English Votes for English Laws

Graham Allen Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point, and he will no doubt argue that when we come to review these and other matters related to the Scotland Bill. Scottish Members of Parliament probably do not need additional areas to be covered at Westminster, to contribute to debates here. Since they do not have, as part of their daily duties, the task of representing their constituencies in areas such as health, education and transport, they have more time to focus on other matters in the Chamber.

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

I thank the Leader of the House for extending the amount of time in which we can consider this issue. I commend him for that; he did not have to do it, but he listened to the House. Will he also listen to the House in a more measured way and inform us today that there will be no votes at all on this matter until the Procedure Committee and the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee have had a chance to issue a report that all Members can read?

[Chris Grayling]

I think that the hon. Gentleman is misunderstanding the process that I have put in place. The measures that we have tabled before the House were clearly and straightforwardly set out in our manifesto as something that we intended to proceed with. I have always intended the Procedure Committee, and indeed the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, to play a role in that. I have set out a process—which I discussed with the Chairs of both those Committees—in which as we go through a 12-month period leading up to a review, both Committees look carefully at how the process is taking place and working. They will comment on that process to the House, and we will study those comments carefully as we review proceedings. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Procedure Committee intends to discuss these issues before we next meet for debate, and its initial reactions will undoubtedly be available to Members before that time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Eagle]

No; let me finish the point I am making.

I would also say in passing that the Union has always been asymmetrical and there have always been anomalies. The issue of English votes for English laws came to the fore when Harold Wilson was Prime Minister and the nationalisation of the steel industry was scuppered by Northern Irish MPs voting against nationalisation, even though there were no steel plants in Northern Ireland. That is what first led to Harold Wilson worrying about the issue. A certain amount of asymmetrical anomaly will be inherent in any Union when 85% of it is English. We must bear that in mind constantly.

[Mr Graham Allen]

Would my hon. Friend consider seizing this agenda by convening all the parties and all the people in civic society who want a constitutional convention, and would she consider doing it now rather than waiting until the next Labour Government are in office?

[Ms Eagle]

There is great merit in my hon. Friend’s arguments. I might be able to consider doing that after the deputy leadership contest is over and I have a bit more spare time. The argument in favour of a constitutional convention, whether convened by the Government or not, becomes greater by the day.

What we have witnessed here is an unseemly headlong dash by the Government to try to rush these complex and partisan changes through the House before the summer recess. Their aim has now, thankfully, been foiled by a mixture of outrage on both sides of the House and a brewing rebellion on the Government’s Back Benches. Last week’s emergency Standing Order No. 24 debate demonstrated that the unease at the Government’s behaviour was widespread. Indeed, they ended up in the absurd position of having to abstain on a vote supporting their own chosen process. The Leader of the House himself beat a hasty retreat, fleeing the Chamber before his Whips abandoned any pretence of trying to win the vote.

So, thankfully, today’s debate has turned into a general one, and we have been issued with new draft changes to the Standing Orders to consider. Even they were late arriving, however. They were not published on Monday, as the Leader of the House promised at business questions last week; they were actually made available at lunchtime on Tuesday. I can assume only that the delay was caused by Government disarray, because the changes that have been made are minimal, and they certainly do not address the points about accounting appropriately for Barnett consequentials that were worrying some Conservative Members. Nor do the Government appear to have considered changing or reconsidering any part of their plans in the face of reasonable doubts and questions. Instead, they have turned up the volume by provoking a huge row over their proposals to wreck the Hunting Act 2004, which the Leader of the House so extraordinarily withdrew by means of a point of order yesterday.

The Leader of the House was in such a shambolic state yesterday that he could not work out whether the Government’s proposals on hunting were anything to do with EVEL. Let me help him with that. The Government have a small majority, and their attempt to change the Hunting Act failed yesterday because some Tory Back Benchers agreed with us and the public that the killing of animals for pleasure had no place in a civilised society.

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham Allen Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tracey Crouch]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on all the work that he has done in supporting Hereford United over the past few years. We will look into these issues in further detail, but he has to wait a few more weeks for the support strategy to be published.

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

Does the sports Minister accept that a lot of culture, media and sport often appears to be somewhat middle class? Will she do her bit to ensure that the deprived areas of the UK are properly looked after by visiting Nottingham North, my constituency, and examining the state of sport there?

[Tracey Crouch]

As somebody with a constituency that has two areas of multiple deprivation, I do understand some of the concerns that the hon. Gentleman raises, and if my diary permits, I would be delighted to come to Nottingham.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Coffey]

The people of Scotland voted to stay part of the Union last year. I respect the fact that the SNP have 56 MPs, but I would point out that in considering the Scotland Bill we are not debating individual Bills: we are debating the powers that will be transferred from the remit of the UK Parliament and Government to the Scottish Parliament and Government. That is a two-way conversation, and that is why all Members of the House may express their views during that deliberation.

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

5. If he will take steps to establish a House business committee; and if he will make a statement.

[The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Dr Thérèse Coffey)]

There was an absence of consensus on this issue at the end of the previous Parliament, and there is still no consensus at the beginning of this Parliament. The Government therefore have no intention of bringing forward proposals.

[Mr Allen]

I warmly welcomed the proposal in the Conservative party’s 2010 manifesto for a House business committee. The consensus that the Minister mentions is one between the two Front Benches—the Government and the alternative Government. Will she consider the interests of Parliament in allowing it to have at least some small say in setting its own agenda?

[Dr Coffey]

The reforms that were voted on at the beginning of the 2010 Parliament gave much more time to Back-Bench business, to debate matters topical to Back Benchers. The hon. Gentleman will also note that we voted at the end of the last Parliament to add extra time in Westminster Hall for consideration of matters determined by Members of Parliament.

English Votes on English Laws

Graham Allen Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband]

Because a few months before the election the Conservative party thought it was a useful weapon at the general election—it turned out that it was, but let us leave that to one side. This goes beyond the disagreements between us; this is about the agreement between us, because we are both Unionists. I find myself agreeing with the right hon. Member for Gordon, which does not happen very often—I totally disagree with him on the United Kingdom. Now, when I am agreeing with the right hon. Member for Gordon, the Leader of the House and Conservative Members should be thinking, “That’s not so good really. There’s something up here.” What is up here is how we make this change happen. I ask this question again: is this true to the traditions of Conservatism? No, it is not, because the last thing the Conservatives should do is rip up hundreds of years of constitutional practice in a Standing Order vote just before the House goes into recess. Is this for Unionism? No, it is not. That is my final point, because I wish to respect the time limit.

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

Will my right hon. Friend concede that solving this conundrum cannot be done by moving the deckchairs inside the Westminster bubble and by changing Standing Orders? It can only be seriously addressed by looking at devolution for England, just as we want devolution for all the other nations in the Union.

[Edward Miliband]

Of course that is an issue that needs to be considered. My proposal is for a constitutional convention, which I know the Government will not take up. At least let us not go down this road of Standing Orders, because it will, all of a sudden, change the whole practice of the House of Commons.

Let us be frank in this House: the cause of Unionism has been going pretty badly since 19 September 2014.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Grieve]

A written constitution will be justiciable as well, but at least it will be justiciable within a framework that is settled and established. However, that requires the sea change for which I accept there is no majority in this House at present.

[Mr Graham Allen]

rose—

[Mr Grieve]

I would like to make progress. I know that the hon. Gentleman is interested in this question, but I want to get on to my main points.

My concern, and this is why I raised it yesterday, is that the only way in which my party will honour its vow to the electorate is by proceeding by way of amending Standing Orders. We certainly should not underestimate the enormity of that change. It is a profound change and needs to be properly debated. At the moment, I have serious anxieties about whether there is time available to carry out that scrutiny. I know that the Government have set aside a day next week, but it does not seem to me that that allows the opportunity at present to table the necessary amendments, to consider the 22 clauses and changes one by one so that Members of this House can make an informed assessment of whether they want to support some and not others, and to have the level of debate that will be required if this is to be implemented.

The point has been rightly made about the Barnett consequentials. I have said on previous occasions that I fully accept that, in view of how we carry out our funding in the United Kingdom, many measures that might appear only to affect England and Wales have a consequence north of the border and a legitimate interest for Scottish Members to vote on. I wish to see that preserved. I happen to think that the Barnett formula is due for review and well past its sell-by date. I very much regret that, following the referendum last year, we seem to have reaffirmed something which even a Committee of the Scottish Parliament had indicated was becoming increasingly unworkable and not in anybody’s—including Scotland’s—interests.

But that is where we are. We have to work with what we have got. If we are to proceed, the changes to those Standing Orders must be properly scrutinised, and we must do it in a way that commands confidence both here and among the public. I have to say to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House that I do not think we are there. I hope very much that before the close of today we will hear that sufficient time is to be allocated to do justice to these proposals. We can then have a proper debate and reach outcomes which, though they may be far from perfect—I acknowledge that—nevertheless are not so imperfect that I feel rather ashamed of our having perpetrated them. I very much hope that we will take the opportunity in today’s debate to ensure that we can have that proper debate next week.

Select Committees

Graham Allen Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

The creation of the Women and Equalities Committee has been asked for by Members from all parts of the House, and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who has been instrumental in driving that agenda. If this Committee’s formation is agreed to by the House tonight, it will have all the usual powers of a departmental Select Committee, as set out in Standing Orders. I have introduced this motion so that the House can make such a decision; I hope it will choose to do so. The Standing Order makes clear that the Committee will be established until the end of this Parliament; it will then be for the House to decide whether in the next Parliament the Committee becomes a permanent Committee. I imagine that that will be the case.

The next motion changes relevant Standing Orders so that the name of the Select Committee on Public Administration can be changed to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee and be given the power to consider all aspects of constitutional affairs. This is a simple consequence of the fact that in this Parliament there is no ministerial position of Deputy Prime Minister. The motion before the House takes us back to the position immediately before the election in 2010.

The final motion paves the way for the election of Select Committee Chairs by secret ballot of the whole House, introduced for the first time in the previous Parliament, by allocating each Chair to a specific party in accordance with the proportions that Mr Speaker has notified the party leaders of, in accordance with Standing Order 122(B). If this motion is agreed to, arrangements for a ballot will be made, under the supervision of Mr Speaker, in accordance with the remaining provisions of the Standing Order. I know that many Members from all parts of the House have put their names forward for election as Select Committee Chairs. I wish them all the very best in their campaigns.

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

Will the Leader of the House explain why the Women and Equalities Committee is not going to be a permanent feature of the Standing Orders and will fall at the end of this Parliament? I hope it is not some sort of sop on this very important subject, because I think the House would take a dim view of that.

[Chris Grayling]

The Committee will be here for as long as the House chooses to keep it here. My expectation, as I said, is that it will be an ongoing feature, but, when a Committee is introduced for the first time, it is not unusual for it to be introduced for a Parliament and, then, for the next Parliament to choose whether to renew it. My expectation is that it will choose to do so.

