European Council

Jack Straw Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend, and it is worth paying tribute to Baroness Thatcher, because what makes the British rebate different from the other rebates is that it does not have to be renewed in each seven-year term: it is there as part of the architecture of the budget, and unless you are foolish enough to give some of it away, which the last Government did, it is there and can only be amended by unanimity.

I agree with what my right hon. and learned Friend says about working with allies, but I would also say this, which is relevant to what Margaret Thatcher achieved at Fontainebleau: everyone in the European Union has got to understand that you are prepared to say no if you do not get what you want.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

In welcoming the progress that was made, may I ask the Prime Minister about further efforts to cut the administrative costs of the European Union? He will be aware that, even in Germany, the high cost of salaries and the benefits that officials enjoy is now a matter of great public controversy. What progress does he think could be made on this budget to ensure that those who work for the European Commission are paid a reasonable salary and not one that offends European taxpayers?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to raise this. The Commission proposal—heading 5, on EU bureaucracy—was €63 billion over the seven-year-period. That was cut back to €61.6 billion, but it is disappointing. Looking at levels of pay, levels of benefit and some of the special payments that people receive, there is a range of reforms that could be made. We must go on arguing for them in the annual budget process and go on working with allies. I think it is now understood across Europe that there are generosities that simply are not defendable.

Justice and Security Bill [Lords]

Jack Straw Excerpts

Tuesday 18th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

The special advocates surprised me with the ferocity of the evidence they provided. They start from the side of the argument that challenges the security services and is suspicious of what goes on, and judges have told me—some have said this publicly—that they underrate their effectiveness in such actions. They are used to practising the present law and I assume that their position is that the present law is perfectly all right and that they wish to continue with it. I am surprised by the adherence to PII, which has not hitherto been evident.

Let me give the example of another case to show that special advocates can successfully challenge the evidence put forward in closed proceedings by claimants. Ekaterina Zatuliveter, the Russian girlfriend of a Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament, won her deportation case after a closed hearing in which a special advocate challenged the argument that she was a threat to national security and should be deported. It is simply not the case that in closed procedures it is impossible to challenge these points. Such cases are comparatively new, as no one dreamed we would have such litigation until 10 or 15 years ago.

The claims are getting steadily more numerous as we have an attractive jurisdiction in which the person against whom one makes allegations will probably not be able to call any evidence and one will be paid millions of pounds. The best way forward is the one that has been successfully used in the two cases I have already cited, which is, despite our very limited experience, having closed proceedings and special advocates. It is less than ideal, but it is justice, not secrecy. Secrecy is what we have at the moment, with an uncertain and debatable outcome in all these cases.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is correct to say, of course, that the previous Labour Administration introduced closed material proceedings in 1997, with support from all parties, as I recall. They have worked. Will he confirm that in at least seven of more than 30 Special Immigration Appeals Commission cases since the beginning of 2007, including the two he mentioned, the court has found against the Government and in favour of the potential deportee?

[Mr Clarke]

I accept the right hon. Gentleman’s statistics. I cannot confirm them, as I do not have them myself, but they sound wholly credible. As he said, a Labour Government introduced these procedures—it might have been him—

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[Mr Straw]

It was me.

[Mr Clarke]

It was he, as Home Secretary, who introduced them. They arose partly at the behest of human rights lobbyists who are now vehemently opposing the Bill. It was the intervention of human rights activists in the case of Chahal in the late 1990s that saw the system of closed hearings develop, but some of the same people are now arguing that closed material proceedings put the Government above the rule of law.

As I have already said and as the right hon. Gentleman has with authority confirmed, people have been successful in fighting the Government in these civil actions under the closed material proceedings, as the number of claims goes—

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[Mr Davis]

If my right hon. and learned Friend will forgive me, I have run out of injury time.

