Ministerial Code (Culture Secretary)
Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Will the right hon. and learned Lady take an intervention from me instead?
Ms Harman
I will make a bit of progress, if I may, and then I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.
First, there is the obligation to give accurate and truthful information to the House. On 19 March 1997, this House resolved that one of the principles that the House sees as being of paramount importance is
“that Ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity.”
The seriousness that the House places on this is underlined by the resolution going on to say:
“Ministers who knowingly mislead Parliament will be expected to offer their resignation to the Prime Minister”.
That is the wording of paragraph 1.2.c. of the ministerial code. This is not just some old-fashioned relic of House pomposity; it matters. I know that Members in all parts of the House regard—
Ms Harman
I would think that it would be common agreement that the ministerial code is important, and I am, if the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, simply setting out what the ministerial code says. I cannot believe that he wants to take issue with my describing, at the outset of moving this motion, what the ministerial code says. I put it to the hon. Gentleman: does he, as a Back Bencher, believe that his rights as a Back Bencher are important and that Ministers should answer truthfully to this House?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am grateful and flattered that the deputy leader of the Labour party should want to intervene on me while I am in a sedentary position. I would like to put to her the question about “knowingly” misleading the House. There is no suggestion whatever from any quarter that the Secretary of State ever knowingly misled this House.
Ms Harman
No, I am not going to give way. I owe it to the House to set out the case that I am making, based on the facts.
It emerged during the evidence to the Leveson inquiry that on 19 November 2010, when it was the Business Secretary’s responsibility, the Culture Secretary sent a memo to the Prime Minister about the News Corporation bid for BSkyB, setting out his views and asking for a meeting. In anyone’s book, a memo setting out his views and asking for a meeting is an intervention.
Secondly, in relation to the Culture Secretary’s special adviser, special advisers have a political role and are appointed directly by the Secretary of State. That is why the ministerial code places responsibility for their management and conduct on the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State acknowledged this at the Leveson inquiry. It was put to him that the person responsible for Adam Smith’s discipline
“was you, not the Civil Service, wasn’t it?”
The Culture Secretary replied:
“Well, he reported to me, yes”,
and went on to say:
“I do have responsibility for what he does. I actually have responsibility for whatever everyone in my Department does, but I have more direct responsibility for the people who are my direct reports.”
Quite so. But at the very least there is prima facie evidence that the Secretary of State failed to take responsibility for the management and conduct of his special adviser—
Mr Speaker
Members can shout as loudly or for as long as they like, but it will make no difference. I am simply saying that on the advice that I have taken, nothing disorderly has occurred. [Interruption.] Order, Mr Brennan. I simply ask the Secretary of State to continue with his case.
I appeal to Members to exercise restraint in the frequency—[Interruption.] Order. Members must exercise restraint in the frequency with which they intervene for the debate to continue in an orderly way and for there to be a reasonable opportunity for Members from both sides of the House to contribute.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. As in this debate it may be orderly to accuse my right hon. Friend of being a liar, would it be orderly to accuse Opposition Front Benchers of being the most sanctimonious, hypocritical humbugs in recent political memory?
Mr Speaker
The answer is no, it would not be legitimate to make such a charge against an individual Member who was not the subject of the motion under debate in the House. The hon. Member for Rhondda has said what he has said. I have explained why it may not be proper for him to say it. I know that, being as well behaved as he is, he will not persist.
Charging for Access to Parliament
Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
I much enjoyed hearing from my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) an impassioned plea for the House to be turned into a glorified hotel with a free clock tower attached. I am not entirely convinced that that is the right order of priorities. It seems to me that the House is united in feeling that savings must be made, but that whenever a specific saving is suggested, everyone is against it.
I wish to defend the Commission against the charge that it never consults people. It does, as one will see if one reads one’s e-mails. I replied to one which dealt with the question of whether or not the bound copies of Hansard should continue to be available. I actually like re-reading my own speeches—somebody has to—and I therefore wish to receive the bound copies, but I quite understand that a very expensive process is involved. It might be appropriate for Members to keep their old copies together or to make a contribution if they want to continue to receive bound copies.
I believe that there are two clear principles when it comes to cost savings in the House. The first is that we, and our electorate, can hold the Government to account, and that anything that enables us to hold the Government to account should not be cut. That includes most of the papers that are produced for us, such as the daily Hansards, the Order Papers, and the lists of early-day motions. All the things that enable us to hold the Government to account ought to be retained, even if they are expensive; and all the things that allow our constituents to hold us to account—their freedom to visit the Galleries, to attend Committee meetings, and to exercise their important right to come to the front desk and ask to lobby us and to see us—should also be free, and not subject to any cuts.
