Oral Answers to Questions

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Tuesday 13th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

The CPS has until reasonably recently had an important programme in Afghanistan, although it is currently at an end. The programme enabled prosecutors to work with local counterparts to deal with narcotics and corruption investigations and prosecutions, one of which was the massive Kabul bank fraud, which saw two former bank chiefs convicted and jailed in March 2013. I visited that project when I was in Kabul.

In addition, there are projects in Nigeria, to which my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General has referred and which have been complimented by the Chief Justice of Nigeria for speeding up the criminal process. There has also been a major project in the Indian ocean area that has led to 110 pirate cases being prosecuted by CPS prosecutors.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

Some crimes committed by British companies or British citizens can be tried in this country or in a foreign country if they are transnational financial crimes committed in a foreign country. What is the Crown Prosecution Service doing to equip developing countries with investigative mechanisms to ensure that more of those cases are tried in the countries in which the offences are committed?

[The Attorney-General]

It is important to understand that the Crown Prosecution Service has limited capacity, but it has prioritised for co-operation a series of overseas aid projects in a number of countries, including the United Arab Emirates, the ones I have just given, and St Vincent and the Grenadines. In addition, it is worth bearing in mind that the United Kingdom Government use the assistance of non-governmental organisations, such as the Slynn Foundation and the Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law, to provide capacity building as well. Simply to give an example, I have seen projects in the west bank being brought forward with the help of those organisations, so not just the Crown Prosecution Service can help in this area.

Tributes to Nelson Mandela

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

I have my South African godmother, Mary Grice, to thank for a lifelong interest in Africa. When I was a child, she used to send me books about Africa and African artefacts. She stood in line with other members of the Black Sash in Durban, where she lived, to protest against apartheid. Her daughter, Jenny, worked her whole life—she recently retired—for the multiracial National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa trade union.

I do not think that hon. Members have said enough this afternoon about the role played by Africans in South Africa in securing their freedom. That freedom did not happen because of the global solidarity movement, important though it was, but because South Africans themselves demanded the rights that they now have. Mandela’s genius was not simply to win the argument and the political struggle, but to win over his opponents and to persuade them that he and the ANC had been right all along.

There has been huge consensus across the Chamber today among hon. Members, many of whom have shown that they learned their politics in the South African solidarity movement, but there has not always been such consensus. I published a poster—I think it was the first in the UK—demanding freedom for Mandela in 1973, when he had just been made vice-president of the National Union of Students. I named a bar after him at my student union in Bristol at about the same time. Members of the ANC came along to the opening, but were a bit sniffy about our naming a bar after their great leader. I was hugely relieved to find, after his release, that he drank.

Ten years later, when the Anti-Apartheid Movement moved its headquarters from Charlotte street to Selous street, as it then was, in Camden Town, I ran a campaign to get the name changed to Mandela street, which is the one it enjoys today. Such minor acts of solidarity were roundly condemned at the time. I still have a cutting from The Rhodesia Herald, as it was then, and from a prominent British national Sunday newspaper expressing incredulity that anybody wished to honour and show respect for the name of this political prisoner.

I served for quite a few years on the executive or national committee of the Anti-Apartheid Movement under the chairmanships of both the noble Lord Hughes in the other place and John Ennals, who was the brother of David Ennals, the Health Minister under Harold Wilson. I led campaigns to persuade local authorities and trade unions to sell their investments in South Africa.

When I was first elected to the House in 1992, I wanted to become involved with anti-apartheid work, but I found that we had apartheid among our all-party groups, which in those days could be set up without needing to have members from all parties. There were two South African groups—the all-party group on South Africa, which argued against disinvestment and for white rights, order and no change in South Africa; and the all-party group on Southern Africa, led by Peter Pike, the former Member for Burnley, who was mentioned by the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt). I joined the Southern Africa group, because it was closely aligned to the Anti-Apartheid Movement. The two groups merged a few years later, and it was because of the experience of reconciliation in South Africa that we felt we should join together into a single group.

