House of Commons Disqualification (Amendment) Bill

Helen Jones Excerpts

Friday 9th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) on getting his Bill debated and on the characteristically entertaining way in which he has discussed it. I think the only person that we did not hear mentioned was Mrs Bone, so, as we have not heard about her for a long time, I want to send her our best wishes before moving on to the substance of the Bill. I shall also try to be brief because I know that the Deputy Leader of the House wants to speak as well, although there is much to be said.

It was entertaining to hear of the cowing effect that the Whips seem to have on those on the Tory Benches. When I was a Labour Whip, it did not seem to work like that at all; the situation was quite the reverse, in fact. I am peculiarly qualified to discuss the hon. Gentleman’s Bill, in that I was Parliamentary Private Secretary to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Dawn Primarolo) in her previous incarnation as a Minister, a rebel on the Government Back Benches and then a poacher turned gamekeeper as a Whip. I was therefore interested to hear what the hon. Gentleman said today.

The Bill would have the effect of disqualifying all Government Whips, the Opposition Chief Whip and the assistant Opposition Whips from membership of the House. Interestingly, it does not seek to disqualify the Opposition deputy Chief Whip or the third person in the Opposition Whips Office who receives a salary and who is usually, but not always, the pairing Whip. I assume that those people would be left here to run amok and do as they wished. Meanwhile, the Opposition assistant Whips, who are not paid, would be subject to disqualification.

The problem with the Bill is not simply that it is defective, but that it is wrong in its intent. It is bizarre, at a time of growing pressure on Ministers to become more accountable to Parliament, that the hon. Gentleman should seek to ensure that one group of Ministers should no longer be accountable to Parliament at all. That is what his Bill states, although of course that is not his real intention. His real aim, as he stated very clearly, is to get rid of Whips altogether. Most of his argument seems to be based on fictional characters from “Yes, Prime Minister” and on a strange belief that people who have fought to become Members of Parliament by scrambling over everyone else to get selected and elected are so wet that one word from their Whip will turn them into quivering wrecks who will do exactly as they are told. That is just wrong.

MPs may choose to break the Whip. That is a choice that many in this House have had to make on occasions, and sensible people know that, if they do that, consequences will follow. We cannot have everything in this life. I remember being threatened with the loss of my career, which was not much of a threat as I did not have a career to threaten at the time—it took me 11 years in this House to become a promising newcomer—but that is the price we pay if we break the Whip. We are all grown-ups, and we know the price.

More importantly, we are also products of a party political system. When the hon. Gentleman goes back to his constituency, the people there know that he represents the Conservative party—at least for some of the time. Similarly, the people in my constituency know that I am a Labour Member of Parliament. I assume that, like me, he stood for election on his party’s manifesto. The party political system in this country is frequently denigrated, but I want to make an argument for it, because it gives people at least a general idea of what they are voting for—unless they support the Liberal Democrats, in which case they usually get the opposite of what they vote for. This is not to say that politicians do not have to react to events or that the manifesto covers every eventuality, but, in broad terms, party politics defines common approaches to problems. There is a good argument for greater scrutiny in the House, particularly on the Report stages of Bills, but if that is what the hon. Gentleman wants, he should concentrate not on the whipping system but on the timetable.

I repeat that Members of Parliament are not sheep. It was certainly not a word that we used when I was in the Whips Office. My right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown), the Chief Whip under whom I served, referred to the parliamentary Labour party as “the body of the kirk”. He used to tell us to get out among the body of the kirk, not the flock.

The hon. Member for Wellingborough should not pretend that we do not have party politics in this country. The alternative to party politics is a system based on personalities. I do not mean that Members of Parliament do not have personalities—I have been a Member of Parliament long enough to know that they do, and the hon. Gentleman is a fine example of that. However, systems that are based on personalities, not parties, tend to lead inexorably to campaigns that are based on personal wealth. The reason for that is simple. People seldom get elected to the House as independents without personal wealth, although there have been one or two notable exceptions.

The long-term effect of the Bill would be to move us in precisely the opposite direction to the one that most of us wish to take—it would lead to the politics of personality rather than politics based on issues. We have already gone too far in that direction, and we should move away from it, not towards it.

I listened to the hon. Gentleman’s comments with great amusement, and I feel terribly sorry for Tory Back Benchers if they are so frightened by their Whips, but I cannot support the Bill.