Conflict Decisions and Constitutional Reform

Graham Allen Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. Thank you for opening our proceedings. There could barely be two more fundamental issues for our country than thinking about or actually being at war, and the state of the Union. Where the Union goes is probably more relevant now than at any other time in my lifetime in politics, and we will watch anxiously and with great interest for the result of the referendum in Scotland. We are trying to pre-empt that. If people want to be taken seriously in their views on the Union, they cannot wait for circumstance; they must build their position on principle. The Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform was keen to put into the field the concept of a constitutional convention in order to give people that opportunity.

These two issues are important, but before I go into them, I should say that I am willing to take interventions throughout my speech, as I know that several colleagues have to get away and might choose to intervene rather than make a speech.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Allen]

First, I want to pay tribute to my Select Committee and its members. For the last four years, we have worked diligently on these issues, and I hope that we have a reputation for working sensibly, crafting answers and working in partnership with Government. Although we are occasionally disappointed by the fruits of that partnership, we are none the less ever hopeful of making progress on numerous issues by working with Parliament and Government constructively, rather than grandstanding and getting nowhere. I pay tribute to the members of my Select Committee, a couple of whom—very distinguished Members—are with us here.

[Dr Coffey]

On a point of clarity, given what the hon. Gentleman has said in his opening statement, are we combining the two debates, or are we having a debate on conflict and a separate debate on the constitution?

[Mr Allen]

For the convenience of Members, I asked the powers that be whether it would be possible to take the two together, which will allow people such as the hon. Lady to catch their trains back to their constituencies if they intervene early, rather than having to wait for the second debate. I thank the Chair for assistance in that.

If I may, I will introduce the first of the two topics: Parliament’s role when the country goes to war. It is an onerous responsibility, and in many ways we have been relieved of it over the years, because the Executive, exercising their control over the legislature, have often not bothered to involve Parliament. In a modern democracy, that is no longer a tenable way to run our affairs and govern ourselves. For me, the most obvious abuse of the system—one that demonstrated that a new, clear, honest and open relationship between Government and Parliament was necessary—came with the events around the Iraq war.

As our troops were gathering in the desert, it was pretty evident—every news channel was certainly briefed—that something was going to happen and that serious engagement was going to take place, but Parliament had gone into recess. I and numerous others were keen for Parliament to return and have a debate and discussion. Our Prime Minister was popping off to Camp David for regular discussions with President George W. Bush, who was keen to go into Iraq, yet our own Parliament had not been convened. Members of this House from all political perspectives and with all views on Iraq were not allowed to vocalise those views in the forum of the people.

It got to such a point that I and others organised petitions to the then Speaker to reconvene the House. They fell on deaf ears, and it became evident that in fact it was not within the power of the Speaker to recall Parliament; he could only do so at the behest of the Government. Perhaps my Committee needs to have another look at how Parliament is recalled. The power vested in Government was obviously not being used to request that the Speaker recall the House. I remember that it got to the point where I asked whether it would be possible for a Member or many Members to get together and hire, rent or be given permission to use a place to have our own debate, without having to recall the full panoply of the House. Of course, that was dismissed without a thought. We were getting ever closer to war—to a decision that some of us felt would make millions of terrorists, rather than reduce the chances of global terrorism. It was a very important question—not a little bush fire war, but a regional war that would have consequences for decades, possibly centuries—but no, the House could not come back.

I started to organise a way for my colleagues in all parts of the House to create their own parliament, to give Members of Parliament a chance to get together and voice the concerns that were clearly out there among the British people. We hired Church House over the road. I asked Members if they wanted to come to our parliament—a Members’ parliament, rather than an official Parliament—and we got to critical mass when a majority of the non-payroll vote replied “Yes” to the invitation to Church House. The former Speaker, Jack Weatherill, agreed to put down his name as speaker, with the proviso, which he and I discussed, that every Member who attended had at least 10 minutes on their hind legs to say what they felt about the impending war, even if that meant—this is the first time you will hear me say this, Mr Weir—an all-night sitting, something I opposed when we, thankfully, won the battle on that issue many years ago. Everybody would stay there, and Lord Weatherill would sit there, until everybody had had their say.

Even that did not get Government to reconvene Parliament. What did was that I communicated with the BBC, which agreed to cover the parliament in Church House gavel to gavel, as the BBC called it—from the opening moments until the close. Within a matter of hours, I received a phone call from the then Leader of the House, Robin Cook, who told me that the Government were going to reconvene Parliament.

We should not have to do that. Members of Parliament should not need to organise their own parliament to consider such issues. It is an abuse of our democracy that that takes place. Although in the end there was a vote, despite the biggest rebellion in a governing party in British political history, people on the payroll vote sided with the Prime Minister of the day, and people were threatened, intimidated and cajoled into supporting the Prime Minister. Sadly, my soon-to-be good friend, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), who was then the leader of the Conservative party, led most of his troops through the Prime Minister’s Lobby, although the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) and many others, including Liberal Democrat Members, sided with the incredibly large number of Members of Parliament who said that now was not the time, and that the case, importantly, was not proven.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Allen]

I will in a second. What that underlines to me is the need for process. In a democracy, in which a Parliament and a Government need to work together, there must be an accommodation, a form of words that both Executive and legislature can agree on that allows sensible debate. I will define “sensible debate” in a moment, when I have given way.