One of the greatest privileges I have had as a Member of this House was to be selected to observe the first genuine democratic, all-race elections in South Africa in 1994. The practice was to put an African politician with one from further afield, so that there was a multiracial observer team, and I had the great good fortune to be twinned with Mose Tjitendero, who was the Speaker of the Namibian Parliament. Just five years before, Namibia had gone through a similar transition—nobody has mentioned it this afternoon—managing to move to democracy and majority rule without destroying the state and without that leading to civil war and chaos. I learned a lot from him during our three days of observing the election.

On the first day, in one of those long lines of voters that many of us will remember from our television screens—the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) described them in his speech—I saw an old African women with snow-white hair, and I asked her how long she had been waiting to vote, because I was trying to find out whether it was taking people two, five or 10 hours, and she simply said, “All my life.”

After the election, I went to the Alexandra health centre, a progressive centre that had fought to extend health care to people of all races during the time of apartheid. I met a midwife who first qualified in what was then called Northern Transvaal—the Northern Province—who said that when she qualified, she was given her equipment, which consisted of a kettle to boil water to sterilise whatever instruments she might use and a candle so that she could do deliveries in the dark. We started talking about the sort of support that South Africa would need to build a health care system that provided for all its citizens, and she said that the challenge was not one of resources—after all, in South Africa the doctor Christiaan Barnard had carried out the first heart transplant operation many years before—but of how those resources were distributed.

Mandela was a revolutionary. Many refused to support him when he was in prison, because he refused to repudiate the armed struggle. Amnesty International would not make him a prisoner of conscience because of that refusal. We should not forget, however, that while the victims were citizens, the violence of apartheid came overwhelmingly from the security forces of the state—as in Sharpeville, the Soweto student uprising in 1976 and the Durban strikes in the early 1970s.

Mandela’s first goal was to achieve democracy and universal suffrage, and that goal has been achieved, but his vision went far wider. He wanted to achieve equality and full human rights and justice for all citizens in his country and the wider world, and those goals remain to be achieved. If we want to honour his reputation, we need to work to do our part, as political leaders in our country, to ensure that those goals are achieved.

We therefore need to concentrate on making the argument to the public in our country that we should spend 0.7% of our gross national income on international development. We need to retain the focus of our development programme on the elimination of poverty, and recognise that that requires us to challenge inequality globally, in our own country and in the developing countries that we are seeking to help.

I believe it was a mistake when, earlier this year, the United Kingdom decided to close its aid relationship with South Africa, which is a middle-income country. It does not need our money, but we have a lot to gain from continuing to work with South Africa and its Government in examining how they are tackling inequality there and in transferring the lessons we can learn from them back to the United Kingdom and other developing countries where we have programmes, because unless we deal with the problem of inequality, we will never end the global scourge of poverty.

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

One obviously cannot discuss the details of potential action in detail in front of this House, but I can tell the House that the American President and I have had discussions, which have been reported in the newspapers, about potential military action.

We have had those discussions and the American President would like to have allies alongside the United States with the capability and partnership that Britain and America have. But we have set out, very clearly, what Britain would need to see happen for us to take part in that—more action at the UN, a report by the UN inspectors and a further vote in this House. Our actions will not be determined by my good friend and ally the American President; they will be decided by this Government and votes in this House of Commons.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

I agree with the Prime Minister about the horror of chemical weapons, but the vast majority of the 100,000 killed so far in this civil war in Syria have died as a result of conventional weapons. Can he convince the House that military action by our country would shorten the civil war and help herald a post-war Government who could create stability?

[The Prime Minister]

It is a good question, but I am afraid that I cannot make any of those assurances. Obviously, we have not made that decision, but were we to make a decision to join the Americans and others in military action, it would have to be action, in my view, that was solely about deterring and degrading the future use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime—full stop, end of story. By the way, if we were aware of large-scale use of chemical weapons by the opposition, I would be making the same argument from the same Dispatch Box and making the same recommendations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

The fundamental judgment that we all must make this evening and over the next week or two, as individuals and as a House, is whether military intervention in Syria by foreign countries, including our own, is more likely to end the civil war or to add fuel to the fire, perhaps in the ways my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) has suggested. I do not believe the Prime Minister made the case today that intervention will do more good than harm.

