Commons Financial Privilege

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

From talking to colleagues around the building, I know that House of Lords reform has returned very much to the centre stage, but we face big challenges in this country and have important legislation to get through. I want to deal first with challenges in health, education, environmental matters, enterprise and the economy, but there is no doubt that reform will now be discussed much more widely in the House.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

The Leader of the House has explained why the measures were not in a Finance Bill. He seems to be confused: he seems to believe that the big bill attached to tax credits makes them a finance measure. If we follow his logic, no Bill that involves spending could go to the other place, be it on legal aid or HS2.

[Chris Grayling]

Let us be clear to the House—this is a very simple matter—that tax credits are officially categorised as a benefits matter and not a tax matter. If one puts a change to tax credits into a Finance Bill, that Bill will not necessarily be certified as a money Bill. That is the state of play and the reality of what we are dealing with. That is why the tax credits measures were not in a Finance Bill.

Standing Orders (Public Business)

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hanson]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

The point I am making is that my constituents depend on services that are based in England and they pay taxes to the Exchequer that also funds services in Belfast. The key issue is that I, as the MP representing my constituents, should have the right to walk through that door and speak on equal terms with Scottish Members, English Members, Welsh Members and indeed Northern Ireland Members.

Under the proposals before us, the Speaker will be required to certify a Bill. He will do so in a way that will make it impossible for me to speak in Committee because the Bill could be

“within the legislative competence of the National Assembly for Wales”.

Health is a Welsh Assembly competence, but my constituents use and depend on English health services, one third of my constituents were born in England and hospital maternity services are there for them. Am I to have that role no longer in this House? Am I supposed to be a second-class citizen? As I suggested in my intervention, Lord Thomas of Gresford, who has fought four elections in or near my constituency, lost every one and now sits in the other place, will have the same right as every Member—apart from myself and Scottish and Northern Ireland MPs—to speak on those matters. Lord Roberts of Llandudno, who has lost five elections in our area will have the same right to speak as other Members, but not me. I have been sent here six times by my constituents, and not once have I been asked to distinguish between the equality of Members of Parliament in this House.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I represent an English seat, and, like my right hon. Friend, I can tell the House that none of my constituents has ever raised this issue with me on the doorstep, or said that they wanted any change. My right hon. Friend and other Members have drawn attention to the wide-ranging and significant constitutional implications of this measure. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is an utter disgrace that it is being considered here for only three and a half hours, with no pre-legislative scrutiny and no constitutional consideration?

--- Later in debate ---

[Kirsty Blackman]

I appreciate that intervention and will come on to a similar point shortly.

[Helen Goodman]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Kirsty Blackman]

Not right now.

I want to talk about the only good thing that has come out of the English votes for English laws process: the fact that the estimates process has been highlighted. It has been brought to the front and centre, and I understand that the Procedure Committee is going to be looking at how the estimates process works. That is fantastic; I am looking forward to hearing Treasury representatives appearing before various Committees in this House and explaining how it will make the estimates process more transparent and allow people to be involved in setting the budget, rather than keeping it hidden in the background. That will be excellent for the democracy of this House, and is the only good thing to come out of this.

There is a complete lack of understanding on the Government Benches about the devolution settlement and process for Scotland and how it works. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) said, there are powers that are reserved and the rest of the powers are decided by the Scottish Parliament. That is quite different from what is being decided here now.

The other thing that is not understood—or is being wilfully misunderstood, perhaps—by those on the Government Benches is the way funding works in the UK. This place decides how much money goes to Scotland.

[Kirsty Blackman]

I absolutely agree. This is more evidence that the Conservative party is misunderstanding the way the funding settlement works. We cannot describe this as devolution for England. What will happen is that the English MPs will have discussions in Committee and will have a veto over things that have an effect on the Scottish finances. That is how this devolution works. If the Conservatives decide to restructure the way the finances in this place work—rather than just going to a full English Parliament, which we would support—and have English MPs take decisions on things that do not have a financial impact on Scotland, I am absolutely on board with that. I think that is a fantastic idea. In fact I would like to see a full federal system or independence for Scotland.