[Mr Gray]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is making an extremely interesting speech. He has spoken on these matters extremely interestingly for 10 or 15 years, to my knowledge. However, I am slightly puzzled by his line of argument. First, he is of course right about the recall of Parliament, but that is entirely separate from the matter that we are discussing. Of course Parliament should be recalled when something important has to be discussed, but that has no relevance whatever to what we are discussing now. Secondly, he may not like the outcome of the vote on Iraq, and he may say that people were cajoled and persuaded by the Whips to vote in a particular way and all those things, but that is precisely what happens for every single vote in this place, and quite rightly, too; that is the nature of democracy.

The interesting thing about the Iraq vote is that for the first time in 250 years this Parliament voted to go to war. Incidentally, the hon. Gentlemen is wrong in saying that there was simply that last vote on 13 February—I think that was the date. There was also a vote in November and another in December. The House of Commons voted three times to go to war in Iraq, and that was the first time in recent parliamentary history, going back to the 18th century, that Parliament had in fact voted to go to war.

[Mr Allen]

I do not disagree with any of the facts that the hon. Gentleman has outlined. In fact, we are in the middle of an interesting discussion in The House magazine. It is one of those debates in which one person writes a paragraph, then their opponent writes a paragraph and then the first person comes back. It is very interesting stuff, and I am having great fun with the hon. Gentleman; I hope that he is, too.

This is not about the facts. It is about the interpretation; it is about the judgment. Above all, for me, it is about process; that is the point that I am trying to make. It is about having the right process. To be told what to do and “This is the way we’re doing it” is not my definition of process. Process seems to involve more than one party, and in this case the Government of the country and the Parliament of the country, I think, can work out a sensible way to go forward.

[Mr Gray]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Allen]

Let me just make this argument first—

[Mr Gray]

This is a central point—an absolutely central point.

[Mr Allen]

—and then I will give way.

[Mr Gray]

I thought you said you would give way.

[Mr Allen]

If the hon. Gentleman allows me to speak and does not heckle me, he may get in a little faster than he is currently likely to do.

The process is very, very important, and I believe that my Select Committee, with its members from all parties producing unanimous reports, could not have done more in attempting to craft words that would satisfy all parties. It may just be a rumour, but I understand that most of the Departments in Whitehall and most of the Ministers involved are content with the words that we have all come up with, apart from one Department—I understand that it may be the Ministry of Defence; I do not know—which still feels that any legitimate process would be inhibiting, so let me just address one remark to the Ministry of Defence, if indeed it is the MOD or its Minister who is doing this.

It is a great strength, when people go or have been to war, if they have legitimacy in what they are doing. In a modern democracy, if people choose to push and cajole elected Members of Parliament, members of the public and others into a particular view without making their case—not without voting for or against; I am not even suggesting that—they lose the moral high ground. They look as though their case is weak. We need to develop a process and a procedure whereby we strengthen our democracy, particularly when we are fighting against people who care nothing for moral or ethical values and will, at the drop of a hat, ride roughshod over democratic process. We above all should not do that.

The final—

[Mr Gray]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Allen]

The final point that I will make on this—

[Mr Gray]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Allen]

I will not give way any more to the hon. Gentleman. The final point that I will make on this part of the argument is that no one, to my knowledge, and certainly not my Committee or me, has ever said that there has to be a vote before we go to war, because there may be occasions when the Executive have to be free to respond. If bombs were falling on London as we were speaking, Mr Weir, I would not want Parliament to be convened and to have a debate in a couple of days’ time. I need to be able speedily to execute—that is where the word “Executive” comes from—action in defence of our nation. However, at an appropriate moment, the House should be reconvened, should look at the reasons why we took military action and should, we hope, endorse that. If it does not—if the decision does not go my way—I have to accept that due process has taken place. I accept that the vote did not ultimately go my way on Iraq, but I do not think that due process, on that occasion, did take place.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

This is a matter of the gravest importance, in that the decision that we took in March 2003 resulted in the deaths of 179 British soldiers. Even now, 11 years later, we do not know the full truth of how Parliament was bribed, bullied, and bamboozled into voting—

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Flynn]

I mean bribed by political favours. The full story of this is available. Is it not astonishing that on this matter—these are the most important decisions that Parliament takes—we are still to be denied the full truth of what happened? The Chilcot report will be published in expurgated form, and many of the reasons why we went to war, many of the influences, will not be included. Will not the impression left behind, if that happens, be that the Chilcot report is a cover-up by civil servants and politicians to protect their own reputations?

[Mr Allen]

I am probably less interested in the history of this, although we need to learn from the history and the ins and outs of what happened—all the dossiers, the weapons of mass destruction and so on. What I am interested in as a parliamentarian is that we all learn the lesson of how we can do this better. That is the main thing that my Select Committee is pursuing. There are people on my Select Committee who voted one way, people who voted the other, and people who were not even in the House at the time, but we have an interest in saying, “In the future, let there be clarity, to the degree that we can obtain it, on how we take the most important decision that any of us will ever face.” My Select Committee—

[Mr Gray]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Allen]

No.

[Mr Gray]

Why not?

[Mr Allen]

If I may continue—

[Mr Gray]

You are supposed to be giving way.

[Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Mr Allen]

This is a rather important issue, Mr Weir, and I know that the hon. Gentleman is agitated about it. If he wishes, I can make a case even on the back of what has happened in Iraq this week, with thousands of people dying and with individuals being executed on television for the benefit of people with particular views. These are really serious issues, so I would like to explain how this Parliament and this Government can work together to ensure that on similar, very serious occasions, we get this right in a way that perhaps we have not before. Again, we have made no outrageous demand that not a soldier should be deployed anywhere at all without the wise words of this House—of course not. We have made five reports to Government and the House, trying to get a clear resolution of this issue.