The second principle is that we must be able to serve our constituents and meet their requirements when they have problems, and that, too, should not be subject to any cuts. It is important for Members of Parliament to have the staff they need and the facilities they need—the writing paper and the postage stamps—to deal with matters that affect their constituents’ lives.
Not a penny should be saved in those areas, and all Members of Parliament should be united in defending us against any such cuts; but—and it is a very big but—there are some things that are not essential to holding the Government to account and do not provide an essential service for our constituents. In those instances, even if the savings are small, it is important to make them. We are not only doing this in the context of Parliament’s £200 million budget; we are doing it symbolically, to show that we are not just imposing costs and cuts on our constituents, but tightening our own belts. Let me put this question to Members who do not want to charge people for going up the Clock Tower. How can we say to our constituents who are on £43,000-and-a-bit a year that they will not receive their child benefit, when we are not willing to accept even a modest charge for a visit to the Clock Tower?
Robert Halfon
My hon. Friend says that we must tighten our own belts. It is not our belts that we will be tightening, but the belts of our constituents who want to come and see Big Ben. I am not one of those who say that the House of Commons does not need to make savings. Indeed, I suggested a series of savings that the House could make in my opening remarks.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
As I mentioned in my own opening remarks, everyone is in favour of savings, but if we can make an additional saving, we should be pleased about it. I hope that the Commission has heard all my hon. Friend’s recommendations for savings and the recommendations of others who have spoken, because they all ought to be considered. However, it is difficult to accept that going to look at a clockwork mechanism and a large bell, however great and however splendid, is essential to the democracy of this country which has served us so well for hundreds of years. It is a curiosity, it is something of interest to do, it is a delight and a pleasure, but it is not at the heart of how we scrutinise the Government or how we serve our constituents.
We know that times are hard. If I wished to be party political, I could say that our friends on the other side had maxed out the credit card; but whether it is due to that or to bankers, the fact is that the country needs to make savings, and a charging £15 each to 9,000 people a year who want to see a clockwork machine strikes me as not unreasonable.
I seem to be in the same position as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall). I seem to be more establishment than the establishment itself. I understand that, as we have been debating the matter, a compromise has been agreed, and I am sorry about that, because I think that this would have been a right and proper thing to do.
Committee on Standards and Committee of Privileges
Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Sir George Young
My answer now is the same one I gave to my hon. Friend a moment ago: there is no change in the resources available to hon. Members. Currently, some decide to take legal advice and pay for it out of their own pocket; others simply represent themselves. We are not proposing changes to the way in which Members interface with the Committee, but seeking to ensure that the Committee’s decisions have greater credibility in the outside world by adding lay members to it. That is the only change that we propose to make.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Following on from the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field), who said that high-powered legal figures might be appointed, I would be very concerned if judges were appointed to the panel as lay members, because that would be against the separation of powers. Will the Leader of the House give an indication as to whether judges would be appropriate?
Sir George Young
We are trying to get lay members. Whether a judge is a “lay member” is an interesting question. Speaking off the cuff, I do not think we propose to exclude any particular profession. Whether a high-powered judge would want to put his name forward to the House of Commons Commission for this interesting post I am not sure, but it will be a matter for the Commission to consider the candidates that come forward. Some might have a legal background. I am not quite sure that it would be appropriate to appoint a serving judge as a lay member, but somebody with a legal background might not be wholly disqualified.
May I move on to safer territory, namely amendment (a), which was tabled by the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee? The amendment would exclude business arising on a report from the Committee on Standards from the definition of Back-Bench business. It would thus prevent the Backbench Business Committee ever scheduling business arising from the work of one Select Committee and return exclusive control over that business to the Government, which is contrary to the spirit of the Wright recommendations—I read paragraph 176 a few moments ago.
The hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) envisages that the establishment of a Committee on Standards to accommodate lay members should be an occasion to reopen the settlement reached in 2010 on the scope and calculation of Back-Bench business. Although there may be a dialogue on that matter in due course, I do not think this is the right forum in which to consider it. It could certainly be considered in the review currently being conducted by the Procedure Committee. I would invite the hon. Lady not to move her amendment. If she does, I urge the House to oppose it if it is pressed to a Division.
Ministerial Statements
Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
This debate is the continuation of a debate that has gone on for centuries in another form. In the 18th century, the line was that the influence of the Crown had increased, was increasing and ought to be diminished. It is the perpetual, almost the eternal, job of this House to try to keep the Executive, Her Majesty’s Government, under check.
