Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL
Graham Allen Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Havard
It is a reality; I am perturbed by it, but I also recognise the fact that it is the realpolitik. There is no way that we will make this change in the short term, and neither will we make it in a Twitter debate of 140 characters. As I have said to you, Mr Speaker, on a number of occasions, we used to have defence debates in this Parliament on a regular basis—a full day of discussion—and we need to reinstate them. This will be a long-term process, and this debate will not be the only discussion about it; we will be discussing this matter for the next 15 years and we need the structure to do that.
Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)
My hon. Friend knows about these things. Is it not a fact that this whole debate, and all the build-up to it, is in reality about the deployment of about six Tornado aircraft in north Iraq? If we are genuine about being humanitarian, would it not be better to deploy about 60 fully laden cargo aircraft to deliver medical supplies, food and water to the affected areas?
Mr Havard
The truth is that to put six jets in the air takes a lot more than six people—I tell the House that for nothing—and we are already contributing with intelligence, humanitarian support and all the rest of it. However, my hon. Friend makes the point that, yes, this will involve long-term investment and a long-term commitment in terms of expenditure on a whole range of places, including perhaps on scrubbing up our bases in Cyprus and other places; we have to invest to do that stuff.
I will just talk about the law for a moment. I led a report for the Defence Committee earlier—in fact, I surprised myself when I discovered that it was 2013 when we produced it—about the legal framework for military personnel in future operations. We have domestic difficulties with all that; the debate about combat immunity has not gone away. The reason I want to raise this issue now is that there seems to be a settled view in some places that there is a legality to going into Syria. That is our next debate; it is not a debate for today, because today we are only talking about operating in Iran—sorry, Iraq; Freudian slip.
If an aeroplane were to go down in Iraq, the search and rescue mission would not be a problem; should an aeroplane go down in Syria, there could well be a problem. There is this “hot pursuit” argument being made, that if Iraq is now defending itself, it is therefore legitimate for it to go over the border into Syria to do so, and to be supported by the Americans and others. However, do we all of a sudden vicariously gain legal legitimacy because we are part of the support activity for that process? Where would that situation leave individual members of the military in terms of their legal certainty? That is a discussion that we will need to have if we get to that point. I understand the arguments that this situation is like Kosovo, that this is collective defence and that it is all these different things, but we need to have a serious discussion about this issue.
The only thing I would say to those who say, “Well, we can make all these decisions today, it is already done and it is all very certain”, is that I do not think it is very certain, including in our own Supreme Court; I think we would find that out if we were to go and ask it. So we should just be careful about what we do. The issue of protection is equally as important for the individual as it is for the collective approach that we are taking.
I will vote for the motion today, despite the fact I think it is being badly sold. I tell Government Members, “You need to get your act together”, because I do not think the general public understand that this motion is a component part of what is a broader developing campaign that will develop into something we might call a strategy. Government Members need to sell their goods a bit better; I think that I understand the motion, but what I also understand is that we have a series of tasks ahead. It is easy to talk to others about what they should do, but I say to Government Members, “You need to address what you need to do.”
Mr Dodds
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. Clearly, the dangers are great for our servicemen and women. I pay tribute to them and salute them for their efforts in many conflicts, and again they are being asked to do a job on behalf of the people of this country; the House is coming together to ask them to do that job. We wish them well, and we know that they will display the courage, gallantry and effectiveness that they always display in these situations.
Mr Allen
Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that if the House had voted last year to go into Syria, or to bomb Syria, in effect we would have been on the same side as ISIS and fighting the same battle as ISIL, and does that not lead us all to show a great degree of caution about the fact that within one year circumstances can change rapidly in an incredibly volatile civil war going on in that region?
Mr Dodds
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the situation then may have led to the consequences that he outlines, which is why we in the DUP voted against intervention in Syria at that time. In any future situation that arises where a motion comes before the House, whether on Syria or the intervention of combat troops, we will take our decisions at the time on the merits of the circumstances. We are taking this decision today on the merits of the circumstances that are before us in the House, and we believe that it is right and imperative that we give the assistance for which the Iraqi Government have asked. It is on a sound legal basis and it will be according to a well-thought-out plan and will make an effective difference. That is the difference between now and last time.
Mr Andrew Mitchell
My hon. Friend is right that the relationships are very complex, but that argument must not be an argument against trying. We are not trying to do this on any terms, but we must do everything that we can to achieve it.
Mr Allen
The right hon. Gentleman was a distinguished International Development Secretary in a previous incarnation. What is his view on winning the peace as well as winning the war, which clearly was not done with Mr Paul Bremer being put in to run the Iraq regime after the previous Iraq conflict? From the right hon. Gentleman’s previous experience, what are the lessons of that and how will we engage people so that they can have a settled political settlement once all the fighting and death is over?
Mr Andrew Mitchell
The hon. Gentleman pre-empts a point that I will come on to later.
My second point is that Britain’s involvement must be in training, arming and giving strategic support and planning. Many have already suggested that links with the Free Syrian Army, the Kurds and the Iraqi army need to be enhanced, but this is an area in which the British military excel. We need to ensure that we do everything that we can to help train, arm and provide strategic support and planning. Those are issues at which Britain is undoubtedly one of the best in the world.
My third point is that the humanitarian protection of civilians is absolutely essential. I remember during the Libyan campaign, when I had the honour of sitting on the National Security Council, the personal attention that the then Defence Secretary took to ensure that targeting was of such quality and standard that civilian casualties were absolutely minimised. There would be nothing worse than the damage that will be caused by an air campaign if huge numbers of innocent civilians are attacked, as they have been in other campaigns but as they were not in Libya. Libya was successful in that respect at least. We must ensure precise targeting and the protection of civilians. We must give absolute priority to that and must ensure that protecting those who are at grave risk in this conflict is right at the top of the list.
My fourth point, which brings me directly to the point of the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), is that anyone who thinks that this crisis will be solved by smart weapons from 12,000 feet is completely and totally wrong, which is pretty widely accepted, at least in the House. It is absolutely critical that there is a plan for when the crisis is over and that the plan is enunciated now, because we need to ensure that we split off the hardliners, those who are intent on military action and advancing their cause through weaponry and ordnance, from those who are biddable and who may be brought back into more sensible dialogue and international comity.
Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)
After six hours and many very good contributions on the substance of this debate, I want to consider the wider constitutional position in which we are placed. During the past decade or two, a convention has started to develop that, except in an emergency, major foreign policy interventions must be pre-approved by a vote in Parliament. The idea springs from honourable motives and it is understandable given the present climate of distrust in politics, but in my judgment it is nevertheless a serious mistake.
It is absolutely right for Parliament to insist on proper democratic accountability where military action is at stake through debates, questions and statements, but the requirement for a prior authorising vote of this House is very different. Yes, it is vital for parliamentarians to maintain the most unreserved communication with their constituents on this matter, as indeed it is on any matter of public importance, but the plain fact is that in matters of foreign policy, with a few signal exceptions, Members of the House are inevitably far less well informed than Ministers who follow and reflect on the issues every day. We do not have the same access to officials and advisers; we are not privy to diplomatic traffic or secret intelligence; and we are not briefed by, and may not demand briefings from, our armed forces. As a large corporate body, we lack the capacity to react quickly and without warning to fast-changing events. The result is delay and a loss of agility and surprise, which ill serves our forces in the field.
Jesse Norman
I will not give way. I am afraid that there is no time.