We have had three or four wars during the time we have been trying to get Government to come to the table and make an agreement that will take us all forward together, united as a nation in the most difficult circumstances we are ever likely to face. Have we been tolerant? One could argue that we have been far too tolerant.

In our first report, we suggested—this is not outrageous language—that the Government should

“bring forward a draft parliamentary resolution for consultation with us among others, and for debate and decision by the end of 2011.”

Similarly, the Government responded to our second report by saying:

“we hope to make progress on this matter in a timely and appropriate manner.”

That was in September 2011.

Our third report concluded:

“The Government needs to honour the Foreign Secretary’s undertaking to the House to ‘enshrine in law for the future the necessity of consulting Parliament on military action’”.

That was not me or my Committee, but the Foreign Secretary. He still is the Foreign Secretary, and one hopes that his words will come to pass. Our report continued by saying that the Government should

“do so before the end of the current Parliament. In the absence of any other timetable, this is the one to which we will hold them.”

Let us move on to the fourth report on this issue by a Select Committee of this House—my Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. In September 2013, after the House had debated the Iraq question, we called for the Government to

“provide a comprehensive, updated statement of its position on the role of Parliament in conflict decisions.”

Again, the language was hardly inflammatory. The report went on:

“We also recommend that it precisely details the specific steps which will now be taken to fulfil the strong public commitment to enshrine in law the necessity of consulting Parliament on military action.”

That shows a Committee trying to make the system work for everyone’s benefit.

Finally, in March this year we published the fifth report, on which the Minister may like to comment in his speech. We drafted a resolution—a draft resolution means that the House and the Government can discuss it, change it and make it more workable if we have failed to make it as workable as possible. We produced a resolution that set out the process we could follow in order to get approval from the House of Commons on future conflict decisions. We called on the Government to consider the resolution and come forward with a revised draft by—we were getting a little frustrated, so specified the time—June 2014, with a view to having the House agree a resolution by November 2014.

We are now in June 2014. So far, we have received no Government response, but I hope that we get one this month. Knowing the Minister as I do, I hope very much that it will be a positive, creative and constructive response. I hope it will be in a form of words that can take us forward for perhaps 50 or 100 years, and will agree with us on a sensible way in which the House, its Members having been duly elected by the public, can be involved with the Executive, who have a vital and necessary interest in sometimes being able to move swiftly and expeditiously on conflicts that we would hope to avoid in other circumstances. I hope that the Minister has had the chance to prepare, and will give us some good news today on how we can go forward together on such a vital issue.

Just to show how forgiving I can be, I am going to let my friend the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) intervene.

[Mr Gray]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman, although I am not quite sure what he is forgiving me for.

[Mr Allen]

You talk too much, James, that is your problem.

[Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)]

Order.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Allen]

I will just let the Members present make of that what they wish.

[Mr Gray]

Why not try answering it instead?

[Mr Allen]

I will have to put the hon. Gentleman on the naughty step if he carries on.

I would like to move on to the report issued by my Select Committee on the need for a constitutional convention for the United Kingdom, on which I will be happy to take interventions from colleagues.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey]

rose—

[Mr Allen]

I see that the hon. Lady would like to intervene.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey]

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman and other Members: I mistakenly thought that a meeting with the Serjeant at Arms and the superintendant at 2 o’clock had been cancelled, so came to the debate. Before I go, I wanted to check on a point of correction. Page 6 of the report refers to the vote rejecting the motion by 332 to 220. My recollection—and I have just checked Hansard—is that that was the vote on the manuscript amendment tabled by the Leader of the Opposition, and that the main motion was defeated by 285 votes to 272. I remember that so vividly because it was probably the most extraordinary moment I have experienced in the Chamber in my four years as a Member of Parliament.

[Mr Allen]

Is the hon. Lady referring to Syria?

[Dr Thérèse Coffey]

Yes.

[Mr Allen]

I am happy to accept that as a statement of fact. It certainly was an interesting moment. The Prime Minister gave an incredibly statesmanlike response. In a short statement, he gave those of us who believe in democracy a great boost, because although some may say that there was technically a little confusion or muddle, the House had very clearly spoken, and he dealt with that excellently. Of course, that had repercussions, which thankfully mean that now, as the leader of Syria is undergoing a steady rehabilitation in the eyes of many people—it is all relative, of course—we are not enmeshed in a situation with great difficulties on all sides. Instead, we are adopting a position that is not going to replicate the awful consequences we see in Iraq on a daily basis.

There are no easy decisions in this field. Any people who pretend that everything would have been wonderful had we gone to war are people whose judgment is not of great value. Such decisions are incredibly difficult, but through the Syria vote the House indicated a way forward that the Prime Minister accepted. He made absolutely the right decision.

[Paul Flynn]

As the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) said, the vote on 29 August was one of immense significance. It was the first time for centuries that, a Prime Minister having come to the House of Commons to suggest that we go to war, Parliament rejected that suggestion. It is extraordinary; had that decision gone the other way, and had we found ourselves opposing Assad in Syria—although there are three sides there—we would now be on almost the same side as the ISIS rebels. Is it not crucial that we learn that if we are to go to war, we should rely not on a Prime Minister writing his page in history, full of hubris and vanity as he takes the decision, but on the good sense of 650 Members of Parliament?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)]

That is perfectly understandable.

[Mr Allen]

Our debate is lesser for the absence of the hon. Member for North Wiltshire. I am sorry that we will not have more chance to debate these issues today, but as we are in the middle of an exchange that will appear in The House magazine, I am sure that Members will be able to read his views. Best wishes for his stepdaughter’s speedy recovery, too.