If a case involves sensitive information, the Secretary of State asks the judge’s permission to keep documents away from the court. The judge examines the evidence and makes a decision that balances national security with the interests of justice. Under the PII system, evidence can be shown in an edited form, and witnesses, whether spies or special forces or whoever, can speak from behind screens. Suspects can be given the gist of the case against them, and the court can sit in open session or in camera. All those operations are possible under the PII system, which has served British justice well for decades, not just against the current threat of terrorism, but against the Soviet threat, which in many ways was much more professional, and the previous Irish terrorist threat. The proof of the PII system is that no Government, including this one, can point to a single court judgment that has undermined national security—not one judgment.

[Mr Straw]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Davis]

I will, but only because it is to the right hon. Gentleman.

[Mr Straw]

The right hon. Gentleman is right that no one can say that PII has led to a disclosure of evidence, because PII excludes evidence—that is the whole point of it.

[Mr Davis]

I missed the right hon. Gentleman’s last words.

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[Mr Straw]

The whole point of PII is that it excludes evidence. Therefore, by definition, there can be no compromise of national security in PII, but there can be no evidence before a court either.

[Mr Davis]

PII balances the demands of national security and justice—that is exactly what it does. I do not want to be distracted for too long, but I discussed this at some length with Lord Pannick, whom my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) mentioned, with a number of lawyers who operate in this system all the time—not just as an aside or even as criminal lawyers, but all the time—and with the special advocates. This is not just the view of some civil liberties extremists, as the Minister without Portfolio tries to imply. It is the view of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which is unpersuaded —the word it used—that the existing law is not up to the task. It is the view of almost all the special advocates, the lawyers who make closed material procedures work and understand the procedure better than anyone else—indeed, I would argue that they are the only people who understand both the strengths and the weaknesses of the procedure they operate. It is the view of Lord Pannick, as I said, and the view of the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Lord Macdonald, who had a formidable record of prosecution in terrorist cases in his time as DPP.

The Government, the security agencies and their proxies say the opposite, just as they did—in fact, we had the reference earlier—when the 7/7 inquest was proposed. What did MI5 say? It said that holding the inquest in public would amount to “handing over the keys” to its headquarters. It said that if evidence was not heard in secret then it might have to release information from top secret intelligence files. No such thing happened. Instead, we learned a great deal about what happened on 7/7. We learned about failings in operations, data handling and management—all perfectly proper things for the British public to know, and not a single failure of security or intelligence. As the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) said, Dame Justice Hallett ran the inquest very well indeed, as we expect our security-experienced judges to do. That balance was managed nearly perfectly. There is no doubt that this sort of important information about the scrutiny of the state is far more likely to come out in an open court of law than by any other means. I even include in that the Intelligence and Security Committee, good job though it does; an open court is even more important than that.

Many of the Government misdemeanours I have just mentioned have been and gone—inquests held and claims settled. However, the problem of Governments using the rhetoric of national security as a shield for politically embarrassing information has not gone away. In recent years, we have seen allegations of Government complicity in torture and extraordinary rendition. We have seen Gaddafi’s political opponents seized and handed back to the Libyan dictator to face imprisonment and torture—the case that was settled last week. I suspect we will be involved in the use of drones, which have killed scores of innocent people, because of intelligence. This issue of exposure of state misdemeanour in the courts, therefore, is still very current indeed.

It is worth looking at an example of how the state currently uses closed material procedure when it is able. As luck would have it, we have a topical case right now—the case of Serdar Mohammed. Two weeks ago, a British court heard allegations that a suspected Taliban terrorist, captured by UK forces, was tortured by Afghan security services. A secret document was presented to the court in redacted form, the way it would have been in a closed material procedure. Indeed, the document was in the Maya Evans evidence case that my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister without Portfolio referred to earlier. The court did not allow the redaction of the secret UK eyes only document, so we now have both the redacted and unredacted copies in the public domain. We can, therefore, see what was redacted, supposedly for security reasons.

Paragraph 20 talks about a visit to this prisoner by British embassy staff and Royal Military Police. It states:

“The detainee showed the visit party...some of the injuries which he claimed were made as a result of being beaten several times with steel rods to the areas of his legs and feet which he claims left him unable to stand afterwards. Photographs of some of the alleged injuries are also annexed.”

