the House of Lords and of elsewhere.

In the 19th century, there were direct accusations against Viscount Palmerston, who, because his viscountcy was an Irish one, was a Member of the House of Commons. The Speaker ruled very clearly that if the debate was about whether Viscount Palmerston had lied to the House, it was perfectly possible to make that allegation, although it would not be in any other kind of debate. We need to draw that line very carefully, because there will be times when our constituents want us to say directly, in words that they understand, adhere to and support, what the allegation is. Sometimes when we mystify parliamentary language, we do ourselves an enormous disservice.

I have already referred to the issue of what should and should not be said in Parliament, and there is just one other thing that I want to mention. If we are to do our job well in opposition—all of us, at some point, are likely to be in opposition—it is important that Ministers adhere to all the elements of the ministerial code. I note that on Monday the Home Secretary was not able to provide a copy of her speech to the Opposition before she stood up to make her statement. It was said that providing it beforehand was merely a convention of the House. That is not so. Section 9.5 of the ministerial code states:

“A copy of the text of an oral statement should usually be shown to the Opposition shortly before it is made.”

I think that “usually” is there because of the Budget, and only because of that. It goes on:

“For this purpose, 15 copies of the statement and associated documents should be sent to the Chief Whip’s Office at least 45 minutes before the statement is to be made.”

I cannot remember the Home Secretary providing a copy of her statement to the shadow Home Office team 45 minutes, 40 minutes, 35 minutes or 25 minutes before, and I very much hope that when the Minister replies, he will tell us that he will ensure that the Prime Minister will reply to questions and that all Ministers will provide Opposition spokespeople with a copy of their statements at least 45 minutes before they deliver them, as required in the ministerial code.

Business of the House

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s role as a champion of businesses in his constituency, particularly of the retail sector. He will know that I announced a debate next week on the Mary Portas review, chosen by the Backbench Business Committee. I hope that will be an opportunity for him to intervene at slightly greater length than he was able to today.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

Could we have a debate on hospital parking charges? The hospital in my constituency has introduced big rises and has recently started charging for disabled parking. Sadly, it is not alone in doing so.

Business of the House

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I understand my hon. Friend’s concern. The Government announced in January that they would review the FOI legislation. We are about to submit our evidence to the Justice Committee as part of the post-legislative scrutiny, and that scrutiny will touch on the issues that he has just mentioned—the costs imposed on those who have to respond to these requests. I hope very much that the Committee, once it has received our review of the FOI Act, can take the matter forward. Of course, we will be interested in any recommendations that it might make on changes to the legislation.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

May we have a debate in Government time on the national lottery provider, Camelot, with a view to securing a constituency breakdown of where tickets are purchased, not just where lottery money is spent?

Oral Answers to Questions

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

I have asked the United Kingdom national lottery operator, Camelot, to give me a constituency breakdown showing where lottery tickets are purchased, but it has refused to do so. Does the Minister agree that, for reasons of transparency, it is important for such information to be in the public domain, and will he help me to put it there?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (John Penrose)]

It is not quite clear why this information is so important, but I am very happy to try to understand why. The destination of lottery funding has long been readily and transparently available, and can be found in the Library. However, I do not see why there should be a direct correlation between potentially richer constituencies where a large number of lottery tickets are bought, and constituencies that are in more need and receive a large amount of lottery funding. If the hon. Lady can explain why that direct connection is important, I shall of course be delighted to help if I can.

Business of the House

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

There will be Education questions on Monday, but my hon. Friend is right, and I hope that the pupil premium will enable more pupils from low-income families to aspire to university. The figures at the moment are deeply depressing, and I hope that as the pupil premium feeds through the education system, more children who would not otherwise have considered a university education will find it accessible to them.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

This week I saw figures from my constituency showing that demand for debt advice over the past year has risen dramatically, yet opening hours of citizen advice bureaux are falling dramatically. May we have a debate on how we might support people who need help during this crisis in CABs?

Oral Answers to Questions

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Thursday 16th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

In an earlier answer, I praised Bournemouth university. One of the first things that I did as a Minister was to commission the Livingstone-Hope report on skills in the video games industry to ensure that our courses were fit for purpose, and I should like to take this opportunity to congratulate Sir Alex Hope on his well-deserved OBE for that work.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

The Government make available about £2 billion to British banks under the enterprise finance guarantee scheme to support small and medium-sized enterprises in the creative industries. Music industry representatives have told me that only two music companies have been successful in raising loan finance via the EFG scheme. One very experienced music manager was successful only on his ninth attempt. What is the Minister going to do to improve the scheme and to support our music industry?

[Mr Vaizey]

I suspect that the hon. Lady met the same people at the meeting that I referred to earlier. I absolutely understand the issue to which she is referring, and I want to continue to work with the banks to try to educate them on how the enterprise finance guarantee scheme can be used to support the music industry. Important changes in the Budget, such as the enterprise investment scheme, will also help our creative industries.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gloria De Piero Excerpts

Thursday 28th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

I hope that I can reassure my hon. Friend that we will apply the rules sensitively. Everyone wants the Olympics to be a success, as they want the royal wedding tomorrow to be a success. Peer pressure from crowds is one of the best ways of ensuring that people behave sensibly on such occasions, although I fully take on board his points.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

When we are cutting spending on everything outside the House of Commons, will the Minister consider freezing spending on the House of Commons and Government art collection for the lifetime of this Parliament? Surely what money there is would be better spent on struggling libraries, theatre groups, galleries and other cultural organisations across Britain that are enjoyed by millions.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

We have frozen spending on the Government art collection for two years. However, let me take this opportunity to say that the Government art collection is a great jewel in the crown of this nation, and I would urge the hon. Lady to go and see it. It is inimitably British, and was set up in the 19th century because the Clerk of the Works decided that it was cheaper to buy paintings to cover the damp on the walls than to replace the wallpaper.