Nomination of Members to Committees

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I had not intended to speak in the debate, but I was so appalled by the remarks of the Leader of the House that I felt that I had to. I feel that the Leader of the House has not understood her role. Her job is not to represent the Government to the House but to represent the House in the Government. She spoke about her constitutional responsibilities, but I should have thought that her constitutional responsibilities would include defending parliamentary democracy, which this motion patently does not do.

Government Members are not being logical. They say that the Opposition are not, but the loss of logic is on their side. If the Leader of the House was right to say that she has a majority, she would not need to change the rules of the game. It is because she does not have a majority that she needs to do so. Government Members are talking as though we are in a world of two-party politics, but we are not any longer. Nobody is saying that the Members of the other parties—the SNP, the Liberal Democrats, the DUP or Plaid—should not have seats on Committees. Under the formula interpreted by the Clerks, they will get their fair share of the seats. They will be represented properly. This is not just a Labour-Tory game, and the Leader of the House does not seem to have taken that into account.

Furthermore, the point made by the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) is incomplete in the extreme. He was in the House yesterday and was present during all the debates about the Delegated Legislation Committees. He knows as well as we do that when statutory instruments are produced and go to Committees upstairs, or when we use the negative procedure, they do not come back to the House. He knows that perfectly well. He also knows that schedule 7 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, which we were debating yesterday, proposes to put whole stacks of delegated legislation through those Committees.

Every single Member who has spoken and mentioned Brexit has revealed that that is the Government’s game plan. They have become so obsessed with getting a hard Brexit—not the Brexit that the British people voted for, but a hard Brexit—that they are proposing to suspend the normal rules of this House. I am very disappointed that a number of hon. Gentlemen—

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

rose—

[Helen Goodman]

The right hon. Gentleman promised to let me intervene and then refused, so I do not feel I need to give way to him.

Just to make another point about the remarks made by the right hon. Member for West Dorset, he has been saying that it does not matter if we do not agree with all the clauses in the Bill—if we agree with the principle of the Bill, we should vote for it. That would be like a person going into a restaurant and saying, “I didn’t like the soup, and I didn’t like the beef, and I didn’t like the apple pie, but I thought it was a great meal.” The right hon. Gentleman seems to be making completely absurd speeches these days. Anyway, the central point is that the Government’s game has been revealed by what has been said. It is all about getting a hard Brexit through. It is not about the consensus building that the Secretary of State for Brexit has been promising us for the past 15 months. The tail is wagging the dog in the Conservative party. I am sorry to tell Conservative Members that they are not taking the country with them on this. The general public are quite clear that this motion is about packing Committees. We have all had endless letters from our constituents, and I am not going to vote for the motion tonight.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bone]

Certainly. Of course.

As I understand it, the Opposition are saying that when a Bill goes into Committee, the Members on the Committee always vote in the way the party Whips tell them to. That is just not the case. I have seen Government Members in Bill Committees who are absolutely opposed to something the Government are proposing because it is not right. That is what the Committee system is about. It is about improving Bills. I am reluctant to say that I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) on this issue, but he is quite correct. The check and balance is the Report stage. If, as the Opposition claim, they have the majority in this House, they will be able to reverse anything that is passed in Committee.

[Helen Goodman]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Bone]

No. I am taking a leaf out of the shadow Leader of the House’s book.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lucy Frazer]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. In every sitting, whether in the Chamber, the other place or in Committee, it is vital that there is scrutiny. The hon. Gentleman, however, is suggesting that Members in Committee do not scrutinise when they are on one side or the other. He will know, as I do, that that is simply incorrect. There is scrutiny at every stage of the parliamentary process.

I now come to the key point. It is right that this motion is passed, because the Conservative party is the single largest party. It was elected with 13 million votes. It has 56 more seats than the next largest party. As Labour argued in 1976, it is simply inappropriate to lump together all the Opposition parties and treat them as one party when they have different interests and perspectives. We cannot say, when we lump them all together, that they hold the balance of power—they simply do not.

[Helen Goodman]

The logic of the hon. and learned Lady’s position is that were the Conservative party to have 251 seats and the Labour party 250, with the other seats held by a variety of parties, it would still be right for the Conservative party to have a majority on every Committee. That is the logic of her argument. Is that what she is saying?

[Lucy Frazer]

What I am saying is that we need to assess the situation. At the moment the Conservatives have a significant majority. In fact, we have more seats than the Labour Government had in 1976 when they proposed such a measure.

As I said, the country voted in a referendum. The Labour party and this Government committed in their manifestos to deliver Brexit. We now need to do so. We need to deliver the democratic decision of the British people, and we need to do so in a way that is practical and expedient, while preserving the ability to scrutinise and debate. The motion will achieve that. As the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) has said, at the general election three months ago, the Labour party said it would implement its manifesto. It needs to do so, and to stop putting obstacles in the way of respecting the wishes of the British people.