Where the security interest of the British state is in redacting that, I do not know. It was absolutely material to the case in front of the court on Serdar Mohammed. The information posed no threat to any agents, no threat to any techniques, and no threat to any British national interest and yet that was one of the redactions. The only negative effect of showing it in court, of course, was the possible political embarrassment that we may not have met our duties under international law and under the rules of war in protecting a prisoner who was technically under our command. This is exactly the sort of public interest information that could be concealed if the Bill became law.

With closed material procedures enshrined in law, the intelligence agencies would inevitably be tempted to protest that any information relating to their activities was “sensitive”. We have seen that before in the Binyam Mohamed case. More cases would be heard in secret, with no defence lawyers, victims, press or public present to challenge or report what transpired. Evidence heard in secret cannot be easily challenged, and we need to address that. Inconsistencies cannot be spotted and witnesses cannot be properly cross-examined. Under these conditions, evidence may not be worth the paper it is written on.

Let me give the House another example of how this system can fail. A few years ago, there was a control order case, under the previous Government, where the suspect was accused of entering Britain at a specific date and time using a fake passport, which was part of the evidence. Shortly afterwards, exactly the same evidence, including the same fake passport, was used against a different suspect in another, totally unrelated case. They were both supposed to have used the same passport on the same day, which was clearly not possible. It was only by lucky coincidence that the same special advocate, out of approximately 70, was handling both cases. He recognised the evidence and was able to point out that this was false. I do not believe that it was an intentional misleading of the court by the agencies; I think it was simply a mistake. However, it is a matter of public record and the special advocate concerned is now a judge. That demonstrates how easily the CMP can fail miserably in critical issues of justice. That is why Supreme Court Justice Lord Kerr, former Government prosecutor in Northern Ireland during the troubles, subsequently Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, said:

“It would be, at a stroke, the deliberate forfeiture of a fundamental right which has been established for more than three centuries.”

The Justice and Security Bill is being sold as a fair way to protect our national security and justice. It does neither.

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[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Before I come to the merits of the Bill, I would like to draw the House’s attention to the fact that, along with Her Majesty’s Government, I have been a defendant in civil actions brought by two Libyan nationals and their families—Mr al-Saadi, who has already been mentioned, and Mr Belhaj. A settlement was made public last week in respect of Mr al-Saadi’s case without any admission of liability by any of the defendants. In the case of Mr Belhaj, proceedings are still active. In these circumstances, the House will, I am sure, understand how constrained I must be in respect of these matters at the present time. I hope to be able to say much more about these cases at an appropriate stage in the future. I should, however, make it clear that at all times, in all the positions of Secretary of State that I occupied, I was scrupulous in seeking to carry out my duties in accordance with the law.

On a lighter note, I apologise Mr Deputy Speaker, to you and to the House that I may have to leave if the winding-up speeches go past 6.15 pm, as I have to conduct an open air carol service beyond the House at 7 pm.

Let me move on to discuss the Bill. As Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary, I was responsible over a period of nine years for all three of the agencies—a distinction, I gather, I share only with the noble Lord Hurd in the other place. During those nine years, I came to have a very high regard indeed for the agencies, for their leadership and for all the staff who work for them. I also recognised that it is through improved methods and means of accountability that the quality and standing of those agencies can be improved and not undermined. I therefore greatly welcome the proposals in part 1 to strengthen the role and status of the Intelligence and Security Committee, and, indeed, to add to the powers of the Intelligence Services Commissioner.

The more controversial aspects of the Bill—on closed material proceedings—are contained in part 2. The starting-point for everyone in this House has to be that, in principle, justice must be open and has to be seen to be done. This House and our courts have rightly established a high bar for any modification of that principle. Sometimes, however, they have so modified that principle where it collides with other equally important principles. One of those concerns the safety of witnesses in criminal trials. Thus, in the Criminal Evidence (Witness Anonymity) Act 2008, following the Law Lords’ decision in the Davis case, I introduced—and both Houses quickly passed—a statutory scheme providing for witnesses who would otherwise be in grave danger, to give their evidence under the protection of anonymity. That evidence is still heard by the defendant and his counsel, as well as by the jury: it is the identity of the witness, not the evidence itself, that is kept confidential.

