Daylight Saving Bill

Debate between Iain Stewart and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Friday 20th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I have the greatest respect for the hon. Gentleman and, had I thought that he would welcome it, I would have supported his candidacy for the Labour leadership in Scotland. I kept very quiet about that, however, because I thought that I might do him more harm than good.

As has been pointed out by other Members, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), it is easy to argue about such statistics. Given the general trend in the reduction in the number of casualties on the roads, the arguments are not as straightforwardly causal as some suggest.

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

My hon. Friend may be aware that the Select Committee on Transport, of which I am a member, is embarking on an inquiry into road safety measures. It will consider a range of matters, including speed limits and MOT tests. I think that it would be difficult to isolate the effect of changing daylight hours on the road accident figures.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

The reason I brought it up to be linked is that if we get rid of clause 2 the President of the Board of Trade, which can meet with a quorum of one, would then be able to consider the issue by himself. Such a great brain—a brain that competes with Lenin’s and will be a matter of interest to scientific research—could consider this without the huge extra cost that might be incurred by paying the expenses of the members of the proposed oversight group, making facilities available to it and giving it written terms of reference.

[Iain Stewart]

Has my hon. Friend had an opportunity to quantify the cost to the public purse of such an oversight group?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I have not, but I know that these things always cost more than is anticipated and that any great project, adventure or public spending scheme starts with the expectation that it will cost a few thousand pounds here or there, then a few tens of thousands, and then a few hundreds of thousands. Before we know it, the experiment is in place and we find that the cost to the British people runs into millions. Would it not be better to get rid of this group of experts and give it, as I have suggested, to the President of the Board of Trade, who would then be able, should he so wish, to convene a meeting to discuss it.

The Board of Trade is one of those fantastically underutilised bodies in British public life. It is a Committee of the Privy Council, established in the reign of His late Majesty King George III, and it last met in 1986 to celebrate its 200th anniversary. If the president were to summon the board’s members, it would have all the wisdom that the country would need to deliberate on this complex matter, because its members include His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, Mr Speaker himself—that would certainly set us on the right course—the First Lord of the Treasury, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and other Treasury Ministers. It would bring together a fantastic conference of wisdom and brain power—[Interruption.]

Legislation (Territorial Extent) Bill

Debate between Iain Stewart and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Friday 11th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

The Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) is tremendously important because the West Lothian question is the constitutional question of the day. That question and reform of the House of Lords are the two issues with which politicians and parliamentarians have wrestled since just before the first world war, although no great solution to either has come forward. Today’s debate gives us the opportunity to examine what the solution to the question might be and how the Bill might contribute.

Although I am sympathetic to what the Bill is an attempt to do, I have several concerns about its details, some of which were spelled out by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), when we get down to the approach to Bills that Governments might take. What classifications would we have? Some issues are devolved to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, while some apply throughout the United Kingdom and others are purely for England. A Bill might cover English issues and matters that are not devolved to Wales but are devolved to Scotland. Would a Standing Order of the House allow English and Welsh Members to consider that Bill, but not the Scots or the Northern Irish? What if one clause of a Bill related to all parts of the United Kingdom, but all the other clauses related only to England? Would Members from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland join proceedings in Committee and on Report to vote on that particular clause, although they had been kept out of Committee and Report for every other part of the Bill, subject to the Standing Order that would follow from the Bill? The sheer complexities of clarifying territorial extent are probably too great.

Our present position is relatively straightforward. An Act of Parliament can technically overrule a devolved power, but Governments have not been willing to bring forward such a measure because of the great constitutional investment involved in establishing the devolved authorities, all of which were backed by referendums in their constituent parts. If the Bill were passed, England would be protected purely by Standing Orders. It is almost an insult to the English to say, “We had a referendum and then a Parliament for Scotland, and we carried that out in a thorough and proper way, but for the English, we will have a Standing Order.” Of course, the drawback to a Standing Order is that an incoming Government could simply remove it so that all MPs could once again vote on all Bills in Committee and on Report. They would lose little political capital if they did so, because a comparatively small amount of political capital would have been invested to set up the previous system, unlike under the referendums prior to setting up the systems of devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Stage two from this Bill seems to involve fundamental flaws of definition and description. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) suggested, it could give rise to ridiculous situations. We will shortly be asked by their lordships to consider whether the Isle of Wight should remain an individual constituency. I rather like the idea that only one Member of Parliament should be able to vote on that. I know without any doubt which way my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) would vote, but I have a feeling that the Minister would not be entirely happy if the decision of the House was made exclusively by my hon. Friend.

We must be careful about taking territorial extent too far, and there are huge areas in which the situation would not be clear. Let us say that we considered a Finance Bill following the devolution of tax-raising powers to Scotland. Would we go through that Bill with different people sitting on different Committees for each clause, depending on a statement made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer? Would we have two separate Finance Bills? As the hon. Member for Rhondda said, we could have a succession of Bills to try to tease out regional effectiveness. It would be incredibly difficult to make such a situation work.

I am afraid that I disagree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) because there is a difference between having an in-built majority to stop something throughout the five years of a Parliament, and a hung Parliament. Let us put it this way: roughly 100 seats are not English, so 550 seats are English. If 300 of those 550 seats were held by Conservative Members, the Conservatives would have a complete block on all English legislation for an entire Parliament. In a hung Parliament, there is an acceptance among minority parties that the Government’s business must be carried, but the main Opposition will oppose day in, day out throughout a hung Parliament, as we see in this hung Parliament and as we saw in the 1970s. In such a situation, the official Opposition would have a majority of English seats, and therefore a block on all exclusively English legislation for the whole Parliament, so the Secretaries of State for Health and for Education would find it almost impossible to get any of their legislation through.

[Iain Stewart]

My hon. Friend makes my point for me, as does my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind). If the general election produced a clear majority for one party in England, but the result for the United Kingdom as a whole was different, the UK Government should proceed with the utmost caution and not introduce legislation that would be diametrically opposed to the wishes of English Members.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend makes an important and valid point. The West Lothian question is serious, but the answer is not necessarily one that we have been given so far. Just because the question is right, it does not mean that an answer to it would necessarily work. My hon. Friend is correct to say that if the majority of English seats had been won by Conservatives but we had ended up with a rainbow coalition, it would have caused huge dissatisfaction and opposition within England, as well as a feeling that the Union was not working for England. I want the Union to succeed and prosper, so I want an answer to the West Lothian question to come forward which the English find fair and with which they are comfortable.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington was right to emphasise the issue of fairness, but such fairness needs to be met with constitutional propriety and effectiveness. We have heard a great deal about the fairness so far today, but not about a workable constitutional situation, and that will not do us any good because however much one dislikes the Opposition party being in government, it will be one day, and when it is in government, it must be able to get its programme of government through. The way to stop that programme of government is not to put down so many constitutional man traps that that Government cannot get their business through, but to defeat them at the ensuing general election and reverse the worst elements of what they have done. The Bill would lead to a system that would make it incredibly difficult for a Labour Government to get their English business through, but that is not an answer to the West Lothian question because it would simply mean that that Government would have to reverse the protections that had been introduced, and I would have the gravest concerns about such protections being established purely through Standing Orders of the House.

I know that this is not in the Bill, but its purpose is to establish the declaration so that Standing Orders can then be built either to put in place the double majority suggested by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, or to establish practice in Committee and on Report. Is it right for us to change the whole basis of legislation through Standing Orders? Standing Orders can rightly do many things concerning the hours that we sit and the way that business is timetabled, but they do not tend to change the fundamental way in which legislation is taken through the House.