I do not understand what the Leader of the House is trying to do with this measure. It was put into the Conservatives’ manifesto, they won the election and now they do not know how to proceed. They are stuck with the proposal because it was in the manifesto and they have to support it. The Leader of the House has stood before various Committees of this House and before this House today and tried to say to the Scottish MPs, “This is a minor thing; this is a really small thing”, but he is trying to say to his own Back-Bench MPs, “This is a really big thing; this is going to solve all our problems.” That does not make sense; the two things cannot be joined together. It is either one thing or the other.

[Helen Goodman]

Given that this debate is only three and a half hours long and is of such significance, I wonder why the Leader of the House cannot even sit through it.

[Kirsty Blackman]

I urge the House not to take this step at all, but in the event that it does, Standing Orders are not the way to go. If the Government are going to take such a step, they need a proper process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Reynolds]

My hon. Friend makes a reasonable point, and it is one that Conservative Members need to hear. Having listened to the speeches so far, I wonder how many Conservative MPs spent a substantial amount of time in Scotland during the referendum campaign. They seem to have a cavalier attitude to these issues.

We are in a constitutional mess at the moment—there is no doubt about that—but the worst thing we could do would be to make that mess even worse by adopting ill-thought-through proposals that have not been properly considered and that would probably create an even bigger problem. There are many complicated issues that need to be considered. First, the proposals lack clarity. They are not easy to understand, and I can envisage a situation in which, even after a vote, we will not really know what has happened until we get the figures through.

Furthermore, the proposals will create two tiers of MPs, and it is pointless to pretend otherwise. We also need to consider the situations in Wales and in Scotland. I wonder how many Conservative MPs really appreciate just how slender a thread the Union is hanging by. We must also consider the role of the Lords and the question of English devolution to areas such as mine in Greater Manchester. Then there is the question of an English Parliament. Should this place be the English Parliament on some days but not on others? There is also the question of a possible federation in the UK.

Most of all, we need to consider the voting system for this place. The Labour party has got itself into a difficult position on that. We look at the electoral geography and we wonder how we can achieve an equitable solution that would give us the chance of a Labour Government now and again. The situation will get even worse if the newly gerrymandered constituencies are brought into being.

A change of this sort must be achieved through consensus and by convention. That is how we have done everything under our unwritten constitution in the past. I am afraid that to go down this route with such an obvious partisan advantage for one party, when only that party supports the change, is reckless and cavalier.

[Helen Goodman]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent case and pointing out all the complications. Does he not agree that using this device of Standing Orders, which means that the other place has no possibility of discussing and voting on it, and giving us only an afternoon’s debate is an utter disgrace? Does he not think that it amounts to a coup?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I think that it is a disgrace, and I think that any fair-minded Conservative MP would say that.

Let me pose this question: by what measure can the new Standing Orders be revoked? We can clearly say that this House would have no authority to revoke the Scottish Parliament unless we followed a similar procedure to the one by which it was created. A referendum created the Scottish Parliament. I believe that we would at the very least need to have a referendum to decide whether it should cease to exist.

What is the process by which these Standing Orders could be changed? For instance, could a simple majority of the whole House, including Scottish and Welsh MPs, revoke the Standing Orders to get a result? Conservative MPs are nodding their heads. Could they not see that such an event might inadvertently trigger a constitutional crisis the like of which we have not seen for 100 years? These things have to be thought through, and there must be support and consensus for them. Such a process can be hard and slow, but look how long it took to get the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly. That is the kind of process that needs to be followed.

Frankly, what we are doing today, with a debate of only three and a half hours, is not good enough. As someone who is genuinely and honestly sympathetic to the cause of needing to look again at how we do these things in the House and, frankly, who is fairly convinced by the core argument behind it, I cannot in any way vote for the motion. It is imperative for Conservative MPs to understand that they are risking the integrity of this country. Quite frankly, I am astonished at the recklessness they are showing today.

[Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con)]

Today’s debate is not about devolving power to England or about reclassifying some MPs; it is about restoring the balance to give England a strong voice again on English matters, and in turn to strengthen the Union. For too long, we have suffered from a halfway attempt at devolution. We must rectify that, especially as we are honouring the promises we made to deliver the Smith commission report and to devolve greater powers down to all parts of the United Kingdom.

[Helen Goodman]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

I hope it is a genuine point of order.