There is, then, the situation that this Bill seeks to address, where the clash with the principle of open justice is the greater. That is where in civil actions, not just the identity of the witness, but the evidence they give, is kept confidential from one of the parties and their counsel—typically in circumstances where the action is against the state.

My hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Dr Francis), who I regret is not in his place at the moment, talked about part 2 being a “radical departure” from accepted principles of the common law. The irony is that the first “radical departure” to establish closed material proceedings came as a result of the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in the Chahal case. As the Minister without Portfolio pointed out, closed material proceedings were established in response to those human rights concerns and at the behest of the same human rights lawyers who are now claiming that closed material proceedings represent some fundamental breach of human rights. If I may say so, they do not, and the Special Immigration Appeals Commission process has been found to be completely consistent with the European convention.

As we know, SIAC’s task is to determine whether a deportation order made against an individual on grounds of national security should be executed. The special advocates see all the evidence, and their duty—formally to the court and not to the client—is to have all the secret evidence tested as forensically as possible before the tribunal, but the deportee cannot know what the evidence is. As a result, there is an especial burden on the tribunal to test this evidence.

Those who are sceptical about SIAC, or any closed material proceedings, need to address themselves to SIAC’s record. I mentioned in an intervention on the Minister without Portfolio that of 37 substantive cases before SIAC since January 2007, in at least seven, SIAC has found against the Government—and the cases do not go there in the first place unless the evidence is quite strong.

SIAC could not operate without closed material proceedings at its heart. The question before the House today is whether such proceedings should be extended to civil actions. In the case of al-Rawi, the Supreme Court decided that if CMP were to be extended to civil actions, that must be a matter for Parliament rather than the courts. Its decision followed the approach of the Law Lords in R v. Davis.

I make no complaint about that. For all the talk about alleged excessive judicial activism, in both cases the Supreme Court and the Law Lords were simply saying “We cannot make the law here in order to extend the law; this is a matter for Parliament.” That seems to me entirely appropriate, and I take issue with the suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon that it was as big a “radical departure” as he and his Committee had claimed. The truth is that there was no necessity for any radical departure in respect of the accountability of the intelligence agencies until 15 years ago, because before then the agencies were not accountable at all. There was no way in the world in which any of these actions would have been entertained. Had they been tried, they would have been struck out by the judge because there was no evidence.

The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) is looking at me sceptically, but before 1989, the existence of the agencies was not even admitted publicly. The present situation is relatively new. It arises precisely because of the work done by successive Governments in the last 20 years to make the agencies accountable, and not for any other reason.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Does my right hon. Friend really think that the work of an Intelligence and Security Committee all of whose members have been appointed by the Prime Minister amounts to open and democratic parliamentary scrutiny?

[Mr Straw]

That has been the charge against the ISC in the past, and I am glad that things are going to change. However, I can tell my hon. Friend that I have given evidence to the ISC on a number of occasions, and it is no patsy Committee. It is composed of senior parliamentarians from both Houses, and they do a proper and effective job. The challenge for my hon. Friend is to explain how, given the nature of its subject matter, that job could conceivably be done by means of open hearings. It is not possible. The choice is between an ISC that operates in the way that the Bill proposes, and the absence of any kind of parliamentary scrutiny. I know which I choose.

Let me now deal with the arguments that have been advanced against closed material proceedings. The most frequently used argument is that we should resort to public interest immunity certificates. I accept that, if possible, gisting should be used or the court should sit in camera, but in most cases those options are not possible. Public interest immunity certificates are used fairly often, but they work effectively only when the evidence that they seek to exclude is relatively peripheral to the proceedings. If they are used in relation to evidence that is central to the case, they make it impossible for a trial of the action to take place at all. They do not protect evidence and make it safely usable in court; they exclude it altogether.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the observation by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis)—I am sorry that he is no longer in the Chamber—that PII certificates have not imperilled national security was obviously correct but utterly banal? As long as we are willing to drop all these cases and pay millions of pounds, national security will not be affected, but the Exchequer will be.