Hon. Members may notice that the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee is not specified in the motion. That is purely because its Chair is not specified under the same Standing Order as the others, although they are elected under the same proceedings. The election of the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee will take place at the same time as the elections of the Chairs covered by the motions before us. I commend the motions to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is very nice to see you, Madam Deputy Speaker, in the Chair. I believe it is the first such occasion since your election. Even though we are to witness the death of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, your decision, as a former member of that Committee, to dress entirely in black was unnecessary but very welcome, and the message will have been received by many in the House.

The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee had a magnificent record in serving this House over five years. I do not know whether that is why its tenure has not been renewed. It is for the usual channels and the Leader of the House’s Office to make it clear why the Committee’s tenure has not been renewed. I will list one or two of our reports that may have caused some embarrassment to the then coalition Government. However, all of them were done and approved by an all-party Select Committee, which was elected by this House. The Chair, which was me, was one of the first to be elected by the whole House, because of the Wright Committee reforms. All the members of the Select Committee were, for the first time ever, elected by the individual parties in a secret ballot.

My anxiety, which I am sure the Leader of the House will allay, is that this could be the first of the changes—the rolling back—that will leave the Government completely in control without even a nod in the direction of parliamentary accountability, because I believe that parliamentary accountability will be lessened.

This was not a Committee packed by one party or another. In fact, it had a Conservative majority, but anyone attending the Committee would not have got that impression. The members of the Committee, including you, Madam Deputy Speaker, when you were in a less distinguished role, are among the most awkward bunch of people whom one could ever get together in one Select Committee. Perhaps that is another reason the Select Committee is being abolished tonight by the Government.

I should mention here some of the colleagues on the Committee: the hon. Members for Christchurch (Mr Chope), for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), and for Foyle (Mark Durkan), my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), the then Member for Chippenham, Duncan Hames, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton), the hon. Members for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris), and for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), the then Member for Vale of Clwyd, Chris Ruane, and the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner). Many of those distinguished Members from all parts of the House are in the Chamber this evening.

There are also Members who were on the Committee who are very keen to be named, and quite rightly, for the great work that they did, including the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths), who served so well. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) was in the House just a moment ago, and has left. Then there was the then Members for Taunton Deane, Jeremy Browne, for Edinburgh East, Sheila Gilmore, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing)—of course, Madam Deputy Speaker—my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), and the then Member for Bristol West, Stephen Williams. Like you, Madam Deputy Speaker, they are people who, from this modest training ground of a Select Committee, have gone on to higher things.

Unlike some Select Committees, the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee took its job very, very seriously, and it never missed a quorum. New colleagues coming to the House may understand that as we get towards the end of a five-year Parliament, it is quite easy to want to drift off and go to our constituencies on a Thursday morning, which is when we used to meet. But we never missed a quorum.

Another interesting fact is that my Select Committee never went on a foreign trip. I do not know whether there is any other Select Committee that can say that. Perhaps that is another reason why we were abolished. Perhaps we were stepping out of line. [Interruption] I do not know whether our frequent visits to Scotland should be regarded as a foreign trip. We certainly did not see it that way. We also made frequent visits to the Senedd in Cardiff and to our good friends in Belfast.

As Members will gather from that roll call of Committee members, we were very serious about our work; indeed we could be nothing else. As I read my own obituary as the Chair of the Select Committee—certainly the Select Committee’s obituary if not my own—I can say, I guess, that it leaves me free to operate in other means. I wish to commend Martyn Atkins, Steven Mark, Joanna Dodd and others who were part of the team. Any Select Committee lives or dies by the capability of its Clerks and those who assist it, and those individuals did a most magnificent job.

If anyone cares to read not even the reports but the list of reports that the Select Committee produced, they will see that it was at the sharp end of so many of the debates that will continue in the new Parliament and that it is perhaps rather strange that it is not enabled to continue its life to pursue some of those issues. We have heard some of them tonight. We have issues such as English votes for English laws—not disappeared and still requiring scrutiny—and human rights.

The Government may welcome a little assistance with their human rights legislation, which does not seem to be progressing smoothly. That is exactly the sort of thing on which, with a five-year Parliament, the Chief Whip does not have to ram everything through or hold every Second Reading in the next couple of weeks. That is the old days; things have changed. We now have a five-year fixed term. He could get the board in Mr Roy Stone’s office—he runs the House of Commons—and plan proper scrutiny. One of our reports was on legislative scrutiny. Why on earth can we not have a steady, clear rolling forward of Bills to include pre-legislative scrutiny of every Bill? Is that not one of the roles of the House? Should that not apply to every Bill, wherever practical?

Have other issues—for example, parliamentary boundaries—gone away? I think not, and I suspect that with an impartial, all-party view, with serious scrutiny, not done on the basis of the whim of the Chair or the majority of members but by a difficult, independent-minded bunch of people getting under the skin of some of these issues, the House could do the Government a great service, if only they realised that they should have a partnership with the House, rather than a relationship of domination and subordination, and it is a great pity that they do that.

We looked at devolution throughout our five years as a Select Committee, not to interfere with the Scottish and Welsh Affairs Committees and the Communities and Local Government Committee—they were doing very well—but in an overarching way to look at the constitutional implications and not just how this affects, say, Wales but how it affects the Union, how other nations in the Union could learn, as we learned when we visited the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Executive, and how things can be done better than they have been done here, often for many hundreds of years without reform.

We certainly need effective scrutiny of things such as English devolution. Can that possibly be given the focus that a dedicated Select Committee on political reform could give it? Had the House completed its consideration of all those democratic reforms, I would be the first to say that the House no longer needed such a Select Committee. That patently is not true; those issues still require scrutiny. I have great respect for the Chairs whom I have served with on the Liaison Committee—the Chairs of the Public Administration and Justice Committees and the Scottish and Welsh Affairs Committees and the Communities and Local Government Committee and others, all of whom were very capable—but they all had very full agendas. Unless they do not have a full agenda, how on earth can they give the sort of scrutiny to things that we gave focus to in the last Parliament?

Sadly, on some occasions, there was not always a relationship of joy. I am surprised that the Chief Whip smiles. He should bow his head in shame for the fact that his Government presented, for example, the gagging Bill, as it became known, one day before the rise of the House and gave it a Second Reading on one day when the House returned. That is not allowing Parliament to scrutinise effectively. Sadly, that is a Government who feel a lack of confidence in their ability to trust Parliament and an all-party committee to give a fair deal, hear witnesses and take evidence. I hope that the Leader of the House changes that tone and style over the next five years and gets the best out of the House of Commons, rather than treating it as a potential enemy to be suppressed, kept down and not talked to.

I said that my Select Committee members were an awkward and difficult bunch. When they were told that the Government were going to put the Bill before the House one day before the recess and have Second Reading one day after the recess, they obviously rolled over and went on their summer holidays—I don’t think so. They insisted that we took evidence in the recess, before the House came back. We did our duty by the House. I do not know whether the House wishes to do its duty by our Select Committee tonight. That is another matter, but we did our duty by the House by reconvening and calling witnesses so that we could do a thorough job for the House. Anyone who witnessed the proceedings of the gagging Bill as it went through the House of Commons can do nothing but say that the Select Committee did its job thoroughly. For possibly three or four days on the Floor of the House, we made sure that the Bill was properly scrutinised.

To give credit where it is due, the Government adopted many of the Select Committee’s proposals. It was not done in a partisan or partial way. There were things that we discovered and could help the Government with to produce a better Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) called it a dog’s breakfast. I think that through its work the Select Committee made that dog’s breakfast slightly more palatable.

There were occasions when the Government were rather slow to respond to the Select Committee’s proposals. As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, it is traditional for a Select Committee to produce a report and for the Government then to respond. Even after the general election, there are still outstanding matters, where the House has not received through its Select Committee a response from Government.

I will write to the Leader of the House listing the items that still need a reply. I should tell him that, on one occasion, the Government took a year to reply to a Select Committee report. But it was worth waiting for—the response was one page long and it did not address any of the detailed points made by your Select Committee, on your behalf, whichever part of the House you sit in.

[Alex Salmond]

The Standing Orders.

[Mr Allen]

Rather like the Women and Equalities Committee, which will I hope be established today, the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee was not in the Standing Orders, as departmental Select Committees are. I ask colleagues who have fought hard to get their Select Committees to remember the difficulties that can be put in their way and what can happen if it is a Select Committee that fulfils its duty to the House and in some cases over-fulfils it, but is not in the Standing Orders. It is much more difficult for a Government who feel they can run roughshod over the House of Commons to repeal the Select Committee if it is in the Standing Orders.

I see you, Madam Deputy Speaker, are shuffling in your place. I do not know whether that is because I am coming to the end of my remarks or whether you are moving in anticipation of the list of reports that the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee produced in the previous Parliament on behalf of the House. I will touch briefly on those and bring my remarks to a close before the hour is up.

For example, we did an extensive report on voter engagement. At the general election before last, 16 million voters did not vote; 7.5 million did not even register. That figure is higher than that for those who voted for both the major parties. We carefully examined a lot of evidence on what we could do about the situation, and more than 16,000 consultations were returned—a record for the Select Committee.

One of the features of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform was that it involved people outside the bubble. It went not only to the Assemblies and Parliament outside Westminster, but discussed through social media and other means the implications of some of the things we were proposing. That is why we reported on votes at 16 and 17 at future general elections and on why online voting should be taken seriously. That is why before the last election we led, not least by portraying a ballot box on Big Ben, on the effort to encourage people to register to vote. We did many other things as well.

Unfortunately, we were not taken seriously on our proposals on political parties and their funding; that issue still needs proper scrutiny and it requires the House to come to a final settlement. There is still no formal process for the House to be consulted about going to war. A convention has arisen in recent years. I remember trying to get the House to sit to consider the Iraq war, and it took a great deal of effort for that to happen. The then Foreign Secretary stated that the Government would enshrine in law for the future the necessity of consulting Parliament on military action. That has not yet happened, and the Government have yet to respond to the report—even before the demise of the Select Committee, the Government had failed to respond to that report.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Laing)]

Order. While the hon. Gentleman is pausing slightly, I should say that I fully appreciate that he is illustrating his amendment by eloquently explaining to the House the importance of his excellent Select Committee’s work in the last Parliament. However, I am afraid that I have to tell him that, in going through in detail—or indeed at all—all his Committee’s reports, however excellent, he is not strictly in order. I know that he will wish to remain in order and tailor his remarks accordingly.

[Mr Allen]

I did say that we had some awkward people on my Select Committee, Madam Deputy Speaker; I did not realise that you would prove that so eloquently from the Chair. You are absolutely right to bring me to order and I will stick far more closely—for the next half hour or so—to the subject at hand. “I’m just getting my second wind”, as Eric Forth used to say.

I am speaking to the amendment on the Order Paper—[Interruption.] I should say to the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) that it is at the top of page 10; I am glad that her reading is coming on. It would add “and political reform” to the title of what would now be the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. That is important because such important issues need to be scrutinised by Parliament and have to go somewhere; no doubt the human rights question will go to the Justice Committee. The so-called territorial Committees will be interested in these issues and the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee will want to take a view. Such issues, including the Boundary Commission, are very important to our democracy.