There is a wonderful picture in this House of the Commons trying to persuade Elizabeth I to marry. Elizabeth I said clearly, “It is not your business to talk about it.” Governments always wish to do that. They wish to maintain information for themselves, to use at their convenience. As a former Lord High Chancellor said, “Knowledge is power”. Governments preserve knowledge carefully. That is not an unreasonable thing for the Government to do from their point of view. However, the ministerial code, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), says otherwise. It is a splendid document, because its foreword shows the ambition of Her Majesty’s Government and the Prime Minister to restore people’s trust in politics:
“It is our duty to restore their trust. It is not enough simply to make a difference. We must be different.”
I discovered, thanks to listening to “Yesterday in Parliament”, that the previous Government leaked the whole time. Or perhaps, to go back to “Yes Minister”, the approach was “I brief, you leak, he breaks the Official Secrets Act”. There has been a change, and this Government have got rather better at putting Parliament first, coming to the Chamber and telling us what is going on rather than gratuitously leaking every little titbit of information that is available. They have therefore done something to move towards the ministerial code.
However, the ministerial code is a most unsatisfactory document. Although it runs, I think, to some 30 pages, the truth is that Ministers abide by the code as long as they maintain the confidence of the Prime Minister and, as shown by newspapers and other media outlets, of the British people. Those 30 pages are quite a lot of waffle around that main theme, whereas a resolution of the House is something substantial, solid and dignified. It seems to me that things that go on in this House ought to be regulated by the House of Commons, not by the ministerial code.
It is worth bearing in mind that one Deputy Prime Minister could punch an elector on the nose and still not be deemed to have broken the ministerial code in any way. I know that it was secret at that point whereas it is now a public document, but it seems to me that it is flexible in its interpretation. The fundamental point, as I said, is that Ministers must maintain the confidence of the Crown and of Her Majesty, as advised by her Prime Minister. Indeed, the code states that the Prime Minister is foremost within its application and is the judge and jury of it.
That brings us back to the motion, to how we should deal with statements that are leaked and to why statements should not be leaked. That is the rather important question that we have perhaps neglected slightly. With some honourable exceptions, everyone broadly feels that statements ought to be made to the House first, but why? Why does it matter that we hear things before the News of the World, as was, or Sky News or the BBC? The reason is that control of the news agenda gives the Government an extra advantage over the Opposition, over their critics and over those who wish to hold them to account, which they would not be able to afford themselves. That advantage is paid for by public money.
The Government are indivisible but have two parts and two hats. They are party political on the one hand, yet they are the impartial Administration of the nation’s affairs on the other. The Labour party has perhaps two dozen press officers sitting in its current headquarters, but the Government can have two dozen in a single Ministry, able to brief and guide the press. The same is true when the situation is the other way around—the Conservatives have a small number, and the Government still have a massive advantage in controlling the news agenda. They use taxpayers’ money to do that, rather than money given to them through free donations, and they use that power to guide the views of the nation.
Nobody pretends that propaganda is not powerful. We all know it is, otherwise Unilever would not be, as I believe it is, the second largest spender on advertising in the country. I believe the Government are still the largest. Propaganda underlies how all of this works, and it is why the Government are so determined to maintain control of their ability to leak statements when they feel it is right to do so. They feel that if they use that power, they can ensure their electoral popularity and their re-election, at the expense of the British taxpayer. That is when the other, non-political side of the Government has to say, “This is improper. This is wrong. It is all right while we are in office, but we will not be in office for ever. The other side will come in, and they will be more ruthless than we are. They will use this propaganda advantage to ensure their continuation in power.”
The check on that is, and has been for centuries, the House of Commons nit-picking, banging away at the Government and saying, “This isn’t right. We are holding you to account on this. Our electors want to know about this”. It is not about us, or the fact that we are here representing North East Somerset or other, lesser parts of the country. Actually, I cannot say that with my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr Knight) here, because I get into trouble if I am not very polite about Yorkshire on all occasions. We are representing our constituents, who wish us to hold the Government to account. Once we are elected, our constituents are not necessarily our political friends and supporters, but we represent every one of them and all their concerns.
I sympathise with the Government. I say that not because I am a loyal hack—I do not think I am the loyalest of loyal hacks—but because I absolutely understand the predicament in which they find themselves.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman referred to the non-political side of things, which I suppose in part means the civil service. One problem is that when we make an accusation—it could be an important one, such as, for instance, that the Government have issued false immigration statistics deliberately four days prior to the real statistics coming out—we write to Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, and he writes a beautiful episode of “Yes, Minister” back. The Cabinet Secretary will never find against a Minister. Without the motion, there is no proper arbiter.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is a model in opposition of how people ought to approach this matter. As I understand it, he was a model in government, although not as invariably successful as a model ought to be.