I will avoid the lure of the clear views of my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) on Syria other than to say that, in a democracy, decision making always benefits if we allow the voices of elected representatives to be heard. Whether we wish to take advantage of that advice, which comes in many different forms and from many different directions—a synthesis takes place—is a matter for the Executive and for the Government. Let us hear those views, and let us define a process that allows that to happen sensibly and appropriately. I look to my party colleagues, who may or may not soon be in government, to ensure that the issue will not go away. Sadly, armed conflicts will not go away, and it is much better to be prepared and to have a position ahead of time so that we can try to resolve what might be a problem in the future, rather than wait until a calamity happens and have to react in a crisis. Although it is hard to say so when we see awful pictures, particularly from Iraq and Syria at the moment, believe it or not this is a moment of relative quietude for the involvement of our country in which we can make sensible, sober and careful judgments about how to involve Parliament and Government in this most horrendous and responsible of decisions.

I will now move on to my Select Committee’s other report before the Chamber today. The report is on the need for a constitutional convention. The report was timely when it was agreed by the members of the Committee who are present, and it has become even more pertinent as time has gone by. With every moment that passes, as we come closer to the referendum in Scotland, and as other issues related to the whole concept of the Union and devolution start to appear on our agenda, the need to work that out becomes ever more pressing. How difficult it must be for Ministers living the day to day, the red boxes and everything else, to take a pace back and try to anticipate problems, but we need to do that in government and in Parliament. At the moment, there is a sense of, “Well, let’s just wait and see what happens in the Scottish referendum, and then we’ll react and respond.” That diminishes our position because it will be seen as a reaction to events, rather than a decision based on a principle on which we can all agree.

I believe that we can all agree on certain key principles. I take great strength from the fact that all the Union parties in Scotland—the Labour party, the Conservative party and the Lib Dems—have signed up, not to every dot and comma of a common position but to a sense that there should be greater devolution. They all have their different views. My party is lagging behind a little at the moment. Believe it or not, zooming by on the right-hand side of the debate has been the Conservative party, which is putting many of us to shame with its proposals on devolution for Scotland. The Lib Dems are there with their strong traditional views on serious devolution, too. A debate is going on, but all three parties are pointing in the right direction and share a common platform of greater devolution, which gives them great strength ahead of the referendum. Had they adopted such a platform after the referendum, people would have laughed, depending on whether the vote was yes or no.

Such a demonstration needs to be echoed in the United Kingdom. I believe that the leader of the Conservative party, the leader of the Labour party and the leader of the Lib Dems should similarly get together and make a simple one-line statement to the effect that, as principles governing our United Kingdom, we believe in Union and in devolution. That should not be after the event but now, and I think it would underpin much of the debate between now and the referendum. It would make the position believable for all of us. Rather than being an expedient because someone is shouting or has won a vote, we would be talking about devolution because we believe in it as a principle.

The Union and devolution are two key principles for our governance, and I would love to see that position put into the public domain. If the parties agree on nothing else, even if they do not agree on the detail, agreeing on those two principles would be immensely strengthening. Why? Because we would then separate the visceral separatists—those who are driven by hatred and dislike—from the rational devolvers, such as me and perhaps most people in this room. I am glad you cannot participate from the Chair, Mr Weir.

[Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)]

I am strictly neutral.

[Mr Allen]

I know these things may come back to haunt me later.

To be serious, though, many of us—even people sitting in Nottingham, as I do—feel that Whitehall telling us what to do and when to empty our bins, and not allowing us to get on and run our affairs, is an unacceptable imposition in a democracy. Many of us work away in our own way to make the case for rational devolution, wherever we are. If we do not have rational devolution, where do the rational devolvers go? Some of them become attracted to nationalism and see it as the way forward. It is ludicrous that we do not say to such people, and to people such as me in the east midlands, or whatever nation or English region we may live in, that we can run our own affairs.

How do we do that? I have some views of my own, but why do we not have a constitutional convention? Why do we not say that there has been a very serious schism? I hope that that schism starts to heal, but it will heal only if we take serious heed of how we can devolve power not just to Scotland, not because it is a reflex and not because it is a response but because we believe in it. The way to demonstrate that belief is seriously to consider devolution in England. That is one of the things that could come through in a constitutional convention.

There is no one in the House of Commons to whom the Minister takes second place on devolution. If there is one person in the House who has done more for devolution than any other, it is him. Long may he continue. Those Trojan, individual efforts of will and drive need a process. I hope he will be with us for many years, but just in case he is not, we need a structure that allows devolution to take place because, regardless of party, there is a means for it to do so.

Fundamentally, if the English get devolution, it then becomes believable not as an expedient for every other nation but because it is seen to be a principle and something that cannot be taken away. I wish that were not the case, but to prove that devolution is a principle we need to be clear and honest about English devolution. Creating a convention does not have to be a formal thing after an election; it could be an informal thing before an election and it could start to outline where we can go and how we take this process forward.

My Select Committee has been looking seriously at what that means for England and how it might shape things. We have not always come to complete unanimity on it; there are many different views and many different parties. However, we managed to get a sense of direction, if nothing else, and recently we produced our report on the codification of the relationship between local government and central Government. I hope that, as an individual Back Bencher, I can produce a Bill on that matter shortly, which will go a bit further and define independent local government of the sort that is commonplace in every other democracy. People are not like us. We are the weird one in the democratic family, in not having independent local government; in being unable to raise revenues locally to meet our budgets; and in being told what to do by a massively over-centralised Whitehall, in this case. That does not happen in many of our neighbours in north America, Europe and elsewhere in the democratic family.