The last reform I want to mention, in the context of the “political reform” stated on the Order Paper, is in respect of the House itself—the unfinished business of the Wright Committee, which did so much good work. I commend it to the Leader of the House, who is listening intently. One of his predecessors, Sir George Young, put before the House the necessary motions to ensure that the House could elect its Select Committees and could elect their Chairs from across the whole House.

One of the items of unfinished business would end this sort of pantomime, in which we pretend that Parliament has decided, but we know in reality that the Government have decided, pushed along by one or two officials when new Ministers and Whips are in place. They want above all to ensure that we do not have the mechanism to decide our own agenda in this House. The only institution that can do so is a House business Committee. The right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who is now the Chief Whip, was a member of the Government who promised solemnly—it may even have been in the manifesto —to bring forward a House business Committee. Instead of manipulating the House through the usual channels—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is addressing a matter of importance and one that was considered at length by his excellent Committee, but that does not make it in order for the matter before us now. I am aware that other Members wish briefly to contribute to this debate, and that we have a maximum of 12 minutes left. I hope that the hon. Gentleman, who is a great constitutionalist, will respect the constitutional position of the Chamber and adhere very strictly to the matter in question.

[Mr Allen]

That is the first time I have ever been accused—it is an appalling accusation—of being a great constitutionalist. I am a democrat, as I hope most people in this Parliament are. The only way in which all of us in the House will be able to express our views openly and freely, without being told what to do by the incubus of Government that controls us here, is by having our own House business Committee.

I believe that those of us who served on the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee have a very proud record to look back on. I hope that some of the things we did and some of our reports are a legacy that people can dip into when they feel they have a problem on human rights or on codifying what the Union should look like in a devolved and federal United Kingdom. For example, they could look at our report on the Boundary Commission question, which we came up with very close to the end of our term. There is a lot of good stuff in the reports. It is just a little sad for the ability of this House to scrutinise the Government, who hold all the cards, that this Committee and its successors may not be able to scrutinise them and do the job that parliamentarians of all parties feel is the role of this Parliament.

Thank you for your forbearance, Madam Deputy Speaker. With that, I close the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee.

Digital Democracy

Graham Allen Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Meg Hillier]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that there is a real mission here, but there is a mission and a will. One of the pleasures of being on the commission was engaging very much with the staff of the House of Commons, who share the desire of Members to modernise the way in which this place works. There are physical challenges in this building, and we need do no more than look at the images of those challenges in the Michael Cockerell documentary. That issue was not the core focus of the commission, but it is fair to say that fellow commissioners who were not used to the workings of Parliament were surprised at some of the physical challenges that we face in this building.

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) on representing us all so ably on the commission. I also congratulate Mr Speaker on setting up the commission in the first place. It was not an easy thing to do. This is not necessarily the most radical and reforming place that one will ever come across, so we are grateful for that. Does my hon. Friend take great heart from the fact that many things covered in her report and in the Speaker’s commission mirror the work that we have been doing in the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, particularly on the digital aspects and getting young people, especially, to vote online? She is not on her own, and one day, all this will come to pass.

[Meg Hillier]

I agree with my hon. Friend that we hope this will all come to pass, and I commend him and his Committee for trailblazing on this issue. Other areas of the House have been looking at the issue. However, it is important that we use the launch pad of the new Parliament, after the general election, to say that this should be business as usual for Parliament. We can no longer debate whether to do it, but should instead debate how to encourage it. It has been a challenge for some colleagues, who worry about the work load that digital engagement can create, but the commission felt very strongly about it. In fact, one commissioner proposed that all hon. Members had a digital manifesto. I would recommend that as an idea, but we did not put it in our recommendations for all 650 MPs. The feeling was that we could not control how that would work. However, it is important that we understand that, although we would knock on a door and hear people’s points of view, that is not the modern method for many young people. In fact, smartphone usage among the under-24s is now more than 80%. It is very important that we allow similar engagement through a digital method.

The resourcing issue is touched on in the report. There was a feeling in the commission that this needed to be resourced effectively. We were not drawn on figures and numbers, but for MPs to do their job properly and actively listen to people through digital means, we need to ensure that we have the resources to do that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Havard. I thank Mr Speaker not only for giving me the opportunity to speak in the debate, but for having the wisdom to set up the Digital Democracy Commission, which is a revolutionary initiative to widen interest in our political democracy. It has been a massive pleasure to serve alongside the other commissioners, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier)—I call her my hon. Friend on purpose—who has just made an important speech. I am grateful for the opportunity to serve alongside her.

I believe that our democracy will never be complete unless it makes an effort to reach out to those who do not participate in it, and in considering access to it, we cannot overlook the impact of the digital world. The workings of Parliament are analogous to the workings of the code cracked by Bletchley Park expert Alan Turing. Parliament is an incredibly well engineered machine, but it can be deciphered only by a genius who has the experience and knowledge required to navigate its many enigmas. While we are still using the Enigma computer of Parliament, the public have moved on to getting information via smartphones and open source computers. Another way of looking at that is to consider Parliament as an old IBM mainframe system in an age where system diversity is the rule, not the exception. Parliament is restricting itself, and we need to ensure that it uses all the available options.

The purpose of the report is simple: encourage the public to engage more with Parliament and ensure that Parliament engages more with the people it represents. I believe that three steps are needed to ensure that that happens. First, we need to make sure that there is a free market of information from Parliament. Not only must that be accessible and understandable, but it must provide a forum for exchange and ideas. Therefore, the first step must be, as the report stresses, to overcome barriers through the simplification and digitisation of parliamentary data so that they genuinely become open. Secondly, the creation of a cyber Chamber will enable all to participate in the daily life of the Chamber. Finally, online voting would ensure that the most important part of the interaction between Parliament and citizens was accessible.

We do not need to build everything from scratch. The digital age has seen a lot of companies—Amazon, eBay and many others—developing ways to engage with customers, and we can use existing expertise to develop parliamentary engagement. If representation is to mean anything, rather than simply implementing a new, fancy web design, we should ask people what they want and directly engage with their opinions. The report has started the crowdsourcing of democracy to make it truly inclusive. In an era that is dominated by the digital sphere, it seems almost absurd to have such limited means of accessing House of Commons literature in a digital format and in language that is accessible to everyone.

The barrier to people educating themselves about Parliament and its features is dual: on the one hand, information is hardly accessible in the format used by the new generations; on the other, the language used in parliamentary proceedings is so obscure that, just like the Bletchley Park codes, it takes an accustomed genius to understand it. That is why, as my hon. Friend stated, the first step towards democratising access to parliamentary literature must be a simplification of the language to make it more accessible, which means clarifying the jargon, but also developing tools, accessible digitally, to demystify all the processes so that everyone feels they can get genuinely involved in the parliamentary system.

That participation cannot constrain itself to the traditional roles allocated to citizens. The policy that I find most important, and which is outlined in our report, is the creation of a cyber Chamber that would allow the general public to weigh in on debates that concern them. Throughout this debate, we have discussed ways to increase participation in parliamentary affairs. We can do that only by allowing those for whom the laws are made to intervene in debates, in an informative style, to ensure that every voice is heard.

Our surveys show that people feel disconnected from political parties, but not from the issues that we discuss. People are very interested in what goes on in the world and at home, but not in Westminster politics, which means that we have to focus our efforts on the substance of Parliament, the debates and the laws it creates to allow citizens to feel that they are an integral part of British democracy in action. That should include not only the cyber Chamber, but a new way of directly questioning the Prime Minister and MPs. The focus on direct representation must extend to ways of holding those who lead our country to account, and the report therefore outlines a need for an additional structure for Prime Minister’s questions that would directly involve the public.

If we are to crowdsource our democracy, we must make certain that the public feel they have real involvement in the way Parliament works. The report suggests the creation of a cyber Chamber, or “Open House”, which would be

“regular digital public discussion forums to inform debates held in Westminster Hall.”

That is the right direction of travel, but I am a revolutionary in that matter—we need to go further.

In the long term, we need a separate Chamber of the public where individuals are able to vote on key issues of the day that are being debated, which would give a voice to public opinion. Although the House of Commons would always have the ultimate say, each citizen would be given a personal identification number and could vote online on major debates. The result would be an advisory opinion as to what the public feel about key issues as they happen. The third, virtual Chamber would always be advisory, but it would be a great way to ensure that MPs were made aware of their constituents’ concerns before we walked into a debate. That would be a real way to re-engage the public in our democracy.

[Mr Allen]

I am following the hon. Gentleman’s speech closely, and he knows that he will not find a greater advocate for the ideas that he and my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) are proposing, but I underline my hon. Friend’s point that many people do not have the access that more educated or wealthier people may have. We have to be very careful not to skew the political system just so that those who are social media-literate and have access to the various devices that can get them into the House of Commons can start to orient policy at the expense of people who are probably more in need of excellent policy from this place.

[Robert Halfon]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point: roughly a third of people do not have access to the internet, but that also means that a huge number of people do. Many people have no access to Parliament and do not engage with their MP. The proposed system would not be perfect, but, as the internet and social media slowly spread, it would allow millions of people who otherwise would not engage with Parliament to do so. As the years go by, more and more people will have access to the internet.

The third essential part of the triangle is online voting. When considering the digitalisation of the political system, we must always bear in mind the ever-diversifying ways to use the internet. One of those is the ability to accomplish high-security tasks without having to move. Banks have set up transfer systems that require nothing but a click, so why would it not be possible for constituents to vote online if they wanted to do so?

The voting system is incredibly romantic. We have the old-fashioned pencil and the beautiful, black, dented, old-fashioned ballot box. We mark a cross on a piece of paper and stick it in the ballot box, which is anachronistic and stuck in the previous century. The public have moved on from such behaviour, which is why we have seen such a drop in voter participation and a huge increase in people who want to vote by post. Our surveys show that the majority of people would support an online voting platform, and 15.3% of the electorate chose to vote by post at the last general election, in 2010.

People want new options, and it is up to us to provide them with some. We must not fool ourselves: the decline in voter participation is strongly linked to the fact that new generations interact in different ways and therefore require different ways of appealing to them.

The digital divide is a fading reality, with more and more people being included in the digital age, and we cannot afford to keep Parliament out of it. We have heard the real concerns linked to such a policy, and the entirely valid fear of security breaches is probably the most important threat to the system we have imagined. I was amazed, after the first public meeting of the Digital Democracy Commission, to receive abusive e-mails from people saying that I was completely ignorant and out of touch with the security of online voting, but that is a farcical argument.

There are a huge number of abuses in the current system, but no one says, “Why don’t we look at the flaws in the system?” There are still many small “c” conservative advocates of that system, even though it has enormous problems. When we go to a polling station, we do not even have to show our identification, yet if any suggestion of online voting is made—we have security for online banking and shopping—everyone starts worrying about security.

As highlighted in the report, Estonia shows that online voting does not differ from the security requirements of other online proceedings. The system obviously needs to be protected, but we will not be able to proceed with digital democracy if we retain an attitude of stunned inaction towards progress. By looking away from online voting, Parliament would exclude itself from participative democracy and let the rest of the world move far ahead digitally and democratically. We have to engage the public in the way that they want to vote, and we have to move towards some system of online voting. I hope we can have some pilot schemes so that, by the 2020 election, we may see how online voting can work in certain parts of the country.

