Private Members’ Bills: Money Resolutions

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Monday 21st May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Lady will be aware that it is for the Government to initiate financial resolutions to commit taxpayers’ money. It is not without precedent not to bring forward a money resolution when the Government believe that it is not in the taxpayers’ interest to do so at the time. I will explain that further later.

The hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton has been quite strong in his language, talking of an abuse of Parliament and accusing the Government of acting in a profoundly undemocratic way. Well, I would strongly put it to him that the Conservative party has done more to support Back-Bench Members than any other in recent history. The Backbench Business Committee was established in 2010, following a commitment in the Conservative manifesto. This has been a much welcomed and successful change. Elections to Select Committees have been introduced. E-petitions have been a huge success, with the Government responding to 125 of them and 22 having already been debated in this Session. We should all be willing to recognise the achievements of the Conservative party in honouring and respecting Parliament. I could go on, but I think I have made the point.

Week in and week out, I raise matters on behalf of Members from all parties with my colleagues in the Government. I assure the House that this will continue.

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

May I remind my right hon. Friend that the European Union (Referendum) Bill, promoted by our hon. Friend, James Wharton—sadly no longer in this House—did not receive a money resolution?

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to remind us of that. It is unusual, but there are good reasons why, on occasion, money resolutions are delayed. It is not without precedent.

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[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

I thank the Leader of the House for what she has said. I hope she will listen to what I have to say, too.

I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) made the application for an emergency debate. Thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing the debate, which is about the will of the House. You have always been a champion of Parliament and I know you will continue to be so. I am disappointed that my hon. Friend has had to take up the time of the House, when we would much prefer to be debating the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill and other important Bills from the other place.

My first point is: what has brought us here? My hon. Friend made representations to me as shadow Leader of the House. He was perplexed as to why his important Bill was stuck in a queue, on call waiting. As the Leader of the House will know, I had to raise this important issue with her in three consecutive business questions—on 3 May, 10 May and 17 May. My hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) raised it in a point of order on 3 May, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton on 9 May as well as in an urgent question on 10 May. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) also raised it at business questions last week, but unfortunately the Leader of the House has failed to appropriately address the issue and respond to our pleas.

The lack of a money resolution affects not just my hon. Friend but a number of hon. Members across the House. Right hon. and hon. Members have taken the time to introduce their private Members’ Bills to Parliament. They are not, as the Leader of the House quotes Winston Churchill, “happy thoughts”; they go through a process and a procedure. Right hon. and hon. Members are pleased when their Bills have a reading and it is a testament to the importance of their Bills that they have passed Second Reading—that is the will of the House.

The following Bills are awaiting a money resolution: the Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Bill from the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton); the Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Bill from the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson); the Overseas Electors Bill from the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies); the Parking (Code of Practice) Bill from the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight); and the Refugees (Family Reunion) (No. 2) Bill from the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil)—I cannot pronounce his constituency as well as the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) did. Those are all important Bills that have not had their money resolution.

The second point that I want to raise is on practice and procedure. Why do we have that? So that there is certainty about the House’s rules. The procedures are there for transparency. It is about fairness. Perhaps the Government like chaos and uncertainty, but there is no benefit to society and this House from chaos and uncertainty. The Leader of the House quotes “Erskine May”, and I will quote it too:

“A money resolution is normally considered immediately after the second reading of the bill to which it relates”.

Once a Bill has received its Second Reading, it cannot be right for the Government to delay money resolutions for such a long period of time. I have previously quoted from the parliamentary website—it is there for the whole world to see. I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton said when he spoke about the evidence given to the Procedure Committee by a previous Leader of the House, and about what a former Minister—the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman)—said: it is about conventions. That Minister said that providing a money resolution

“is not a signal of Government support; it is absolutely in line with the convention of the House”.—[Official Report, 3 November 2015; Vol. 601, c. 926.]

