Graham Allen
Main Page: Graham Allen (Labour - Nottingham North)Department Debates - View all Graham Allen's debates with the Cabinet Office
(14 years, 2 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
As I have said, it is not only our view in the Government; it is also the view of a number of very distinguished constitutional experts who gave evidence to the Committee on this very point just a short while ago. As I was seeking to point out, we have looked at the court case on the Hunting Act 2005 specifically cited in the memorandum from the Clerk, and found that it arrives at exactly the opposite conclusion.
Mr Allen
In the very limited time that we had to look at this matter, the Clerk was the only person to raise this question, and the academics who have been referred to—Professor Hazell, Professor Blackburn and others—completely disagreed with the view put forward by the Clerk. This is simply a question of whether the power exists in statute law or in Standing Orders. I should like to quote from the Committee’s report, in which we said:
“It would be a pity if the Executive gave up the power to call an election at a time of its own choosing only for the legislature to hand it back by a simple suspension of Standing Orders to that same end.”
In other words, we all know that the Standing Orders of the House can be suspended at any moment on the whim of the Executive. It would be a shame, were the Executive finally to give up that power, for us simply to hand it back again.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I am grateful for that clarification. I strongly agree with the hon. Gentleman, and we agree with the Committee’s conclusions on this point. Given the constitutional significance of the Bill, which has been underlined by many Members during the debate, it would be inappropriate for those significant constitutional provisions to be translated into Standing Orders. They need to find their way into primary legislation, and into law.
In the event of an early Dissolution, and an early general election, the new Parliament will run until the first Thursday in May in the fifth year of its existence, unless, of course, it too is subject to early Dissolution. Questions have been asked about whether the new Parliament should run for the full time, or whether its life should be limited to whatever period its predecessor had left on the clock. Our view is that resetting that clock is a more sensible proposition. That is the arrangement that will be most natural to voters; people do not expect to elect a Parliament knowing that it will last only a short time. When they hand a Government a majority, they are giving them a mandate to govern for up to five years.
Mr Straw
We need to do it in the next couple of years, but we do not need to do it now. If the Leader of the House were true to his word, he would at least have allowed for the 12 weeks’ pre-legislative scrutiny that his Government promised would normally take place for Bills.
Mr Allen
Does my right hon. Friend agree that were the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee to have been given 12 weeks—I think that we have done an incredible job in two days, producing this report—many of the wrinkles that everyone concedes are in the Bill could have been smoked out? We could have heard from a lot of expert witnesses and we would have proposed ways in which a principle that appears to have the support of the whole House could have found consensus, as opposed to becoming a cause for bitterness and division.
Mr Straw
I accept that entirely. Constitutional legislation is always complicated and we should always seek consensus on it. I have to say—I believe Members know this—that I can think of plenty of occasions when I brought forward constitutional legislation and then had to take it away again. With the single, terrible exception of the European Parliamentary Elections Bill—for which I have already abjectly apologised as it was a dreadful piece of legislation—I have always both provided sufficient time and quite often changed proposed legislation addressing this complicated territory in the light of what was said in this House or the other place in Committee and the Chamber.
To consider why we have ended up in this situation, we have to return to a point made by the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) in an intervention on the Deputy Prime Minister. The hon. Gentleman echoed a comment made last week by the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), who said of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill that people might have more respect for the Government if they admitted that it was about party advantage. There would have been greater respect for the Government over the timing and abject drafting of the Bill before us if the Deputy Prime Minister had said, “Yes, we brought this forward—and the Prime Minister has stood on his head on this—because we did a deal for a variety of reasons which I shall explain. That is the price the Prime Minister paid for this bit of the deal, and we are rushing it through for internal reasons.” The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex was absolutely right to say—he can correct me if I get a single preposition in the wrong place—that the Bill smacks of gerrymandering the constitution in favour of the coalition, which is what I heard him say, and that it was legislation on the hoof. That is true. The Deputy Prime Minister should have taken his time and invited the other parties into discussion, sought the advice of the Liaison Committee and others, and come forward with a much better proposition.
Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
May I tell the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) that I have witnessed many maiden speeches, but his was up there among the best? I am sure that the House will hear much more from him in the coming years, and I look forward to his contributions. His maiden speech was certainly gracious and well constructed, and he made it with very little reference to notes. It was very good, and we all look forward to hearing more from him.
Characteristically, the Deputy Prime Minister stayed for the opening speeches, then cleared off. He described the measure as modest in size. Well, at five clauses, it is indeed modest. He managed to demonstrate that, even though it is only five clauses long, he is not totally familiar with the content of his own Bill. In fact, it is not just modest in size but squalid in intent.