[Mr Straw]

Yes, and using PII certificates in respect of evidence that is central to a case is profoundly unjust to both sets of parties.

Dinah Rose is a leading critic of the proposals in the Bill. I have looked carefully at her response to the consultation document, which was published earlier this year.

She stated,

“PII is not perfect—it does result in some cases being tried without all evidence being available.”

She also stated that in rare cases:

“PII may also result…in a situation in which a party is ordered to disclose a document which it is not prepared to disclose, leaving it no alternative but to settle the claim.”

She is being disingenuous, because in these national security cases we are talking about not a document—her word—but bundles of documents that are central to the adjudication of the action.

I, like the Minister, dealt with lots of PII cases and had to work through them very carefully. If there were thousands of documents, as there would be in these cases, a Minister would have to take a month or so off to operate that and, at the end, if the court accepted the PII application, there would be evidence that could not be used in the case.

Ms Rose concludes her summary by referring to the need for “potential misconduct” by the agencies to

“see the light of day”.

I absolutely agree with her sentiment. The problem is that in the absence of CMPs, there is no way of determining misconduct by members of the agencies in a civil action. The most that can happen is a settlement out of court with a payment into court but no admission of liability. That is profoundly unjust to both sides. It is unjust to the complainant, who might well have right on their side but who is denied the means to have the court find in their favour, and equally unjust to the agencies and their staff, who might also have right on their side but no means of making their defence.

In the other place, various amendments were made that were designed to strengthen the role of the courts in determining whether and, if so, how CMPs should be used. They will be examined upstairs and I look forward to the result of the Committee. I am in no doubt about the necessity of the Bill and if the sceptics want to make the agencies more accountable, they should have this Bill—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order.

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[Mr Howarth]

The hon. Gentleman is correct and I am glad that he has added to what I have said.

I will address my remarks on part 2 to closed material proceedings. Usually, if I find myself in agreement with the Minister without Portfolio and the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) on these matters, it means that I am in the wrong and I change my position. They tend to be far more liberal than me on these matters.

[Mr Straw]

Not difficult.

[Mr Howarth]

Indeed. However, I am reassured by the unholy alliance that has been formed between my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). That has made me feel a little more secure about the extent to which I agree with those other Members. I rather think that I have brought on an intervention with that remark.

European Council

Jack Straw Excerpts

Monday 17th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend asks an important question, which reminds me that I did not answer the former Chancellor’s question about the Spanish banks. There will be opportunities to deal with that, but in the light of the way in which this is being structured, further progress will need to be made under the banking union proposals before the sorting out of Spanish banks can take place. Many in the eurozone would argue that all those delays are damaging to the future of the eurozone. On bank recapitalisation, stress tests have been carried out in Europe, although some people argue about their robustness, but that was not the focus of discussion on this occasion. This was not so much about banking capital as about the process of a banking union.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

May I ask the Prime Minister to expand a little on his view of the process towards a democratic, inclusive Syria, given that, although probably 70% of Syrians are wholly opposed to the Assad regime, about 30%—Christians, Alawites and others—are still committed to it? What further efforts are being made with the Russians to try to secure international agreement, however difficult that might be, given that Russia’s compliance and consent will be crucial to an overall settlement?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about this. As I explained in my statement, there are two ways in which transition can take place in Syria. One would involve revolution from below, if you like, while the other—which could be faster if everything went according to plan—would involve a transition from the top, and for that, we need the Russians to engage. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has met and spoken to them regularly, and I have discussed the issue with President Putin. There was a report on Thursday, while we were in the European Council, that the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister had made some interesting remarks about Syria, so we will read those with care. Clearly, everything we can do at the UN and with countries such as Russia to put pressure on the Assad regime is worth while.