This year, we celebrate 800 years of Magna Carta, which is perhaps one of the most important documents in modern history—it might be rivalled only by the ten commandments. For the first time ever, a major country said that the king was not above the rule of law and did not have divine right. It took hundreds of years for the system to evolve into what we know as parliamentary democracy, but in that same way we need to mark this anniversary and to make digital democracy the new internet Bill of Rights between the people and Parliament. The report is a step in that direction.

Democracy does nothing if it does not evolve with the times. Freedom survives only when it is a living organism, not when it is stuck like a pickle in a jar in a laboratory. We must strive to enliven our democracy through the digital world. We would do well to remember that the Bletchley Park codebreakers who saved our country did so thanks to IBM. Democracy is nothing if it does not recognise others.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I will be very brief. I had not intended to make a speech today, but I was prompted to do so by the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), as is often the case, but in a very positive way. He talked about Magna Carta, which leads me immediately to mentally flip to a written constitution.

In a sense, we have seen the future and it works—the remarkable report produced by the Speaker’s commission. I never miss a chance to boast about the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee and I hope that we have shown, in a small way, how this could happen as a regular practice.

I have two examples in mind. We have done a report on voter engagement, why people are disengaging and what we can do about it. There are lots of reasons for that: the media; MPs’ behaviour; registration; and not being able to vote easily, for example. We were determined to consult as many people as possible. We thought that engagement of voters would be very important.

I think we received what was, at the time, a world record of responses: we received some 16,000 responses, in one form or another. We used every possible type of social media. Also, and this is an interesting facet of what the commission is talking about, we used other organisations. This does not have to be almost nationalised by Parliament, as it were. Bite the Ballot, the Hansard Society and the British Youth Council all got involved and did their own online survey of all their members. The results then came back to us and were fed into our final report. Our report was very influenced by the majorities that stacked up, particularly on online voting.

In addition, we have produced a door-stopper of a report on a written constitution, which gives all the possible options. We have consulted widely on that. I think that there were some 6,000 responses to that. We have now distilled that into a 10-pager—what one might call a “mini-Magna”—a UK written constitution that tells us what we have now, written down for the first time ever, with some possible options for change on the margins.

Individuals can use that resource online. There is now a further consultation, until the end of the year, until we have had an election and until the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta has passed, and in the run-up to what may well be a constitutional convention. We have that resource open online, so that people can say what their view is on the distillation of a written constitution.

Rather than people saying that traditionally constitutions were written by 30 white guys in a hall in Philadelphia, we would like to have many millions of founding fathers and mothers, who will make their contribution towards what a final constitution might look like. Of course, that will be available to those who wish to set up a constitutional convention.

I want to make two points quickly. I am not trying to spoil the party, but we absolutely need to take them into account if this is to be successful. First, there is the point I have already mentioned to the hon. Member for Harlow about the information haves and the information have-nots. We need a strategy to consider how we can involve the have-nots. I represent the 10th poorest constituency out of 650; it is rated the 10th poorest by many different measures. It may be that two thirds of my constituents have access to social media and the online world, but I suspect not. I also suspect they are not fluent in it. What we need to do is to take these recommendations further to ensure that, as the hon. Gentleman said, everyone has at least the prospect of being involved, if they are not involved now, so that they can be part of this family.

[Meg Hillier]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. He makes a valid point. We discussed digital exclusion a great deal in the commission. It brings to mind a constituent of mine who said, “Remember that my online access is one hour a day at the library.” He is online, but does not have a smartphone in his hand and has no broadband at home. There are layers of digital exclusion, even for those who are able to use the technology.

[Mr Allen]

Indeed. Dare I mention hon. Members who, like me, do not have the staff available at a particular time or who do not have relatives to help them? I have a young daughter to help me through difficulties when things seem to go wrong. I think many of us are excluded by our own incompetence, more than anything else.

Technology is often neutral. We need to use technology to give us a broader-based democracy and to involve more people. We should never, ever think it is a panacea. The problems with this place are about its relationship with the Executive and its inability to stand as an independent institution separate from the Executive. We must always consider how technology can help us as parliamentarians to build a stronger Parliament. That is what the Speaker’s commission has done. Once again, I congratulate my two colleagues on representing all of us in the House so effectively. More power to your elbow.

[Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)]

The two Front Benchers will speak next. Could I ask you to share the time, please, so that Ms Hillier can have a couple of minutes at the end to summarise and talk about what might come through in future? Thank you.

Devolution (Implications for England)

Graham Allen Excerpts

Tuesday 16th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

It is about fairness, and I think that issue is now strongly felt by people across the United Kingdom, and most intensely in recent months by people in England. The issue must be addressed and visibly addressed; it is dangerous for the UK for it not to be addressed. On the issue of proportionality, of course we have a different view within the coalition. We have discussed electoral reform for many years and had a referendum on it, which produced a very clear outcome. We have a different view within the coalition on that, but the principle of establishing English votes on English laws is one on which we in the coalition can agree.

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

Does the Leader of the House accept that 23 million people—more than voted Conservative and Labour combined—did not vote at the last election; that 10 weeks ago we came within 400,000 votes of the Union dissolving; and that a right-wing party is now coming in at 15% in current polling? Does he accept that the people are saying, “It’s broken; we ought to fix it”? Does he accept, too, that failure to include a comprehensive English devolution settlement based on the vehicle of independent local government and to substitute it with a minor issue of moving around the green benches of the Titanic on English votes for English laws just does not meet the historic need put to the right hon. Gentleman to do this job of putting forward a Cabinet Committee on devolution—not EVEL. Has he not missed that historic opportunity?

[Mr Hague]

I agree with a good deal of what the hon. Gentleman said at the beginning of his remarks, and I am grateful to his Political and Constitutional Reform Committee for its input so far and its discussion of all these issues. This is partly about decentralisation and devolution to local government in England. However, I have seen nothing to suggest that that will address the problem here in this House where laws are made with some Members able to vote on things outside their own constituencies and other Members not able to do the same. That is why we have to make sure that, in addition to decentralisation, we address that further issue here as well.

Devolution and the Union

Graham Allen Excerpts

Thursday 20th November 2014 Commons Chamber

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

If you believe as I do, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the United Kingdom should continue for another 100 or perhaps 200 years, it needs to be built on two solid principles. The first principle is union and the second is devolution. Without those two in tandem, the United Kingdom will be under threat. It is important that we examine the motion before us today in those terms. I suspect that we are not taking devolution as seriously as we should if all that we are talking about is votes on the West Lothian question or the Barnett formula. There is a bigger agenda. Devolution is diminished if we talk only about those two issues. They are a couple of per cent. of devolution for most of us, and for most of us in England, too. Scotland has rightly had a lot of air time, a lot of legislative time and a referendum, but now it is time for England to come to the devolution party, and that is what I want to talk about today.

The Liaison Committee met this morning, and we had in front of us the Prime Minister. The subject was devolution. There were times during that discussion when I felt that the Prime Minister was too chilled out for his own good about devolution. There was a lack of urgency. It was almost as if the problem had been resolved because a referendum had taken place in Scotland. He used expressions such as, “We need to settle this down now,” or, “There is no need to rush these things.” The Scottish referendum was important inside Scotland of course, but outside it allowed us to realise what we could do with a level of engagement and participation that should excite us all given some of the threats to our broader political system in the Union. There are risks.

It is only eight or nine weeks since there was a 400,000-vote difference between Scotland staying in the Union and the Union dissolving. That was just a few weeks ago, yet some of us seem to act as if the problem is over and everything is back to normal, and we have gone back to our default position. Similarly, 23 million people did not participate in the last general election. That is more than the Labour and Conservative vote added together. To imagine that there are not risks and problems in our political system that need to be addressed and can be partially addressed, even largely addressed, by devolution is a dream.

Also since the general election we have seen the rise of an extreme right-wing party. It is polling up to 25% of the popular vote in opinion polls. These are serious issues that can be addressed at least in part and often in large part by giving power back to people, by engaging them in the political system, by involving them and by ensuring that they feel they own their democracy rather than want to vote for an apolitical party.

As for the West Lothian question, it seems strange that the very thing that led to a lot of people being turned off politics and lured by separatism is replaced in our thinking by something that is relatively small beer. It is a Standing Orders question. It is a Westminster-bubble question. I am sorry that the Prime Minister, after this fantastic adventure in democracy in Scotland, was on the doorstep of No. 10 Downing street as the ink on the result was barely dry, talking about English votes for English laws rather than the possibilities of further devolution for the rest of the United Kingdom. Let us deal with the West Lothian question but see it for the relatively small issue it is in the broader aspect of devolution.

On the Barnett formula, of course there will have to be a method of equalisation and redistribution of some description. We are a family of nations and we need to look after each other, just as we do in equalisation in local government.

[Angus Robertson]

On the family of nations, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree that taking Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom out of the European Union would be a bad thing. Does he think it is right that all four nations in the UK should have a safeguard on membership—a double majority—should that case be put? One member of a family dictating to the family would be unacceptable, would it not?

[Mr Allen]

I suspect that the hon. Gentleman, as someone who tried to leave the family of nations, does not speak with quite the authority he may think he has.

What about the positive things we need to address in terms of devolution? It is key—we often say this in the Chamber—that we address the sclerotic over-centralisation of the United Kingdom, particularly with regard to Whitehall. In the big family of nations, we are probably the third most over-centralised nation of the western democracies. Albania is worse than us—that is an obvious example—and, of course, the SNP’s Scotland is also massively over-centralised, sucking up powers on a daily basis. We can hear that slurping sound of local autonomy being sucked into Holyrood, which makes it a highly centralised nation.

[Ms Abbott]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the issues arising from the current debate on devolution and the Union is that of more powers for our great cities? As the London Finance Commission and the Independent City Growth Commission have set out, there is a strong argument for many of our great cities to be allowed to keep more of their property taxes and to empower people in those cities.

[Mr Allen]

My hon. Friend is uncharacteristically moderate in her proposal on this occasion. I will come to some better ideas that she may care to think about.

To continue the dialogue with my friends on the SNP Bench, double devolution—in other words, taking stuff beyond the devolved settlement and into local authorities, and even into neighbourhoods and communities—is one of the things we need to press when we discuss devolution, rather than run after the bone the Prime Minister threw out at 7 am on the day after the referendum. Such key things need to be on the agenda when we talk about devolution.

Of course, the pledges made to Scotland in the vow have to be pulled together. Indeed, as we speak they are being pulled together in the Smith package. I am used to seeing SNP Members rolling around in agony and crying, “Foul!”, but this is the first time they have done it before the starting whistle of the match has been blown. People of good will in all parts of the political spectrum want this package for Scotland. I want us to do it, first, because it is honest, and secondly, because it will set a bar and a benchmark for what we in England should get as we talk further about devolution to our cities, towns, villages and rural areas across the whole of England.

If we are going to do this, we—particularly my own party—have to come to terms with the concept of giving genuine independence to local government, just as most local governments in most western democracies enjoy. For the first time in this country, local government would be equal rather than subordinate and supplicant, holding out for, in effect, charity from the centre. That needs to be entrenched and beyond easy repeal.