Constitutional reform often has the effect of inducing an outbreak of navel gazing in the House, so I am usually reluctant to take part in these debates. That said, I genuinely believe both that the Bill is wrong in principle and that its details have not been properly tested or subjected to wider scrutiny. There was legislative scrutiny in the second report this Session by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee—I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) will give his views to the House—but it can hardly be said that that report, although helpful, gave the proposals a ringing endorsement. Quite the opposite, in fact. In its conclusion on page 8, while not ruling out the principle of fixed-term Parliaments, the Committee expressed its position:
“If the coalition wants five years in which to govern, it has the legal right to do so, for as long as it can command the confidence of the House. But we are not persuaded that current circumstances are a sensible basis on which to commit future governments to five-year terms.”
Hear, hear.
It is not just the Select Committee that has expressed concern. Indirectly, in business questions last Thursday, the Leader of the House did so, when he said, in answer to a question from me:
“However, I hope that the right hon. Gentleman understands that with a new Government, it is not possible, if one is to make progress, to put everything in draft, particularly when commitments have been made to do certain things by a certain time. Those political imperatives sometimes”—
The House should note the words, “political imperatives”—
“override the ambition that both he and I have to subject all Bills to draft scrutiny.”—[Official Report, 9 September 2010; Vol. 515, c. 466.]
There we have it. The reason why the Committee chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North was not given longer and why there was not a wider consultation is that the coalition Government have decided—it would appear, by the way, without a great deal of support from some parts of the Government—that they need to deliver the measure for political reasons.
Mr Allen
It is possible, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) suggested, to devise a means by which pre-legislative scrutiny could take place. Even with Second Reading being completed today, it would be possible to commit the Bill either to the Select Committee or to a Special Standing Committee, so that the 12 week-period that the Government regard as appropriate is fulfilled. I leave that in the air, in the forlorn hope that even at this point the Minister may take it as a suggestion.
Mr Howarth
My hon. Friend makes a useful suggestion, and doubtless he will expand on it if he succeeds in catching your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker. Issues of principle are involved, as well as of detail, and that is what I intend to try to deal with.
Before dealing with the Bill’s provisions, I want to say a word about the trust that was placed in our hands by our constituents at the general election. I hope that that does not sound too pious, but it is important that we discuss these principles when we deal with measures of this kind. Regardless of our party labels, we have been entrusted by our constituents with the ability to exercise judgment as representatives of our constituencies. That may appear trite, but it is important that we do not lose sight of it. Let me qualify the point, however, as I am not so naive as to assume that the 31,000 people who voted for me in Knowsley in the general election did so wholly or even mainly on the basis that I was the best person for the job.
Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)
First, I congratulate the members of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, many of whom are here tonight, on performing a brilliant job of which I hope the House is very proud. They had a mere two or three days in which to produce for the House a first-class report; I hope that colleagues will take the chance to look at it. If it does not cover all the answers, it none the less raises most of the key questions, which can be resolved through the passage of this Bill. I thank all those Members who worked so hard on pulling the document together. I took the liberty of e-mailing it to every Member of the House within one minute of its publication on Friday morning, in the hope that those who were not out campaigning and knocking on doors at the weekend would have a chance at least to look at it and inform themselves ahead of the debate. We did the best we could, but it is still not good enough in respect of the procedures of the House. We should expect our Select Committees to have a careful, long, detailed look at the legislation that is proposed by the Government and that the House is expected to pass. We can do that by having proper pre-legislative scrutiny.
The Bill flies in the face of effective pre-legislative scrutiny. We will do our best for the two days of Committee on the Floor of the House, but I hope very much that in future the Government will ensure that we all get adequate time to do what we are here for—to make better law. The Government-drafted law, good as it is, will always benefit from a careful, steady appraisal and from the answering of questions. That is what the parliamentary process is designed for.
Mrs McGuire
Pre-legislative scrutiny is a valuable tool for the House across a range of legislation, and constitutional change has significant ramifications for a whole other range of legislation that the House has passed over many hundreds of years. Does my hon. Friend agree that pre-legislative scrutiny should almost have been a pre-requisite before the Bill came to the House?
Mr Allen
As I would expect, my right hon. Friend has hit the nail on the head. As we have heard today, many people support the principle of what the Government are saying. Why lose friends by rushing the process? Why not get better law by going steadily? I am sure that colleagues know that democratic change has been dear to my heart for many years. Above all, why not build a consensus in the House for the change once it has been gone through carefully and after everyone in the House feels that they have been able to be involved—rather than everyone in the House feeling that they have been cheated and that the process has been abusive to them as Members of Parliament? I shall return to that issue a little later.