[Helen Goodman]

I seek your guidance, Mr Speaker. Obviously, the process being followed this afternoon is highly controversial. The hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) referred to something called “the Chequers meeting”. Most Opposition Members do not know what that was or whether it was a formal part of the process. I seek your guidance on how we might find out what the Chequers process was?

[Mr Speaker]

The answer is by persistent questioning of those who might be in the know, among whose number the Chair is not included.

English Votes on English Laws

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

There are two parts to the answer. The first is that in the referendum last year the Scottish people voted to protect the Union. At the same time, we offered them a raft of additional powers for the Scottish Parliament that will enable it to take a far broader range of decisions than it could in the past. That is the difference. If we are to make that change, we must in my view address the issues raised by constituents in England who ask, “What about us?”

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Does the Leader of the House not understand from this very intense debate that what he is doing is ill-prepared? If we had proper legislation, we could have pre-legislative scrutiny, consult the public and get academic experts in, but he is denying the House a full look at all the implications.

[Chris Grayling]

Let me make this clear for the hon. Lady. Will she explain, therefore, why last year when my predecessor invited members of her party to take part in the discussions about constitutional reform, they declined? I will not take any lessons from Labour Members about why this has all come late to them. When we published the proposals six months ago, we invited them to take part, and they ignored us. Do you know, Mr Speaker, the now acting leader of the Labour party did not even bother to respond to the letter? I will not take any lessons from them about this.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Walker]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. The Committee will take a close interest in these changes, if they are implemented by the House next week—that is my guarantee to the Chamber.

The changes, if adopted, will insert up to four extra stages after Report. It is important that the Leader of the House identifies in the near future where this time will come from. We cannot have the Report stage being pared back. If anything, there is an enormous appetite in the House for its being extended to provide greater scrutiny, so we would be concerned if no additional time was provided for the extra stages.

[Helen Goodman]

Does the hon. Gentleman not find it the tiniest bit ironic that when the Procedure Committee asked the previous Leader of the House for extra time on Report, it was turned down, but that now, all of a sudden, extra time and extra possibilities seem quite feasible?

[Mr Walker]

I hope that extra time is indeed feasible. That is what I am asking for. It would be disastrous for the House and its ability to scrutinise and amend Bills if Report were truncated to take account of these new stages. Indeed, we might have to accept that the legislative process attached to certain Bills will become longer. Something will have to give. Either we will have to spend more time scrutinising fewer Bills, or we will have to extend the parliamentary day. More time will have to be found in the parliamentary week, or we will have to consider having fewer Bills.

Business of the House

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Thursday 11th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I take the issue very seriously. It is disturbing for all of us that the number of young male suicides has risen to a level not seen in a generation in this country. We need to get to grips with the problem. I am pleased that, in the last Budget before the general election, the Chancellor said he would make additional funding available for mental health work in the national health service. I commend all those who are working in my hon. Friend’s constituency and elsewhere both to raise awareness and to find ways to tackle the problem, which I know will come before the House regularly. I suspect there will be cross-party support for a debate in one of the Backbench Business Committee slots.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Channel 4 is a Government-owned company. This week, the chief executive’s pay was increased to £855,000. Could we use next Thursday to debate excessive pay at Channel 4 and how it can be brought under control?

[Chris Grayling]

Responsibility is paramount in top pay awards. There are times when it is necessary to pay a substantial sum to get the right person, but many of us in the House will share the hon. Lady’s concerns that organisations such as Channel 4 need to get top pay awards right, and need to be very careful about how they approach them. Next Thursday, we will debate the European Union Referendum Bill, so that might not be the best day to slot in a debate on top pay awards, but those standing for the chairmanship of the Backbench Business Committee will have heard her. Perhaps they will want to address top pay awards more broadly, and not simply in relation to the circumstance she mentions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Vaizey]

As I have already said, I think that the programme has been successful. We have passed more than 2.5 million homes. By the end of 2015 we should have 90% superfast broadband coverage in the UK, which compares well with almost every other country, and puts us at the top of the tree of the big five in Europe.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Hon. Members are right; this is a problem. As I recall, there was a big underspend—£75 million—on the super-connected cities programme. Would the Minister like to reallocate that to speed up broadband roll-out? I offer him this idea free, gratis and for nothing.