The hon. Gentleman raises the issue of the indivisibility of the Government, who are both political and impartial. In a sense, it is much easier to be a judge or to be the Speaker, because people in those positions are always impartial. The Government are always seeking re-election, but at the same time, they must make decisions in the interest of the nation impartially and fairly—one hears Ministers talk about being in a quasi-judicial position in certain circumstances. Parliament seeks to divide those indivisible roles and to say, “That bit is political. Therefore we are holding you to account for political reasons, not necessarily because we disagree on the benefit to the nation.”
The Procedure Committee debated with a great deal of amusement whether impeachment could be reintroduced. I would love to see the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) introduce articles of impeachment against a Minister whom he thought had misbehaved. If that did not work, perhaps he could go further and attaint a Minister, which would be the final sanction.
However, the Committee decided, cautiously and prudently —to some extent this answers the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms)—that, as the conclusion of part 1 of the report states,
“We do not believe that it is practical or desirable to produce a detailed protocol that would cover all possible situations”.
That is clearly right, because there will be circumstances in which Ministers must answer questions urgently—perhaps they would be pressed to do so or the financial markets demand it. However, there will also be occasions on which the Minister knows perfectly well that he has a jolly good, fat, juicy news story that he would like to put out to his chums and he does so. That is what we ought to be trying to stop.
I have great confidence in this Government when I think of what they have done so far to restore the standing of Parliament. We can see how much better debates are attended than they were under the previous Government.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
I suspect that that is more because of the quality of the hon. Gentleman’s speeches than those of any Minister.
Mr Knight
My hon. Friend is making an excellent contribution to this debate. In essence, is not our problem that the ministerial code, upon which we rely for justice in this respect, is presided over by the Prime Minister acting as a judge, when in reality he must also be an advocate for, and on the same side as, his Minister?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. It is important that this be brought to the Commons as a matter of our procedure, and that we do not rely on the good will or benign nature of the Government to see that it is enforced.
I want to finish on the sympathy that I have for the Government. They have allowed the formation of a Backbench Business Committee, which is letting debates such as this take place. Ministers are regularly making statements and they are answering questions for over an hour on those statements. There is a more rigorous approach to the treatment of scrutiny, and the House of Commons is being treated more seriously. That is a thoroughly good and admirable thing. None the less, the House of Commons should be greedy and say, “We want more scrutiny of the Government. We want to push the Government further so that we may keep them under control and under a proper check because they wield the most gigantic power.”
The Government have all the organs of state at their control. They have as many press officers, briefers and leakers as one may wish to cast a stick at. The Opposition do not have that. Nevertheless, the day will come when the Conservatives are once again in opposition and we will want to claw our way back into government and will not want to have the dice loaded against us as they were between 1997 and 2010. For that, we must make tough decisions to hold the Government to account when it is a Government whom we support, and that scrutiny must be firmly embedded, reinforced and made solid in the culture of the House. Although the motion may not be ideal, it unquestionably moves in the right direction. If the Government do not accept it today, I hope that they will at least indicate what they will accept and how quickly they will pass this from the Government, the Crown, and back to Parliament.
Nick Boles
My hon. Friend is a distinguished member of the legal profession and therefore well understands the ability of people to abuse otherwise well intentioned elements of the law. However, I intend to go further than he suggests, because I argue that we should move away from this idea that it is a leak when the Government decide to announce in advance to the media some elements of their proposals. I believe that it is directly and strongly in the public interest that the public are given a chance to understand the detail of the Government’s proposals and the range of views and arguments that will be expressed, and for Parliament also to contribute to that debate, but not to have the monopoly on first communication.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend makes a perfectly reasonable point. It would be perfectly possible to write a ministerial code that said, “Her Majesty’s Government will take not a jot of notice of Parliament, but will issue statements to whomever they feel like, whenever they feel like it.” If that is what my hon. Friend wants, will he redraft the ministerial code and send it to the Prime Minister?
Nick Boles
My hon. Friend asks a cunning question, but one I think I can sidestep by saying that, as I discussed with him before the debate began, I think that the ministerial code is a load of nonsense. The truth about the ministerial code is what he said, which is that a Minister can stay in their job while they have the confidence of the Prime Minister, but as soon as they lose it, it does not matter what the ministerial code says, they should lose their job.
Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation Bid for BSkyB
Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Brown
If we do not act now as a House of Commons, knowing what we now know, and act forcefully and with clarity, friends around the world who admire our liberties as a country will now ask what kind of country we have become. A crime has been committed against innocent members of the public; a complaint has been made to the police and no satisfaction has been given. Even when the police have had someone’s name as a likely victim, they were neither telling them nor taking action. No action from the head of the first police inquiry, Andy Hayman, whose next job just happened to be at News International; no action from his successor, who had overall responsibility for two inquiries—Mulcaire and Abelard, or what is called Southern Investigations—each with vast but unexamined archives exposing criminality on a huge scale. Inspector Yates has redefined for us the meaning of an inquiry. He not only failed to ask any of the right questions but, as became clear yesterday, he failed even to ask any of the basic questions.
I deeply regret my inability to do then what I wanted to do—to overturn the advice of all the authorities and set up a judicial inquiry. I can say for the record that, as I left office, I talked to the leader of the Liberal party and warned him that a Coulson problem would emerge, and I did so directly, and not through an intermediary who might not remember to pass on the message. At the same time, I handed him, in person, our proposal for a commission into the media, and in summer last year, I wrote to the head of the civil service to point out that the previous advice against the judicial inquiry had clearly since been overtaken by the new evidence.
I am afraid that the House must examine more recent, more damning and more alarming evidence. Because of what happened to my children, whose privacy at all times I have tried to protect, I have been sent, I have been offered, and I have had thrust upon me a great deal of evidence that is relevant to this debate, which is now for the police to examine. It is right for the House to know that the damage done in the past 10 years to innocent lives was avoidable. As early as the winter of 2002, senior police officers at Scotland Yard met the now chief executive of News International and informed her of serious malpractice on the part of her newspaper staff and criminals undertaking surveillance on their behalf. The new investigation will no doubt uncover why no action was taken within News International and what lay behind the subsequent promotion of that junior editor concerned.
In that context, and again, because of what happened to my family, I have been made aware of an additional and previously unexamined stream of orders by one of the editors at News International, Mr Alex Marunchak, to hack and to intrude—a man who was subsequently promoted to be a full editor of a regional edition of the News of the World. As we now know, a cover-up can be more damning than the original crime, and the decision of the News International chairman to pay, without reference to his board, some victims sums of around £500,000, may now be seen as the buying of silence. Given his statements to this House, that must now be the subject of full parliamentary, as well as police, scrutiny.
The freedom of the press in this country was built through the countless acts of fearless people who had done no wrong, and yet had to make huge sacrifices. Today, the freedom of the press can best be assured by full disclosure and reparation by those who know that they have done wrong. First, for the future, the press media itself should immediately press for a new Press Complaints Commission. We need one that is proactive, not passive; one that is less about protecting the press from the public, and more about properly processing the complaints of the public against the press; and one that is wholly independent, so that it can differentiate, and be seen to differentiate, between the abuse of power as a result of self-interest and what we really need, which is the pursuit of truth in the public interest.
We need to put an end to the violation of rights, but also to ensure the righting of wrongs. Secondly, therefore, News International papers, and every other responsible paper, should in future be obliged to publish—not on page 35 or 27, but on page 1—apologies to all individuals whose rights have been infringed. Perhaps in future we will know the naming and shaming of criminals inside the media by the name of one of the saddest victims, as happened with Sarah’s law. That would require News International to practise what it has so self-righteously preached to other people.
Thirdly, we must do all in our power to prevent the subversion of our basic rights again. We must therefore be ready to discuss limits to the undue concentration of ownership in the media as a whole. I must say to the Prime Minister, in response to the statement he made earlier today, that I believe that he will have to widen the remit of the commission of inquiry, so that we are sure that it will examine not just the police and general ethics, but all the evidence of the abuse of surveillance techniques and technologies, as a result of which we saw the undermining of our civil liberties.
In the long and winding evolution of our rights and freedoms, the people of this country have always been at risk from huge concentrations of power. Traditionally, they have seen the freedom of the press as a force for their freedom, but when our country’s biggest media organisation has itself become an unchallengeable concentration of power, as it was until today; when it is has held in contempt not only basic standards of legality, but basic standards of decency, too; when it has replaced freedom with licence; when it has wielded power without ever being elected to do so; and when it has regarded itself not only as above the law, but as above the elected institutions of our country, all concerned people in this House should be able to see that what should be our greatest defence against the abuse of power had itself become an intolerable abuser of power.
