Business of the House

Iain Duncan Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I am terribly sorry, but I will not give way, because I have promised to give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green and then to sit down.

[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, with whom I served in government for a positive period of time. I gently chide him on his previous comments about colleagues changing their minds. He knows very well that we all change our minds when we are in government, because we curse the very fact that we are delayed by the Speaker for urgent questions—you were one of those too, Mr Speaker. Now that we are here, we all praise the Speaker because we are not in government and we think it is an excellent idea. You were with me on that as well, Mr Speaker. I say gently that it never does to criticise colleagues for changing their minds. I think it is a habitual point in this House that we somehow forget what we said before.

On my right hon. Friend’s motion, I am little confused about how he thinks this procedure will follow from the House of Lords. I think he expects it to take precedence over everything else. Does he anticipate that this House might reject some amendments and, if so, how does he see this happening the second time around? Would it still have the same precedence?

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

The answer is yes it would, but I do not anticipate that that is at all likely. My sense, for what it is worth, is that although the House of Lords procedures are arcane and it is impossible to determine from the outside the time that will be taken, there is very substantial support for the Bill there, and it is therefore very unlikely that anything other than technical amendments, which might be wholly welcome, would come back, and they would therefore be accepted. I do not think that is an issue we need face.

I apologise for going on for so long. I have tried to answer the points that have been made and shall now sit down.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Duncan Smith]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir William Cash]

rose—

[Pete Wishart]

I will take both interventions, because I will enjoy them.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am genuinely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I ask him this simple question. He has complained throughout this Parliament and the long time he has been here that, since the Blair Government brought in programme motions, Governments have cut and curtailed time for debate—he finds that reprehensible, and I agree with him. So why, when a Bill is introduced with such a tight timetable, does he not think that that creates an excellent precedent for the Government to use again and again? Will he complain about that in future?

[Pete Wishart]

What attracts me to this particular motion today is that Parliament is doing this. For the first time, Parliament is actually defining, creating and progressing a Bill through this House. That is an exciting prospect, and I did not think the right hon. Gentleman would be so churlish as not to enjoy that, as somebody who really enjoys such events.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)]

I intend to be very brief. I rise to explain why I will oppose this motion, in line with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, who spoke for the Government.

I think the biggest danger here is that a precedent is being set. I am not by any means the oldest Member in the House—I simply chide the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who spoke from the SNP Benches—but I recall that when I first came here that it was always a requirement for every Bill to have 100 hours in Committee before the Government were allowed to bring it back to the Floor of the House with any kind of guillotine. Debate and scrutiny took place in Committee, or on the Floor of the House for that matter, at great length, as many of my right hon. and hon. Friends will remember. I think the quality of our examination of Bills was infinitely better than what followed under the subsequent Labour Government, who introduced programme motions on Bills immediately. That has meant that this House has fallen into disrepute for its inability properly to scrutinise legislation in the way it should.

We now dump everything in the other place and say blithely, as my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) said earlier—I say quite genuinely that he is a good friend—things will go to the Lords and, of course, we expect the Lords to tidy it up. However, we are the elected Chamber: the public have elected us to come here to hold the Government to account. We constantly say that we are here to hold the Government to account, and then we blithely say that we will let the Lords do it for us when they get the chance and that we will think about it later on.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

rose—

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I was not going to give way, because my right hon. Friend told us that we were speaking for too long, but I will give way to him.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I certainly would never accuse my right hon. Friend of speaking for too long; it was others who advised me that I was speaking for too long. I just say to him and other Members present that we are aware of the issues the Government have with the details. We have discussed with the Government, at their request, changes that would accommodate those concerns. We expressed our total willingness to include those amendments at this stage in the Commons; the Government, so far at any rate, have not come forward with those. That is why that would have to be in the Lords; I would far prefer if it were done today.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am happy to accept my right hon. Friend’s explanation for some of the rationale behind this, but if he will forgive me, I do not speak for the Government—to be fair, I have not done so for a little while, since I resigned, in case he had forgotten. I will try to speak for what I think it is like to be in opposition. I always think that Oppositions should be careful about what they wish for when they are going to be in government, because Oppositions fall upon all these mechanisms in this place. Delaying Bills is part of the reasonable rationale of an Opposition to force the Government to think again. These devices, once swept away at short notice, are swept away for good and for ill.

[Mrs Main]

rose—

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I will give way briefly, because I intend to finish fairly shortly.