[Mr Vaizey]

I am extremely pleased to have a free, gratis and for nothing suggestion from the second candidate for the chairmanship of the Public Accounts Committee who has participated in questions this morning. I suspect that whoever wins that chairmanship will want to investigate broadband and will take note that the super-connected cities vouchers scheme has now taken off like a rocket, with 24,000 businesses now benefiting. In fact, we are going to spend the money by the end of this year.

Procedure of the House

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I am talking about the programming of Bills, but I shall come on to the secret ballot issue in a moment.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

As the Leader of the House will recall, the purpose of changing the arrangements for timetabling amendments was to facilitate debate on non-Government amendments in order to democratise the Report stage and consideration of Lords amendments. Will he explain why he is continuing with only one part of the experiment, and—if I may say so—not going all the way to facilitate proper consideration on Report?

[Mr Hague]

We have generally had a great number of days for Report, and we worked closely with the Opposition on that in the last Parliament. We are implementing the recommendations of the Procedure Committee—the part that the Committee recommended should be implemented before the end of the Parliament, which is today. That does not exclude further changes in the new Parliament, but if the motion is agreed to we will implement the urgent recommendation of the Procedure Committee. The Committee also recommended that the deadline be extended to cover amendments in Committee of the whole House for all Bills, and at Report for unprogrammed Bills. Those are further improvements to the procedures.

Devolution (Scotland Referendum)

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I will give way a couple more times, first to the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) and then to my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith).

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

We share a constituency boundary and the Leader of the House knows, as I do, that our constituents feel that too many decisions are London-centred. They want more power closer to them. Is not the problem with English votes for English laws that it changes the job description of Members in this House, but does not actually take power nearer to people?

[Mr Hague]

These issues are not mutually exclusive. It is entirely possible to believe that there should be greater autonomy at the local level, including for the hon. Lady’s constituents and mine. However, if she is talking, as she did at the beginning of her intervention, about what people feel, I think she will have to acknowledge that they also feel, whether it be in Yorkshire or County Durham, that Scottish Members should no longer be voting on matters that have been devolved to Scotland. That is the local opinion.

Deregulation Bill

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Monday 23rd June 2014 Commons Chamber

TV licensing: duty to review sanctions

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I beg to move amendment 62, page 40, line 13, at end insert—

‘(3) The Secretary of State must lay the terms of reference of a review under subsection (1) before each House of Parliament.”

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Government amendments 14 and 15.

Amendment 63, in clause 55, page 41, line 26, at end insert—

‘(14) The power conferred by subsection (1) may not be exercised until after the BBC’s Royal Charter has next been reviewed.”

Government amendments 20 and 22.

[Helen Goodman]

I want to speak to the amendments in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), as well as to the Government amendments.

Clause 54 puts a duty on the Secretary of State to review the sanctions on those who own a television but fail to pay the licence fee. Our amendment would require the Secretary of State to lay the review’s terms of reference before both Houses. Clause 55 gives the Secretary of State a power to decriminalise sanctions on those who fail to pay the licence fee. Our amendment would prevent this power from being used before the completion of the next review of the BBC’s royal charter.

The BBC is a universal service, and the licence fee is a universal payment for anyone with a television. The licence fee is not a tax; it is a guarantee of the BBC’s independence. The BBC is the most trusted source of news in the United Kingdom, with 58% of people rating it as their most trusted news source.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the BBC is trusted not just in Britain but across the world, and when other broadcasting services are compared to it, they take it as flattery or a compliment?

[Helen Goodman]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The BBC is now one of the great British brands and it exports across the world.

In the evolution of British broadcasting, the licence fee has gained broad support. Nearly everyone in the UK uses the BBC each week—it has 97% reach—which helps to explain why support for the licence fee is at 53%, up from only 31% in 2004, and is ahead of the 17% support for subscriptions and the 26% support for advertising. It is the top choice for funding the BBC across all ages and all socio-economic groups, whether people are in Freeview, Sky or Virgin households.

Not just the public but other broadcasters appreciate the licence fee, since they have built their business models using finance from advertising, sponsorship and subscription on the assumption that the BBC will not enter those markets and that, as a result, the size of those markets will be fairly stable. Labour believes that the licence fee is the best funding model.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I apologise for intervening again so quickly, but I want to reinforce my hon. Friend’s point. The fact is that we have quality television across the piece in Britain because of the BBC. If it were not for the BBC, standards might drop severely.