The Prime Minister argues in his motion that

“a strong humanitarian response is required”

and I agree with that. A humanitarian response is needed to protect civilians, but how can it be a humanitarian response to propose to use UK military might to protect Syrian civilians from one class of weapons—chemical weapons—but not to use it to protect civilians from conventional weapons, which have of course killed far more of the 100,000 dead so far in this civil war? In effect, such a proposal gives the Assad regime impunity to continue to use guns, bombs and missiles as long as they are conventionally armed and not armed with chemical weapons.

Clausewitz said that war is the continuation of politics by other means. He was absolutely wrong, because war is qualitatively different from diplomatic action, from humanitarian relief, and from the kind of action we have taken hitherto on the crisis in Syria. It is qualitatively different because, by taking military action, we become involved in the conflict morally and in international law, and because we require young British servicemen and women to fight and risk their lives. I do not believe that we should shoulder the first burden, and nor should we ask our military personnel to shoulder the second one—to risk their lives—without having a credible plan to bring the Syrian conflict to an end. The Prime Minister did not set out such a plan today.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

Would it not have been so much better if the frenetic activity of the past few days to try to build international support for military action had been devoted to trying to build international support for a peace conference?

--- Later in debate ---

[Hugh Bayley]

Yes. I do not rule out the possibility that in the future circumstances might be such that I support military action, but an overwhelming, international shared objective would have to be built around a military plan that appeared credible as a way of ending this conflict.

We know that it is much easier to start military action than it is to bring it successfully to a conclusion. After the first Gulf war the decision was taken not to topple Saddam but to impose a no-fly zone to prevent him from using his weapons of mass destruction. We and the Americans alone, under a UN mandate, operated that no-fly zone at a cost of millions of pounds for more than a decade, but it failed to bring Saddam to heel and eventually it escalated into the second, controversial Iraq war. Once a small military step is taken, conflicts are likely to escalate because of the uncertainty involved in military action. If the Government want the support of the House and of our people, they need to provide a clear strategy for managing a military campaign.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The only decision that we envisage needing to be taken is about direct military action in an American-led operation. [Interruption.] Let me be clear. In other words, there is no scenario in which we envisage indirect action. That is something we will consider and we will always listen to the House.

Those queries, legitimate though they are, suggest that there is some suspicion about the intentions of the motion. Our intentions are as they are written in the motion. We believe that what happened last week was a war crime. We believe that it was an aberration and something that flouted the principles, values and laws that we have upheld as a nation for close to 100 years. What we have done is to publish the legal advice and the independent assessment from the Joint Intelligence Committee. Unlike 10 years ago, we have recalled Parliament at the earliest possible opportunity, provided a vote and been clear that we will listen to the will of Parliament.

[Hugh Bayley]

Will the Deputy Prime Minister give way?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I would like to make some progress.

Before I conclude, I think that it is important that we remind ourselves of the events that brought us here tonight; the murder of Syrian civilians, including innocent children, with chemical weapons outlawed by the world nearly a century ago. Those haunting images of human suffering will stay with all of us who saw them for a very long time. There is a danger in this debate that we lose sight of the historical gravity of those events. Chemical weapons are uniquely indiscriminate and heinous and we must not forget that. It is right that we proceed with care; openly, consensually and multilaterally. It is right that we restrict our commitment in principle to action that is limited, proportionate and in keeping with international law. It is right that we ask ourselves all the detailed questions that have been voiced here today.

But there is another question facing us tonight, which is what kind of nation are we? Are we open or closed? Are we engaged in shaping the world around us, or shunning the difficult dilemmas we all face?