[Mrs Main]

I absolutely sympathise with the sentiments that my right hon. Friend is expressing. Did he note that our right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) also said that this was not the world’s best drafted Bill, but that there was not enough time and that the House of Lords would expedite it, because he had already talked to a few people there who were going to proceed in a fashion that meant it would come back here quickly? The rush associated with this is absolutely appalling.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I think it is—I agree with my hon. Friend—but more important is the precedent being set. I worry that future Governments, of whichever persuasion, will reference this device and frequently conclude that time must be curtailed because it is their right to do so.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

rose—

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I will give way, but I feel very bad because I was going to conclude.

[Lady Hermon]

I urge the right hon. Gentleman not to feel bad about it. I also remind Members that the Northern Ireland Office has developed quite a habit of using the emergency procedure to take through Northern Ireland legislation in all its stages in one day in this House. We have had the Northern Ireland budget taken through in all its stages not just once but twice, when it was not an emergency, along with the regional rate and energy tariffs in Northern Ireland, so the right hon. Gentleman should please not use the argument that what we are doing today is setting a precedent. The Northern Ireland Office and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland have already set that precedent.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I recognise that, and I think that procedure should never be used, except in absolute extremis. I agree with the hon. Lady. As someone who once served in Northern Ireland, I have to say that if we legislate in haste, we will repent at leisure, and we do nothing in this place but repent at leisure again and again. The Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 and all these other things that we said were emergencies were never properly scrutinised, and it is the scrutiny of this place that should matter above all else.

We talk about sweeping away precedents because they are archaic and were around for 200 years or whatever, and that everything modern must be brilliant. I do not agree with that. I think that sometimes history teaches endless lessons. This place is at its best when it is arguing and debating, and taking its time to do so. Other legislatures around the world, such as the Senate, which has no time limits, spend a lot of time looking at Bills and legislation. We do away with that at our peril.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

rose—

[Mr Duncan Smith]

If it is urgent, I will give way; then I will conclude.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, because he has made all the points that I want to make, so I do not now need to speak, expect to make one point about the Northern Ireland legislation. That process was done with the consent of both sides of the House before the legislation was brought through. Therefore, there was a consensus in this Chamber that it needed to be done in that way, which does not exist on this occasion. That is a convention of the greatest importance, because now a Government with a majority will feel entitled to use this dangerous process.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I agree and I recognise that, but I think that Governments too often use that process, and it occasionally suits Oppositions to agree with them. It is better that we delay and debate. I will conclude with the wise words of my predecessor, now Lord Tebbit. When I first came here, I asked him, “How will I know whether I am right or wrong?” He said, “You’ll be wrong if you’re not speaking and arguing. You’re right if you’re arguing and you’re speaking. That’s what you were sent here for.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Hilary Benn]

The hon. Gentleman makes a really good point, because it was not clear from the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday how the propositions, if the two of them are not able to reach agreement, will be constructed and put to the House. Obviously, we will wait with interest to see what may come out of the discussions taking place today and—who knows?—tomorrow, but it does give the House a chance to interpose in this process. If I were the Leader of the House, I would be enthusiastically supporting amendment (a), because it may well be that votes on Monday will be exactly what is required to take this process forward, whether as a result of something that comes out of the talks or from the House itself.

[Mr Duncan Smith]

I am genuinely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, and I hesitate to correct him, but if he thinks back to what he has just said, he will see that he has made a comparison that does not stand. He compared what happened in the indicative votes with the failure of the Government’s motion. The Government had to get a majority of the House, and they are 48 short of that, whereas not one of the indicative votes got within whispering distance of a majority of the House. Is the right hon. Gentleman suggesting that if the indicative votes process is brought back, each element should meet the requirement of a majority vote of the House?

[Hilary Benn]

I was making the much simpler point that none of the propositions has carried. The Prime Minister said in her statement that

“the Government stands ready to abide by the decision of the House.”

That is important. She was referring to the indicative votes that may follow the process that we are currently undertaking. In my view, anything that the House indicates it is prepared to support—the difference is that indicative votes are so called precisely because we ask the House to indicate whether it is prepared to move in a given direction—would have to be considered by the Government. If a proposition were adopted, the Prime Minister would have to go to the European Union and seek to change the political declaration. At that point, it would come back to the House, and the test that the Government rightly set in section 13 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018—the approval of the House for both the political declaration and the withdrawal agreement—would have to be passed.