[Helen Goodman]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. No one wants people to go to prison for non-payment of the licence fee. Last year, 165,000 people failed to pay, and 51 were jailed for non-payment of the associated fines, even though people can pay by instalment. Clearly, we need some sanctions to ensure payment. The question is whether the current sanctions are the right ones. That is why we have agreed to a review of the sanctions.

Our amendment 62 would require the Secretary of State to lay the review’s terms of reference before Parliament, because we want a proper, analytical and unbiased review. I wrote to the Solicitor-General’s colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), who has responsibility for communications, about this matter on 7 April.

Such a review should cover the impact of a change on the level of licence fee evasion. It would be helpful to have historical data on evasion rates. According to the TV licensing database, the statistics on the socio-economic background of unlicensed properties show that 38% are ABs, 29% are C1s, 13% are C2s, 8% are Ds and 11.5% are Es. Those figures are broadly in line with the socio-economic background of UK properties as a whole. That does not translate to the socio-economic status of those prosecuted or imprisoned for non-payment of the licence fee, but it indicates that there is higher evasion among better-off households.

The review should cover the impact on the BBC’s finances. Without that information, we will not know the full impact of evasion. Estimates suggest that a 1% increase in non-payment might lead to a £35 million loss to the BBC. It has said:

“If Licence Fee evasion were to double to around 10%, the BBC would have an estimated…£200 million less per annum for content and services—equivalent to the combined budget of BBC4 and our two children’s channels, CBeebies and CBBC, for example. Due to low rates of evasion at present, an additional £6.7m was available to spend on BBC content in 2012/13.”

Obviously, if evasion went up, such investment would no longer be possible.

The review needs to look at the impact of new technology and the possibility of ending the BBC’s universal offer. Currently, the BBC cannot switch off the signal, so what would happen if it could?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Solicitor-General]

We have had a short but lively debate, and I would like to put it on record that no Government Member said that the BBC was not a fantastic institution, or anything of that sort. Our debate was not about the licence fee, although the charter review is coming up, and that will have a process of its own; it was about enforcement.

My hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen)—I pay tribute to the way he put his case—made the point that there are many poor and vulnerable people who struggle with the licence fee, and they can be criminalised and even sent to prison for failure to pay it. He clearly felt concerned about them, and made his case in that way. It was not developed as some kind of veiled attack on the BBC. I think it right to look at decriminalisation. Even the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) seemed to accept that at one point, and he even seemed to accept that it would be right to have a review of the sort proposed by the Government. Again, I do not see much cross-party disagreement there.

Clearly, the Government will not take up the invitation of the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) and say what the outcome of the review and the penalties will be—something I thought she said. She asks why the Government are unwilling to set the penalties now; the answer is that we have not yet had the review. Whether one particular body will have the duty of setting the variable fees is another issue for the review; we want a proper review that will look into all aspects of the issue. As to what analysis has been done of the potential impacts—positive and negative—of switching to a civil rather than a criminal enforcement, or of having the option of both, we are having a review precisely to determine that. The whole point is that we do not want to prejudge the review.

[Helen Goodman]

My question was not why the Government will not decide the penalties at this juncture—I completely accept what the Solicitor-General said about that—but why the Government were offloading the task of setting the penalties on to another body.

[The Solicitor-General]

There will clearly need to be a mechanism to effect the change; someone will have to decide what the variable penalties should be, and I shall come on to that in a moment. I do not think it right, however, to prejudge who or which body should do the setting. The hon. Lady suggested one particular body, but we are happy to let the review look into these issues and come up with its thoughts on what sort of regime should or should not be approved.

The amendments are designed to achieve two objectives. Under amendment 62,

“The Secretary of State must lay the terms of reference of a review”

of the TV licensing enforcement regime

“before each House of Parliament.”

Those would be key papers for the review, and there would be others. What normally happens, and what we propose, is that those papers are deposited in the Libraries of both Houses. It would be unusual to lay them before the House. That would be the normal and best way forward, and it would achieve the same effect as the amendment—that is, it would ensure that the House of Commons was fully aware of the details.