We can get up to standard—up to modern democratic standards—by doing those things. If we do that; if it is written down and cannot just be thrown away on a whim by the next Government, or the one after that, or the one after that; and if it is part of what we are and what we believe in, which is union and devolution, it will be something that will see us through for a long, long time. That was the heart of what we were trying to say as a Select Committee—working together—when we put forward the paper on our proposal for a constitutional convention for the United Kingdom.

One of the key things that we opened up in our other report on codification of local government was how we finance things. We can have all the nice codes written in Brussels, which get shipped over here every so often and go straight into the waste bin in Whitehall, but if we are really to do this thing we need, of course, to have powers—they are relatively easy to define—but we also need to have finance.

At the moment, local government is financed. Where does that money come from? It comes largely from the income tax payments of every individual in this country. Maybe it is not possible to devise a system whereby we can link income tax to local government. Oh, yes—let us look up the road, and we see that they are doing it. Again, Scotland has led the way, winning over even the Treasury to the concept of assigned local income tax. Right now, it is only 10p of the income tax, but the foot is in the door; it is possible to go further and indeed the Scottish Conservatives have demonstrated how that can be done.

Such an offer—the current offer—has been made to our good friends in the Welsh Assembly. I hope that they will bank that, I hope that they will pick it up and I hope that they will be greedy and come back for more, because all they would be asking for would be to retain some of the income tax in their own nation and put it to work. It would not be income tax on a different rate; it would not be without equalisation; it would not be collected in a different way; and it would not involve setting up a local income tax bureaucracy. It would just be income tax the way that we do it now, but using the equalisation mechanism. If we wanted to use one in England, it would be the Department for Communities and Local Government, which would take that allocation—the amount of money currently spent on local government, paid for by income tax—and equalise it there, before distributing it to the local authorities.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was present yesterday at the Margaret Thatcher conference on liberty, but if he had been he would have heard Dr Art Laffer explaining to those present that in the United States the nine states without local income taxes have grown faster and provide better public services than any of the states that have local income taxes.

[Mr Allen]

That is a very good argument to ensure that, under this new arrangement, we will make sure that there is an opt-out for Christchurch, so that it can carry on without any of the income tax that its residents pay going to its local government, but I suspect that most people would want to continue a system of equalised funding.

The beauty of tax assignment is that it changes nothing in terms of the money values and the collection, but it brings transparency and accountability to the line of account from someone’s pocket to their local government. One of the suggestions in our report is that everyone’s personal wage slip or salary slip should show not only national income tax as x pounds and national insurance as y pounds but local income tax—the element that goes to support their council—as c pounds.

People would look at that and soon start to become interested, once again, in their locality, in their issues, in a bond issue, in joining their local parties and in getting involved with the constituencies, councils and boroughs throughout the land, because they would own and pay for their own local government. That is happening in Scotland, it is soon to happen in Wales, so let it happen in England soon, and then we will be going back again to those two key principles of union and devolution, and of doing what is appropriate at the most appropriate level: at the Westminster level, or the federal level of central Government; at the national level in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; and for us in England, that level or vehicle could be local government.

That issue just happens to be something I care about and feel I have thought through, but there may be dozens and dozens of other issues out there. Again, rather like being convened to discuss a major issue—such as whether the nation should go to war—let us convene on other issues. Perhaps our Parliament could be the convention, but let us convene what we may call a convention to hear the voices, and not pretend that something will go away if a vote goes our way in Scotland, or if Wales or England adopts a particular set of legislative expedients.

Let us hear the voices, and that is all my Committee has been doing. It is a thread right the way through four—nearly five—years of work. To have a fixed-term Parliament in which a Select Committee can set its stall out and start to do some thinking has been useful for us. Not everybody does it that way—that is okay, because people have different ways of running Select Committees—but we have taken advantage of that fixed term to craft some of those answers and some of those debates.

I will say why that is important, and then I will start to wind up. It is not just about whether our Select Committee comes up with a particular answer on a particularly nifty bit of procedure. Our politics has changed. I would say that it had not changed much for most of my life in the House of Commons, but it has changed in the last five or six years—big time. There are lots of reasons for that. But what we now have, and we are in the middle of a big inquiry into voter engagement, is serious voter disengagement. It may be that people are taught this cynicism about our politics, or perhaps they pick it up, or it may be that people in this House have a large share of responsibility for it, but whatever caused it, we are where we are. And we are, as conventional parties, disparaged and disrespected—often with good cause. However, the answer is not to go forward and build a new politics; the answer is currently seen as anti-politics, anti-democracy and anti-the parties in this place. That is the choice that the nation as a whole is considering at the moment and we need to supersede it, because it could be quite dangerous unless we come up with something that goes beyond it.

Looking at the big picture again, looking at the principles again, getting away from tomorrow’s headlines and looking at how we build that future is very important. It may be just about process in how we go to war; it may be about pulling together a constitutional convention; it may be about looking in the year that we commemorate Magna Carta at what the last 800 years have meant in terms of the conflicts that led to Magna Carta; and it may be time for a new Magna Carta. I do not think we should be telling people that. People should be deciding that for themselves. There should be a debate, which all parties should be encouraging, because some of those big principles need to be revisited.

I am worried that, unless we revisit those principles quickly, if we just continue to respond to events, not only will a Scottish referendum dictate our futures reactively but possibly even the next general election will do so. If a quarter of the population votes for a party that does not get any seats, what legitimacy will there be for a party that just manages to cobble together a coalition or manages even to get an outright majority in Parliament? Will that be a strong pillar of democracy?