We are opposite the building that used to house the Greater London council, which on the whim of a particular Prime Minister—although it could have been any of them—was abolished, as were other tiers. We need to entrench local government, rather than give it powers that could be taken away at a later date. We need to give it its own life. It is pointless giving people powers unless we give them the right to have what Scotland has pioneered, namely an assignment of income tax to ensure that it can maintain its financial certainty. A second Chamber made up of representatives from the four nations of the Union is also key. Let us not be modest; let us be ambitious for devolution beyond Scotland.

Devolution (Scotland Referendum)

Graham Allen Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I will make just one more point.

The Prime Minister has asked me to chair a Cabinet Committee to look at the devolution of powers across the United Kingdom. There will be every opportunity for decisions on the future rights of England and devolution to Wales and Northern Ireland to be made on a cross-party basis, unless, that is, any party chooses not to participate in the discussions. That is a point to which I will return.

The hon. Member for Moray made the point about 1.6 million people. We should pay tribute to all those who voted in the referendum. He might not want to remember so easily that more than 2 million people voted for Scotland to remain part of the United Kingdom. They voted for a stronger Scottish Parliament, backed by the strength and security that comes from being part of the United Kingdom. Before the referendum, the three pro-Union parties of the United Kingdom made clear commitments to devolve further powers to Scotland on a clear timetable that was put forward by the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), who is in his place. That was supported by the three party leaders.

Yesterday, the Government published the Command Paper on Scotland ahead of schedule. It sets out the published proposals of the three UK political parties on further devolution in Scotland. Lord Smith will oversee a process that takes forward those commitments. He has already begun his work and has written to the groups that were formed during the referendum campaign, inviting them to give their views on further devolution. I welcome the fact that, for the first time, all the major parties are involved in shaping devolution for Scotland, with the Scottish National party and the Green party tabling their proposals too. Lord Smith will talk simultaneously to the political parties, civic institutions and the public, with a view to reaching the heads of agreement by 30 November. As the House heard again yesterday, draft clauses will be published by the end of January, so that the legislation is ready to be implemented after the next general election.

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

The Leader of the House will know that the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, which I have the honour of chairing, has produced extensive work on a written constitution, devolution to English local government and the need for a constitutional convention. Will he ensure that Parliament is represented on and has input into his Cabinet Sub-Committee, which will discuss those much bigger and much more important issues than the one on which, I suspect, many Members will focus, which is English votes for English laws?

[Mr Hague]

Absolutely, I will. The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee and the Procedure Committee need to be fully involved in the process. It is certainly our intention that they will be. I will make arrangements for that to happen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Moore]

I shall come back to the issue of English votes for English laws in a moment.

I believe that there is a lot of support across Scotland for a modern Scotland within a reformed United Kingdom, and it is important that we should be serious about that reformed United Kingdom as well. Let us look at the inner workings of the United Kingdom, and particularly at the civil service. I am proud to have worked with some immensely talented people in the Scotland Office, the Cabinet Office, the Treasury and elsewhere. I saw for myself what could be achieved when people put their minds to working together in common cause. I saw the limitations as well, however. I saw the hollowing out of the United Kingdom Government’s presence and capacity in Scotland and, at times, a lack of understanding and sclerotic responses.

I plead for forgiveness for previously arguing for the abolition of the Scotland Office. I confess that I did that when I believed that the rest of the United Kingdom Government had a strong presence north of the border. Three and a half years in the Scotland Office disabused me of that notion. However, the resources, the policy-making capability and the stakeholder engagement in Scotland improved substantially in response to the referendum campaign. We must seize the moment and ensure that there is a step-change in Scotland on the back of that. We must not go back to the old days.

We must also look afresh at how we resolve disputes within the United Kingdom. We need greater openness and engagement in the joint ministerial Committees, and quicker resolution of disputes before they are elevated to constitutional crisis level. All of that is about more openness and a greater understanding of what is done in people’s names across the length and breadth of the United Kingdom.

[Mr Allen]

May I take the right hon. Gentleman back to his remark about greater independence for local government in Scotland? One thing I hear is that in Scotland there has been great over-centralisation at the Scottish Executive level. Will he underline that in any written settlement that comes forward for Scotland—and, hopefully, in time in the UK—it will be very clear that there is double devolution? By that I mean devolution that goes not only to the Scottish Parliament, but down to a lower level. That is equally applicable in the United Kingdom. One falsehood of English votes for English MPs, because there is a lower level—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Interventions are supposed to be brief. The hon. Gentleman is waiting to speak and I am sure he will be able to expand on his point. May I say to the right hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Michael Moore) that he does not have a time limit, as the Speaker ruled, but he has been speaking for 15 minutes and a time limit will apply after the fourth speaker opening the debate. Although he has been generous in taking interventions, may I therefore ask him rapidly to draw his conclusions in his remarks so that we can move on to the next speaker?

--- Later in debate ---

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

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to address the federal Parliament today. Like many colleagues, I want to start by congratulating the Scottish people as a whole—whether they voted yes or no—for the way in which they gave many of us an exciting and euphoric democratic experience. I suspect that those who were out there on the day will not share that view, but as someone who was external to the process for most of the time, I think it was a great tribute to the concept of democracy.

It would be a great shame if we let that go and did not surf the wave of democratic feeling unleashed by the referendum but lapsed back into good old Westminster intrigue and internal politics. That is why the referendum had the legs that it had—people had thought that all we were concerned about were things such as who sat next to whom on these Benches and whether they were able to vote or not. We have been given the most fantastic opportunity, with the Scottish people leading the way, to improve our democracy.

As an English Member of Parliament, I congratulate Scotland on the way in which it managed, perhaps hairily, to get what will be an incredibly strong devolution package. All I would say to this House is that what is good enough for Scotland is good enough for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We should treat this as a launch pad for devolution for the whole of the United Kingdom. That is the key lesson for us. I am afraid that none of our party leaders covered themselves in glory the day after the referendum result was announced. They did not take that lesson to the extreme and address the journey we could all begin to take so that everybody else can do as well as Scotland has done.

All I am asking is that Britain be allowed to join the family of western democracies, with a devolved settlement and a constitution that guarantees, as has been said, what happens with local government. It is good to give local government some authority and a package of proposals, but the experience of Scotland has shown how a Government can suck powers from the localities if they are not entrenched and guaranteed in writing—not just in law, but in a constitution.

[Graham Stringer]

My hon. Friend is making some profound points. In 2010, public expenditure in Greater Manchester was £23 billion, and in 2014 the figure was exactly the same. There have been huge cuts in public services, local government and elsewhere over that period. Does that not show that the centralised model does not work, and that if people in Greater Manchester had been in control of that money, we would have had a better outcome?

[Mr Allen]

I strongly support my hon. Friend’s record of achievement in pressing the case for Manchester and many other places that need that liberation. Our country’s localities, regions and nations can do far better than simply rely on the man in Whitehall telling us what to do. My only caveat to my hon. Friend’s comments is that we all have to get this. It is not just a matter of having a great campaigning council or a strong council with the right connections; everybody, including, as has been said, the counties, non-core cities, parishes and rural areas, has to benefit from that liberation, and I think that is what a written settlement will be able to do.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for the powerful speech he is giving. Does he agree that it is also vital that we focus not just on the delegation of powers but on collaboration among the cities and the counties, to bring about economic benefit for all involved?

[Mr Allen]

The independence of local government to do things appropriate to its level will actually encourage interdependence, interrelationships, treaty making, sharing and co-operation in a way in which we are all currently constrained from doing, because all we can do at the moment is implement the stuff that comes down the pipe from Whitehall. That will be liberating with regard to relationship-building, and it will give local government the sensitivity to engage with local people and spend money more accurately locally.

I have been worried that the vision needed to get on this road has been lacking. I think that has happened in Scotland to a degree over the years. I think Donald Dewar led at such rocket speed that perhaps it has been difficult to keep up the pace of that engagement with people. That has certainly been the case at the UK level: our respective Front Benchers seem shy of engaging with the British people on the subject of democratic change. Above all, not engaging with people in England on how they can run their own affairs more effectively has led to the ghost of UKIP appearing at the feast to fill the vacuum. All of us, regardless of party, have a role to play in bringing such things back to the English people, as well as to the Scottish people and the rest of the people of the Union.

We have had high levels of complacency and short-termism, and we are now being paid back for that. We must not forget that that led us to the brink of failure: however excited the people in the no campaign are now, we came within an ace of destroying the Union. Going back to business as usual is not the way forward. We must ensure that the whole range of democratic measures are considered in any settlement, rather than just English votes for English laws. In saying that, I am criticising those on both Front Benches.

It is close to arrogance to assume that devolution in England means just talking to English MPs. That is where we previously went wrong. It is why people do not like us and think that we are corrupt, to a degree, in wanting to move the deckchairs around on the Westminster Titanic, rather than reaching out to them with double devolution—not just in relation to us as English MPs, but as people who run local authorities, which should be vested with much more authority than they currently are. We need to be very careful to avoid such arrogance.

There is lots of stuff that people can use to make this work. The Leader of the Opposition said that he did not want to do anything on the back of a fag packet, so I have brought a few fag packets along from my Select Committee—they are on the Table—showing how we can build a written constitution, have a constitutional convention, and have independent local government in England as the vehicle for devolution. A lot of smoking went on in my Select Committee to produce them.

Lots of parliamentary colleagues have made individual contributions, as have several think-tanks on the left and the right, and many local authority leaders of all parties, from Boris Johnson to Sir Richard Leese, and including George Ferguson. Loads of people have engaged with this subject—for example, Jim O’Neill’s recent Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce project on cities—and a lot of thinking has been done. The idea that we cannot now decide on a package to put to the people of this country ahead of a general election therefore beggars belief. History will not forgive any of us if we do not take this chance on the back of what the Scottish people have led us towards.

If we look at what all the parties are proposing on the package before us, I must say, as a former trade union negotiator, that with such a package from three different parties, we could make it work and reach agreement. There is more room for agreement than for disagreement. We or, rather, Lord Smith can make a great package to offer Scotland on income tax assignment—putting on every wage slip the amount of money that goes to Scotland or, in our case, to English local authorities—and on the entrenchment of local government powers, which has also been agreed, as well as having a written constitution so that things are in writing and cannot be repealed by somebody else at a later point and so that we all know the rules of the game. That is the package and the common ground—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order.

Standards

Graham Allen Excerpts

Thursday 8th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Barron]

Yes. That relates to the preceding case the Standards Committee dealt with, which has not been debated in this House. I was very surprised indeed, because we have had a memorandum of understanding with IPSA since 2010. If it is felt that this House should take action against a Member—only this House can do that—the case will initially go to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and then to our Committee, which will produce a report and make recommendations. IPSA has never approached us on such an issue in any of the past four years. If any UK organisation knows about Members’ expenses post 2009-10, it is IPSA, so I was not particularly happy about that.

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

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the all-party groups, so many of which have secretariats from outside this place, are the next big scandal waiting to happen, and that the only way to clean up the situation is for Members themselves to take responsibility for the groups by funding them and, if they care about the issues so much, using their own resources to make sure the process is clean? The Mercer case could be the first of many, if we are not careful.