Moreover, I suggest that as a matter of fundamental constitutional principle, extreme care should be exercised over when or whether the House is asked to vote on such matters in future. It is a basic purpose of Parliament —above all, of this Chamber—to hold the Government to account for their actions. It is for the Government, with all their advantages of preparation, information, advice and timeliness, to act, and it is then for this Chamber to scrutinise that action.
If Parliament itself authorises such action in advance, what then? It gives up part of its power of scrutiny; it binds Members in their own minds, rather than allowing them the opportunity to assess each Government decision on its own merits and circumstances; and instead of being forced to explain and justify their actions, Ministers can always take final refuge in saying, “Well, you authorised it.” Thus, far from strengthening Parliament, it weakens it and the Government: it weakens the dynamic tension between the two sides from which proper accountability and effective policy must derive.
On 3 April 1982, the House was recalled by Mrs Thatcher for the Falklands war debate. It was a Saturday—the first time that the House had been so recalled since Suez. Tempers were high. The atmosphere was one of crisis. The taskforce was about to sail. It was a matter of peace or war. The very sovereignty of this nation was at stake. Yet what was the motion that day? It was:
“That this House do now adjourn.”
When, in calmer days, the Government come to reflect on these proceedings, I hope that they will heed the wisdom in that—
Conflict Decisions and Constitutional Reform
Graham Allen Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
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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.
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 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 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 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—
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 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.
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
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?
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 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 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 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?
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.
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.
Oral Answers to Questions
Graham Allen Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Maude
We will take the same approach as the Government the hon. Gentleman supported—I think he was an adviser to the last Government—when they set up NHS Shared Business Services, which is also a joint venture with Steria. A number of jobs were offshored, but Britain has benefited because that entity has also created more jobs in the UK. We take the same approach as his Government took.
I will cheerfully take up your sensible suggestion, Mr Speaker, of writing to my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone).
Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)
3. What progress his Department has made on developing social finance.
The Minister for Civil Society (Mr Nick Hurd)
I am proud that Britain leads the world in developing social investment. The hon. Gentleman is a tireless champion of its power to support early intervention. A new tax relief has gone live this month. There are now 15 social impact bonds in operation. I hope that he will welcome our announcement today of two more funds to support social impact bonds, which we believe will generate better outcomes for young people who are at risk of not being in education, employment or training.
Mr Allen
There is an important judgment from the European Court of Justice today on the Robin Hood tax, which will have a big influence on civil society and the big society. However, that will be minuscule compared with the potential impact of a serious social impact bond market on early intervention, which the Minister mentioned, and on council projects. It is two years since Big Society Capital was established, so is it not time to review the working of the Act that set it up to see whether we can take it further?
Mr Hurd
I am very proud of Big Society Capital as an institution. I have seen the impact that its investments are having on the ground. It has committed £149 million and has done important work to build this important market. It is just two years in and is about to publish its second annual report. We are always looking to ensure that it succeeds. I am more than happy to pass that question on to the Big Society Trust, which is its governing body, and get its response.
Oral Answers to Questions
Graham Allen Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Hurd
The hon. Lady totally ignores the reason why there are cuts in the system, which is to get control of the deficit that we inherited. We passionately believe in the value of youth services for young people. That is why we have developed the National Citizen Service, which has an evidence base to support the value that it gives to young people. As I have said, we are now prepared to work with local authorities to see how they can commission, in an innovative way, really effective youth services in their area.
Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)
4. What progress he has made on developing social finance.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)
Britain is proud to lead the world in developing the emerging market of social investment. Big Society Capital has already committed £140 million, and the number of social impact bonds has risen sharply. Grants are flowing to help social entrepreneurs to become more investment-ready, and a new tax relief will go live in April.
Mr Allen
I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
Having properly evidenced early-intervention programmes is the biggest known deficit reduction programme. In order for such programmes to start up, we need effective social finance. Will the Minister meet me to discuss what more his Department and, above all, Big Society Capital can do to maximise that possibility?
Mr Hurd
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his leadership in setting up the Early Intervention Foundation and on the work that it published today on domestic violence. He is entirely right that part of the value of social investment is its ability to create space to finance early intervention. That is where a lot of the social impact bonds that I mentioned are focused. I know from my conversations with Big Society Capital that it is very interested in engaging with What Works centres, including the Early Intervention Foundation. Following the hon. Gentleman’s question, I will write to the chief executive, asking him to update me on his engagement with the Early Intervention Foundation and other What Works centres.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Graham Allen Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Mrs Main
I hope the DPP is always considered to be independent, but if there is some legal reason why that should not be the case in the Bill, I would welcome hearing it. That is what we should be discussing today. I do not wish to speak for too long, but my concern is that ministerial lobbying that goes on at every level, including with persons of influence, is not captured by this Bill because the causal nature of some conversations and chats is not included. I would like to see that tightened up, including guidance on what ministerial conversations can be held after some of that subtle lobbying has been going on.
I am sorry if lobbyists are offended today, but I hope I am trying to deliver a level playing field for all lobbyists, and not have some hiding in a back room getting advantage while others are captured by measures in the Bill. I hope we can progress with that and achieve consensus on some of the amendments that will get rid of the worries that many of us have.
Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)
Even that most brutal sport, boxing, has a code of honour so that when an opponent is bloody, battered and exhausted, they are not kept in the ring but we try—if we can—to deliver the coup de grâce. I do not like witnessing the parliamentary equivalent of propping up the opponent. In virtually every aspect, this Bill is battered, bloodied, and ready to fall over. Rather than the grizzled cornermen, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the House are pushing in some game bantamweights to keep the fight going. They are good people, but they are not here today. They are putting other people up to argue for a Bill that was not their doing. Rather than that, we should end this cruel sport and do what the all-party Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform proposed, once it was allowed to report and get engaged in this process. It proposed that the Bill be put into a special Committee so it that could be discussed and got right—not delayed, but brought back to the House as a new Bill that does the business for everybody—within six months. I argue that there would be a strong consensus behind that new Bill.
We have worked hard and I pay tribute to my Committee, two members of which—the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) and my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn)—are present in the debate. Other members are on shift to come and do their turn over the next three days. Both they, and members of staff who worked incredibly hard to get a report in front of Members in about seven working days, deserve the utmost credit.
I believe in evidence-based policy making. Through that period of about seven days, we called for, sought and proactively received evidence that provided a welter of overwhelming information to say that the Bill does not work or do what it promised to do. This Bill does not do what it should say on the can—I do not know whether the Trade Descriptions Act applies in the House of Commons, but if it did there would be a strong case for putting somebody at least in front of a magistrate. This is not the lobbying Bill, it is the 1% lobbying Bill. Most of the problems that have been identified across the House, in the media and elsewhere, will not be affected or tackled by the Bill.
As well as producing a massive wodge of evidence for Members to interpret, my Committee also proposed a number of amendments designed to make the Bill what it should be—a genuine lobbying Bill. In clause 1, as part of our long debate over the next three days, we are attempting to ask: who are the lobbyists? When one lobbying group’s trade association says, “We think maybe 20% of lobbyists will be covered” and another says, “1% of lobbyists will be covered”, there is clearly a massive welter of people who do what we normally think of as lobbying but who will not be covered.
Dr Thérèse Coffey
I would like to understand how many people the hon. Gentleman believes will be required to register as a lobbyist under the proposals that he and his Committee have put forward.