Afghanistan and EU Council

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. This Government are engaging with others in Europe to try to cut down on benefit tourism and to look at what we can do to make changes to the habitual residence test so that people can come to work but cannot come to claim benefits. It is also worth making the point that as new members join the EU, such as Croatia, this Government will put in place the transitional controls that should have been put in place when members joined under the previous Government.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

When we, on both sides of the Atlantic, bring our troops home from Afghanistan, one of the knots that ties the transatlantic relationship together will inevitably loosen. So may I ask the Prime Minister to comment not on the security matters, but on the political implications of the allegations in the newspapers about electronic eavesdropping by the United States on the EU? Will he say specifically what Britain can do to help to heal that rift between the US and other countries in the EU?

[The Prime Minister]

On the hon. Gentleman’s first point, I do not believe that the ending of combat operations in Afghanistan will in any way loosen the bonds between Britain and America. I think the Americans are deeply appreciative of the fact that we have been the second largest troop-contributing nation, understand the very high casualties that we have taken and also welcome the role that we play at the heart of the command structure. The commander of ISAF is an American general and the deputy commander is a British general, Nick Carter, with whom I spent some of the weekend. On the second issue, I have said all that I want to say. I do not comment on intelligence and security matters, but in this country we operate very clearly under a legal process.

Oral Answers to Questions

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Wednesday 20th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. Let me say how strongly I support all those who serve in our special forces. As Prime Minister, I have the privilege of meeting many of those brave people and seeing that they are some of the finest and most courageous people in our country. I do not, however, want to get into any trouble with my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General, so I will leave the issues of the courts to the courts.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

Q13. The money that the Government have set aside to help people who are hit by the bedroom tax will not cover a fraction of the really hard cases, such as that of my paralysed constituent who receives round-the-clock care from his wife. There is an acute housing shortage in York, and they have nowhere to move to. So will the Prime Minister do one more U-turn on the bedroom tax, and scrap it altogether?

[The Prime Minister]

First, let me remind the hon. Gentleman that only the Labour party could call a welfare reform a tax. It shows how little they understand how tax and benefits work. We are making available a discretionary fund that is there for the hard cases, but we are also recognising that there is a basic issue of cost—about £23 billion is spent on housing benefit every year—and a basic issue of fairness, not just between the private sector and the social sector but in recognising that there are 1.8 million people on housing waiting lists who would love to have a bedroom.

Collective Ministerial Responsibility

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Hugh Bayley (in the Chair)]

Order. I can see two further Members trying to catch my eye. It would be helpful if they could conclude their remarks by 3.40 pm —they may, in any case, have concluded them before then—because I would like to invite the Front Benchers to start speaking then, so that they have 10 minutes each.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Reckless]

In that case, I shall move on.

There are clearly events that were not anticipated in the coalition agreement; we have heard examples of them today, and Lord Justice Leveson’s report is a good one. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, I believe that we still need greater clarity on how the mechanisms of government should operate in such circumstances. Today, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport was called to answer an urgent question in the main Chamber, and I rushed along, interested to hear what Government policy was on a royal charter. I listened intently, but it was only after 20 minutes that she referred to the fact that she was making a Conservative party announcement. If that was the case, why was she answering for the Government? Clearly, the Speaker will, with respect, have been correct to make his wise decision to allow this urgent question, but I was left in a state of confusion about whether the discussion related to Government policy or to a Conservative party policy that had not yet been discussed, or at least agreed, with the Liberal Democrats.

The same issue arose when, in response to Leveson, the Deputy Prime Minister gave a separate statement immediately after the Prime Minister’s. That struck me as a constitutional innovation. Some people may have mentioned precedents, but they went back decades, if not centuries. I asked the Deputy Prime Minister whether he was speaking for the Government; I was not seeking to be difficult, so I referred to Cabinet responsibility and sought further information about how it was now operating, but I did not get a satisfactory response. As a Back Bencher, I would appreciate clearer guidance, in my interaction with Ministers of whichever party, on whether they are speaking as Ministers or merely as party leaders or party representatives on particular issues.