Leveson Inquiry

Jack Straw Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The difference is that I believe that the case for legislation has been made, but of course I acknowledge that we now need to show how it could be delivered in practice in a proportionate and workable way. The Prime Minister—I hesitate to recap what he said while he is sitting next to me—has thoughtfully expressed his serious misgivings about taking the step of legislation, but has not entirely excluded that possibility in the absence of other viable alternatives. I think that, in a nutshell, is the difference between our two approaches.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Echoing an important point made by the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), does the Deputy Prime Minister accept that the Prime Minister was incorrect when he talked about crossing the Rubicon in writing elements of press regulation into the law of the land, because the press themselves explicitly asked that there be direct reference to the press complaints code in what became section 12 of the Human Rights Act 1998? The press has already sought a statutory underpinning of what it does. All that Leveson is proposing is to give greater strength to the process that they began in 1998.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

What I think we can all agree on—Lord Justice Leveson places great emphasis on this in his report—is that none of this would have arisen if the press had abided by its own code. What surprised all witnesses to the Leveson inquiry—it certainly surprised me, because I was not familiar with the details of the code—was that on reading the code, one thought, “This is excellent—brilliant!” We just need to ensure that it is enforced.

That is where the debate now comes: it is about the means. Everybody agrees that the end must be the application of the principles set out by Lord Justice Leveson. Everybody agrees that the code itself was well drafted and that, if it had been enforced in full, the problems would not have arisen in the first place. The debate, which is clearly already raging this afternoon, is about how we can make absolutely sure that that is done in a way that is independently monitored and that endures. My view is that Lord Justice Leveson has made the case for why that can be done only through legislation, although I stress that how that legislation is crafted is a separate matter, to which the House will need to address itself.

Leveson Inquiry

Jack Straw Excerpts

Thursday 29th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The report goes into enormous detail about the history and ownership of the press. Part of one of the volumes goes into immense detail, which my right hon. Friend can study, and perhaps that is the best answer to him. This point was raised by the Leader of the Opposition. Lord Justice Leveson does address concerns about plurality and media ownership and does say we need to make sure there is more plurality than would otherwise be guaranteed simply by competition policy. That is important, because we want to have not just a vigorous press, but a press that is in different—in wide—ownership as well.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Does the Prime Minister not, however, appreciate that the argument made by Lord Leveson is not, as he says, for statutory regulation, which is not there, but to enforce and give backing to the proposals of the press? The fundamental flaw with the proposals of the press, as Lord Leveson clearly sets out, is not their intention, which I acknowledge is now an honourable one, but that it is impossible to deliver the independence proposed by the press themselves and the enforcement—for example, not least on penalties on legal costs—without some overarching form of statutory backing? It is not regulation—it is statutory backing. I plead with the Prime Minister to recognise the force of the argument, not that I am making, but that Lord Leveson makes.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Jack Straw Excerpts

Monday 3rd September 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I would like to correct the right hon. and learned Gentleman on one point: the Steel Bill would not remove hereditary peers. It would do three things, to be precise. It would extend the, in effect, voluntary retirement scheme that is in place in the other place, which I think has led to the spectacular result of two of its Members choosing to do that. Having seen the coverage of the views of some Members of the other place who are from my party, I can think of one or two whom I hope would take early retirement, but there would not be a mass cull in the way that the right hon. and learned Gentleman implies.

Another provision relates to crooks, but let us remember that that means future, not existing, crooks, who would—hey presto!—not be allowed to sit in the other Chamber. Also, any peer who did not attend once, not even for a few minutes to sign on for their £300 tax-free daily allowance, would be disallowed. I am afraid that any scrutiny of that Bill shows that it would barely trim at the margins the size of the House of Lords, so by its own reckoning it would not do what it purports it would do, which is dramatically to reduce the size of the House of Lords. While I have a great deal of respect for the considerable time and effort that Lord Steel has put into this, my view remains that there is no surrogate for democracy.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