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The quotation that the hon. Lady gives from “Erskine May” on the provision of money resolutions immediately after Second Reading has never been applied to private Members’ Bills. They have always got it at a later date; it is only Government Bills that get the money resolution immediately afterwards.

[Valerie Vaz]

That is a matter that we need to take up with the writers of “Erskine May”, but nevertheless, it is there. This is about interpretation and that is what it says.

Of the private Members’ Bills in need of a money resolution, the Bill from my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton is the only Bill that received its Second Reading in 2017 and has yet to have a money resolution agreed. The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) is lucky: his Health and Social Care (National Data Guardian) Bill had its Second Reading on the same day—1 December 2017—but after my hon. Friend’s Bill, and it has been given its money resolution today. However, the whole point about procedures, processes and conventions is that Members should not have to be lucky. It should not have to be granted at the whim of the Government. There should be certainty.

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[Sir Christopher Chope]

I thought that we did not need to change it, because I thought the convention was that if a Bill secured a Second Reading it would get a money resolution, and that is the disappointment that has come out of this debate.

My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House says that the Government are now going to look at this on a case-by-case basis, so we now have another layer, basically with the Government—the Executive—saying “We’re going to second-guess Members’ priorities.” It is difficult enough to secure Second Reading for a private Member’s Bill, but once these Bills have done so the order in which they go into Committee is now solely under the control of the Government, because the Government decide whether or not Bills are going to have their blessing on a case-by-case basis.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am fascinated that my hon. Friend has become such a champion of private Member’s Bills, as he has killed more of them than almost any other Member of this House, and to my mind has played a very useful role in doing so. However, is the Government’s practice not caprice, but constitutional correctness? It is the job of this House to seek redress of grievance while it is the job of the Government to ask for expenditure, and we are at risk of confusing the two?

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

I am going to talk about the constitutional point in relation to money resolutions, rather than the virtues of the private Member’s Bill of the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan), and about the difficulty related to that Bill being a private Member’s Bill. In promoting his debate earlier, the hon. Gentleman said that the situation was democratically quite improper, that the procedures were being ignored, and so on and so forth, but that seemed to me rather to ignore the point that it is usually the practice of this House that the Committee stage of a constitutional Bill is considered on the Floor of the House, just as the Act that the hon. Gentleman’s Bill seeks to amend was. After Second Reading, the hon. Gentleman did not, as he was entitled to—as it happens, as I have done on several occasions—move that his Bill should be put before a Committee of the Whole House, which would have been the correct procedure for a constitutional Bill.

In respect of the money resolution, we are dealing with the most ancient practice of this House and of the constitutional division between the Crown, as represented by Ministers, and the responsibilities of Parliament. Although in this country we do not have as formalised a separation of powers as they have in the United States, none the less we have a separation of powers between that which is done by Ministers and that which is done by this House. What is the role of the House historically? It is to seek redress of grievance and to achieve that redress of grievance by preventing the Government from getting or spending money, or by forcing the Government to change the law to implement that redress of grievance. It is not and never has been the role of this House to seek to force the Government to spend money; the House has always responded to requests to do that.

Therefore, we turn to chapter 32 of “Erskine May”, on page 711, where things are set out extremely clearly. Under the title “Financial Relations Between the Crown and Parliament”, it says:

“It was a central factor in the historical development of parliamentary influence and power that the Sovereign was obliged to obtain the consent of Parliament (and particularly of the House of Commons as representatives of the people) to the levying of taxes to meet the expenditure of the State. But the role of Parliament in respect of State expenditure and taxation has never been one of initiation: it was for the Sovereign to request money and for the Commons to respond to the request. The development of responsible government and the assumption by the Government of the day of the traditional role and powers of the Crown in relation to public finance have not altered this basic constitutional principle: the Crown requests money, the Commons grant it, and the Lords assent to the grant.”