The coalition agreement is behind a lot of this. It is half incorporated into the ministerial code. Paragraph 1.2 of the code says:

“The Ministerial Code should be read alongside the Coalition agreement and the background of the overarching duty on Ministers to comply with the law including international law and treaty obligations”.

I have had great problems with that in another context. Our highest Court has ruled that we may deport a certain individual—Abu Qatada—but Ministers refuse to do so, on the basis that the Court in Strasbourg does not wish us to do so. I have been referred by the Attorney- General, among others, to that bit of the ministerial code. I do not quite understand its applicability, to the extent that our own highest Court has interpreted the relevant international law and has said that the individual in question can go. I note that the same sentence refers to the coalition agreement, and how the ministerial code needs to be read alongside it. When there is an apparent breach, issues to do with the ministerial code are raised—of which, clearly, the Prime Minister is the arbiter. I wonder whether we are giving too much semi-constitutional significance to the ministerial code—a significance that it is no more designed to bear than is the coalition agreement.

The coalition agreement is a different thing for the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, because the Liberal Democrats took an admirably democratic and participative approach to it. They had a parliamentary meeting, not just of all their Members of Parliament, but of all their Members of the House of Lords too, and agreed, if not unanimously at least overwhelmingly, the coalition agreement and participation in the coalition with the Conservative party. Liberal Democrats act as though our arrangements were theirs, or as though Conservative Back Benchers had the same commitment—moral commitment, at least—to the agreement, which they present as almost contractual.

However, we of course were not party to that agreement. Four individuals, perhaps with the expectation of ministerial office, and the leader of our party agreed it, but it was not agreed by our parliamentary party. We had one meeting, at which there was arguably agreement, or acquiescence—although not all of us were allowed to speak—on the issue of having a referendum on the alternative vote in exchange for equal boundaries. That was the only discussion that the Conservative parliamentary party had, so the Liberal Democrats should not complain if we seek to hold them to that deal. We gave them the AV referendum and took the risk of a change to the electoral system that would disproportionately benefit their party, and won our argument in public, and the other side of the coin was fair, equal boundaries. Now they have welshed on the deal. That was the only deal into which the Conservative parliamentary party had any input.

Previously, the Liberal Democrats believed in, or spoke quite highly of, parliamentary procedures, the importance of Parliament, and the holding to account of the Executive. However, now that they are in coalition, too often it is a question of a deal between the party heads, or the quad, and there are great problems with that. Quite minor issues are pushed all the way to the top of Government. The Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister are extremely busy people, as are the two Treasury representatives, and I fear that that approach has led to yet more power being put in the hands of the civil service—Sir Jeremy Heywood has been mentioned—and that the civil service has its own interests.

I first came across an instance of that in the context of policing finance. There was a White Paper in July 2010 called “Policing in the 21st century”, which was sound in many respects. It included the agreement that Liberal Democrats and Conservatives had reached on what to do in policing. It encompassed the directly elected police and crime commissioners that we wanted; but the Liberal Democrats also wanted the police and crime panels, which we agreed to. The White Paper said that if it was not possible to agree on a police precept, the panel, perhaps by a super-majority, could trigger a local referendum. I thought that was an excellent localisation and democratisation of politics, and I was grateful for the Liberal Democrat input.

However, between the publication of the White Paper and Royal Assent to the legislation that emerged, the referendum element was removed and replaced with a weak power for the panel, which was misleadingly described as a veto. The panel can say it does not like the precept once, and as long as the elected PCC comes back and says something slightly different he can just impose it. That is all that the panel can do. My view was that we did not want that; we wanted a democratic local approach that would permit a referendum if there was strong enough feeling, but I was told that that could not happen because the Liberal Democrats would not accept it, and the Deputy Prime Minister insisted that the panel should have much stronger powers and a veto.