This is a Second Reading debate, so we are talking about the big principles. The big principle is whether we should have a fixed-term Parliament. I speak personally and strongly in saying that such a Parliament is certainly needed; many of us have campaigned for one for many years. I think that it will become a steady, fixed aspect of what we do in this country. To quote the report,
“our expectation is that future Parliaments would run for their full fixed term, and that this will become an unremarkable aspect of our modern democracy.”
That is how most western democracies operate, and they take it in their stride. That is just how things are. They have a set, fixed system and do not get terribly excited for two or three years about whether there will be a general election. They know perfectly well when their legislature and Executive are going to be elected. The process is not all covered in mysticism, judicial archaeology and obscure Standing Orders; it is there for people to see, with every elector owning their democracy.
It was said that nobody writes to hon. Members about fixed-term Parliaments. People do not; but they do speak to all of us on the doorsteps about how they feel about politics. They feel that politics is not working and does not deliver for them. Our role is to take that general sentiment—albeit not expressed in favour of this or that clause in a particular Bill—that we must restore politics to people. That is one of the key principles underlying the idea of a fixed-term Parliament.
I have got form on this issue. My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) talked about the 1992 Labour party decision. I was fortunate enough to have drafted that document. That was nearly 20 years ago and there has been a lot of discussion since, but the House is finally getting the chance to decide on whether the people of our country should know when the next general election is going to be. That is a really important step forward.
Mr Cash
The hon. Gentleman is doing a great job with his Committee and I congratulate it on producing such a speedy report.
Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that the will of Parliament can easily be subjected to the will of the Whips? On a matter of great constitutional importance, it is perfectly clear that one of the main objectives would be to use the Whip system to get whatever result the respective members of the coalition Government wanted—at the expense of the people of this country, who vote for us?
Mr Allen
Indeed. One of the small matters of dispute that I have had with the hon. Gentleman over the years has been that somehow he feels that we can recreate some golden parliamentary age. This place is owned by the Executive and the alternative Executive; the hon. Gentleman, more than anybody, should know that. If he does not understand that, he falls into the same trap as the Clerk, who talked about the
“House’s mastery of its own proceedings”.
That is a myth and a self-deception. We must confront that issue. We imagine that somehow there are 650 individuals here creating our own rules, but the rules are created by the Executive.
The Bill seeks to put into law provisions for a fixed-term Parliament, rather than putting them only in Standing Orders, which can be changed at a moment’s notice. The 10 o’clock rule is suspended on a daily basis and Standing Orders are cast aside and suspended on a regular basis. To pretend that there is an atomised Parliament with 650 Members all exercising their consciences is a self-deception out of which, I hope, hon. Members throughout the House will educate themselves. In that way, we can take back some control for the House and strengthen Parliament, and people can elect us understanding that the House of Commons—the legislature —is different from the Executive, and should have its own independence and powers.
The hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) led me down the road of the rebalancing of powers between the legislature and the Executive, and I agree with the Deputy Prime Minister that this, for once, is the Executive actually giving away a power, for whatever reason. We can make our own judgments about the reason, but I welcome the change, because it helps to rebalance the power between the Executive and the legislature. If we seize this moment, we could use it to help to strengthen this institution rather than, as the hon. Member for Stone mentioned, just following the Whips. We could use this precedent to make sure that we can build up and strengthen our Parliament.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The hon. Gentleman says that the Bill could strengthen the standing of Parliament. However, as I understand it, the Bill does not prevent the Government from putting down a motion of no confidence in themselves and therefore, if they had a majority, getting an election whenever they wanted one. That is the ineffectiveness of the drafting of the Bill.
Mr Allen
There are so many flaws in the Bill’s drafting. The Committee, on the hon. Gentleman’s behalf, has done as good a job as it can in pointing them out. I hope that all of them will be put right during the Committee stage, as they could be put right if we were to have a special Public Bill Committee or a proper pre-legislative process. However, that is currently not the case. The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point, and one that should be addressed by the Government as the Bill proceeds.
The other thing about a fixed-term Parliament is predictability and continuity. Instead of permanent politics-as-entertainment, in which there is speculation about impending general elections and people feed tittle-tattle and gossip to raise or lower the political temperature, we will know that we can get on with serious business while knowing the date of the next general election and putting such considerations aside. That is something of great importance, and would lead to us as parliamentarians being able to seize greater control of what we do in this place on a number of issues, rather than being engaged, even at arm’s length, in speculation about when an election will take place.