We have to look at these issues before they happen. My Committee has made a serious contribution to the future of that debate on those issues, on the ones I have spoken about today and on many others. I hope that this House and the Government listen seriously and take us forward, so that we build a stronger democracy and put reactiveness and expediency behind us, because if we do not we may be threatening the very democracy that we say we love.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I had not intended to participate in this debate, but I have been stimulated into action by the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen). He and I have been on this Select Committee since the beginning of this Parliament. I pay tribute to him for the work he has done.

We do not agree on everything, as I think will be obvious. Even the Minister responding to our report on having a convention said:

“The Committee itself did not agree on the need for a constitutional convention. According to its report, ‘There is a range of very different opinions. This is true, not only among the witnesses but also among the members of our Committee, some of whom do not accept either the need for further review of constitutional arrangements or that a constitutional convention would be the right vehicle for any such review.’”

I count myself in the last category, as somebody who does not believe that a constitutional convention would be the right vehicle for any review. If we wish to review the constitutional arrangements for our country, that should be initiated by Parliament and by the Government. It is a matter of regret that, for example, we have not yet got a clear response to the McKay commission. These commissions are set up and the Government are often rather slow to respond to them.

The Government also said that they are

“grateful to the Committee…which has added to the broad-ranging conversation that is taking place on the UK’s constitutional arrangements, including the shape of the UK’s devolution settlements.”

It has been a great asset for the Committee to reflect and, in a sense, take part in this conversation. That is probably why the Government’s response to quite a thick report looks rather thin. Unlike most Government responses, it does not deal with our recommendations paragraph by paragraph, but puts all the responses together, forgetting some of the most important recommendations. Anyway, that is how it is.

The response is quite short, is it not, on issues to do with Scotland and the United Kingdom. Where did the Edinburgh agreement come from? The hon. Gentleman says that Parliament should be consulted on when we go war. Was Parliament consulted in advance of the Edinburgh agreement, which is potentially far-reaching? If the result of the referendum in Scotland is a vote for independence, that agreement, which effectively guaranteed that the Scots would be able to have their will, as reflected in their referendum, implemented without question by this UK Parliament, could be the makings of a constitutional crisis. If, say, there is a small turnout or a small margin of difference between one side and the other, people will ask, “Why wasn’t the House of Commons engaged in this?”

A couple of weeks back, I was told by a taxi driver in Catalonia how difficult it is in Spain because of the unemployment problems—this was before the results of the World cup. He wanted Catalonian independence. He said that this year is the 300th anniversary of Spain’s conquering Catalonia and that 1 million people are going to join hand in hand along the old boundary, to try to re-establish the case for a separate Catalonia. The difference between Catalonia and Scotland is that the Spanish will not allow the Catalans to have a referendum.

The hon. Gentleman talks about constitutional arrangements in other countries, but we should not rush off and say, “It’s always much better.” If an established part of a country, such as Catalonia, is not allowed to have its own referendum, one is riding an impossible horse. Spain could say that, before any action is taken, a two-thirds majority will be needed in support of that, but to say, effectively, “You can’t have a referendum”, is rather backward in terms of democratic principles.

Let us give credit where it is due: we have said that the Scots can have their referendum and they are going to have it. Effectively, the question has been chosen by the Scottish Government, rather than being imposed on them by the UK Government. We will have to see what happens in the aftermath of that referendum. Increased powers for a devolved Scottish Administration are being talked about by political leaders at the moment, albeit without their having discussed those powers with the House of Commons or with members of political parties represented in this House. However, people seem to be making ex cathedra statements such as, “Don’t worry, we’re going to do this”, or “We’re going to do that”. I do not know how much that will impress the electorate. However, if there is a vote against a separate Scotland, there will be significant pressure for even more devolved powers.

The hon. Gentleman talks about income tax, but that cannot be separated from the total amount of income that the country has. Scotland seems to have such good public services compared with England because the English are paying significant contributions towards the provision of those public services. One can conceive of a situation in which the English say, “We are not going to sustain that amount of subsidy for Scotland. We are going to reduce the subsidies,” and the Scottish Government say that they will have to increase their income tax. There is a balance between the yield of income tax in Scotland and the amount that comes direct in grant from British taxpayers.

[Mr Allen]

I shall be brief, because I am enjoying the hon. Gentleman’s contribution, as always. Of course, he should not forget that even if it is just England there will be equalisation. Poorer areas will benefit from the tax take of wealthier areas. That is an all-Union principle, but it could and should apply if we were able to have assigned income tax by nation within the UK.

[Mr Chope]

Equalisation is an inevitable consequence of having a single currency. If there is no equalisation, there will be the sort of problems that the eurozone has at the moment. Who will decide on the detail of that equalisation? In my view the UK Parliament should decide that, rather than ad hoc statements being made, suggesting that this has all been thought through. I fear that it has not been thought through. How a vote for a separate Scotland, if that happens, would impact on membership of this House and what would happen at the end of a fixed-term Parliament, and so on, have not been thought through either. It was significant that Government Members abstained when one of my hon. Friends brought forward a ten-minute rule Bill raising that particular issue.