I took the trouble to explain that to the Deputy Prime Minister’s chief of staff, and to talk to other Liberal Democrats, to try to get our mutually agreed view reflected in the legislation. However, I failed, and I believe that that was because civil servants exploited the coalition, and a claim that the Liberal Democrats did not want what we all wanted, to keep power in Whitehall, rather than giving it to local areas. The structures of the coalition are significant in explaining that.

[Hugh Bayley (in the Chair)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman’s discussion of the role of the civil service went a little wider than the debate’s terms of reference, which are collective responsibility. He should confine his remarks to those policy areas where there appears to have been a breakdown in collective responsibility.

[Mark Reckless]

I will of course follow your ruling, Mr Bayley, for which I thank you.

Two other areas that I want to discuss are Europe and boundaries. As to Europe, the Liberal Democrats had a manifesto commitment to an in/out referendum, and I was disappointed that it was not carried through to the coalition agreement. However, I am delighted that that is now my party’s policy. I am slightly confused about why it is not the Government’s responsibility, given that it is now, at least on the face of it, the policy of both parties.

Similarly, I was delighted to table an amendment and to secure majority support in the House for a cut in the EU budget. I was a little disappointed that the Deputy Prime Minister described it as “completely unrealistic” to expect a cut, not least because he should be subject to collective responsibility on such matters. Apparently it was hopeless for the Prime Minister, or anyone else, to seek such a reduction. We were miles away from other countries on that matter, and it could not be done. Yet yesterday at Deputy Prime Minister’s questions, speaking as the Deputy Prime Minister—with, I assume, collective responsibility—he told us that he supported that approach, and that it was because of him we had got the cut. He had spent months going around Europe pushing that extraordinarily tough stance, while publicly saying that he disagreed with it and it was completely unrealistic. Which is it?

If we have collective responsibility, we should have answers to those questions. I know that sometimes a coalition is difficult, and that the circumstances are new, but we should not take the attitude of sweeping away all the dusty old conventions because they do not matter very much; there is a reason for collective responsibility. I do not accept that there was any breach of the coalition agreement until the Deputy Prime Minister decided that he would welsh on it with respect to boundaries. Then his Ministers voted against it. Yet they stayed in the Government, notwithstanding collective responsibility and paragraph 1.2 of the ministerial code. If the Prime Minister has waived that, and the need to refer to the coalition agreement on all things in government, I trust that he has also waived the part about international law, at least where our own highest Court has said that international law is being respected.

What is the situation with respect to boundaries? I was disappointed that several Conservative Back Benchers voted against the Government, and that my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), for whom I have great respect, was not with us on the issue. His near neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), abstained. However, I was astonished that a Conservative Minister abstained: the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), did not vote in that Division. I knew that she was concerned about various issues to do with boundaries, but she is a Minister. Why did not she vote for Government policy?

--- Later in debate ---

[Miss Smith]

I wanted to go on to say, in addressing what I took to be my hon. Friend’s central point—accountability for the decision, when taken, to set aside collective ministerial responsibility—that the key is that Parliament certainly ought to be informed in a way that is appropriate to the instance in hand. I will not comment on whether the Prime Minister did or did not do that for the hon. Gentleman in parliamentary questions, but in the instance of the Lords amendments to the ERA Bill, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House of Commons made such a statement to the House, explaining why he was speaking and how it was that collective responsibility had been set aside. I believe that the explanation has been offered in cases where such a departure has been outlined, and I think that that provides the kind of transparency and accountability that we are all seeking in this important area.

In conclusion, I note that the coalition agreement, in so far as it relates to the debate, sets out specific areas where the normal rule is not expected to apply. The citizens whom we all serve have had the chance to observe that in advance, and so hold us to account. Through that, there is no undermining of the coalition’s shared commitment to reducing the deficit and delivering a radical programme of reform that gets Britain back on track, after the catastrophic position in which it was left in 2010.

It has been possible in my short remarks to address only the notion of accountability for such decisions, but I want to finish by saying that it is vital that we are not distracted from our core task in Government at this time, which is to put right the mess that the Labour party made of Britain.