Mr Allen
Under the Government proposals, the Public Relations Consultants Association says that fewer than 1% of meetings with Ministers take place by consultants without the clients present. Transparency International states that the Government are not even going to capture the 20% of the industry that they have identified as the reason for the register. One can choose whatever figure one wishes.
On the earlier intervention by the Deputy Leader of the House, I say gently that this is not a choice between 100% of everything we regard as lobbying being registered and enormous bureaucracy, and 1% being registered. Let us grow up, have a debate, and find a happy medium. It does not have to be perfect the first time, but it certainly does not need to be as imperfect as this Bill.
Paul Flynn
I also sat on the Public Administration Committee in the previous Parliament, and evidence was given that the information required would not be some bureaucratic burden but information on the computers of the companies involved. It is a simple matter of cut, paste and e-mail. The costs will be minute. Does my hon. Friend not think that the most impressive evidence we heard in Committee came from organisations that have been campaigning passionately for the past 20 years for a lobbying Bill? They said unanimously that this Bill is worse than nothing at all.
Mr Allen
Indeed, and for Labour colleagues who unkindly say that the Government are not seeking consensus, I say that they have been brilliant in trying to build consensus. I have never seen the embrace that has taken place between Spinwatch, whose very existence is to expose problems in the lobbying industry, and trade associations of the lobbying industry. If pulling those two groups together is not consensus building, I do not know what is.
There is another tremendous example of consensus building. One would never have thought that the antagonism and bile that has been exchanged between, for example, the League Against Cruel Sports and the Countryside Alliance, could ever be put aside, but those two bodies now stroll hand in hand towards the sunset because they believe that the Bill is inadequate and that it does not help them. We will come to that when we debate part 2 tomorrow. Let no one churlishly say that the Government have been unable to build a good consensus on the Bill.
Mr Jim Cunningham
Like most hon. Members, my hon. Friend will remember the campaigns for a lobbying Bill. Most people thought it would deal with the big fish who have undue influence in this country, whether in service or political terms, but that has not happened. We must also remember that MPs could be restricted under the Bill. He will remember the Freedom of Information Act and the Data Protection Act 1998. MPs were stopped from getting information from various public bodies on behalf of their constituents. In 2006, the Government put Back Benchers up to try to amend those measures.
Mr Allen
My hon. Friend makes wise points. Perhaps I should excuse myself for having a little fun at the expense of the Deputy Leader of the House and the Minister who, in my experience of working with the Political and Constitutional Reform, are committed to what they do. However, that is not enough in this case. They have been put up as the fall guys to promote a Bill that has very few friends and does not do what it should.
My hon. Friend spoke of the public perception, which I mentioned on Second Reading. The public expected the House of Commons to do something about lobbying. The Prime Minister said something should be done about it. The coalition, in its agreement, and the Opposition had almost a contractual agreement that lobbying should be dealt with. All were committed and said clearly that lobbying should be dealt with. My hon. Friend is right that the people who will suffer most—I do not wish to repeat the points I made on Second Reading—are the public, who will be disillusioned that we will fail to do what we should. We agree that something clear, honest and open should be done, so perhaps the biggest losers will be hon. Members—the House of Commons as an institution, which is recovering from difficulties in the recent past. We have it in our power over the next three days to make a better Bill. It will not be the perfect Bill, but we have it in our power to try to make a better Bill. I will therefore take the opportunity to press amendment 48 to a Division, so that hon. Members have the opportunity of supporting their colleagues who serve on the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee.
I should make one other procedural point. I am surprised that knives will not operate on any of the next three days. I will cut my remarks short, but we should have knives so that we can have a sensible debate and vote on each of the key clauses. We need to deal with five key clauses today, but we may only get past clauses 1 and 2. If we had a more sensible arrangement on the division of time, we could do a better job—I am not making a point against the Government.
Tom Brake
Will the hon. Gentleman clarify one thing? I have sought clarification from the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett), who speaks for the official Opposition, but it has never been explained to me. Ministers already report their meetings with in-house lobbyists. What do we gain by extending the register to include in-house lobbyists when Ministers already report such meetings?
Mr Allen
I am very much in favour of extending the register to in-house lobbyists because many people regard the biggest scandals—the ones reported in the national press and elsewhere, and those that come to hon. Members’ attention—as resulting from the activities of people who work inside large multinational companies, whether engineering, arms manufacturing or many other things. It is not beyond our wit to produce such a measure.
The hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) has courageously underlined how much lobbying takes place outwith the scope of the Bill. She highlighted with great tenacity some of the most poisonous and difficult things to deal with in the lobbying arena. We should listen to her and learn how to improve the Bill with her proposals.
Mrs Main
I should reinforce that point. There was no ministerial logging of the meeting to which I have referred. It was a private lunch, but it was admitted that the application was discussed. Such a meeting will never appear under the Bill; it was revealed as a result of a parliamentary question.
Mr Allen
It is not for me to network within the coalition Government, but I advise the Deputy Leader of the House to make an appointment with the hon. Lady so she can tell him clearly and forthrightly how lobbying has influenced things in her constituency. Currently, such lobbying is not covered in the Bill, which is supposed to be about lobbying. The Bill is not about one or two problem people such as Ministers, permanent secretaries or people in the lobbying industry. Hon. Members and the public have been waiting for the Bill, and it is a big disappointment. It does not cover many of the problems the hon. Lady describes.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful case. He is describing how the public regard both hon. Members’ treatment of the Bill and the Bill itself. Does he agree that it is a mockery that we will probably not even reach, much less debate, amendments tabled for debate later this evening? What confidence can the public have that hon. Members are taking lobbying seriously when, not only does the process undermine us, but the Bill manages to be weaker than the current provisions? Are we not sending ourselves up? It is contemptuous of the public and of ourselves.
Mr Allen
It beggars belief that we have three days to talk about a lobbying Bill and some of the key issues highlighted by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee will not be paid the due respect of having an airing in a Committee of the whole House. I agree with the hon. Lady that people outside will say, “What are they playing at? They promised us a Bill, and now they are playing parliamentary games so that we do not have the time to debate very important matters, such as the role of MPs, the definition of lobbyists, whether there should be better scrutiny of expenses paid by charities, and the definition of political activities.” I will not make that worse by going on for too much longer.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
The Deputy Leader of the House made a point about logging meetings with internal representatives of organisations. The problem is that, even if we accept that the system is 100% perfect, which I do not, the log does not include Parliamentary Private Secretaries, special advisers, senior civil servants and other people to whom internal representatives speak. I was contacted recently by a senior figure from Starbucks. I will not meet them, but their interest in me was because of an all-party parliamentary group with which I was connected. Such contacts should be logged.
Mr Allen
My hon. Friend makes an important point. We have only a day to discuss those issues, which will be covered in the next group of amendments. I hope that the Committee will have the time to debate them, but it is now a matter of doubt whether we will have the chance to do so.
Much comes back to the fact that the Government do not consult Parliament in an effective way. If the Government had consulted Parliament, many of the foibles and flaws in the Bill could have been dealt with. My Committee spent a year, on behalf of every Member, considering this matter. We then spent seven hectic days trying to produce a report for the House. It is as if we had not bothered; it is as if the parliamentary process were irrelevant. The Bill has been stuffed into the sausage machine in the hope that it will be voted through tonight and the next two nights.