History will also show that a press will not long remain free in any country unless it is also responsible. If the irresponsibility that has characterised News International is not to define the public view of the media as a whole and if continued irresponsibility is not to force Parliament to take ever stronger measures to protect the public from the press, we will need far more than the closure of a newspaper one week and the withdrawal of a bid the next.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, as are many other Government Members. Before he finishes with this high moral tone, will he tell us something about Messrs Whelan and McBride?
Mr Brown
I find it strange that when I am giving to the House new evidence of criminal wrongdoing, the Conservative party, instead of listening, want to shout down the speaker. On reflection, when we are talking about people who have been abused as a result of the infringement of their liberties, the Conservative party will think it better to hear the evidence before jumping to conclusions.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Paul Murphy
I very much doubt it. The whole point is that the Government have handled the matter atrociously. At the end of the day, this is not about better democracy; frankly, it is about the fortunes of the Conservative party. In taking that approach, the whole basis of our parliamentary democracy will be threatened.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
I wish to speak to my amendment 207, but first may I say how much I agreed with the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)—I am surprised to be saying it, but he will be even more surprised—who spoke a great deal of sense about not making constituencies purely numerical compartmentalisations? This country has such a rich history of communities, and when it is a case of a few hundred here or a few hundred there, we ought to be more generous than this very rigorous and rigid approach. Many Government Members, as well as Opposition Members, feel that.
This matter ought to be looked at in a broader context and have more cross-party support. The one area on which I disagree with Opposition Members is the advantage to the Conservative party, which I think will be remarkably small.
Kevin Brennan
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, particularly so early in his remarks. I have read his interesting amendment. Does he hope that the flexibility around historical county boundaries for which he is looking might find more favour in another place, if not with the Conservative Front-Bench team tonight?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
It had occurred to me that I might suggest to my noble kinsman that he might wish to move a similar amendment. I look forward to doing that after this evening’s debate, if Her Majesty’s Government are not kind enough to accept my amendment.
I hope I do not bore the House by going on about history too much, but not far from here, outside the House of Lords, is a statue of Richard the Lionheart—Richard I—who was a great, noble king of England. It was in his reign that people first came from the shires to advise the king. His reign began in 1189—that means more than 800 years of counties being represented in Parliament. I am sorry to say that those Members who represent boroughs are very much the Johnny-come-latelies—they only got here in 1265. However, those of us representing counties have been here since the reign of Richard I.
I tabled my amendment because it seems a great shame to get rid of a long-standing historic tradition by accident, by a rule of the pen, by just doing something because it is there and it is tidy. I accept, as the hon. Member for Rhondda did, that we need to have a numerical approximation, but it does not need to be utterly rigid, and it ought, as far as possible, to respect our historical traditions.
Tristram Hunt
Is the hon. Gentleman more and more surprised, when he reads into the Bill, that this proposal comes from the Conservative party? He understands the Conservative party and its traditions, customs and inheritance, yet this utilitarian Bill undermines all that.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. Reading his piece in the Financial Times, which made a similar point, I did not understand why he was not on the Conservative Benches. His views and outlook seem similar to those of what I might call a high Tory. I am delighted that there are others in the House who might be so described.
I do not want to make a long speech. I just want to make the simple point that we have these great historic traditions, within which we can adopt what the Government are trying to do. My suggestion would not run a coach and horses through the Bill; it would broadly accept most of it.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Is it not a sign of how rushed this is that the Government will not listen to any of these arguments? They are intent on smashing this Bill through before the next election.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I was going to make the cheap comment that the Deputy Prime Minister is, of course, a borough Member, so he probably has an objection to the counties, because the borough Members used to get only half the wages of the county Members. Perhaps there is a long-standing objection to the higher pay we used to get.
Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the historic boundary between Devon and Cornwall needs to be protected? Cornwall has a unique identity; it has its own language, and should be treated as a special case, like the Shetland Isles and the Western Isles, for geographical purposes. Cornwall’s identity is special and deserves to be protected.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I have the greatest sympathy with my hon. Friend’s view, although, as I said in an earlier intervention, in 1362—I think—one Member represented seats in both Devon and Cornwall simultaneously, so there is at least some historical precedent for Devon and Cornwall having an association. It is important, however, to respect communities as far as possible, so I call upon Her Majesty’s Government to be generous, to be kind and to consider the great history of my own county of Somerset—[Interruption.] I know that they are not listening, but they might listen eventually. I ask them to be kind and allow us to maintain our great historic traditions. It would not much change the Bill, it is not a very great amendment and I hope that the Government might at least think on it.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
I am not calling merely for kindness from Her Majesty’s Government; I am calling for decent, adequate representation for my home nation of Wales within my other home nation of the United Kingdom, of which the nation of Wales is part. It is ironic that tomorrow, in the United States, millions upon millions of people across that large and expansive land will elect their senators, and regardless of the size of the states from which they come, they will each elect two senators. Theirs was a constitution that developed over centuries, and those Americans realised that we ought not to enter into such changes lightly. How different from those on the Government Benches.