Amendment 63 looks to ensure that the power to decriminalise the failure to have a TV licence via secondary legislation, either by replacing the criminal regime with a civil regime, or by enabling the imposition of civil penalties for such offences, would not be exercised until after the conclusion of the charter process. As previously mentioned, this power would need to be exercised in the light of the review’s findings, and considering the full impacts, costs and benefits to licence payers, to the court system—where, as the hon. Lady said, changes are being made—and to businesses of any changes to the enforcement regime. That would be considered in the context of the charter review.

At this stage, it would be premature to put restrictions on the timing of when the power may be exercised, given that the charter review has not yet started, and the Government have not set out the detail of the process and the timing. The Government therefore resist the amendments on the following grounds. First, the key papers will be deposited in the Library in the normal way and, secondly, we do not want to restrict what should or could happen, in terms of decriminalisation, by aligning the legislation with the timing of the charter review, although the legislation would be in the context of the review.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) made the point that we are living in a changing world. That is true, both as regards the courts and how they go about enforcing, and about the media and broadcasting world. It is also true in respect of how we look at enforcement. Given that so many public services have civil enforcement and that it can be effective, it is certainly right, I think, at this point to have a review, and to try to move away from the aggressive approach that my hon. Friend mentioned. The point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley), and I have encountered the issue in my constituency postbag and at surgeries. Elderly people who feel that they have paid their licence fee—they often have—can be threatened with bills, letters about going to court and so forth, yet it is often the TV licensing authorities that have made the mistakes. A civil approach, where at least the threat of court is not frightening elderly, vulnerable and poor people, might be a better way forward. It is certainly something worth reviewing. On the issue of excellence and free markets, it is right that both can deliver.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Solicitor-General]

It is certainly not the intention to do anything that does not take into account the full context—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman laughs, but there is a full context to the charter review. It is difficult when the process has not been set out and nobody is aware of the full details, so one needs to be wary of tying one’s hands too much. All I am saying is that some commitments have been made about the time scale for the review; that is in the legislation. We know when the charter review will take place, and we know that nothing will happen until the review has been completed, taking into account all the various points I have made. That should satisfy the hon. Gentleman.

The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland mentioned variable fees; they are provided for in the Government amendments, which also deal with the question of extent and the Crown dependencies. I commend Government amendments 14 and 15 and 20 and 22, and urge the hon. Lady to withdraw the amendment.

[Helen Goodman]

I did not find the Solicitor-General’s arguments very convincing. He seems to want to retain the freedom to fiddle around with the way in which the licence fee operates before we have seen the results of the royal charter review. None the less, I do not wish to press either amendment 62 or amendment 63 to a vote, although I suspect that amendment 62 may be re-examined in another place. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 55

TV licensing: alternatives to criminal sanctions

Amendments made: 14, page 40, line 24, after “be” insert “—

(a) ”

This amendment is a drafting amendment related to amendment 15.

Amendment 15, page 40, line 25, at end insert

“, or

(b) such amount, not exceeding a maximum amount specified in the regulations, as may be determined by a body so specified.”—(The Solicitor-General)

In the event of the Secretary of State deciding to make regulations replacing the TV licensing offences with a civil penalty regime, this amendment would allow the regulations to provide for the amount of the penalty to be determined by a body specified in the regulations, subject to a maximum amount specified in the regulations.

New Clause 3

Limit on indemnity required under Outer Space Act 1986

‘(1) The Outer Space Act 1986 is amended as follows.

(2) In section 3 (prohibition of unlicensed activities), after subsection (3) insert—

“(3A) An order under subsection (3) may—

(a) provide that section 10(1) does not apply to a person to the extent that the person is carrying on activities that do not require a licence by virtue of the order;

(b) specify the maximum amount of a person’s liability under section 10(1) so far as the liability relates to the carrying on of activities that do not require a licence by virtue of the order.”

(3) In section 5 (terms of licence), after subsection (2) insert—

“(3) A licence must specify the maximum amount of the licensee’s liability to indemnify Her Majesty’s government in the United Kingdom under section 10 in respect of activities authorised by the licence.”

(4) In section 10 (obligation to indemnify government against claims), after subsection (1) insert—

“(1A) Subsection (1) is subject to—

(a) any limit on the amount of a person’s liability that is specified in a licence, and

(b) any order made under section 3(3).”