[Kevin Barron]

The Standards Committee did not know that this would come up when we started looking at all-party groups. The right and proper time to discuss those matters will be during next Tuesday’s debate.

The Committee on Standards has been critical of media stings in the past, but the case under discussion was not one in which a Member was misrepresented or had made a single error. It was a sustained course of conduct, not an ill-advised response to a single “fishing” incident.

There has been some confusion over the respective roles of the Committee and the commissioner. The commissioner is a finder of fact. She investigates and presents her findings to the Committee, and sometimes those findings include advice on the interpretation of the rules. The Committee entirely agreed with the commissioner’s conclusion that Mr Mercer’s actions had inflicted significant reputational damage on the House and its Members. The commissioner does not have a role in recommending a penalty. It is for the Committee to decide on the recommended penalty, and MPs and lay members play a full part in that discussion.

In this case, the Committee took into account the gravity of the offence and the penalties given in similar cases in the past. In fact, there are very few similar cases, and in most of them the Members concerned were no longer in Parliament by the time the Committee’s investigations were over. There is very little we can do about ex-Members.

As our minutes show, the Committee seriously considered an even heavier penalty than the one on which we eventually agreed. It is disappointing when colleagues say that the Committee overturned the views of the independent Commissioner for Standards and suggest that there are fundamental disagreements between the Committee and the commissioner, because that is not the case. Clearly, no system is beyond improvement. Indeed, the Committee will itself hold an inquiry into how the House’s disciplinary process could be improved, and the commissioner will contribute to that process as fully as possible. However, public confidence is not helped when Members of Parliament attack the integrity of the system rather than try to understand the Committee’s work, or when they claim that the Committee has overturned the commissioner’s findings, without appreciating the complexities of individual cases.

I do not want to go into this in great detail, but on 8 April my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), who sadly is not in his place, asked an urgent question and said that the Committee’s proceedings should be open

“so that people can see on what basis the Committee overturns the views of the independent Commissioner for Standards”. —[Official Report, 8 April 2014; Vol. 579, c. 124.]

There are three pages in that report that clearly explain our decision in relation to that of the commissioner. I advise Members of the House to read our Committee’s proceedings before dashing to the media to grab a few headlines.

I would have more sympathy with Members’ calls for reform to increase public trust if the proposals of the Committee on Standards and Privileges, made in December 2012, to update the code of conduct and the guide to the rules had been debated in the House. We are still waiting for that to happen.

House of Commons Business

Graham Allen Excerpts

Thursday 8th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I picked on four because that was the number recommended by the Procedure Committee as its preferred figure—and I think that is right, actually. It seems to me that going further would tip the balance too far. I take the shadow Leader of the House’s point about what might have happened in the further reaches of the last century, but for nearly 40 years we operated on the basis of having no more than three amendments. Technically, and strictly, the Standing Order was not unambiguous. As it turned out, it had been interpreted previously as meaning three amendments, but it was capable of being interpreted as meaning more, or any number. In my view, it is not the purpose of Standing Orders to be ambiguous; their purpose is to be clear. The Procedure Committee took the view in its original proposal that four was appropriate. I was not of that view, but I am content to support it: there is no point in having a Procedure Committee and then not listening to it; we listened very carefully.

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

While the Leader of the House is in listening mode to Select Committee Chairs, I should advertise the fact that today the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee published our report on fixed-term Parliaments. This is the first time that we know we are in the last year of a Parliament—from one end to the other. Will the right hon. Gentleman consider, therefore, whether this is an appropriate time to use the House for purposes other than passing Government legislation? Of course that needs to happen, but we could have more private Member’s debates, more Adjournment debates, more consideration of policy and, dare I say it, more amendments to the Queen’s Speech and on important policy issues—ahead of the public taking a decision in 363 days’ time.

[Mr Lansley]

Happily, I have had an opportunity to read the report of the hon. Gentleman’s Select Committee. As his Committee was sitting earlier this morning, he was not in his place for business questions, when I took an opportunity to refer to the report. His Committee pointed out that the certainty surrounding a fixed-term Parliament provides greater opportunity for the planning of legislation, with a greater understanding of how much legislative time will be available. When he hears the Queen’s Speech early next month, he will see that a substantial legislative programme is intended for the full Session. That will not prevent us from meeting our obligations under Standing Orders for Back-Bench debates, Opposition time and other requirements. Indeed, in this Session, we have exceeded them, so we are already providing time for precisely the things that the hon. Gentleman seeks.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Allen]

rose—

[Ms Eagle]

I can see that my hon. Friend is itching to get up, so I will certainly give way.

[Mr Allen]

To ensure that my hon. Friend does not have something on the record with which she feels uncomfortable, may I say that I am not proposing that the House takes over the whole of e-petitioning? On the contrary, I am very clear, and I will make this clearer in my remarks, that there has to be a separation, with appropriate petitions to the Government and to Parliament. There are two different functions, and I want to be clear so that she does not misinterpret my amendment.

[Ms Eagle]

I am looking forward to my hon. Friend’s speech, in which I believe he will go into the detail of the work we all hope the Procedure Committee will be doing as it looks to the future. I hope it will be able to come up with recommendations that the whole House can agree on as to how to make the e-petitions system more robust, transparent and understandable to members of the public. I know that he will have important points to make about that. The Opposition look forward to working with the Procedure Committee as it drafts proposals for implementation at the start of the next Parliament.

We must be careful not to see e-petitions as some kind of silver bullet that will help us to solve the crisis of political engagement in our country. Undoubtedly they have a part to play, but we have to keep things in perspective. This Government came to office making some very grand promises about the “biggest shake-up” of British democracy since the Great Reform Act 1832, but the reality has been somewhat smaller in scope than that vainglorious ambition: we have had a failed attempt to reform the Lords, a massive and clearly partisan increase in the number of unelected peers, and a lobbying Act so bad it should actually have been described as a charter for lobbyists. Ranged against the massive failure of delivery, making welcome but small and slow progress on e-petitions seems a very small improvement, although a welcome one.

That brings me on to the second motion, which concerns the outcome of the Government’s work on parliamentary privilege. The Conservative party began this in opposition by promising a parliamentary privilege Act to make sure that MPs cannot

“claim parliamentary privilege to evade justice”.

That intention was repeated in the Conservative manifesto and in the subsequent coalition agreement. Since then, it has become clear from the outcome of court cases, especially the Chaytor judgment, that MPs cannot use parliamentary privilege to evade justice, and that the current Government were actually tilting at windmills when they were in opposition. Following the Government’s Green Paper on privilege and the work of the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, which was published in June 2013, it has become clear that there is no need for a parliamentary privilege Act. Today’s motion implicitly accepts that and instead suggests a few minor but sensible clarifications of existing practice.

The motion accepts the Joint Committee’s suggestion in paragraphs 226 and 227 of its report that any legislation which creates individual rights that might impinge on the activities of both Houses should, for the avoidance of doubt, expressly say so. That will reinforce official guidance issued by the Treasury Solicitor in 2002, which has been more honoured in the breach than in the observance. It is certainly desirable that there is consistency across government about the way in which Bills are drafted when they may impinge on this issue, and the Opposition support this clarification. As the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) helpfully pointed out, it is in the interests of a healthy parliamentary democracy that MPs can speak on the Floor of the House without fear of being sued for libel by powerful interests which may be seeking to silence them—that is an example of how this principle is applied in practice. In many ways, I feel that the term “privilege” could almost have been invented to be misunderstood as meaning some kind of privilege for individuals—Members of this House—which puts them above the rights of others. We have that capacity to speak in this way only so that we can represent the interests of our constituents and those who voted to send us to this place. That is surely in the interests of robust democracy. The term “privilege” is often very misunderstood by people outside in a very unhelpful way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Eagle]

The hon. Gentleman, who served on the Committee on Standards, makes an extremely good point: the term “privilege” applies not only to Members of Parliament, but, much more appropriately, to proceedings of this Parliament. That is there to protect our democracy from being undermined by powerful forces which may have more finance at their disposal to try to intimidate those who wish to represent their constituents robustly.

[Mr Allen]

Will my hon. Friend consider, or even request the Procedure Committee to consider, changing the word, redefining “privilege” and saying that in future Acts, past Acts and in Standing Orders we should refer simply to “freedom of speech” in Parliament?

[Ms Eagle]

I suspect that will not do, because of the history of how parliamentary privilege has developed. The Joint Committee did think about looking at a review of previous Acts of Parliament so that we could deal with this point and concluded that it would actually cause more trouble and anomalies than it would solve.

--- Later in debate ---

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

Let me start by touching on a couple of democratic principles that underlie some of the issues before us. The first is about whether we are a representative democracy or whether, because we are held so much in contempt by the public, we want to become a direct democracy. That is why e-petitions could either be advantageous to us or play into the hands of those who want to see a Parliament even more diminished, especially those in newsrooms and media offices up and down the land who have the ability to get up 100,000 signatures and put pressure on Government and Parliament. Under motion 3 as it stands, that pressure could be transferred from Government to Parliament. Parliament is a handy whipping boy for so many of these issues, including expenses. Governments of all parties have shown a great facility in ditching Parliament—leaving Parliament holding the baby for issues that have been the responsibility of Government.

One issue is about explaining what we are. Earlier, we had a mini debate about privilege. It was all about these poor people out there who do not really understand these arcane bits of judicial archaeology, and the fact that there is something wrong with the public. One Member said that we need to lead them and be stronger in explaining these things, but we have tried that for many decades. We have all discovered that even when we try to explain the concept of reimbursements using the word “expenses”, it does not always work. Explaining how Parliament and Government are different from each other is one of our main duties, because people lump us together. Indeed, this business in front of us today is an example of the Government trying to get that conflation of two institutions. Even though we will not change minds today on the Government Front Bench, it is important that we keep those Front-Bench Members honest and point out that we know what they are trying to do, even if there is not much we can do about it other than heckle the steamroller.

That choice over whether we go to a serious representative democracy and continue to try to rebuild Parliament or whether we abstain from that and hand over to a plebiscitary democracy is one that all Members need to consider.

[Mr Harper]

I think the hon. Gentleman is being a little cynical about those on the Front Bench. The problem with what he is trying to do, which is to have two petition systems—one to Government and one to Parliament—ignores the fact that Government are accountable to Parliament. They are only the Government because they have a majority in Parliament. Having two separate systems would be worse than having this House and the Government working together collaboratively. With respect, what he is suggesting is not helpful; it is the opposite.

[Mr Allen]

Obviously, I do not spend all my time in the Chamber, but during the 26 years that I have been here, I have missed that occasion when Government were accountable to Parliament. What we have here is the mythology of parliamentary sovereignty—the hon. Gentleman knows that and we have discussed it in front of my Committee—in which Government can use and abuse Parliament on a daily basis. They can set the agenda of Parliament on a daily basis. It is a little disingenuous to pretend that it is Parliament holding Government to account. If we conflate two systems, we will make things harder. Rather than Parliament being able to say, “The Government have not responded to a legitimate petition”, we will have to share the blame for the problem. If we do not have a petitioning system of our own, we will not have direct redress, through which we can say to the Government, “We have discussed this, as many people have requested of us, and we have a view. What are you now going to do?” Parliament legislates and, in theory, holds Government to account, but it is the institution of Government who execute and put Acts into the parliamentary sausage machine. Putting the two together continues the deception that Parliament can effectively hold the Government to account. What we need to do is build our accountability function, not give it away to Government.