In conclusion—I will speak to other amendments on behalf of my Select Committee and others—the Prime Minister said that lobbying would be the next big scandal to hit us. I am afraid that there has been another scandal: the prostitution of the House of Commons by the Government in the way that the Bill has been brought forward. This is not a partisan point, but a point about the legislature and the Executive. I hope that there is a communion between Members of this House, who are parliamentarians, to say that this is an unacceptable way of making law. It would be unacceptable if it produced good law; it is absolutely intolerable that it produces such terrible law.
On behalf of my Select Committee, let me say that the Bill should be put into a special Committee so that we can have something we can all be proud of and say to our constituents, “You wanted us to do something about lobbying. The Prime Minister said it was a big issue, the coalition agreement said it was important, those on the Labour Front Bench said it was important and here it is, we have done the job. It has taken us a few years and another six months, but here it is.” If it is not, I am afraid that this House will be dragged into disrepute because of the way the Bill has come before us.
Mr Cox
The hon. Gentleman makes a familiar lament. I remember making it myself many times in the previous Parliament, from the Opposition Benches on which he now sits, in relation to his own Government.
There are those of us on the Government Benches who have concerns about the drafting of the Bill. I hope those on the Front Bench will listen to them and understand that there is no need to dive into the trenches and resist, and protect every clause. I must say that in making criticisms of the Bill—specifically, on clause 1—the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) deployed a fundamentally misconceived argument, one that a short acquaintance with its provisions can demonstrate. It is important, if we are to make criticisms of the Bill, and to expect the Government to move on them, that we ensure they are well targeted and accurate. If they are not, all that will come from the Opposition will, if I may say so, be a wall of noise. A wall of noise will not persuade the Government to change individual clauses.
Government amendment 76, which seeks to delete clause 1(1)(b), does not do the mischief the hon. Member for Hemsworth suggested. After the deletion, clause 1 will read:
“A person must not carry on the business of consultant lobbying unless the person is entered in the register of consultant lobbyists.”
The word “person” is apt to cover a multitude of types of persons: it can cover an individual, a partnership and a corporate entity. That is plain in clause 25, which is not to be amended, where the interpretations provision is set out:
“Where the Registrar is required or permitted to serve a notice on a person, this is to be effected—
(a) if the person is a registered company…by sending it by post to the company’s registered office;
(b) if the person is an individual, by delivering it in person;
(c) in any other case…to the last known main address”.
It is plain that the word “person” in clause 1 covers companies and is not intended to exclude companies, as the hon. Member for Hemsworth suggested.
Mr Thomas
My hon. Friend makes the perfectly reasonable point that new clause 2 is an attempt to prevent the sort of concerns that have arisen, going wider than our Benches and our parties, about the role of Mr Crosby. New clause 2 seems to me to be a perfectly sensible provision to prevent any similar situation from happening in future.
New clause 7 is designed to make provision for professional lobbyists taking up employment in government. It deals with similar territory, albeit on a slightly different issue, to new clause 2. It would similarly deal with the potential conflicts of interest that can arise when a lobbyist seeks to take up a senior position in government. It is quite possible that someone with considerable skill and expertise who is working as a lobbyist at the moment might secure an offer to work as a senior civil servant. Such a person who has worked in a senior position in government before and has been seeking to widen their career profile might now successfully seek to return to a senior position in government. Having a system in place, which is what new clause 7 allows for, to check that there are no conflicts of interest around such employment is surely sensible and would help to build trust in the new appointment. Together with new clause 2, that new clause would allow the relevant Committee to probe whether there were any reasons to be concerned about any ongoing commercial lobbying interests that such a person might have. I say gently to Government Members that the new clause could have helped to prevent the ongoing concern about Mr Crosby’s role and his access within No. 10, so I commend it to the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton), who intervened on me earlier.
The most appropriate Committee would perhaps be the excellent Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. It has a mix of cross-party talent among its membership and it could explore with the relevant individual whether there were any potential conflicts of interest and, if not, how the situation should be handled, leaving the individual free to go about their public role, with the worry and concern that something improper is somehow going on and is attached to them no longer being an issue.
Mr Allen
It is very generous of my hon. Friend to offer the creation of a more effective Bill to the tender mercies of my Select Committee, but we are not looking for that job. There is a process whereby a special Committee can be created in order to review a Bill effectively and pre-legislatively. It is also important from my hon. Friend’s point of view, however, that the Opposition make it clear that pre-legislative scrutiny, which has barely taken place in this case, must become part of the Standing Orders of this House so that every Bill as a matter of course—apart from in emergencies—goes through proper pre-legislative scrutiny. This must not be a convention gifted to us by courtesy of the Government of the day, of whichever political colour, but must be something that this House does as of right to every appropriate Bill.
Lady Hermon
It is a lovely surprise to be called to speak so early in this debate. First, I must say that I am absolutely delighted that the Leader of the House is present, particularly as amendments 136 and 138 in my name and those of other hon. Members were prompted by his comments on Second Reading, when he said, with great enthusiasm:
“To ensure the independence of the system, the register will be administered and enforced by an independent registrar of consultant lobbyists”—[Official Report, 3 September 2013; Vol. 567, c. 176.]
His use of the phrases “independent registrar” and “independence of the system” fascinated me because I read the Bill very carefully from beginning to end and those phrases never appear in it. Instead, the Bill states that the registrar is to be appointed by the Minister—a term which, of course, includes the Secretary of State—but, it is stated in paragraph 3(6) of schedule 2, the poor old registrar can also be dismissed by the Minister
“if the Minister is satisfied that the Registrar is unable, unwilling or unfit to perform the functions of the office.”
So the Minister does not even have to have reasonable cause to dismiss the registrar. He does not have to have reasonable suspicion or reasonable belief. Under the Bill as currently drafted, the Minister appoints the registrar and can dismiss the registrar if he is “satisfied” of those things. That is far too weak.
We must remember that the powers of the registrar as set up under this Bill are quite extensive. More to the point, my constituents have lobbied me—written to me; “lobbied” is almost a bad word—on many topics, and it was not fair for the Leader of the House or for the Deputy Leader of the House to suggest on Second Reading that we were all alarmed because of trade union scaremongering. That is not the case. I have not received a single letter or e-mail from a trade union, but I have received them from charities, which want reassurance that the registrar will be independent of Government. The registrar will have the power to keep and publish the register. They must keep the register up to date, they have the power to monitor compliance with obligations, and they can issue information notices if they believe that consultant lobbyists have not registered.
There are significant penalties, including criminal conviction and civil penalties for non-compliance with the terms and conditions of part 1. It is essential for public confidence in the new register that, as the Leader of the House promised on Second Reading, the new system is independent of Government and the registrar enjoys independence. The amendments that I have tabled would require the Minister to allow the registrar to act independently. There must be an assurance in the Bill that the functions of the registrar will be exercised independently of any other person.
The Leader of the House suggested on Second Reading that the register would be funded by the lobbying industry via a subscription charge. Again, I urge the coalition Government to heed the lack of confidence engendered in the general public because of lobbying scandals. It is incumbent on all of us to do all that we can to restore that confidence. For the Leader of the House to suggest that the lobbying industry would pay for the register through a subscription is not helpful. My amendments would ensure that the independence of the registrar and of the register is guaranteed, and I hope that the Government will look at them sympathetically.
Mr Allen
I strongly support the points that have just been made, and I am happy to add my name to the amendments.
