EU Justice and Home Affairs Measures

Huw Irranca-Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The Home Secretary has deprived him of his will to live, so I feel sorry for him, but he is right that we need to get on to the huge amount of substance in this debate.

I must say that the most startling thing of all in the chaos of last week’s debate was not the betrayal of promises or even the contempt for Parliament, but seeing the Chief Whip and the Home Secretary having to sit next to each other on the Government Front Bench and having to talk to each other for a change.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend share my surprise that the intervention by the right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) was not to thank her for giving the House the opportunity to demonstrate the good faith of the Prime Minister? The Prime Minister said—quite clearly, I think—that there would be a vote on a specific measure, so I look forward to interventions by Conservative Members thanking her for giving them such an opportunity, not passing that over as if it had never been said.

[Yvette Cooper]

I am sure that Conservative Members are all deeply grateful to us, which is why they have come to the Chamber to join the debate today.

We still do not know whether it was the Chief Whip or the Home Secretary who made so much of a mess of last week. In June, the Chief Whip said of the Home Secretary that she

“lacked intellectual firepower and quick wit”.

He said that “she has no friends”, and with amazing prescience, he said that

“she can’t even gain the support of her colleagues”.

That makes two of them, because the Chief Whip is on a roll. He nearly lost a vote—he came within 10 votes of doing so—last week. The man who is supposed to be working the bars of Westminster lost a vote on pubs this week. The man who is supposed to be holding the parliamentary Conservative party together has managed to mislay two MPs. When he was appointed, he said that his new job was

“to ensure the right people are in the right place”.

It is just a shame that they were in the wrong Lobby.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

What I have just said about our view of the debate—[Interruption.] Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would like to be a little patient and wait for my answer to his question. As I have made clear, we felt that the debate was on the 35 measures, and Mr Speaker made clear that hon. Members could speak about all those measures in the debate. In the House of Lords it is open to the Government to amend an affirmative motion—something not open to the Government in the House of Commons—so when the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), said that there were different procedures, she was absolutely right.

Last week we had the opportunity for a full day’s debate. The hon. Members for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) and for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) complained about a lack of debate last Monday, but that was because the shadow Home Secretary moved a motion that cut short the whole debate. We are now able to debate today’s motion, and as the right hon. Lady has made clear, there is nothing in it for the Government to disagree with, so we will support it.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Does the Home Secretary think that the wording of the motion last week was in the spirit of what her Back Benchers understood when the Prime Minister offered a debate and vote on the European arrest warrant? Did it reflect what he said to the House of Commons, and does she think her Back Benchers believed that?

[Mrs May]

I am clear that there was no requirement on the Government to bring the measures, other than those in the regulations, to the House, or to hold a debate on the Floor of the House on those regulations. There would normally have been an hour and a half debate upstairs in Committee, but we chose to bring it to the Floor of the House and to use a business motion to extend the debate. We chose to say to the House that we were clear that because the debate was about only those measures in the regulations that required a legislative instrument, we would nevertheless be bound by the vote on the whole package of measures, including the European arrest warrant.