Mr Shepherd
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and his Committee, and for the evidence that it has taken. However, what concerns me—one of the witnesses makes this point in a written statement—is that we are talking about piecemeal constitutional change. The Labour and Conservative parties are dedicated to an elected House of Lords, for instance. How does a five or four-year term—or whatever it is—fit into the broader picture for us? That is what bothers me, so to talk about a piece of piecemeal legislation—and to ask the question “Cui bono?”—is not good enough.
Mr Allen
Perfection may be the enemy of the good in this case. As parliamentarians, we are feeding on the crumbs from the table, and I guess that this is as good as we can do. The choice is not between the Bill and a big-bang written constitution that solves all the problems in one go; the Bill is what is on offer, and as supplicants in the process, we can only try to make it a better part of this piecemeal change. Unfortunately, we do not have the option of something much more fundamental; and indeed, I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman would really want that. However, perhaps he does, so I will follow his speech with interest.
The other thing about predictability and continuity is that they give Governments the chance to decide their programme and work through their Bills much more effectively. This helter-skelter “throw it into the mix” way of passing legislation debilitates Governments of all parties. Let there be proper evidence-based policy making—probably for the first time in our lifetime—so that the Government can put things to the House of Commons that are almost fully formed, rather than throwing them in and saying, “We’ll hope to amend them as they go through this House and the second Chamber.” Instead of saying, “Let’s botch a few things and get hundreds of amendments down to try and get the Bill into shape,” how about having proper, considered, evidence-based policy making from the Government, which would then be immensely strengthened by proper scrutiny by the House? Who loses in that process?
Some might say, “It’s going to delay things,” but we did this. Indeed, a classic example from when Labour was in power was criminal justice Bills. We popped them out virtually once a year because we had not got it right the first time, but we also had to get something before the House and show that we were fighting crime. I think we can all do better than that. If we used the process that is readily available to us to consider legislation carefully, the Government would amaze themselves at the Bills they could produce for the House and the House would amaze itself at the contribution it could make by having proper scrutiny of how legislation develops.
We have proposed, on an all-party basis, that there should be 12 weeks of pre-legislative scrutiny. To his great credit, the Leader of the House has written to the Liaison Committee saying that Bills should normally have a 12-week evidence-taking pre-legislative scrutiny period. If we can get the so-called new politics to deliver on that, so that every Bill goes through that process, we will produce much better law. However, if we just ram things through the House of Commons, it will be business as usual and legislation will be flawed. Those who throw in the bogey of the courts coming and lurking in the corridors of the House of Commons will find their wish fulfilled, because there may indeed be flaws in the legislation. I hope we will iron out all those wrinkles this week and in the days on the Floor of the House, but if we are not careful and if we do not have the right level of scrutiny, we may get what we wish for.
Mrs McGuire
Given the adversarial nature of our legislative process, does my hon. Friend agree that some of the issues to which he has alluded will be difficult to iron out in the passage of this legislation and that pre-legislative scrutiny would have led not only to a far better conclusion, but to one that would have gathered a consensus across the House?
Mr Allen
It is not always possible to achieve a consensus, but technical issues—whether the courts might be involved; whether the proposal might be implemented better through Standing Orders or in statute; the number of days needed after a Government have lost the confidence of the House—are the sorts of things that can be decided to everybody’s satisfaction. That does not mean that everyone will be satisfied for or against a fixed-term Parliament, but that is the purpose of a Second Reading, and that is the purpose of the final reading in this House: to say yes or no to the key principles. What we in this House are failing to deliver is technically competent, thoroughly analysed and examined pieces of legislation. That is why we have Select Committees, Public Bill Committees and the Committee stage on the Floor of the House for democratic Bills. However, we as a House are robbing ourselves of the opportunity to do that work by asking our Select Committee to come up with a report, good as it is, in two or three days.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
I join others in congratulating the hon. Gentleman and his Committee on the work that they have done in the short time available. Can he share with the House what discussions he has had, and what explanation he has been given, about the failure to go down the route of pre-legislative scrutiny for this important piece of constitutional legislation?
Mr Allen
I will have to let the Minister answer that question in the wind-up. With the first Bill—on AV and boundaries—there was a desire for a referendum in May and a great rush to secure one. With this Bill on fixed-term Parliaments, which would benefit immensely from study—not delay, but getting it right—I have not really had a sensible explanation as to why it is being pushed through in the brief period when the House is back in September.
The Bill as a concept—and so without a Second Reading—could have been discussed on the Floor of the House in June or July. Without any knowledge of the Bill, we could have discussed the key principles, but it was not put before us in a way that enabled the Committee to bring sensible and serious evidence before the House. If doing things that way could become part of the process, I would be very happy, but that would really mean putting it in Standing Orders. It is no good waiting for smoke signals from Ministers or the Leader of the House; it should be the right of this House to look at legislation. That should be what we expect, not something that may be handed down with a nod and a wink.