(5) The Secretary of State may vary any licence under section 4 of the 1986 Act that is held at the time when this section comes into force so as to specify the maximum amount of the licencee’s liability under section 10 of that Act.

(6) A variation under subsection (5) is to be made by giving notice in writing to the licensee.

(7) The power under section 15(6) of the 1986 Act may be exercised so as to extend to any of the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man or any British overseas territory any provision made by this section (subject to any specified exceptions or modifications).” —(Oliver Heald.)

Section 10 of the Outer Space Act 1986 requires people carrying out certain space activities to indemnify the UK government against claims arising out of the activities. The new clause makes provision for limiting the amount of the liability under the indemnity.

Brought up, and read the First time.

[The Solicitor-General]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

Business of the House

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Thursday 5th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

I hope my hon. Friend knows that I share his sense of how profoundly important the proper use of the UK’s asset, or in this instance, England’s asset—NHS data—can be. When patients and the public generally are asked whether they are content for their data to be used to enable treatments and research to be promoted for all patients in future, as long as we give them the proper protection for their anonymity and confidentially, they are very much in favour. That is the point we are trying to get to.

My hon. Friend mentions something that will be important this coming week: that Back-Bench colleagues take every opportunity to put their names forward for the private Members’ Bill ballot. He instances one issue, but it would be very much in the interests of the people of this country if a number of others were brought forward under the banner of a private Member’s Bill.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) pointed out how little legislation the Government are bringing forward, but they are also evading accountability to this House on a week-by-week basis. In the four months between the beginning of May and the beginning of September, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport will come to the Chamber only once to answer oral questions. Will the Leader of the House tell us what the Department has to hide?

[Mr Lansley]

I am not sure the hon. Lady understands that the rota for questions is a standard process. When the House is sitting, we answer questions in the normal way. I have to say that the premise of her question is somewhat misplaced. As I explained to the shadow Leader, 20 Bills were passed in the previous parliamentary Session. In the penultimate Session of the previous Parliament, 18 Bills were passed.

House of Commons Business

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Thursday 8th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I want to confine my remarks to motion 5 on programming. I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), with whom I enjoyed serving on the Procedure Committee. I am pleased that he took us back to the 1300s, because he has shown the context in which we can understand the glacial pace at which the Leader of the House seems to want to proceed in making changes to programming.

When we are thinking about improving the processes of this House, it is really important that we understand the poor reputation that the House has at the moment and has had previously. Maybe we have turned a corner, but maybe not. It is incumbent on all of us to show that this House is responsive, effective and understands what the public expect of us.

Broadly speaking, the House has three functions, all of which have been discussed today: holding the Government to account; raising matters of general concern and supporting campaigns; and legislating. Legislating is the one thing that only we can do. The media take part in holding the Government to account, and all citizens are involved with campaigning, but legislation is the one thing that is solely our responsibility, and we should therefore do it as well as possible. It is appalling that things get on to the statute book without any debate in this Chamber, but that is what has been happening. I do not want to take part in a partisan debate on this. From my experience in this Parliament and the previous Parliament, things were not altogether as they might have been in the previous Parliament.

In my view, the efforts that the Leader of the House has made to extend the time on Report do not do the business. We need a system that works so that we are not reliant on the good will of whoever happens to hold the office of Leader of the House and be in charge of timetabling business. The basic problem is that because there is a fixed time for amendments on Report, if there are too many groups, the early groups are debated and the later groups are not debated. This creates two problems. First, sometimes amendments tabled by Her Majesty’s Opposition or by Back Benchers do not get debated at all, so new ideas and possibilities are not floated. Secondly, because of our practice of voting on all the amendments, when the Government get their legislation through, the Government amendments are put on to the statute book without any discussion. Across the House, people are appalled by this, and if the public knew about it, they too would be appalled. That is what we need to address.

The Committee that produced the major report on this House, the Wright report, was particularly concerned about the fact that Back Benchers’ opinions are not voiced. The evidence that the Procedure Committee gathered about which Government amendments are put on the statute book without debate reflects a more serious problem. In the Session that we looked at, 28 clauses were put on to the statute book without any debate in this House. That is the equivalent of a small Bill; it is quite a substantial amount of legislation. Some of the subject matter might not have been so exciting, and in some cases, had there been an opportunity, it might have taken only 10 minutes to debate, but that is not true of all of it.