Does the Deputy Prime Minister not recognise that his relying on timetabling problems will be seen as a tawdry excuse for a lamentable failure of political will? To my certain knowledge, because I handled such Bills, plenty of controversial constitutional Bills, not least in the first Labour Administration, were not subject to timetabling at all. Such Bills can be got through the House, as this Bill could have been, either by informal agreement or, if necessary, by subsequent guillotining. If he had any courage, that is what he should have done with this measure.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Not only did I have the courage, but I had the courtesy to speak to the leader of the right hon. Gentleman’s party and ask a simple question: if there were objections from the official Opposition to a timetable motion, or even the concept of a timetable motion, how many days would they want? We were prepared to offer more days.

As the right hon. Member for Blackburn knows, under the Labour Government, time and again Bills of constitutional importance were timetabled, and for good reasons. Members in all parts of the House rightly said that at a time of severe economic distress they wanted us to get on with the House of Lords Bill, but for the Bill not to consume all available parliamentary time. What answer did I get, both publicly and privately? That the Labour party wanted individual closure motions.

I am not as much of an old hand in parliamentary procedure as is the right hon. Gentleman, but he knows just as well as I do that that would have led us into a morass and the thing would have been dragged out for months. That once again showed the skin-deep sincerity of the Labour party’s commitment to reform, and it is a great betrayal of his great work in the previous Administration that his party is becoming a regressive roadblock to political reform.

EU Council

Jack Straw Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman failed to answer the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, just a moment ago, in which he asked the Prime Minister to recognise that the pressure for deregulation and a very light touch in the City was coming very strongly from him and—[Interruption.] Oh yes it was. So if there is to be truth and reconciliation, will there be some acceptance by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor that they got it woefully wrong in putting the pressure on us?

[The Prime Minister]

Everyone will have to account for what they have said and all the rest of it, but I have to ask: who was in charge for the last 13 years? Who was the City Minister who carried out this action? If the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) wants to go into the interstices of who said what and did what, I can tell him that the Conservative party—I do not think I was in Parliament at the time—actually voted against the tripartite arrangement that has so badly failed.

Civil Service Reform

Jack Straw Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has been urging me to publish a civil service reform plan for some time. I have said many times that I am keener on civil service reform than I am on civil service reform plans, but we have set out the plan and what we aim to achieve. It will require concerted political leadership, and there must be no hiding place. The political leadership of the Government and wide consensus across the party divide, which I think there is, together with the leadership of the civil service, will provide the best chance of implementing the plan successfully. I completely accept his point that the civil service is an important component of our stability, but we need to ensure that stability does not equate to a lack of any movement.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

I welcome the substance of what the Minister said and the bipartisan tone in which he put it. In particular, may I welcome his proposals for greater involvement by Secretaries of State in the appointment of their permanent secretaries? I say by way of confession that, although I am not sure what the rules were at the time, in each of the three permanent secretary appointments that I made—in the Home Office, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Justice—I insisted that there was a shortlist of at least three candidates from which I should choose. There was not the least allegation that I had acted in a partisan or cronyist way. The point that I made to those Departments was that if I was to take responsibility for the whole Department and for the work of that permanent secretary, I needed to have some confidence in the individual at the official top of the organisation.

[Mr Maude]

I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his point of view, which I think most people who have been Ministers would recognise and respect. As Ministers we come to the House of Commons and, more or less cheerfully, take responsibility and are held accountable, sometimes in very robust terms, for what our Departments deliver and how they perform. The relationship between a permanent secretary and a Secretary of State is the most important one in a Department, and it is not reasonable for a Secretary of State to feel that he or she has no real choice in the appointment of that permanent secretary.

