Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [Lords]

Debate between Graham Allen and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Monday 7th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I do not think the Prime Minister had any intention of making me the Secretary of State for Health, but now that he has heard from the hon. Gentleman, I am sure that he will not.

We will return to the legitimacy of these changes if there are no referendums. Although the Government might well push the provisions through and order these mayors to be appointed, if there is not that validation through referendums the component parts of the super-areas will chafe. They will say, “We are paying taxes to pay for the centre of a city to which we have no real link. We would rather be run from Whitehall than by these funny people in a town hall with whom we have no real link.” The referendum lock follows the grain of the developing referendum theory of government in this country and will ensure that the process is more successful in the long run. In opposing the amendment, the Government are probably being short-termist.

I promised the hon. Member for Glasgow Central that I would come on to the amendment about first past the post and why I have put my name to it. I am very grateful that my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove proposed it, and had he not done so I would have tabled my own amendment. I believe in first past the post as the fairest electoral system. I think that people get what they vote for rather than what they do not vote for. They get what they most like, not what they least dislike. The fundamental problem with proportional systems is that nobody gets what they want. Everybody gets something else, because the votes go off in all sorts of different directions.

[Mr Graham Allen]

Does the hon. Gentleman feel that the 50% of people in Scotland who voted for non-separatist parties got what they thought they were getting when they received only three Members of Parliament to represent them whereas the other 50% got 56?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman makes my point for me. They got exactly what they wanted. They got a referendum that decided that they would remain part of the United Kingdom and then they voted for champions to come to this place and represent them constituency by constituency. That is how first past the post works. I wish that they had all voted Conservative; it is a great shame that they did not. The system worked effectively to represent what most people in Scotland wanted. Sadly, most people in Scotland did not want the Conservatives to have 56 MPs. How that aberration could have come about, I do not know, and I am sure that in time it will change.

Cities and Local Government Devolution [Lords] Bill

Debate between Graham Allen and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Allen]

I do, but I gently suggest that the hon. Lady does not push me too far on that point, because she will push me into talking about what the SNP has done to local government in Scotland. One of my new clauses, which may go some way to meeting her point, would entrench the rights of authorities below local councils—neighbourhood, community and parish councils—so that they too can have clear rights.

The hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) has left the Chamber, but people do get confused if there are lots of different tiers and nobody quite knows who does what. If the parish council looks after grass verges, everybody gets to know that and those who are interested can ask questions at that level. If the electrification of the midlands main line or the refurbishment of the M1 motorway is the responsibility of the combined authority for Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Derby, people will get to understand that mechanism. We could spend a lot of time talking about combined authorities. Let us let evolution take place and let us make sure, as part of that evolution, that, if we manage to secure this immense gain and step forward of going from Whitehall to town hall, we also go to the level below the town hall.

Entrenchment sounds like a very technical, dry constitutional question, but it is what just about every other country has. Just in case we ever got an unpleasant or tyrannical central Government of any political party, a local area would have justiciable rights to say, “I’m sorry. You cannot do that. You cannot impose that on us. We are an independent unit, with just as many rights as central Government.” Those rights might include the right to raise its own money, issue bonds or whatever it may ultimately be during the next five or 10 years as we catch up with the rest of Europe. Such entrenchment cannot be obtained, however, even by a Minister as benign as this one or his colleague the Secretary of State, because it is sometimes required to be in writing and to be defended.

The object of my new clause 1 is to defend the progress that the Minister and the Secretary of State are trying to make so that there cannot be changes unless there is consent. There are many ways of doing that. One way is to have a super-majority in the House. If someone came along and tried to terminate the life of a Parliament, just at the whim of the Executive, it could not now be done because there has to be a super-majority. Perhaps local government is as important as the question of how long the life of a Parliament is. Another way would be to have a check and balance, as it were, perhaps with local government itself—with the LGA, or any other institutional arrangement—being able to say, “No. We’re not yet prepared to relinquish that power, so we stand where we are.” It could also be defended behind the Parliament Act 1911, which says that the second Chamber shall not stick its nose into any affairs other than—this is the only one at the moment—five-year Parliaments. We could add that it shall also defend the rights of local government and its independence from the centre. Putting such constitutional or democratic blocks in the way of an erosion of some of the very good work that the Government are doing in the Bill is very important in my opinion. I hope that that will be addressed, if not only this occasion, then in a future Bill.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The whole concept of entrenchment in legislation is very interesting, but it is very difficult without a written constitution. Would the hon. Gentleman like to move to a written constitution to be able to entrench such powers?

[Mr Allen]

I would jump at the possibility of moving to a written constitution, because that would make it knowledge we could share with every schoolboy and schoolgirl, rather than having parliamentary archaeologists, such as the hon. Gentleman, tell us the right interpretation of a particular view. We could, however, have a halfway house; sadly, it does not necessarily require a written constitution. There are the means of a super-majority, a self-denying ordinance, a lock by an external body—in the case of local government, I have suggested it could be the LGA—or the 1911 Act. It is absolutely possible: every other western democracy has done it, and there is nothing in the parliamentary water that robs us of the wit to do something comparable.