The extradition provisions were not discussed in this Chamber. Whichever view one takes—whether for or against the legislation—it is absolutely clear that those provisions were highly controversial. Such was their significance that it would have been right to discuss them properly. The problem did not begin on 5 May 2010. It has been going on for some time and we need to address it.

The Clerks of the Procedure Committee came up with an excellent way of dealing with the problem. It was suggested that if amendments could be tabled earlier, the Chair would have more time to produce a schedule for the day, and that the time given for debate on Report could be divided in proportion to the number of groups of amendments so that every group could be debated. Members have always been dependent on the excellent work of the Clerks in getting into the nitty-gritty and making a reality of our vaguer aspirations, and the Procedure Committee could not have produced a report as good as its third report without their help.

I made a tactical error because, having produced that third report, which suggested a solution to the problem, I resigned from the Procedure Committee. That was obviously a mistake, because I resigned before we received the Government’s response and I was not involved in the sixth report. The resistance of the Leader of the House to the suggestion that every single group of amendments should be debated on Report takes the heart out of the matter. We have the disadvantages of tabling amendments earlier, without the advantages of being confident that every single group will be debated, which was the whole object of the report.

If we are taking the glacial approach that has been taken over seven centuries towards the issue, I am prepared to go along with the motion; we have part of what we wanted, but not all of it. I am not confident, however, that in future we will feel that all parts of every Bill will have been debated, and we will have the disadvantage of having to do everything earlier.

[Mr Charles Walker]

May I say to the hon. Lady, before she gets too depressed, that we have reached the shoulder of the mountain, but the summit remains to be conquered?

[Helen Goodman]

I am glad that the Chair of the Procedure Committee, who chairs it most ably, is showing once again his political nous in his attempts to corral us. I hope he is right and that, after this experiment, the Procedure Committee will be able to return to the matter and see whether it has achieved its purpose. If not, I hope not only that the experiment will result in a permanent change to Standing Orders, but that all of the third report’s proposals will be fully implemented.

[Mr Harper]

My intervention is likely to be more prosaic and not as poetic as that of my hon. Friend the Chair of the Procedure Committee. Having read the Government’s response to the Committee’s recommendations, I am not as depressed as the hon. Lady, because all it said was that they did not agree with the suggestion for a proportionate and rigid allocation of time. They said they wanted to be able to exercise judgment on how to allocate the time and that a proportionate model would be complex and unwieldy. The sense I got from the Government’s response is that they want every group of amendments and all the major issues to be debated; they just do not want to do it in the mechanical way suggested by the Committee’s report.

[Helen Goodman]

We will hear whether that was the intention when the Deputy Leader of the House winds up the debate. What the Government actually said was this:

“The Chair would have to make rapid calculations on the number of minutes available per group in response to the progress of the...business”,

as if the Chair is not capable of doing some straightforward arithmetic. I know that education standards in this country are not what they ought to be, but I am absolutely confident that the Chair, supported, of course, by the Clerks, would be able to do that. The Government’s response also said that there is no evidence of a “systemic problem”, but there is a systemic problem, which is precisely why it is worth changing the rules of the game.

[Mr David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD)]

The systemic problem is not purely on the Government’s side, whichever party is in government or in opposition. As long as an Opposition’s main weapon of debate is seen to be the ability to delay and prolong debate rather then make points succinctly, we will never have a rational distribution of time in this House.

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Gentleman makes my point for me. I have said that I do not think that the fault lies on the Government side or the Opposition side of the House. If the time were divided in proportion, we would be confident that every group of amendments would be debated. Without that, things will get squeezed out and there will be maximum scope for playing games.

It is obvious that, in order for the House to work well, we need sensible rules and a degree of co-operation. That requires a constructive approach from the Government and the Opposition and responsible people in the Chair who are interested in facilitating debate. If we had those things and all the right rules, we would be able to do it. I simply do not understand why the Leader of the House has resisted the proposal in the third report that would provide the best guarantee of debating every group of amendments.

I enjoyed serving on the Procedure Committee under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), who showed his skill on many occasions. I am prepared to take his advice once again and not to push the motion on programming to a vote. We should, however, return to the issue in a year’s time and make sure that we absolutely lock it in.