[Mr Harper]

The problem is that, if we have a petitioning system directly to Government, we then suggest to Government that they respond directly to the people who have petitioned them, completely bypassing this House. I would prefer Government to interact with the public through Parliament, keeping Members of Parliament in that conversation rather than excluding them.

[Mr Allen]

We have an e-petitioning system at the moment which is to the Government and to which the Government have to respond. What we are discussing is giving Parliament its own e-petitioning capability, so that it can engage as a partner in a debate with Government. That has to be healthier than one organisation or the other imposing its will, as happens continually in our proceedings, with Government dominating Parliament. This is a minor demonstration of the mythology and fallacy of parliamentary sovereignty, and therefore it is useful to bring it to the attention of the House.

[Mark Durkan]

Is the hon. Gentleman’s point not even more marked when one considers that the current e-petition system is widely talked about as the Downing street e-petition system for securing a debate in Parliament? When it is talked about in those terms it is as though debate in this House is absolutely controlled by Downing street, and that is bad for the reputation of this House.

[Mr Allen]

It is bad for the reputation of the House, but it is the truth. It is useful to call a spade a spade and to call a Downing street petition a Downing street or Government petition. Let us keep it like that and people will see the response they get from Government and will, through the processes of the House and its individual Members, be able to do something through the House of Commons itself. We cannot change the law for people, but we can bring issues to the attention of the Government. We need that capability to keep the Government honest and to hold them to account when many people see that as the way forward.

The fundamental question is about the separation of powers. We ought to have that, as it would be quite useful and would develop a more pluralistic view of our politics. People might not share that view and might think that we can somehow collaborate beyond merely using the platform and technology that are already there—I am perfectly happy to use that platform and technology to save the House money, as we all want that, and I am prepared to compromise on that alone—but an e-petition site for Parliament should be run by Parliament, not the agency we are meant to be keeping under control and holding to account. It is a contradiction in terms that the very people we should be holding to account will be running our system. I hope that the Procedure Committee will be very clear about that as it considers the issue. We all want to be pally and we all want to have little chats with the Leader of the House, but at the end of the day we either have our own e-petitioning system or we have not. If we have not, let us concede that and admit it clearly.

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

My only issue with my hon. Friend’s amendment is that I support the idea that a proposal should be developed by the Procedure Committee and cannot understand for the life of me why he does not submit what he has written in his amendment, much of which I agree with, to that inquiry, rather than tabling it for debate on the Floor of the House today. On that point, does he intend to press it to a vote?

[Mr Allen]

I can guarantee to my hon. Friend that I will make representations and, if I am allowed, I will give evidence to the Procedure Committee on the views held by many people in the House about the independence of the House’s institutions and agencies. I do not see Parliament as a sub-office of Government, a Government Department or an offshoot of Government. It is an independent institution that is legitimately and directly elected by the public, as are we all. The current Government and all Governments of the past cannot claim to be that.

The proposal in motion 3 smacks a little of a tidy-up job. The Government have said, “It is a little inconvenient to get all this stuff coming to No. 10 Downing street. We have to deal with it, so why don’t we push it over to the House of Commons and run the system for them? Then they can take the blame if we fail.” My hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) knows more than anybody in this House that if a petition reaches the barrier of 100,000 signatures there is an expectation, which has been deliberately inflated by Government, that it has somehow earned and deserves a debate. It is a difficult to pin down where that idea came from, but it was put out there and that is the assumption. That is why in every newsroom—in The Sun, the Daily Mail and elsewhere—the idea is to reach that barrier of 100,000 signatures on a petition to put pressure on my hon. Friend to grant a debate. There are other ways in which that pressure can be seen and relieved rather than by perverting and twisting the honourable institution that is the petitioning of this House.

[Mr Charles Walker]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Petitions cannot be a panacea for the public. Like the hon. Gentleman, I have often received a communication from one individual that has spurred me into action, so powerful has it been. That has led to my approaching Government and colleagues in the House to ask for action to be taken.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Allen]

I agree, and I shall come on to the point about how we direct people to a better way of doing what they want to do. It is risky to give people the idea that by submitting a petition to the House of Commons they are making their demands, only for them not to be met. The Leader of the House said that would be a great advantage, as it would make people think that the process represents progress and is more inclusive, and it would encourage people to use the House of Commons. On the contrary, if we allow the idea to be out there that if a petition reaches 100,000 signatures it somehow deserves a debate, which those horrible people in the House of Commons are preventing, it will lift people only to drop them back down again. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire has some experience of that, but it will be as nothing compared with the expectation that could be built up if we operate the Government’s petitions process rather than having our own based on open and honest rules that do not try to deceive people into thinking that if they write in they will get a debate.

[Natascha Engel]

Perhaps my intervention was not clear. Does my hon. Friend agree, given the content of his amendment, that how the petitioning system works should more appropriately be a matter for the Procedure Committee in considering such proposals? Will he press his amendment to a vote or will he withdraw it?

[Mr Allen]

My hon. Friend is a very powerful person in the House, but she does not yet have the ability to respond to a debate and to accept or not accept the proposals in my amendment. I shall listen carefully to the Deputy Leader of the House’s response. When he accepts most—not all—of the points in the amendment, as he no doubt will, I am sure we will be able to reach an accommodation. Somebody has to stand up and say that the House of Commons is a separate institution. The Government cannot just walk in here and set up a petition system on our behalf when we are perfectly capable of doing it ourselves. As the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) says, we have some excellent and expert people, who do not need to understand the software and the hardware to be in control of a petitioning system. We need to ensure that all those things are in place before we say that it sounds like a great idea to get together and run one petitioning system on behalf of two separate, distinct and independent bodies that are elements of our democracy.

Let me move on to the particulars of my amendment. First, on the subject of Parliament’s having its own site, let me repeat that I am happy for the technology to be shared if it means we can save a little money and can get on with what we are meant to do in Parliament. I would rather that than continuing this move towards Parliament as a theme park, where the sittings of the House get in the way of tourist trips and movies being filmed—the Chamber could have been hired out this afternoon to some Hollywood film company. If we can make a little bit of money by sharing the Government’s platform and technology and can have less of the theme park stuff, we should all be happy about that and could have a little more self-respect about being a legislature.

My second point, which was also touched on by the hon. Member for Broxbourne, concerns Members of this House and their role in the process. It should not be possible, willy-nilly, for a newsroom campaign to get a debate going in the House of Commons. “What are we going to do next week with our House of Commons, lads? Let’s get a few ideas, a few headlines, a cut-out in the newspaper and a debate next week—but on what?” As with the paper petition, the process should take place through a Member of Parliament: I have to stand up at the end of business and make a little speech to get a paper petition in the bag behind the Speaker’s Chair. I own that petition. That is the way to reinforce a representative democracy, rather than have stuff coming in, willy-nilly, from people who cannot sleep, have seen something on late-night TV at 3 am and have got up a petition to try to get a debate in the House of Commons.

I urge members of the public: “use your Member of Parliament. Convince your representative. Get them to put the subject that concerns you before the House.” To me, it is just as valid if one person contacts their Member of Parliament—I am thinking of the elderly lady who I met at the weekend who is trying to find an extra 40 quid so that she is not turfed out of her house because of the bedroom tax—as if somebody down in Wapping decides that we should have a debate on the increase in fuel duty, for example.

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman’s argument seems in part to rest on the proposition that the petitions that have reached 100,000 signatures have somehow been generated in the newsroom of a newspaper. I have the list of 29 petitions that reached 100,000. I do not know of any, from what we know of them, that started in the newsroom of a newspaper. Which of those 29 does he think started in that way?

[Mr Allen]

I have not gone through the list. I am happy to go through it and write to the right hon. Gentleman if he does not have the researchers to enable him to do that job for himself. I am saying that if we introduce a system without the safeguards that I am proposing—a quasi-Government system based in the House of Commons—it will be very easy to generate petitions and put pressure on Parliament, and to put pressure on the Backbench Business Committee, and so on, to take time that would otherwise be used for purposes for which in the past we have all used our judgment.

My judgment, returning to the lady who has to find £40 out of a very low income to remain in the house where she was born 60 years ago, is that I want to get that subject raised on the Floor of the House because I think it is very important, but some other colleagues—I alluded to the all-party parliamentary groups—for one reason or another, or as a result of one influence or another, may want a specific debate. Let us all start equally. Let us hold sacrosanct the view that the House is a place where anyone may petition, anyone may convince their Member of Parliament and anyone, ultimately, time allowing, may get a debate. We should not compromise on that.

[Mr Charles Walker]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way a second time; I will not detain him again. We must be careful to avoid promoting the idea that it is only through petitions that the House will debate matters of interest to our constituents. Whether I agree with the substance of the debates or not, we have had debates on badger culling, the spare room subsidy, Europe, immigration, and so on. Those subjects and many more have been debated on the Floor of the House. It may well be that our constituents do not like the outcome of those debates, or the decisions taken at the end of them, but actually very many debates of interest to our constituents happen anyway because we are in touch with our constituents, despite what the media would try and have them believe.

[Mr Allen]

Indeed many of those debates, and many of the 29 listed by the Leader of the House, did not arise from a petition. They arose because Members of Parliament were very interested in the subject matter, and there is a device of tagging documents to a debate, as we have done today. We have tagged three or four reports to this debate. Is there a single Member in the Chamber who knows what those reports are? They are on the Table.

[Ms Angela Eagle]

They are here in my hand.

[Mr Allen]

There are some very eminent Members, of course, who know absolutely everything, and that is why I always bow to their view. But similarly, in many of those 29 debates, although a petition was tagged to the subject, the petition was never even referred to in the debate. Those were the debates, actually, that Members got going, and petitions were tagged to them. If we get to a position where that is reversed—where, if there is an inference that if you can get to 100,000 signatures, there is an expectation, not that Government should find time, but that the agent of Government, the sub-office, Parliament, will have to look after those things—I can tell Members what happens next. It is that their time, as Back Benchers, starts to get squeezed out.

If there is a petitions committee, let us imagine being the Chair of that petitions committee. Will they just pass the petitions through? Or will they ask, “Would my hon. Friend on the Backbench Business Committee give us a little bit of time? This is so important; I have had more than 100,000 signatures and my petitions committee thinks it is really important”? Is it likely that members of the petitions committee will go to the Government? Will they pop up at business questions and will the Leader of the House say, “Absolutely; very important. I will find you a couple of hours next week”? No, they will not. They will go to our Backbench Business Committee.

