Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Henry Smith and Mark Harper

Tuesday 1st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

1. What progress he has made on his plans to bring down the level of reoffending.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

6. What progress he has made on reducing the level of reoffending.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Henry Smith and Mark Harper

Monday 27th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

It is difficult to know where to start; there were so many inaccuracies in that question. First, in the case of 99.6% of passengers, we meet our queuing requirements and we have now largely fixed the problems we inherited with Border Force and queuing. Secondly, everyone who comes through our airports has their details checked and it is clear in the operating mandate that 100% should be checked. We have fast-track approaches where people pay fees that provide extra resources so that we can deliver that service without damaging the service received by everybody else.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

London Gatwick airport in my constituency introduced automatic e-gates for departures for all passengers some time ago. May I seek assurances from my hon. Friend that Gatwick will be included in future fast-track border entry, which will be great for local business and great for that important gateway into the UK?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. He will be aware that I recently had the opportunity to open the e-gates at the south terminal at Gatwick that mean that British citizens and European economic area passengers can get access to the United Kingdom more quickly with their chipped passports. We are looking into developing a range of services so that those who bring value, business, growth and jobs to the country can get here more efficiently. That is something that all Members should welcome.

United Kingdom Parliamentary Sovereignty Bill

Debate between Henry Smith and Mark Harper

Friday 18th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)]

I do not think I will quite match the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) for brevity. He will be pleased to learn that I am not going to go through all the reasons why the Government oppose the Bill and will oppose it if it is pressed to a vote, but I will touch on a number of them. My hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) got to the heart of the argument at the beginning of the debate when he discussed clause 1 and its reaffirmation of sovereignty. As he said, if this is indeed a sovereign Parliament, as we all believe it is, it does not need to reaffirm its sovereignty, but if it is not a sovereign Parliament, reaffirming its sovereignty is of no consequence.

My hon. Friend also made the point—I have been surprised that other Members have not discussed this—that this is not a Bill about the European Union. As clause 3(b) makes clear, it touches on not only our European commitments, but all the commitments we have made in all the treaties we have signed. I shall go on to discuss what the Prime Minister said earlier about our membership of the United Nations, which would be affected if the Bill became law.

[Henry Smith]

My hon. Friend is of course right that this country is a member of a number of international bodies, including the European Union, the United Nations and NATO, but so are other independent sovereign nations. I do not think there would be any suggestion that the United States compromises its sovereignty by its membership of the United Nations.

[Mr Harper]

I will not dwell on that now, if my hon. Friend will forgive me. I will come to it later in my remarks, and he will be free to intervene on me then.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and several others touched on issues such as the European Union Bill, particularly the debate that we had on clause 18; the issue of prisoner voting, which my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) mentioned; and our relationship with the European convention on human rights, including the role of the Court. Those are all important.

There is no doubt that the sovereignty of Parliament lies at the heart of our constitution as one of our fundamental underpinnings. Since the time of the Bill of Rights in 1689, no one has seriously challenged the notion that Parliament is the ultimate arbiter of the powers of the Executive. Indeed, Parliament determined who the Executive should be: it intervened in the line of succession to the Crown and altered it. I will not go into the various changes to the line of succession, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) dwelled on that. I was disappointed that he did not feel the urge to set out his views on those historical events in more detail, and probably on a much better informed basis, than I would be able to.

It may be surprising to some that the adoption of parliamentary sovereignty is nowhere set out in authoritative form. The Bill sets out sovereignty without attempting to define it in any way in a piece of primary legislation. That would mean, in effect, that the courts would then be invited to define what we meant by sovereignty, to define what “reaffirming” meant, and to do a number of other things. The Bill would therefore take us down a dangerous road that would undermine the proposition of parliamentary sovereignty instead of defending it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Henry Smith and Mark Harper

Tuesday 26th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

2. What progress he has made on developing proposals for a wholly or mainly elected second Chamber.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)]

My right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister announced to this House in June that he would chair a cross-party Committee that would set out the Government’s proposals which they will bring forward in a draft Bill early next year. We hope that a Joint Committee of both Houses will be able to scrutinise it in due course.

[Henry Smith]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that answer. Does he agree that only those elected to a revised second Chamber should be able to vote on the passage of legislation?

[Mr Harper]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. The Government have made it very clear that we think those who make our laws should be elected. Thinking back to the previous question, it is worth saying that of the peers created since this Government came to office, more of them are Labour than represent the coalition parties.

Individual Electoral Registration

Debate between Henry Smith and Mark Harper

Wednesday 15th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady would not seriously expect me to comment on individual cases, particularly when I do not have the details of them. On her second point, people are not legally obliged to register to vote. If they receive inquiries from the local authority—the household registration form or some other inquiry—they are legally obliged to respond to them accurately, but there is no obligation on individuals to register at all. When registration is a household matter, and a person is responsible for registering other people, it is right that that should be obligatory, but when individuals take responsibility for their own registration, it is perfectly reasonable to say that it is up to them whether they choose to register— [Interruption.] We live in a free society, and people are entitled to decide whether they wish to be registered to vote and to cast their vote. That is the position today, and it will remain unchanged.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I very much welcome the Minister’s statement today. He mentioned the checking of national insurance numbers. These are of course available to people who are not citizens of this country or other eligible countries. What sort of citizenship or nationality checks will be carried out on those people?

[Mr Harper]

Electoral registration officers already have to undertake a number of checks to confirm that people are eligible to vote, particularly in different sets of elections. My hon. Friend will know that, for example, in order to vote in a general election, a person has to be a citizen of the United Kingdom or a qualifying citizen of the Irish Republic or the Commonwealth. Those checks will remain as they are now. The checking of the date of birth, signature and national insurance number will enable the registration officers to be confident about someone’s identity, which will enable those other checks to be more accurate.