We should return to the point that I made briefly about pre-legislative scrutiny. It would have saved a great deal of grief if we had undertaken such scrutiny, and it is incumbent on all of us to consider how we do so in future, so that we avoid the mistakes and so that the Government—I do not mean just this Government but the one before and the one to come—listen to Parliament. As a result of that sentiment and the fact that Parliament has a contribution to make, the report that members of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee hurriedly put together after having returned early from the recess to take evidence made it clear that the Standing Orders of the House should be amended to say:
“No public Bill shall be presented unless a) a draft of the Bill has received pre-legislative scrutiny by a Committee of the House or a joint Committee of both Houses, or b) it has been certified by the Speaker as a Bill that requires immediate scrutiny and pre-legislative scrutiny would be inexpedient.”
Let us try to avoid, for the sake of all future Governments, getting into this sort of shambolic mess—a mess whereby people push through a Bill, do not discuss it with Parliament or with any of the relevant organisations before releasing it into the public and parliamentary domain a day before the recess, where it is then debated on the Floor of the House a day after our return from recess.
Mr Thomas
Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the many benefits of pre-legislative scrutiny might have been more time to go through the finances of the registrar and to understand which set of estimates on who would register—the estimates of the industry or those of the Government—was most likely to be correct?
Mr Allen
There are so many possibilities where a contribution might have been made, and where no contribution could have been made, we would have been no worse off. We managed to accumulate a wealth of evidence. Let us not forget that in a period of about four working days, my Select Committee produced a report for the benefit of Members in all parts of the House. We worked very hard and received 81 organisations throughout the UK, which are listed at the back of the report—not just anybody, but people who had a real interest. It was surprising to see how much interest was generated among people who were a little afraid about what is in part 2, which we will consider tomorrow. I hope we will consider it tomorrow in a slightly more seemly way.
Today’s debate is to conclude at 10 pm and we have got through only two groups of amendments. That is an abuse and it is disrespectful to the House. There are eight amendments that I tabled or with which I am associated that we will not reach, and there are many, many others tabled by Members in all parts of the Committee. These are not trivial matters. They are not fillers, as though we did not have much to think about over the past few days so we bunged in a few odd amendments.
Those amendments relate to extremely serious issues, which will not now get an airing in this Committee—issues such as whether Ministers and permanent secretaries should be the only people who should count as being lobbied. It has been alluded to, but the group of amendments relating to that, which are the result of some solid work, may I say, by my Committee and by colleagues in all parts of the House, will not be taken seriously. They will not be listened to and colleagues will not be able to make those points, to have Ministers listen to them and to improve the Bill.
The rights of Members of Parliament are also a very important area. Are Members of Parliament lobbyists? Are they lobbied? Should they be registered? How does this relate to our interaction with constituents? I know that these issues are of great concern to the Leader of the House, the Deputy Leader of the House and the Government. That group of amendments, too, will not be reached tonight.
The Temporary Chair (Sir Roger Gale)
Order. The hon. Gentleman is very experienced and he knows perfectly well that he may not debate issues that may or may not be reached later. We are debating a group of amendments.
Mr Thomas
Is not one of the concerns about the short time that we have to debate even this group of amendments the fact that we will not be able to explore the case for a code of conduct, which so many organisations outside the House and so many of those on both sides of the House who have studied the Bill believe is essential if we are to give a registrar the teeth they need to make a difference?
Mr Allen
Sir Roger, my hon. Friend on the Front Bench deserves a severe reprimand for trying to mislead me again into talking about matters not covered by the present group of amendments. It is a matter of great regret that that issue is another one that, as he points out, will not be discussed. This is not to make a point for or against either Front-Bench team, but Members have a right to voice an opinion on key aspects of legislation. That will not now take place. I do not point a finger at anybody. I merely say that that is not an acceptable way to run a sweet shop, let alone a Parliament.
To describe the heart of what we are considering in the present group, I shall quote extensively from the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee report, which states:
“There was a significant degree of agreement that the additional information should include disclosure of the subject matter of the lobbying, and some agreement around the idea of including the purpose of the lobbying and a list of who had been lobbied.”
I talked earlier about an evidence base. However hurriedly it took place in the time frame we had to put our evidence base together, a wide variety of organisations, which are listed in the report, submitted evidence, quotations from which are included. Spinwatch said that the information required under the Bill was “wholly insufficient”, adding
“For a register to meaningfully allow public scrutiny of lobbying, it must include information from lobbyists on their interactions with government. In other words: whom they are meeting and what issues they are discussing. Members of the public wanting to see which outside organisations are exerting influence on a particular policy area, for example, will be unable to do so under this proposal.”
We also had a joint submission from three eminent academics, Dr Hogan, Professor Murphy and Dr Chari, who argued for the inclusion in the register of
“the subject matter and purpose of the lobbying”.
The Royal College of Midwives said:
“It is hard to see how the information requested will add greatly to the transparency of the lobbying process…Would it be too burdensome, at the very least, to ask for the register also to spell out the issues on which clients are seeking to lobby (e.g. improved conditions for farm animals), and the nature of the lobbying that has taken place (e.g. an all-party group on road hauliers established)?”
The oft-quoted tonight Iain Anderson, the deputy chair of APPC, supported publishing information about the purpose and subject matter of lobbying, but suggested that this could be done most effectively and efficiently when details of ministerial and official meetings were published rather than in the register. That is a perfectly acceptable matter for the Committee to explore, but time will not allow us to do so, although we could make a serious contribution to the development of the Bill.
The Committee on Standards in Public Life also argued that information on the subject matter could be included, either on the register or in the details that were published of meetings. The difficulty with including the information in the data about ministerial and official meetings is that if the definition of lobbying is expanded to encompass contact with the rest of the civil service, special advisers and others who do not necessarily publish details of their meetings, such information would necessarily be quite patchy.
Lady Hermon
That was said with great enthusiasm. I thank the hon. Gentleman for gladly giving way. That is very kind indeed.
Can the hon. Gentleman throw light on one particular aspect that I am genuinely extremely concerned about? We are talking here about oral and written communications with Ministers and permanent secretaries, described by the Minister as the key decision makers. Did the hon. Gentleman’s Committee and the witnesses comment on or even criticise the fact that “permanent secretary” is defined to include the Director of Public of Prosecutions? What we are aiming to look at here is what goes on behind the scenes of Government. The DPP should not be included. He is independent of Government and his independence should be guaranteed.
Mr Allen
Witnesses did indeed express great concern about the narrowness of the provision whereby those who can be regarded as falling into the category of being lobbied include Ministers and permanent secretaries only. There was nothing precisely about the DPP that I can immediately bring to mind, but I will go back over the evidence and make sure that I drop a line to the hon. Lady should there be anything along those lines.
Lady Hermon
I am not testing the hon. Gentleman’s memory at all. I am sure that his recall is clear and that he does not need to go back over the evidence. But does he himself think that it is proper that the DPP should be included within the definition of a permanent secretary?
Mr Allen
I do not feel competent to give an accurate and helpful answer to the hon. Lady’s point. She and those with a different view should participate in pre-legislative scrutiny and put their arguments and reasons to the Government, who then make a choice—they will execute, they will decide. At the moment, there is execution and decision without participation and consultation; it is blindfolded government not using Parliament as the effective partner it should be.