I remind new Members that the Backbench Business Committee did not pop out of thin air. It was fought through against the wishes of the Labour party, fought through, it seems now, against some of the wishes of the governing parties. The Committee is a very precious thing and its time is very precious. It is not to be bandied about and traded to a petitions committee in order, really, to salve the conscience of the Government, who, if they are interested in specific issues, should be using the vast majority of the House’s time, which they own and control, to hold debates on them. We do not need to be manipulated into using valuable Backbench Business Committee time for Government debates.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

On that point, I am interested in the subject of a petitions committee and the Scottish Parliament comes to mind. Would not the best role of a petitions committee, if it were working properly, be not to fight for time from the Backbench Business Committee but to sit in public, calling Ministers of the Government in front of it to account for the problems that were brought before it by petitioners, and to insist that Ministers explain to it—the petitions committee—what was going to be done to address those problems?

[Mr Allen]

The hon. Gentleman has probably put the final nail in the coffin of a petitions committee by making it clear that Ministers should be brought before it to answer on matters that are in the Government’s, rather than Parliament’s, domain. Either that, or it may well be that the people who are members of the petitions committee will be so pliant that they will never bother to do anything like that and will just pass most of the responsibility over to the Backbench Business Committee, pretending that the job has been done, and that those petitioners have really been listened to. They do not get listened to easily. Every Member of the House knows that they have to fight for time. We have to fight for airtime. we have to campaign. We have to really demand that something that incites us as individuals gets in front of Government. We should be extremely careful about compromising that.

My final point was pre-empted by the hon. Member for Broxbourne, the Chair of the Procedure Committee. It is about gateways. I do not pretend to be an expert on these things, but I do know that when people log on and have a look at how they can progress a petition, it is really important that they are given good advice from the first moment, just as we are in the House. If a Member goes into the Table Office with an idea for a question, they will get some good advice about who to send it to and how to word it. The same standards should apply in the House to petitions. That is why each petition should be in the ownership of an individual Member. Rather than the petition starting with the words, “We, the petitioners, call upon Parliament to declare world peace”—or free beer for everyone—there should be a check, and advice to the effect: “Hang on a minute. You are the Member in charge. We need to get the words right and ensure that your petition is in order. Then you may go crazy and get 100,000 signatures if you can.” But if we leave things as vague and open as they are at the moment, we again do the public a disservice, because they will not know, any more than they do now, the difference between Government and Parliament.

As the Chair of the Procedure Committee said, people need to know what other options exist. Petitioning may not be a very effective way to proceed. It may be better to write to the local Member of Parliament and get them to ask a question or appear before a Minister or write a letter to a Minister. Unless the gateways are really clear—the parliamentary gateway being very different from the Government gateway—I am afraid we are again perpetrating that deceit upon people. It would be no better than the origins of petitioning—prostrating oneself before a mediaeval monarch in the hope that they might grant a favour. I think we can do better than that.

My hope is that if the Leader of the House or the Deputy Leader of the House respond positively, the Procedure Committee will take what is before us now and do a really great job on it. I say to the Chair of that Committee, directly across the Chamber, that the responsibilities are onerous. People have been kidded about e-petitions. It has been confusing. It has not been clear even to many Members of the House, let alone to members of the public. It is easy to misrepresent. He needs to clean this up, and his Committee has a job to do that. One of the best ways he can do that is to ensure that a separation between Government petitioning and parliamentary petitioning is clear in the report that he produces for the House. I wish him well.

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[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I, too, will concentrate on petitioning, although I may say a few words on other issues. I will start with the Bill of Rights. We have heard a lot about article 9 of the Bill of Rights, but article 5 maintains that

“it is the right of subjects to petition the King, and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal.”

The right to petition is an ancient and important one, and tends to go through this House to the King or, as now, the Queen. It is not unique to this House, which is why the Lord Privy Seal is right in his proposals for a collaboration—not a Vichyesque collaboration because we will not all become quislings, so “collaboration” is the right word—because the Queen in Parliament is the correct organisation or body to be petitioned.

The Leader of the House may be modelling himself on Edward I. During the Parliament of 1305, in the reign of Edward I, there were many petitions—450. What is so interesting is that they then began to become legislation. More Members of Parliament subscribed to the petitions coming in and they ended up becoming Bills. A complaint from Simon Le Parker is the first petition that can be identified as being listed in the statutes of the realm. I mention that because petitioning is extraordinarily important in the development of our democracy. By 1316, there was a claim that Edward II was not following the procedures of his father in taking proper notice of petitions. He duly did so and petitions were dealt with and acted upon. That is how this House gets redress of grievance from the Crown.

It is important to look at the procedure along the way. Since Parliament began to sit, constituents have come to their Members of Parliament who have then come from the counties or boroughs they represent to Westminster, or wherever Parliament was sitting, to say that something is wrong and needs to be changed. We, as Parliament, can do it through legislation, but much can be dealt with by the Crown without the need for legislation.

That is the twofold aspect of petitioning that we are rightly bringing under one e-petitioning system. It is entirely in line with our history and proper in terms of the constitutional division—the separation of powers—because there are clear and distinct roles between Parliament and the Crown, and Parliament and the Government. It has the chance of re-energising the petitioning process. I would not go as far as the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) in saying that paper petitioning is withering on the vine. It is still an important means for individual constituents to get a message to Parliament and through to the Government.

E-petitioning is hugely exciting. I heard the Leader of the House say that he was congenitally relaxed. On this occasion, and perhaps rarely, I am enormously excited by what is happening with e-petitioning because 10 million people have suddenly thought that it is worth while and in their interests to engage with the political process and to say that they feel strongly about something. The carrot that is dangled in front of them is a debate in the House of Commons. How proud we should be that 10 million people think that a debate in this place is so important and could be so transformative that it is worth their while organising and signing up to petitions.

I disagree with the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) who worries about the press becoming involved or Parliament being guided too much by what people outside think. I take the opposite view. If people want to launch campaigns to highlight important major issues, we would be a pretty funny sort of Parliament if we said that we did not want to consider them because they were not organised by an hon. Member. Indeed, I would have thought that most hon. Members, with their fine politically attuned antennae, would grasp such issues and think that if their constituents were so strongly in favour of something and 20,000 people in north-east Somerset think something is a good idea, it might be in their interests to pay attention, bring it to the House and perhaps go to the Backbench Business Committee to ask for some time.

[Mr Allen]

I wonder how many of those 10 million people feel that they have had a good shake out of the system as it currently operates. Are not many of them, if not a large majority, having signed a petition with probably nothing arising from it other than it being tagged on to another debate, reinforced in their view of a plague on all your houses and all your parties?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman thereby makes the case for bringing petitions under this House so that we can ensure that people have a proper response that they feel meet their needs.

Although they are not strictly petitions, hon. Members do receive e-mail campaigns. I find that when I reply to these, as I do—I reply individually to everybody who has sent in a missive—there is always a percentage who get in touch absolutely amazed that they have got a response. Indeed, some have completely forgotten that they ever signed up in the first place, are rather surprised to get a response, and wonder why I am writing to them out of the blue. Then, when I send them a copy of their original e-mail, they continue to be in a state of surprise. We need to give a response that shows that we are listening and doing something about the matter.

Of course, our constituents understand how this works. I should rather say my constituents; I can speak only for my own, who are the most intelligent people in the world. It is well known that the people of Somerset have more brain cells than can be found in the whole of the rest of the United Kingdom put together. The people of Somerset know these things. As you are in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will say the same for Bristol on this occasion. People understand that just because they are in favour of something, not everybody in the country will want it, and that the petition will not necessarily end up achieving what they want. Equally, though, they want to know that the matter has been taken seriously by the people who have the power to do something.

Getting e-petitioning right is a tremendously exciting opportunity for the House of Commons. It can ensure that we are back at the centre of public debate, with the public knowing what is going on. I really welcome the Government’s decision to proceed along these lines. In a spirit of generosity, the system they already have is basically being handed over to the Commons free, gratis and for nothing—which is better for us in terms of the expenditure of the House. It is then up to us, as a House, to grasp it. I agree with much of the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) as regards how we must deal with the implementation of petitioning to make sure that it is a House of Commons-owned process that is about holding the Government thoroughly to account.

Let me deal briefly with a couple of other matters—first, timetabling. My hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who is in his place, took through two constitutional Bills that I opposed at almost every turn. This gives me an opportunity to say how helpfully he always engaged with those debates, which were a model of Government ensuring that the Commons had the chance to debate things and to do so seriously. If that is what is being done by having amendments tabled earlier for Report stages, it is hugely to be welcomed. Although I disagreed with almost everything my hon. Friend said in the constitutional debates, the courtesy with which he responded was a model for Governments to follow. I am glad to have had the chance to say that properly here.

On privilege, I am pleased that the Government are not going down the legislative route. It is better that the privilege of this House is rooted in history, is not open to challenge, and is simple and straightforward, in the straightforward language that people used in the 17th century. [Laughter.] Seventeenth-century language is much more understandable than the legislative language used today. In the 17th century, people wrote clear, straightforward, simple Bills that a layman can read. We now write legislation that is completely incomprehensible unless one is a silk. It seems to me preferable that we stick to the clarity and beauty of 17th-century English rather than confusing ourselves by allowing too many draftsmen to get involved with confusing privilege, and potentially undermining it. The one thing we do not want is learned judges interfering in the procedures of this House, and avoiding legislation is therefore greatly to be welcomed.

I am, for once, at one with the Government in all that they are trying to do, and I am grateful for what they are trying to do. As the Lord Privy Seal begins to think about where he may go for the brief holiday that we have during Prorogation—perhaps to Weston-super-Mare or another suitable beach—he can go a happy man thinking how well the petitioning system will do in the next and future Sessions of Parliament.

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[Mr Allen]

No.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House supports the establishment, at the start of the next Parliament, of a collaborative e-petitions system, which enables members of the public to petition the House of Commons and press for action from Government; and calls on the Procedure Committee to work with the Government and other interested parties on the development of detailed proposals.



Parliamentary Privilege

Resolved,

That, in light of the recommendations contained in paragraphs 226 and 227 of the report of the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, HC 100, this House resolves that legislation creating individual rights which could impinge on the activities of the House should in future contain express provision to this effect.—(Mr Lansley.)

Programming

Resolved,

That this House approves the recommendation of the Procedure Committee in its Sixth Report of 2013-14, Programming: proposal for a trial of new arrangements for the tabling of amendments to bills at report stage, HC 1220, that a trial should take place for the course of the 2014-15 Session of a three day deadline for the tabling of amendments and new clauses/schedules at report stage of all programmed bills.—(Mr Charles Walker.)

Calling of Amendments at the end of Debate (Amendments to Standing Orders)

Ordered,

That Standing Order No. 33 (Calling of amendments at the end of debate) shall be repealed and the following Standing Order made:

‘Amendments to address in answer to the Queen’s Speech

(1) In respect of a motion for an address in answer to Her Majesty’s Speech, the Speaker may select up to four amendments of which notice has been given.

(2) No amendment may be selected before the penultimate day of the debate on such a motion.

(3) If, on the last day on which such a motion is debated in the House, an amendment to it proposed by the Leader of the Opposition shall have been disposed of at or after the expiration of the time for opposed business, any further amendments selected by the Speaker may thereupon be moved, and the question thereon shall be put forthwith.’.—(Mr Lansley.)