Debate on the Address

Jack Straw Excerpts

Wednesday 9th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I will give way in a moment, but I want to make one point about the Leader of the Opposition’s response. They have had two years to work out what their answer is. What is their answer to too much borrowing, too much spending and too much debt? Their answer is more borrowing, more spending and more debt. Because the right hon. Gentleman did not mention his alternative Queen’s Speech, let me go straight to its centrepiece. The centrepiece of the alternative Queen’s Speech is, I believe, a bonus tax to pay for a jobs fund. Never mind that the last Chancellor in the Labour Government said that a bonus tax would not work; let us look at the detail. The deputy leader of the Labour party was asked in a big set-piece interview how much money that would raise, and this was her response:

“I haven’t got quite the, er, er, I know that we have worked out that figure. I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

She went on to say:

“I haven’t got that actual figure to hand but I can absolutely assure you that Ed Balls has”.

Ah—[Interruption.] The plot thickens. The shadow Chancellor was interviewed this weekend—I know, I need to get out more—and he said that he was sorry, but

“I have not costed the whole programme”.

So there we have it. We have a deputy leader who does not have a clue and a shadow Chancellor who does not have the figures, and I can tell the House why: they have spent their bonus tax 10 times over. They have used it to reverse the VAT increase, to reverse the child benefit change, to reverse the tax credits change, to boost the regional growth fund, to boost capital spending and even to turn empty shops into community centres. They have no idea whatsoever about how to deal with this deficit. They give in to every single interest group—it is the bank tax that likes to say yes from the Front Benchers who cannot say no.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

May I take the Prime Minister back to what he said about reform of the House of Lords? As someone who spent four years working very co-operatively with his colleagues and the Liberal Democrats to find a solution, I say to him that it is palpable that each party is divided on the issue and work between the Front Benchers will not resolve it. It is right in principle that the British people should decide, and that would also avoid a train wreck in the business of this House. Will the Prime Minister look carefully and positively at the idea of having a pre-legislative referendum on reform of the Lords?

[The Prime Minister]

I very much respect the work—often painstaking, careful and difficult—that the right hon. Gentleman did in a range of different roles to try to move House of Lords reform on. He is absolutely right that all parties are divided on this matter—we should be frank about that—so we will only achieve reform if people work together. I do not believe that a pre-legislative referendum is a good move. On the whole, that is a weapon that has been used by slightly unsavoury regimes over the years. On the question of a referendum more generally, I will merely say that every political party went into the election with a pledge to reform the House of Lords so I do not personally see a referendum as having much to recommend it. The House of Commons can discuss this matter and the House of Commons must decide. If we are going to achieve reform, we will have to work together across the parties to try to deliver what I think will be progress for our constitution—a reformed and smaller House of Lords.

Ministerial Code (Culture Secretary)

Jack Straw Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I can absolutely give my hon. Friend that assurance. I agree with him. Having seen some of the Leveson inquiry on television, I know that it is immensely powerful that people are questioned under oath, that all the documentation is carefully gone through and that questions on that documentation are properly followed up. As I say, that is far more robust than anything the independent adviser or the civil service could provide. As my hon. Friend says, I am not waiting for Leveson to complete his investigations. If at any stage information comes out that shows that anyone has breached the ministerial code, of course I will act. That is the right approach and I think people should respect the integrity of the fact-finding mission in which Leveson is engaged. It does not remove from me the necessity to police the ministerial code; that is my job and I will fulfil it properly.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

One of the clear duties on any Secretary of State, for which they in turn are responsible to the Prime Minister and not to Lord Leveson, concerns the conduct of their special advisers. Given what the Prime Minister knows already about the palpable dereliction of duty by the Secretary of State in supervising that adviser, does he not believe that there are matters under the ministerial code that now merit investigation by the independent adviser? No one understands why he is seeking to shelter behind the smokescreen of Lord Leveson’s inquiry when the duty to have this investigation is on him.

[The Prime Minister]

I respect hugely the right hon. Gentleman and his experience in government and I think he would know that I consulted the Cabinet Secretary, asking the question, “What is the right process to follow to ensure we get to the truth and we deal with this issue?” The right process to follow is to allow Lord Leveson to find the facts of the case and if at any stage there is a question of the ministerial code being broken I can act. The ministerial code in respect of special advisers is absolutely clear: Ministers are responsible and they have to take responsibility, and that is what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State did when he came to the House.