Once upon a time, in the “Encyclopaedia Britannica”, there were the words, “For Wales, see England”. That is what Government Members are saying today, because they do not understand—or perhaps they do, and this really is just gerrymandering, in which case I am being kind to Her Majesty’s Government—that we cannot get rid of 25% of the representatives of a nation within the nation of which it is part, and expect there to be no repercussions. Some Government Members will hop up and down and say, “Isn’t this a bit unfair? Aren’t some bits not truly equal?”, but that is not the point. This is about the devolution settlement, which was granted in a referendum. My party was in favour of devolution, but so-called Unionists on the Government Benches were against it—well, some sort of Unionism that shows itself to be this evening!
This is a Government who have already decided that Chesham and Amersham is part of Wales, and who decided in the past that Wokingham was too—and the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) could not even sing the national anthem. They decided that a representative for Worcester could stand up for the people of Wales.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Heath
We will have to differ on that specific point. I believe that what is proposed provides for a high level of equalisation across the whole United Kingdom. It is based on what is equitable for our constituents.
I return to the point about an incremental reduction, which was raised by one other hon. Member. I should like to make it clear that the issue was considered in the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, and the secretary of the Boundary Commission for England reported that there would be no particular advantage to making the change incrementally. The commission also said that it had both the resources to carry out the review and sufficient time, before the deadline for submitting reports on 1 October 2013, to draw up constituencies for a House of 600 at the review. The suggestion that that is impossible to achieve in the time scale that we propose is not substantiated.
The Government’s proposals strike the right balance. They will end once and for all the fluctuation in the size of the House and the upward pressure on the number of MPs under the current legislation, and propose a modest reduction in overall numbers, which will cut the cost of politics, but do so in a way that will not result in constituencies that represent a departure from the type that we see in this Parliament. I hope that right hon. and hon. Members will feel able to withdraw their amendments and support the Government’s position.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
Mr Evans, thank you so much for calling me. It has been enlightening, educational and a real honour to listen to this debate since we last divided the House some hours ago. I have listened to some fine speeches. The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) put his case with such pith and moment that I was almost persuaded to vote against my own side. The spectre that arose before us was one so terrifying and so fearful that we quaked in our Tory boots; it was the spectre of clause 9 leading us to proportional representation. The fear that came upon me was that as a result of setting a number so precise and clear that it could not be questioned even by the great and good of the Boundary Commission, we could face proportional representation. I saw other right hon. and hon. Members struck with fear at the thought, and I saw them feeling that they would move towards supporting greater flexibility.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) offered us an amendment that would meet almost every objective of Her Majesty’s Government but would still have flexibility—that great aspect of the British constitution, which has served us well since Alfred the Great, who was a Somerset man. I debate with my hon. Friend the Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) whether Alfred is more my constituent or his; I think, in fairness, that he would belong more to the Deputy Leader of the House. This constitutional flexibility is something that has been of great benefit to us. I feel that my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes got it right in saying that it is useful for there to be some degree to which one can go outside the boundaries, without being too prescriptive.
On the subject of today’s speeches, what a fantastic history lesson we had from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt). To think that this was supposedly the least discussed reform of Parliament since the Rump Parliament, when Cromwell decided to send in the troops—the only man to send troops into the predecessor building to this House to enforce debate and Divisions. Some of us may think that the Whips are tough, aggressive and forceful, but even in my experience they have not used force, or pikes, to make sure that I go in the right direction. Oliver Cromwell did indeed do that; he prevented people from voting in that forceful way. The shadow Minister returned us to these matters again and again, and spoke for at least 50 glorious minutes—minutes that felt to me like days, but days of such pleasure, joy and rejoicing in spirit that I hope we will have another 50 minutes from him in due course, or on another occasion, or perhaps tomorrow, if we should be so lucky.
Let us return to the specifics of numbers. Should it be 650, or perhaps 649? Should it be 648 or 647?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend would like to have more—perhaps it is a “points mean prizes” occasion. However, I think that 600 is not too bad a number. One hon. Member suggested 666—the number of the beast. It is worth being careful about the number 666, because if we read our Bible carefully there is always a footnote saying that other ancient authorities refer to 616. I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes set his limit at 612, clearly aware of the dangers of going as high as 616 and thereby finding that we inadvertently had in this House the number of seats that was the number of the beast. We know what that would mean: it would be deeply terrifying—almost as terrifying as the threat of proportional representation.