Pete Wishart
We all very much enjoy the hon. Gentleman’s evangelical speeches on behalf of empowering the House, but there are three representatives of minority parties in the Chamber, and he will know that we do not have the same access as hon. Members in the three big parties. What is he actively doing to ensure that we are represented in all those important Committees of the House? We are not on his Committee, for example, or on the Liaison Committee, and there are so many others. Surely he could help us a bit more to get there.
Mr Allen
I do not want to go over old ground—you might pull me up, Madam Deputy Speaker—but the hon. Gentleman will know that there are a number of us, not least among the Select Committee Chairs, working away on that issue to try to find a happy resolution. Unfortunately, what was agreed at that moment was a satisfactory compromise, but not exactly what we might all have wanted in those negotiations. None the less, that is something that the House must continue to pursue.
Another advantage of the predictability and continuity of a fixed-term Parliament would be that it would give Members of Parliament and their staff, and the staff of the House, some clarity about the House’s timetable and calendar. That would bring some stability to the way in which staff are employed, for example, and to their holidays and their terms and conditions. Such provisions in the Bill would also give electoral registration officers in every locality a greater length of time to prepare than they have when a snap election is called. We have heard, in a different context, lots of stuff about people failing to register. It would be well within the compass of election registration officers to build up a registration campaign ahead of key events such as general elections, and to plan ahead for such campaigns.
We have also heard—I think it was from the Deputy Prime Minister, or perhaps from an intervener on him—about the Electoral Commission’s report, which was published today. It talks about the importance of overseas and forces voters being registered properly, and a fixed-term Parliament could broaden our democracy by making that work. At heart, however, the Bill is about restoring policy questions to our politics, and about not being so distracted by the media blood sports relating to whether we are going to have an election, in whose favour it will be and when the Prime Minister is going to go to the palace.
Finally, I want to deal with the failure to get effective scrutiny for the Bill. That failure has meant that we have not been able to look at a large number of issues that attach to a fixed-term Parliament, including the use of royal prerogative powers and the strength of the Executive over Parliament. We have not been able to study the links between what we are proposing now and fixed-term Parliaments in other areas. We have not been able to examine prerogative powers in relation to proroguing Parliament. That has been mentioned tangentially, but why do we still have these obscure, ancient rights? No one, except those who work inside the Executive, seems to know quite where they come from or how they can be exercised. These things are not in our power; they are not part of Parliament’s mastery of its own destiny.
The power to set the date for the meeting of Parliament after a general election is not in the gift of the Members who have just been elected; it is in the gift of the Government. We are not masters of our own destiny in that regard. The power also exists for the Prime Minister to go to the Palace without any authority from Parliament. We talk about things being announced on the “Today” programme, but the Prime Minister does not even need to come to the House to announce that there is to be an election. He does not even have to come here, as the leader of the main party, to claim the right to be sent by Parliament to the palace. We see smoke and mirrors on general election night; colleagues are a passing butterfly of an electoral college that night, and they are expected simply to toe the line thereafter. That is what royal prerogative powers are about; what the term really means is Executive power. All those powers remain untouched and unlooked-at, because we were not allowed to scrutinise the Bill effectively.
I will vote for the Bill tonight. In principle, we need a fixed term for our Parliaments. We should debate on the Floor of the House whether it is four years or five. We should, however, have had proper scrutiny. That would have made this a better Bill. I say with some empathy for the coalition Government that, above all, if they want to change the way in which we are governed, and the way in which our democracy works, they cannot do it by the old methods. They have to reach out, explain and educate. If they do not, those people who would otherwise be their friends and make a consensus work, and who would make the new democracy work and give Parliament the rights that it deserves, will not be with them. It is a great mistake to push through legislation, particularly legislation of this nature, without trying to bring people with them, and the most important people to bring with them in that regard are Members of this House of all parties.
Mr Harper
Yes, the Leader of the House made the point and I do not think it is different from what I have just said. These are important measures and the Government want to get on with political and constitutional reform. That is why we are moving ahead with these measures, but they will be debated on the Floor of the House and all colleagues will have the opportunity to debate them.
Mr Allen
Is not one of the advantages of having a five-year or four-year fixed-term Parliament the ability to plan the legislative timetable, and will the Minister therefore reassure Members of all parties that in future all Bills will be subject to a 12-week pre-legislative scrutiny process? [Interruption.]