That example is an indication that a constitutional convention would be an incredibly bureaucratic and time-consuming distraction. It is not what we need. We need to be much more fleet of foot and much more responsive to changing circumstances. It is a cause of immense frustration, particularly among Conservative Members, that an agreement that was incorporated into the coalition and passed into law—namely, that we should have a fairer distribution of constituencies, so that they are of a more equal size—was effectively vetoed by the Deputy Prime Minister and his party. Although the considerations of the coalition programme have been delivered in other respects, they reneged on that agreement. That was a constitutional outrage and we are now within months of a general election where there will be a significant and avoidable disparity between the size of the electorates in the largest and smallest constituencies. We have not even been able to respond adequately to that challenge. The conversation needs to continue, but I am rather with the Government in their response, which said that they do not see a convention as being justified.

I do not know whether my right hon. Friend the Minister was responsible for it, but some of the language in the Government response seems to be opaque in the extreme.

[Mr Allen]

Surely not.

[Mr Chope]

I will quote just one example. Paragraph 3.9 of the Government response states:

“The Government is committed to constitutional reform driven from the ground up. Inevitably, as a result of this approach constitutional reform may not be neat or consistent across the UK. The Government is of the view that an approach which is built on public demand will reflect local circumstances and have a greater chance of success.”

[Mr Allen]

I agree with the Government on that point.

[Mr Chope]

I am not even sure that the Government know what they are saying. As their response states, there is no public demand for a lot of these changes.

Briefly, on Syria and the other report, which is on how we should be engaged in decisions on going to war or entering conflict situations, we have to pay proper tribute to how the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have brought Parliament into the process in a way that it never was before. That happened most recently with the Syria vote, which not only caused an enormous earthquake in our country, but had a ripple effect on the United States and France. I have no doubt that, if our vote had been different, the United States would have engaged in the conflict, and the French would have gone in with them. We were setting a lead for the west in debating that openly. I do not hear anyone now say that we took the wrong decision. That gives those of us who did not support the Government on that occasion considerable satisfaction.

So far as Libya goes, we debated engagement in Libya. Everyone thought that it was the right thing to do, because it would avoid a massacre in Benghazi. That was avoided, but where we are now with Libya is not a pretty place. Next week, we will be debating in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe a report that references the fact that there might be as many as 800,000 people on the Libyan coast waiting to get into Europe, often risking their lives in ramshackle boats to get across the Mediterranean and make a new life. What they all have in common is that they are victims of armed militias, traffickers and so on. It is an unpleasant situation. Whether our military intervention there made the situation worse or not, history will be the judge. It again emphasises, however, that if parliamentarians are involved in the process, it is not so easy for us, having supported engagement in Libya, to turn around and say, “Well, it was an awful mistake.” At the time, with our eyes open, we thought it was for the best, although it might not have turned out that way.

The Committee’s reports are important, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister will be able to add in value. In particular, we need to have an answer to the point that the hon. Member for Nottingham North started with: when will we get what the Foreign Secretary has said he wants us to have, which is an agreement in Parliament that is an effective guarantee for subsequent Parliaments?

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[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

I shall make a short contribution. As I mentioned earlier, I had anticipated not being able to participate. This is such an important debate, and I am slightly disappointed that more Members are not here, but we all know that people like to go back to their constituencies.

I take a different view from some of the hon. Members who have spoken today. What happened on 29 August 2013 is a matter of regret. More people have been killed since then than in the years running up to it. Nevertheless, as has been articulated, the House spoke and the Prime Minister responded graciously by recognising the voice of Parliament.

The reason why I have already drawn hon. Members’ attention to page 6 of the report, and why I am speaking, is that I do not agree with the Committee’s central premise, on the grounds that we have imperfect information, and in those circumstances, any decision becomes a judgment call. Furthermore, when I wrote to or contacted by e-mail many of my constituents to get a view, a lot of the issues in the responses that said “Don’t vote for this” related to the Iraq war. People felt that Parliament had been misled—I am not suggesting that it had—and we know that apologies were subsequently made about the 45-minute claim. I was not then a Member of the House, but I have a strong political memory of the seriousness of the potential situation. The claim was later retracted, although the retraction did not feel very public, if that makes sense. Those who were Members at the time say that if they had known that what was claimed was not the case, they might have voted differently. If my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) was still present, it would be interesting to have a semantics debate on that point.

Members of Parliament have to make a judgment on what is presented to them at the time. To be fair, although I cannot remember which witness—Lord Wallace of Saltaire, perhaps—restated the point that as a rule the Attorney-General’s advice is not disclosed to Parliament, last year the Attorney-General did disclose parts of the advice in order to help some Members come to a judgment. However, there was seen to be so much double questioning of the intelligence services, that I thought it was a sad day, in a way. In effect, Parliament and a lot of our constituents who contacted us—principally through the 38 Degrees campaign website—seemed to lose faith in our intelligence services; if they did, that is a worrying sign for Parliament.

I believe that to declare war on others is the prerogative of the Queen—the sovereign—advised by the Prime Minister. Going back to what happened last August, that was not the motion we voted on; indeed, the Prime Minister did not seem to be setting that out. Even on the day of the debate, however, he was limited in what he was able to share with the House and, to some extent, people again had to make a judgment call.

I do not endorse the comments in the report, although it was thoroughly done and I respect the views in it, because I am concerned about the stage towards which we are moving. I am starting to hear regular comments such as, “Why aren’t we spending more on defence?” but there is a greater reluctance to see our armed forces engaged in action at all. There is an interesting judgment to be made there, too: do we need such a large defence budget if that is the expressed will—rather than the actual will—of all our constituents?

I will leave that point there, except to say that we do not have perfect information. I still think that we should try to trust our intelligence services and the good people in the Government. We are all Members of the House, but at the end of the day they have had access to more information than the rest of us. Perhaps more Privy Counsellors should be made aware of the knowledge available at the time—that might be a way forward—but if the Committee’s proposal is ever put to Parliament, my instinct will be to vote against.