We had great discussions about the great and noble historical counties, and the wickedness of Humberside and suchlike. I would like to add that Avon was even worse than Humberside. Avon was an abomination—a foul creature disgusting in all respects, destroyed, I am glad to say, by the noble father of my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer). In the numerical aspect, it is important to look at the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome in representing so many Somersetshire constituents. It seems important that the people of Somerset should have as much representation as the people of Rhondda—indeed, I think rather more, because we are from Somerset and they are from Wales. A few extra seats should be especially included, to give Somerset the representation that that wonderful county needs.
I will say just one final thing about seats, because time is getting on. In the Parliament of, I believe, 1392—let me just check that in my notes—no, the Parliament of 1362, one Member, a Mr John Wonard, represented two seats in Devonshire and two in Cornwall. It seems to me that the flexibility that the history of our nation allows ensures that the number will always come out right in the end. A right and suitable number we shall have, a fine and good number, a lucky number, perhaps a number that the—
Use of the Chamber (United Kingdom Youth Parliament)
Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Philip Davies
The hon. Gentleman seems to think that members of the UK Youth Parliament are unique in not being able to vote or stand for Parliament at a general election. That, I am afraid, is not the case. They are not unique. No young people have the opportunity to participate in general elections, not just members of the UK Youth Parliament. As I made clear earlier, the royal family do not have the opportunity to vote in elections. [Hon. Members: “Sit down!] Well, this is a repetition of an intervention. Does the hon. Gentleman not accept my point? Prisoners do not have the opportunity to vote or stand for Parliament. People who are bankrupt do not have the opportunity to stand for Parliament. Again he has failed to say why the UK Youth Parliament is unique. Yet again, he has spectacularly failed to answer that point.
Philip Davies
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who certainly is not the antithesis of Conservatism. I am checking whether the Whips are still writing notes, because it would be helpful if they have noted that I am not the antithesis of Conservatism: that would be helpful for my career prospects. I am grateful that he made the point that I am the antithesis of Conservatism. Thank you for that, Madam Deputy Speaker.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) made the most salient point: younger people do not vote at general elections, not because we do not allow them to use the Chamber or because we do allow them to use it, but because we do not inspire them to vote. The onus is on us. [Interruption.] I note the laughter from the Liberal Democrat Benches, but the point I am making is that what inspires people to vote in elections is people who stand up and have clear views and beliefs and are prepared to stand on matters of principle. That is what inspires people to vote. Perhaps Liberal Democrats might wish to consider that.
It is delusional to pretend that we can carry on as we always have done and trot out the same meaningless stuff that will not offend anybody, or that we can go around saying nothing worth while or meaningful and hope that nobody notices, while claiming that allowing the Youth Parliament to sit in the Chamber will inspire young people to vote. Young people do not want to vote because they never hear arguments and ideas; they never hear a battle about ideas. I was lucky enough to be brought up to be interested in politics in the 1980s, when there was a clear difference between the main political parties. Whichever side of that divide one happened to be on, it was perfectly clear where we were. I was a great admirer of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister. She was the person who inspired me to enter politics. No doubt lots of Opposition Members felt exactly the opposite. They knew exactly which side of the fence they were on.
The problem that we now have with inspiring young people to vote is that when they listen to debates, they are not entirely sure which side they agree with, or even which side sticks up for their principles. Indeed, when Tony Blair was the leader of the Labour party and my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr Cameron) was the Leader of the Opposition, it was sometimes difficult for young people who were just getting interested in politics to know which side of the political divide they were on, or which way they should vote in an election. My point is that if we want to inspire young people to go out and vote in elections, the onus is on us to start having a battle of ideas and stand up for what we believe in, rather than just saying what we think might be popular or politically expedient.
To all those people who have been grandstanding in here about how important it is for the Youth Parliament to sit in this Chamber, let me say this. I hope that they will go away from this debate and think about what else they can do. Part of that battle might be about standing up and saying something controversial or unpopular every now and then—standing on a point of principle, arguing their point of view and trying to change public opinion, rather than just trying to follow it and saying “motherhood and apple pie” things, in order to get a nice little press release in their local papers. That is not what inspires young people to get involved in politics, and if people think that they can cover all that with an annual debate in this Chamber, they are sadly mistaken.
Other people may want to have debates in this Chamber—other people whose issues do not—