Then there appear in “Erskine May” the rather dubious words “In more modern terms”, before it goes on to say that

“the Government presents to the House of Commons its detailed requirements for the financing of the public services; it is for the Commons, acting on the sole initiative of Ministers, first to authorize the relevant expenditure (or ‘Supply’) and, second, to provide through taxes and other sources of public revenue the ‘Ways and Means’ deemed necessary to meet the Supply so granted.”

[Mr Bone]

I do not disagree with anything that my hon. Friend says, but he refers to the situation for Government legislation. When it is a private Member’s Bill, the convention and tradition of this House, which I hope my hon. Friend supports, is that a money resolution is laid. That does not mean that the money is granted; that is up to the House to debate and then divide on. Does he not accept that point?

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[Mr Rees-Mogg]

No; I disagree fundamentally with that point. That is why our Standing Orders are as they are. If we look at Standing Orders Nos. 48, 49 and 50, we can see that the requirement of public money is given only at the express request of the Crown, because regardless of whether it is a private Member’s Bill or a Government-initiated Bill, the principle is the same.

[Chris Bryant]

I would argue that one problem with how we do our business is that we do not afford enough scrutiny of the way in which the Government seek expenditure. We are simply unable to fillet things out, which is why we have not voted against estimates for a very considerable period of time. Does the hon. Gentleman agree with the simple proposition that, if the number of MPs is reduced, the number of Ministers should also be reduced?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is a great constitutional expert, but his point is completely irrelevant to this debate, which is on money resolutions relating to private Members’ Bills. He seeks to widen it to the virtues of the Bill that is being considered, but we need to focus on this basic constitutional principle, which is at the heart of how this place operates.

A Government elected on the basis of popular suffrage come to the House with their demands for expenditure. We as Parliament and the House of Commons hold that Government to account for the expenditure they wish to have. It has never been the role of the House to say that money should be spent if the Government do not wish to propose it.

[Pete Wishart]

What about the sovereignty of the House, which is an underlying principle for the hon. Gentleman? Does that not matter? If this House decides something, should it not have its way?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman is not focusing on the totality of the constitution. The sovereignty of this House is there to give confidence to the Government of the day. If the Government do not have the confidence of this House, they fall. Therefore, if the Government do not operate correctly in bringing forward their requests for expenditure in terms of their dealings with this House, or if the House does not approve, the Government change.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

rose—

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I will not give way again because time is short, much as I would like to give way to the hon. Gentleman.

The point of the constitutional differentiation—the separation of powers—is that, as long as the Government command the confidence of this House, they are the sole proposer of expenditure.

[David Linden]

rose—

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I will not give way again.

[Pete Wishart]

What about sovereignty?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Of course we are sovereign, but we are sovereign in that we have the ability to dismiss the Government.

The separation of powers is very important. If we allowed the House to do all that the Government try to do, we would in effect not have an Executive. We would simply have Committees of the House trying to run the whole Government, which would be completely impractical and a novel constitutional experiment. For very good reasons, we have the Standing Orders we have. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) rightly said that we can change our Standing Orders—we can change Standing Orders Nos. 48, 49 and 50 so that money resolutions are not needed.

[David Linden]

rose—

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I have so little time—I apologise.

The House has decided not to change its Standing Orders because it recognises that the constitutional settlement works well. The British people give a mandate to the Government. That mandate is represented through this House. That Government then come to this House seeking to push through their agenda. The House holds them to account and supports or opposes their expenditures. We would be turning our constitutional settlement on its head if we decided that the powers of the Executive are to revert to the legislature. We are here to seek redress of grievance and to hold to account. We are not here to mimic, replace or take over the functions of the Government. Therefore, it is our role to say to Her Majesty’s Government: “You are right. You are preserving the constitution. You are following the constitutional norms.”

My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) made a point about conventions. The one he mentioned is observed more in the breach than in the observance. It has been ignored on many occasions because it is not a rule of this House or of the constitution. That an application for expenditure lies with the Government is not only a rule of the constitution, but a cornerstone of it. Let us preserve our constitution.