Alexandra Runswick, the director of Unlock Democracy, made points about the depth of the information required. Again, we go for black or white—either people want everything or do not want anything, but the truth is that we should have reasonable amounts of information that everyone feels is appropriate. Having discussed the issue with all parts of the lobbying industry and those interested in it, we got to a position of consensus. For example, Unlock Democracy said:
“We are not expecting a transcript of the meeting, but what policy area it is that is being lobbied on. There are already individual MPs who publish their diaries and say, for example, ‘I met Unlock Democracy about the Lobbying Bill.’ That is the level of information that we are looking at—the policy that is being lobbied about, not the exact information that was shared with the person whom you are lobbying.”
That led my Select Committee to table amendment 56, which we felt was appropriate, proportionate and helpful to the Government. Yet we are discussing it at the fag end of the sitting and many other issues will not even get an airing.
We suggested that the information that the register requires to be listed should be expanded to include the subject matter and purpose of lobbying when that is not already clear from a company’s name. To be clear, that should not involve the disclosure of detailed information about the content of the meeting, just a broad outline of the subject matter and intended outcome. For example, “Subject matter—lobbying; purpose—change the Transparency of Lobbying Bill.”
We also suggested in our report that there should be a financial threshold above which companies are required to provide information about the subject matter and purpose of lobbying. That is why we framed, as a Select Committee, an amendment that we felt was reasonable and helpful to the House and the Government.
I will conclude my remarks, as others wish to contribute. At the end of the day, we are trying to improve the Bill. It is a sad fact that if the House of Commons is not treated properly and if the process is cavalier and one in which Parliament’s view is neglected or not even regarded with respect, we sell the pass. When the public want an effectively lobbying Bill, we say, “We’re not even capable of discussing most of the groups of amendments on the agenda tonight.” As a House of Commons, we pass our responsibility over to the other place. That is not satisfactory to anyone in the House of any political description who feels that their role is to hold the Government to account and scrutinise legislation. If we do not do the job, the second Chamber will fill the vacuum. Any self-respecting Member of Parliament will feel that that is not a place where we should be.
Miss Chloe Smith
I want to respond to a couple of the amendments before we wind up. Amendments 3 and 4 would alter clause 1 and provide that lobbying was prohibited unless a lobbyist had both registered and signed up to the register’s code of conduct. Amendment 42 would establish a civil sanction in relation to breaches of the code of conduct. New clause 1 provides that the registrar must produce a code. However, there is little detail about what provision such a code would make other than that it would forbid inappropriate financial relations between registered persons and parliamentarians. The amendments reveal that, as we perhaps knew already, the Opposition intend not only a register of lobbyists but a full-blown regulator of the industry.
Mr Allen
The way we have dealt with the Bill has meant that much of today’s debate has been esoteric and about us, Parliament, and a tight group of lobbyists. Tomorrow, we will be debating a matter of great concern to charities and voluntary sector organisations, hundreds of which have spoken to Members from both sides of the House. Will the hon. Lady join me in hoping that the discussion tomorrow, particularly on key clause 27, is conducted in an open and honest way so that a decision can be made that links this House back to the broader civic society—or big society—tomorrow? That will be an important debate.
Caroline Lucas
The hon. Gentleman is right to say that after the mess of today, tomorrow is an opportunity to demonstrate that the House is able to debate the matter seriously, honestly, and in a way we can be proud of, rather than feeling—as I certainly do tonight—rather ashamed of the way the debate has taken place this evening.
Let me conclude simply by saying that the Government’s proposal of a mere list of consultant lobbyists and their clients does not go far enough. The point I have made in amendment 152 is that we need to know how much money is being spent. If the US can do it, surely the UK can. That would tell us a lot more about lobbying trends in this country.
Oral Answers to Questions
Graham Allen Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
I think we have done better than that. As the hon. Gentleman knows, back in October the Chief Secretary to the Treasury made it clear that we would work with the Administration in Cardiff before each public spending review to monitor the convergence or divergence between the funding settlements in both places. This commitment has not been made by previous Governments here in Westminster. That is a demonstration of our willingness to respond to some of the concerns about the future funding arrangements within the United Kingdom, particularly as they affect Wales.
Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)
7. Whether he plans to examine the balance of power between local and central Government.
The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)
The Government are clear that we must disperse power in our society. That is why we have initiated a historic shift away from Westminster to put our counties, cities, towns, villages, neighbourhoods and citizens in control of their own affairs. I look forward to seeing the final report on the relationship between local and central Government from the hon. Gentleman’s Select Committee inquiry as we continue the process of reform.
Mr Allen
The Deputy Prime Minister will know that three out of the four nations within the United Kingdom now enjoy some form of devolution; the one that does not enjoy any devolution, effectively protected by statute, is England. Will he engage with local government at the right moment to discuss how devolution can be made effective through local government, and will he also engage with the Select Committee, which is due to report on this very matter at the end of this month?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I certainly stand shoulder to shoulder with the hon. Gentleman on his long-standing critique of the over-centralisation of power in Westminster and Whitehall. I know that he has welcomed some of the initiatives that we have taken. They do not provide all the answers, but they are significant steps in the right direction. The retention of 50% of business rates by local authorities is probably the biggest act of fiscal decentralisation in England for several years. The city deals, in my view, are a radical template of a wholesale transfer of responsibilities, ranging from transport and capital investment to skills and training, to local authorities. The question that the hon. Gentleman’s Committee is posing is whether that can be done in a more systematic, neat and formalised way, and I am certainly open to look at any suggestions in that respect. It is the tradition in this country to do things in a slightly more informal and uneven way, but his Committee’s report will be taken very seriously by us in government.
House of Lords Reform Bill
Graham Allen Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Sadiq Khan
I apologise for correcting my right hon. Friend, but in fact there were nine days of debate, not four, on the Floor of the House. She is absolutely right in all other respects.
Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend understand that if he is not prepared to say how long a programme motion should specify for debate, even in his wildest dreams, while saying that he wants reform of the second Chamber, people outside this Chamber might well feel that his position is contradictory? Will he therefore consider entering into proper negotiations should the programme motion fail tomorrow night, so that we ensure that everyone outside this place knows that the Labour party is still a party of reform of the second Chamber?
Sadiq Khan
I thank the Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee for his helpful words. It is important for us to ensure that we do that so that the public can see that we are genuine and because we believe in House of Lords reform. We do not want the Bill to get stuck in the House of Commons so we will enter into discussions, but the Government must talk to us. The Deputy Prime Minister has failed to talk to us on the substance of the Bill and what is really important is that the usual channels operate—
Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)
The most fundamental principle of any democracy is that those who exercise political power over us must be elected by us, yet everywhere in the UK it is evident that the long march to extend the franchise has a long way to go. The most powerful and influential in our society are not directly elected—the media, the bankers and the civil service. Even the chief executive of our Government is not directly elected. We are still one of the few western democracies in which the people are not trusted to elect directly their Prime Minister—the top politician in the land. Our problem is not too much democracy, but not enough democracy.
Elections are almost a guarantee of powerlessness. Anyone contaminated by contact with the ballot box is edged around by regulation, oversight and rules that dull our enterprise and inhibit our leadership. For example, locally elected councillors are bound by 1,500 Acts of Parliament, which render them as little more than agents of the centre. Elected Members of Parliament have a fleeting existence as an electoral college on general election night, but thereafter are laughably alleged to hold to account the very Executive that whips them to vote for them several times a day, every day, every week.