[Hugh Bayley (in the Chair)]

We now come to a half-hour Adjournment debate about engineering as a career choice for young people. It might be a courtesy to all hon. Members who want to listen to this debate if we wait just a minute or two for hon. Members who attended the previous debate to leave the room quietly.

Oral Answers to Questions

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As the hon. Gentleman and I have discussed before, collective responsibility prevails where there is a collective agreement and a collective decision on which collective responsibility is based. It is not easy, and certainly not possible to enforce collective responsibility in the absence of a collective decision taken first.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)]

As Deputy Prime Minister, I support the Prime Minister on the full range of Government policy and initiatives. Within Government, I take special responsibility for the Government’s programme of political and constitutional reform.

[Hugh Bayley]

I am obliged to the Deputy Prime Minister. I read his speech last week about rewarding work. Three days before he made it, The Independent reported that

“the Government’s figures revealed that child poverty would increase by 200,000 as a result of the”

1% cap on benefit rises. The Liberal Democrat Minister of State at the Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), confirmed in a parliamentary answer that “around 50%” of those 200,000

“will be in families with at least one person in employment.”—[Official Report, 30 January 2013; Vol. 557, c. 858W.]

What are the Government going to do to make sure that work is a pathway out of poverty?

European Council

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his support. It is absolutely right to say that the British Parliament speaks clearly about these issues and is listened to carefully in the corridors of Brussels. That is true. We should always respect the fact that it is to this Parliament that Prime Ministers have to answer.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

What did other leaders say to the Prime Minister in the margins about a British referendum? Does he believe that this budget deal makes the case for Britain staying in Europe stronger?

[The Prime Minister]

I would say that the reaction that I have had to the speech I made a few weeks ago has been, on the whole, fairly positive, because people can see that it is not some simplistic argument about an immediate referendum—it is a well-argued case, I would say, for how Europe should reform and how we should secure Britain’s place within it. These discussions show that Britain can get good deals done with partners in Europe having made a speech on that subject. I think that actually it strengthens Britain’s place in Europe.

Oral Answers to Questions

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Commons Chamber

The Minister for the Cabinet Office was asked—

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

1. How much financial support the Government gave to civil society organisations in (a) 2009-10 and (b) 2012-13 to date.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)]

It is estimated that the Government committed £13.9 billion to general charities in 2009-10. As the hon. Gentleman will know, data for 2012-13 are not yet available.

[Hugh Bayley]

Thousands of people in every one of our constituencies depend on the services provided by voluntary bodies. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations estimates that funding for the sector will fall by £3.2 billion during the current Parliament, while the Charities Aid Foundation says that private giving to charities has fallen by 20%. The big society is shrinking. How are the Government going to give it the resources it needs to provide services for our constituents?

[Mr Hurd]

The Government are doing a great deal to support our charities. We are encouraging giving, volunteering and social investment, and we are trying to make it easier for charities to help us to deliver public services. There is less money around as a direct consequence of the actions, and the fiscal incontinence, of the Government whom the hon. Gentleman did not adorn. We all have a role and a responsibility to support our charities, but this Government are doing their bit.

Voting Age

Hugh Bayley Excerpts

Thursday 24th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that point and congratulate him on securing the debate. It has given the House the opportunity to give the subject an airing, for which I am sure we are all grateful, whichever side of the debate we are on.

It is not that long ago in the history of this country that the voting age was reduced from 21 to 18 and we are now debating whether to reduce it from 18 to 16.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

It is very kind of the hon. Gentleman to give way. I was one of the first beneficiaries of Harold Wilson’s Labour Government’s decision to reduce the voting age from 21 to 18. I was born in 1952 and voted in my first general election aged 18 in 1970—the first general election in which there were 18-year-old voters. It seems to me that all the arguments being made against reducing the voting age could have been and were made in the 1960s, and it is now many years later. The hon. Gentleman says that it is not very long ago, but I am old enough to have a senior person’s railcard now. It is about time we moved on and allowed younger people, who are better educated now than I was then, to vote.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but he reinforces my point. If a decision was made to reduce the age of majority to 16, in three or four decades’ time this House would be full of people saying, “That was years ago, we ought to consider making it 14. People made that decision long ago and they are far away.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