[Mr Allen]

The hon. Lady is making a rational and sensible contribution, which echoes many of the debates that we had in Committee before we came to our position. I need to reassure her immediately that there is no blanket need for some sort of armchair guesswork in Parliament before anyone is deployed in a zone of activity. On many occasions, the Executive—the Government—will have to respond quickly. When the hon. Lady was at her previous appointment, I mentioned that if bombs were falling on London as we were speaking, we would not check the time and say, “See you next Tuesday. Let’s have a chat about it.” We would want our people up in the air and responding. I put on the record again, for her benefit, that our recommendation is not clear-cut and black and white. That is why, through engagement with the Government and Parliament, we could find a form of words that satisfied not only me but, perhaps more importantly, the hon. Lady if she came to vote on a motion of that sort.

[Dr Coffey]

I respect what the Chair of the Select Committee says. I will leave that point about conflict and speak briefly on the convention.

My last memory of a constitutional convention is the one pertaining to the European Union. Under the leadership of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the great and the good met, including hon. Members on behalf of the House—I am trying to remember which ones; it was perhaps the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) and the former Member for Wells. We all know what resulted: a constitution, in a huge, thick book, including a huge transfer of powers, with no popular endorsement in most countries. Even when certain countries had a vote, they were invited to vote again when they got the wrong answer. In this country we expected a referendum on that constitution, which, but for a few niceties of minor detail, suddenly became the Lisbon treaty. There was no popular vote to endorse it.

I am glad that the Government introduced the European Union Act 2011, so that we will have a vote on any major transfer of powers. I am pleased that the Opposition now have policy proposals to go even further, with an in/out referendum on every single potential transfer of powers. I prefer the solution favoured by the Conservative party—I will not say by our Government—which is to have a decisive referendum in a few years’ time. That is why I am anxious about the idea of another European Convention.

I recognise the work in the report on how we should engage people more. Members of Parliament continuously try to engage their constituents in issues of the day. Let us be clear, however, that even on the most contentious issues, when we have had votes in the House, less than 1% of my electorate have contacted me. The challenge will be interesting.

I recognise that there is growing anger about the so-called English question. I question, though, whether regional devolution is what matters. Regional assemblies have already been rejected resoundingly up in the north-east; proposals for a mayor have been rejected in most of our cities, when put to the vote; and in consequence, we almost have a happy medium on most things involving local government in England, with the exception, I would argue, of the imbalance in the size of constituencies. It still amazes me that when I ran for election against the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) in 2005, there were fewer than 50,000 electors, in a constituency where all those powers have been devolved; I now represent 77,000 electors in a place where all the powers are essentially within the English Parliament. That issue needs looking at, but whether it needs a constitutional convention I am not sure.

Ged Fitzgerald, the chief executive of Liverpool city council, made the following point when he was interviewed in 2012—I mention Liverpool a lot, because I grew up there. In essence, 91% of Liverpool’s revenue is based on Government money, so the local population feel a lack of empowerment. Contrast that with many other councils whose Government-sourced income is less than half of their total income, meaning that they have to levy a lot of often unpopular charges. Councillors feel those things more, which is why they are so adept at lobbying MPs and the Government to get a fairer funding settlement for local government. I suggest that one of the ways we should go about that is to work towards a situation in which no council relies on the Government for more than—I am plucking a figure out of the air—60% of its budget. We have made a step in the right direction by reducing the grant, and substituting it with the proportion of business rates retained. I may be wrong about this, but I think that the budget in Liverpool, with the business rates, was higher this year than it was last year, although not in real terms.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Allen]

With your leave, Mr Weir, I will respond briefly to the debate. One beauty of a five-year, fixed-term Parliament is that it has a known final year. We are now in that known final year—a privilege that was not accorded to any of us in our previous political lives. It allows us time to think and to pause ahead of the clash that will take place in the 290-odd days, or whatever it is, before the general election. We can suspend hostilities, and a Parliament and a Government can look back on four years and perhaps think about the next five years. It provides a space where a bit of thinking can go on. I hope that my Committee has put into that space some thoughts that may be of interest and help to all those who aspire to government.

I am very grateful to the Minister for what he said about putting the new situation in the Cabinet manual. My Committee was in many ways partly responsible for securing the Cabinet manual being in the public domain. It is something that we can work with, and I am very grateful for what he said.

We should use the space that I referred to because both issues will not go away. When they revisit us, they could do so as crises. They could revisit us in a very different political environment. We have a moment when I hope that, as we are not in the midst of active war as we have been in the recent past, we can consider in a sober and quieter environment what we would do in those circumstances.

The constitutional convention and matters such as separation and devolution are key issues in our democracy. There is a demand from a growing and quite broad alliance, from the Mayor of London to the leaders of the core cities, the Local Government Association and even the RSA with its review of cities under Jim O’Neill, for a push now. People want greater power, a greater say and greater expression in their localities and, indeed, their nations.

In conclusion, I am grateful for what the Minister has said and for what my Front-Bench colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), has contributed. We have a period now when some thought can go into what we might all want to put into our party programmes at the next election. It might even be possible, in my dreams, that the parties could see a consensus when one is jumping up and down and waving its arms in front of their faces and produce something that we could all agree on after the next general election.

I thank you, Mr Weir, for your tolerance over the time we have taken, but these are two very important debates, and we are better for having aired them publicly today.

Question put and agreed to.