Mr Allen
I very much hope that Government Members exercise their independence in pursuit of parliamentary sovereignty and a wider democracy rather than in pursuit of any special interest—I am sure that will happen.
In all those areas, reform is a relatively simple matter, but the most centralised state of all western democracies is blocking the way—the sclerotic relic of an empire, with England as the last country to throw off its yoke. The regime is so suffocating and so clueless about the alternatives that some of our blood relatives in the nations of our kingdom feel driven to break free of it.
There is an alternative, as there always has been, and as the best elements of the philosophies of the Labour, Conservative and Liberal parties have always known and for which they have always fought: the ballot box. No one, and above all hon. Members, needs to be afraid of the ballot box or of spreading electoral possibility. The ballot box is the weapon feared most not by those outside the House, but by Executive power, whether in the House or elsewhere. The vote can deliver devo-max not just for the nations of the UK, but for this Parliament and for locally elected councils, and above all for individuals in our country.
Today, we will see whether this elected House, this poor, whipped, dwarf of a legislator, can reconnect with its historic mission to extend the franchise, or whether we decide to pull up the drawbridge so that none can share our meagre status. Can we outgrow this fairytale of parliamentary sovereignty and our self-delusion about the primacy of the first Chamber? The cold, harsh reality is that we have Executive sovereignty and the primacy of Government. That is what dominates British politics, not some fairyland where Members of Parliament dominate the political scenario.
Mr Allen
My hon. Friend makes his point, but anyone looking objectively at this House would see two competing teams, one for the Government, the other against, and it is rare that there is rebellion or independence of mind, as he well knows.
We should not fear the liberty and the improvement of the second Chamber. It might actually be the making of the freedom of the first Chamber. It might be one step on the road to having a free and independent legislature that would challenge the power of the Executive.
Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
I wouldn’t hold your breath.
Mr Allen
My right hon. Friend, having been a strong member of a past Executive, knows where he is most powerful. Is he most powerful sitting on the Back Benches here, or was he most powerful when in Whitehall and commanding a Government Department? We could discuss how effective the scrutiny was that he went through.
To have an un-elected Chamber with a say in passing laws over our citizens is a democratic abomination. It is not a deficit, an anachronism or a quaint ceremonial corner; it is an insult to every elector in the land. It is hobbling and repressive. It says to our citizens, “You are not capable or worthy of deciding your own future, of deciding who should run your country.” It says that this country is about deference and patronage, about a lack of self-confidence and belief, and about insiders and those who know better. It is about our past, not our future. It is an open wound in the body of our democracy and it must be healed.
That wound can be healed only by introducing the elective principle to the second Chamber. That is what this generation of parliamentarians in both Houses can achieve over the next year, and it can be done without beheading those whose service in the second Chamber deserves our respect, not our abuse. For those of us who for 25 years or more have worked for reform, standing on the shoulders of a century of giants before us, these proposals are the most serious attempt yet to bring about a change in our democracy and bring it into the modern era. Their courage and ambition mock the flaccid indecision of recent years.
Are the proposals perfect? No, of course not. Only the 650 different plans in the minds of each hon. Member are perfect, but that is why, theoretically at least, we have a parliamentary process. There is a—
Electoral Registration and Administration Bill
Graham Allen Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point—to which we might return in Committee, given that I have not got very far with my speech and want to make a little progress before I take any more interventions.
As I was saying to the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane), part 2 also contains provisions to improve the administration and conduct of elections, thereby serving to increase voter participation and to make a number of improvements to the running of elections.
Before I explain the rationale behind our proposals, I shall deal briefly with the Opposition’s reasoned amendment and approach.
Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)
Before the Minister turns to the burden of his argument, may I congratulate him on how he has involved the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform and the House in the deliberations on the Bill? It is an exemplar of good practice, but he will see from the reasoned amendment that there is still some way to go. May I also put on his agenda the question of fines for people who do not register? They will be introduced under secondary legislation, so at the moment we have no idea whether an effective and proportionate fine will be available. Will he address that in his remarks?
Mr Harper
I am grateful to the Committee’s Chairman for what he says, and I hope that by the time I finish my remarks the House will see that I have addressed satisfactorily all the points in the reasoned amendment, at which stage I will of course urge Members on both sides of the House to support the Bill’s Second Reading.
We debated this subject on an Opposition day in January during which I welcomed the tone that the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) adopted. He said, for example, that he welcomed the process that the Government had adopted and how we were acting; he noted that we had had a draft Bill and a White Paper with pre-legislative scrutiny; and he noted that the Deputy Prime Minister and I had said that we would not just listen to concerns, but act on them and make changes accordingly.
At the time I noted that that was a shift from last autumn, when the right hon. Gentleman’s party leader said, in response to our making registration individual rather than household, that the Labour party was going to go out and fight against the change, and when the shadow Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), said that our proposals were
“a shameful assault on people’s democratic rights.”
I thought that that was nonsense when she said it. In January, the right hon. Member for Tooting appeared to think so, too, and he adopted a sensible tone that was welcomed not just by me, but by Members on both sides of the House, so I am disappointed that in tabling this reasoned amendment he appears to have reverted to the Labour party’s original approach.
One of the main points in the reasoned amendment that I will not cover later in my speech is the assertion that there was cross-party support for the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009. As I said in January’s Opposition day debate, it is true that we supported the proposals in the Act for individual registration, but it is worth reminding the House that the previous Government had to be dragged kicking and screaming to include them. They were not in the Bill when it was introduced in this House, and that is why we voted for a reasoned amendment. In fact, they were not in the Bill when it left the House of Commons, although by that stage the Labour Government had made a commitment to include them. They were, however, introduced in the other place. My right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr Maude), now Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, who led for us on the issue, ably assisted by my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), said:
“I am glad that at the eleventh hour the Government have, at last, agreed to move ahead with individual voter registration, albeit in what still seems to be a lamentably leisurely time scale. They committed to the principle of individual voter registration many years ago, but a bit like St. Augustine, they seem to be saying, ‘Make me chaste, but not yet.’”—[Official Report, 2 March 2009; Vol. 488, c. 695.]
My right hon. Friend made it clear that we approved of the decision to proceed with individual registration, which we thought could be accomplished earlier. We said that it would be our intention to do so, and on page 47 of our 2010 manifesto we made a commitment to
“swiftly implement individual voter registration”.
It is not fair and right, or at least it leaves out something quite important, to say that there was complete cross-party consensus on that measure.
Before I set out the Bill’s provisions in detail, let me explain the rationale on how we got to this stage following the draft proposals and the significant amount of pre-legislative scrutiny that has taken place. The move to individual registration was supported by all three main parties in the previous Parliament and was in each of their manifestos. It is supported by the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators and has been called for by a wide range of international observers. We remain one of the few countries in the world to rely on a system of household registration. I believe, as I am sure many Members do, that a system that relies on the rather old-fashioned notion of the head of household, whereby just one person in the house is given the responsibility of dealing with everyone else’s registration to vote, is out of date. It does not engender any personal responsibility for being registered or promote a person’s ownership of their own vote, and it could give that one person the ability to disfranchise others. That is not the approach that we adopt in other areas where people engage with the state.
Oral Answers to Questions
Graham Allen Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
I know this issue is being looked into at the moment, so I am happy to write to the hon. Gentleman and give him the details. He represents island communities that can be extremely cut off, particularly during the winter months. He needs to know that those services are there, and I will write to him about that.
Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)
Q7. Further to his letter to the hon. Member for Nottingham North of 15 August 2011, when he expects the civil service to issue the full tender document required to set up an early intervention foundation.
The Prime Minister
First, let me pay tribute to the work the hon. Gentleman does in this area. Early intervention is absolutely central to what this Government are looking to achieve. That is how we are going to improve the life chances of the least well-off in our country, and genuinely lift young people and children out of poverty. We will base funding decisions on what comes out of the first two years, but as he will know, the early intervention grant, which is a crucial piece of Government funding and policy, is going to rise next year.
Mr Allen
May I thank the Prime Minister and the leaders of all parties in the Chamber for their continuing support for early intervention? Early intervention not only helps babies, children and young people to develop the social and emotional capability to make the best of themselves, but saves the country billions of pounds in the long run. Will the Prime Minister and the Chancellor take this as the first representation not for today’s Budget, but for next year’s Budget? Will he consider theming next year’s Budget around early intervention, bringing forward proposals for tax changes to stimulate the social finance market, which we heard about in earlier questions, and move 1% only of departmental budgets from late intervention to early intervention?
The Prime Minister
In terms of Budget submissions, that was definitely an example of early intervention. I praise the hon. Gentleman for the work that he has done. As he knows, we will be setting up the early intervention foundation, which will be funded to make the arguments that he has put very effectively, whichever side of the Chamber he has been sitting on, for very many years. I will certainly discuss this issue with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor. What we are trying to do is look at all the mechanisms we have, whether it is backing nursery education, introducing a pupil premium, making sure the early intervention grant is going up or actually putting the money in early to try to change people’s life chances before it is too late.
Individual Voter Registration
Graham Allen Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)
I apologise to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to the House for necessarily being out of the Chamber at about 4 o’clock. I apologise in particular to the Minister, who is always most courteous in such circumstances.
If the House has any sacred duty, and that is arguable, it is that we should ensure that the British people are able to elect those of us who come to this Chamber. That is one of the most important things that any of us in the House can stand up for and fight for. Today, we have a chance to do that, but we need to consider one other thing. The hon. Member for Hendon (Mr Offord) was right to talk about abuse of the electoral registration system, but the biggest abuse of that system is not the five or six cases nationwide that went to court on fraud charges, but the fact that all of us in the Chamber have at least 10,000 people in our constituency who are not on the register to vote. That is the biggest abuse, and it is the most important thing to put right when we look at individual voter registration.
Siobhain McDonagh
Is my hon. Friend aware that in the ICM poll for the Electoral Commission, which has been cited as the basis for much of the legislation, barely 2% of people thought that registering to vote was very unsafe, and that 20 times as many people were satisfied with the way in which they registered to vote as the number who were dissatisfied?
Mr Allen
My hon. Friend makes her case eloquently, and she is a great champion of ensuring that members of the public in her constituency and elsewhere are on the register. We need to support that sentiment, and only we in the Chamber can do so.
We do that partly through the activities of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, which I am fortunate to chair. It is an active Committee, and some of its members are in the Chamber: my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) and the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths). I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), who spoke on behalf of the Committee when I was absent due to ill health when this matter was last debated.
We have worked together, and we have worked with the Government, to try to make the proposal better. Given the exchanges that have taken place, the House is in severe danger of doing the job that members of the public elected it to do. The Government have submitted a pre-legislative proposal to the Select Committee, which is how things should happen. The Select Committee responded with non-partisan efforts to determine a better Bill and to make better proposals, some of which have already been heard by the Government. Today, we are having a measured debate. There may not be a great drama if we tend to agree on a number of the issues, but that is what the House should do when proposed legislation is introduced, so that we end up with better legislation.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a good speech and an important contribution to the debate. Will he comment on the concerns, particularly in urban areas, about the change to individual registration without safeguards? Those of us who represent such areas will have far more people to represent, often with far greater problems.
Mr Allen
My hon. Friend, as always, is well ahead of me, and I shall come on to those points.
Something that unites everyone in the House is the feeling that individual voter registration is right. We have heard concern from Members from all parts of the House that unless the measure is implemented effectively we could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I do not think that anyone wants that to happen. Listening to us in the House and making sure that this is done properly will ensure that the measure—what the Electoral Commission called the “biggest change” in the franchise since the introduction of universal suffrage—is implemented effectively so that everyone can benefit, rather than partially or going off at half-cock and getting it all wrong.
Our anxiety in the Select Committee fell into several parts. The blockbuster came when we heard from the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators about the fact that if we did not do this right, not only might 10,000 people on average in every constituency not appear on the register, as only 90% of people would register, but that that figure could drop by a third, making the situation even worse, perhaps going down to 60%. That was a shock to the Select Committee and to members of all parties represented on it. I know that that is not the Minister’s intention, and that he will keep listening to ensure that as many people as possible are on the register.
Our anxieties—I shall put them to the Minister again—covered a number of areas. First, I pay tribute to him and to his colleagues for listening to what we had to say on the opt-out: the tick box saying “Don’t bother me any more. I don’t want to be registered. Leave me alone.” The fact that the Government listened to those representations very early bodes well for future amendments.
Secondly, on the issue of registration and whether non-registration should be an offence, I ask the Government to think again. We heard what my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) said about the evidence from Rhyl. He made a compelling case that there may well be a better way to deal with the matter. Perhaps it is not by means of a £1,000 fine or by taking up half the space of the form with bold red capitals, but maybe it is. I ask the Government to take the matter away and think again. There are people who need a little encouragement, a little nudge to register, and across the House we should consider the best way to do that.
My third point concerns the full household canvass. I do not know whether the Minister said anything about that, but I hope he is keeping an open mind as the process develops. One of the particular concerns of the Committee were the areas that already have high rates of under-registration. We need to consider whether there is something we can do across the board or in those specific circumstances to ensure that something is done in areas that are brought to our attention as having a large unregistered population. I hope the Minister will look at that.
Another point that came up repeatedly was the funding of electoral registration officers. I will not get into the subject of local government expenditure and reductions, but we cannot put a price on democracy. If additional resources are needed or existing resources ought to be ring-fenced, we would all commend the Government for thinking further about that. I say no more than that. I do not offer a magic solution. I do not propose any more than was suggested in Committee, but I hope that electoral registration and returning officers locally are given the sort of support that will enable thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands of people to participate in our democracy, as is their right.
I guess colleagues have very much in mind yet another redistribution of parliamentary seats and boundary changes. If there is a catastrophic fall in the numbers of people on the registers, all of us, regardless of party, nation or region within the United Kingdom, will again face the merry-go-round of boundary redistribution. All I will say to the Minister is that if this debate is an exemplar of the way we can conduct our business in the House and reach as close to consensus as we can, perhaps the way in which previous Bills have been dealt with is an example of how not to do it. Let us not inadvertently have a rerun of the boundary changes under which we are all labouring now, with the accidental reduction of a register causing yet another boundary change. I hope that lesson can be learned, otherwise Members in the House will be representing numbers rather than places and people.
Finally, I commend the Government and my Front-Bench team for the way we have managed through the parliamentary process—of course there have been the ding-dongs, the public exchange of insults and so on—to make a better proposal than we started with. I hope very much that the Government, who have listened, will continue to listen and that we will have a piece of legislation that we can be proud of and that introduces individual voter registration in a way that we would all want.