I am grateful to my hon. and good Friend the Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams) for introducing the debate, and to the Backbench Business Committee for agreeing to it. It is absolutely right that we should debate the subject. Like the hon. Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley), I, too, was a beneficiary of the change in the voting age from 21 to 18. When I was 18, I could not vote, but by the time I was 21 I had got the vote, because the law had changed, and I cast my first vote in the 1970 election. It was an exciting moment. I went with my dad back to where we had moved from, and I felt the importance of being able to play my small part in that general election.

Ever since then, I have been persuaded that we need to keep asking ourselves whether young people are properly engaged in politics. I chair the governing body of a primary school, and of course there are bright and engaged youngsters in that school, but as some hon. Friends have said, nobody seriously thinks that they are yet sufficiently engaged and interested to be able to vote. I am the trustee of a secondary school; the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) and others spoke about going to secondary schools and meeting youngsters, most of whom are really engaged, interested, informed and active. A couple of evenings ago, I was with some friends in my constituency. Their under-18 son was at the dinner table, and nobody could argue that he, doing his A-levels, was not as competent to cast a vote as many other people.

[Hugh Bayley]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the habit of voting is usually learned young, and that the chance of getting a 30-year-old who has never voted into a polling station is small? If we had voting at 16, large numbers of 16, 17, and 18-year-olds at school or in higher education would feel peer pressure to vote, and might acquire the habit for life.

[Simon Hughes]

That, in a way, is my central argument, and I will come back to it. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West was kind enough to remind the House that I was the first person to introduce this proposition. I have checked; it was in Committee stage of the Representation of the People Bill on 15 December 1999. Mike O’Brien, whom we all remember with affection, was the Under-Secretary of State, and he opposed the proposition on behalf of the Labour Government, although we reported that Paul Waugh of The Independent had written an article on the previous new year’s eve saying that the Labour Government were thinking about whether they should propose changing the law. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West was right to say that we did not get the measure through; the votes were 36 in favour and 434 against.

One of the then Minister’s strongest arguments was that a person could not stand for election until they were 21. That has changed; people can now stand in local elections when they are 18, and they do—and get elected. The discrepancy has narrowed. My key point is this: if we educate young people to understand the issues, as the House’s education department does, and as we do when we go into schools; if, when children are still at home, parents educate them on the issues; if, as colleagues in all parts of the House have said, we are keen for people to be more competent to make financial decisions when they leave school; if we want to make sure that young people understand how to apply for work, and look for training, a university or college, apprenticeships and so on, and have the information that they need; we should logically link that with the ability to see what the options are in life, and who makes those decisions.

Who decides whether a person can be housed locally? The local council, and therefore it matters who the local councillor is and whether they are likely to be responsive. Who makes the decisions in London about policing? The Mayor of London. A young person might have very strong views on the subject, and might want to do something to influence the decision of who becomes the Mayor. Who makes the decisions about licensing laws and ages, and about drugs? Parliament, and young people might want to influence it if they have very strong views on those issues.

The crucial point is the one that the hon. Member for York Central and I made. If we educate young people—we do it increasingly well with an increasingly bright cohort—and there is a gap of up to five years before they can apply what they have learned, what happens? First, when they can vote, they may not be at home; they may be struggling to find somewhere to live, and be moving around. Relationships are often all over the place. There are uncertainties to do with study, training and work. People then generally do not find that voting is a priority, because they do not have the stability that they had at school, college or home.

In the past, people voted much more often in the way that their family did Now, if young people are at home, it does not necessarily mean that they will vote the way their parents do, but they are much more likely to be encouraged to go to vote with their parents, and to be shown what to do. Some people do not vote because they do not know what to do, and they are terrified that they will be embarrassed when they go.