I tabled new clause 13 on double devolution. The Minister has been very generous about considering how we can safeguard devolution pressed down below town halls to the localities. The new clause suggests that the Government should make a regular statement to talk through and enable Parliament to debate what happens when powers are given to town halls and to ask whether the powers get down to the people who really need them. There may be many powers that appropriately stop with the town hall or the combined authority. Equally, however, many others would be administered much better at a lower level. It is not about doing that for everything or forcing people into it, but about doing only what is appropriate. That is the way to follow this through and to continue the debate. This is not about trying to prevent the Government from doing what they are doing, but to facilitate the next stage.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) talked about the need for public consultation and involving the public. It is absolutely imperative to take the public with us on this journey. It should not be seen just as a technical exercise. We should involve them by saying, “Look, we’ve had our devolution for a year or so. Let’s have a little look at what we’ve managed to do so far. What do people outside Government or Parliament think we could do better?” It would be very healthy to have such dialogue, promoted by the Government through a statement to the House or to the general public, and it would help us to move to the next stage of the evolution of devolution, particularly in England.

The Minister referred courteously to my new clause 18, so I will not go over the ground again in relation to parliamentary oversight. Let me, however, mention the other part of the new clause, which is about having an independent body to look at how devolution is going. This is comparable to my point about double devolution. However, they constitute it, the Government could create an arm’s length authority to say, “There are a lot of problems around x, or whatever it may be.” My hon. Friend mentioned cross-border difficulties, where one bit of territory is contested by more than one combined authority or metro mayor. Other colleagues spoke about powers being in one place, but not being relevant to another part of an authority. Many others have spoken about mayoralty.

An independent body—without the vested interests we sometimes have to have in Parliament, sadly—should look at this and say, “Well done, the Government. You’ve got us to first base, but if you want to get to second base, we think you should have a look at these things.” Again, that is not about binding Parliament or telling Ministers what to do, but about allowing ventilation of what is, for us, the very novel concept of devolution and the question of how it can work better.

I have already put a number of other points on the record. Like the Minister, I have spoken to Core Cities, Key Cities, the New Local Government Network and the National Association of Local Councils. They have all raised with me concepts, as well as detailed amendments, about where this ought to go, but I will not go through them. I will not detain the Committee much longer, suffice it to say that as well as getting this Bill through the House, we must look at where we want to be in 2020 and take steps to open a dialogue so that we can get to where we all want to go. We want to ensure that people control much more of their own affairs not only at United Kingdom level, but at national level, at combined authority devolved level and at the grassroots—on the ground in the localities. I hope that the Minister will take my remarks in the spirit in which they are intended and continue such a dialogue over the coming years.

House of Commons Business

Debate between Graham Allen and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Thursday 8th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[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.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Graham Allen and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Monday 13th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Allen]

Indeed. One of the small matters of dispute that I have had with the hon. Gentleman over the years has been that somehow he feels that we can recreate some golden parliamentary age. This place is owned by the Executive and the alternative Executive; the hon. Gentleman, more than anybody, should know that. If he does not understand that, he falls into the same trap as the Clerk, who talked about the

“House’s mastery of its own proceedings”.

That is a myth and a self-deception. We must confront that issue. We imagine that somehow there are 650 individuals here creating our own rules, but the rules are created by the Executive.

The Bill seeks to put into law provisions for a fixed-term Parliament, rather than putting them only in Standing Orders, which can be changed at a moment’s notice. The 10 o’clock rule is suspended on a daily basis and Standing Orders are cast aside and suspended on a regular basis. To pretend that there is an atomised Parliament with 650 Members all exercising their consciences is a self-deception out of which, I hope, hon. Members throughout the House will educate themselves. In that way, we can take back some control for the House and strengthen Parliament, and people can elect us understanding that the House of Commons—the legislature —is different from the Executive, and should have its own independence and powers.

The hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) led me down the road of the rebalancing of powers between the legislature and the Executive, and I agree with the Deputy Prime Minister that this, for once, is the Executive actually giving away a power, for whatever reason. We can make our own judgments about the reason, but I welcome the change, because it helps to rebalance the power between the Executive and the legislature. If we seize this moment, we could use it to help to strengthen this institution rather than, as the hon. Member for Stone mentioned, just following the Whips. We could use this precedent to make sure that we can build up and strengthen our Parliament.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman says that the Bill could strengthen the standing of Parliament. However, as I understand it, the Bill does not prevent the Government from putting down a motion of no confidence in themselves and therefore, if they had a majority, getting an election whenever they wanted one. That is the ineffectiveness of the drafting of the Bill.

[Mr Allen]

There are so many flaws in the Bill’s drafting. The Committee, on the hon. Gentleman’s behalf, has done as good a job as it can in pointing them out. I hope that all of them will be put right during the Committee stage, as they could be put right if we were to have a special Public Bill Committee or a proper pre-legislative process. However, that is currently not the case. The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point, and one that should be addressed by the Government as the Bill proceeds.

The other thing about a fixed-term Parliament is predictability and continuity. Instead of permanent politics-as-entertainment, in which there is speculation about impending general elections and people feed tittle-tattle and gossip to raise or lower the political temperature, we will know that we can get on with serious business while knowing the date of the next general election and putting such considerations aside. That is something of great importance, and would lead to us as parliamentarians being able to seize greater control of what we do in this place on a number of issues, rather than being engaged, even at arm’s length, in speculation about when an election will take place.