Business of the House (Saturday 19 October)
Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Anne Main(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Rees-Mogg
It was my pleasure and honour to brief the Scottish and Welsh Governments about the Queen’s Speech on Monday, so I happen to know—[Interruption.] Well, the Queen’s Speech’s first point was that we would make sure that Brexit was delivered and legislated for. There are constant communications between the devolved authorities and the Government, and that is quite right.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend share my surprise that so many people are already commenting on the deal in the media and indeed rejecting it out of hand, without giving it the thoughtful consideration that the 33 million people who engaged in the biggest democratic process ever would expect us to give to it? We should listen to this new deal, and actually take a thoughtful approach—not a tribal, but a thoughtful approach—to whether it has our support.
Mr Rees-Mogg
Absolutely. My hon. Friend is completely right that we want to respect democracy.
European Union Referendum Bill
Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Anne Main(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Rees-Mogg
The hon. Gentleman had the opportunity to listen to an excellent debate on that very subject yesterday, led by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), but I think I would be in trouble if I went through the question of full fiscal autonomy for Scotland in relation to amendment 10 to the European Union Referendum Bill, so I want to stick to the subject at hand.
The European Union has a budget for this. Indeed, we passed a Bill in 2013 that allows for the European Union to engage in political activity and the promotion of the cause and objectives of the European Union. That money flows to institutions within the United Kingdom and that money comes with strings attached. It is money that is given on the basis that the institutions receiving that money support the objectives of the European Union.
Mr Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It would be against the conditions of receipt of that money to use the money to campaign for a member state to leave the European Union.
Some very influential bodies in this country receive money from the European Union. My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) said that the CBI receives money from the European Union. We know that the CBI is in part funded by Europe. It is therefore under an obligation either to return that money or to support the objectives of the European Union. When the director-general of the BBC came before the European Scrutiny Committee, he was asked about the money the BBC received from the European Union and the strings that that may have attached. Even the most impartial and highly regarded bodies in our establishment receive money from the European Union, and they take on certain obligations in return.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mark Spencer) made a very good point about what happens to farmers in receipt of subsidies that have come from the European Union. Are they then prohibited from giving money to the Conservative party to campaign in the referendum? No, of course not. He may well be right that the amendment needs improving to ensure that people are not captured by mistake.
Mrs Main
The stakes are very high. If a Government have nailed their colours to a mast when it comes to a particular vote—in or out—and that vote does not go their way, a Government will then be in power for two or three years with a vote that they do not wish to live with, because it was contrary to the colours that they nailed to the mast.
Mr Rees-Mogg
That is a very important point, which may be worth discussing when we debate other amendments. Ultimately, the Government must accept the will of the people—that is what we all believe in, and that is why we are all here—but they must deal with that fairly.
There is also the question of where the Government should proceed from here. There seems to be a wide consensus that paragraph 15 of schedule 1 is deeply unsatisfactory, and that the removal of the issue of purdah was simply a mistake. I am willing to trust the Government, so I accept that it was an honest mistake, and not a mistake that was made in an attempt to fiddle the referendum result. I believe that partly because I am a simple fellow who is very trusting of the Government, but also because trying to fiddle the result will damage whichever side wishes to do it.
The British electorate will not have the wool pulled over their eyes. If little bits of legislation are squirreled away into the Bill to make things easier for one side or the other, those of us who are on the other side will campaign on that basis. We will say, “Look, we need to act against this, because people are trying to fiddle us over what is happening.” There is a wonderfully contrary spirit among the British people, who will not be cowed by those who try to trick them.
European Union (Approvals) Bill [Lords]
Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Anne Main(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Jacob Rees-Mogg
This is a dreadful Bill of which Her Majesty’s Government should be deeply ashamed. They should hang their head in shame at having done it. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport, or the Department of entertainments, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Sir Richard Shepherd) called it, has agreed to something that directly contradicts what the Prime Minister said a year ago. We have a Prime Minister, a leader of Her Majesty’s Government, who says one thing and a Department for Culture, Media and Sport that brings forward a Bill to do exactly the reverse. The Prime Minister said he was against ever- closer union; the money that we are discussing will be spent on promoting ever-closer union.
The Commons, in its wisdom, is to contradict the Prime Minister. Does that show the proper control that the Government should have of their legislative programme, if Bills are introduced that make the Prime Minister’s words look like wormwood? Is that how the Government wish to treat the British people? Can we have trust in our politicians in this nation if the Prime Minister says one thing and his Ministers bring forth Bills saying another? Are we to feel that there is any movement in the Government’s policy towards reducing ever closer union when their Bills say the reverse and when the words, which are cheap, say one thing but the Acts of Parliament say another—and say that which the British people are opposed to? We have a review of competences to see whether there is the right balance, yet we increase the competences without having any review at all.
We have, by unanimity, agreed to spend money on promoting the ideal of the European Union, and we have had no apology for it and no defence of it other than the Minister saying that he does not much like it but he does not think it is a grand scheme and it might cheer up his mates in eastern Europe.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Anne Main(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Jacob Rees-Mogg
The British Legion will not become a third party in a general election because it is against charity regulations for it to do so. It would be an outrage if one of the most admired and apolitical bodies in this country suddenly started saying that people should vote Conservative—let alone say that people should vote Labour, heaven forfend! Charities are not there to intervene in general elections. They have specific tax benefits and their ability to fundraise is dependent on them being charitable, not political, and there is a clear difference. There is no question of the Royal British Legion becoming a third party in a general election. That is the classic scare story that we hear again and again from the Opposition, who wish to obfuscate and confuse matters because they are worried that their trade union masters will, under this clause, have the amount they can spend reduced. They hide it; they camouflage it under this complaint on behalf of the Church of England, the Royal British Legion, and so on.
We should be concerned about third parties spending money in a way that is less regulated than political parties themselves, or having the ability to spend more and with lower effective limits on what they are able to do. The clause succeeds in doing that and would make no difference at all to charities or the Church of England. My amendment would further tighten the clause. As I have said, the Opposition should be enthusiastic about it, because it is wrong for Government money to be used by third parties when they have received it not for political activity but for their general activities of whatever kind.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
My hon. Friend makes a powerful and interesting speech, and perhaps he can help hon. Members who, like me, are concerned about this aspect of the Bill. Will he give us examples of organisations that tread the fine line of political campaigning that would be caught by amendment 27?
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The Government and the taxpayer hand out very large amounts of money to third parties. Therefore, those parties should say either, “We will not take those funds,” or, “We want to be free to campaign.” They have the choice.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The hon. Gentleman assumes I have a much more salubrious social life than I have. I wish I constantly enjoyed a round of garden parties during general election campaigns. I am sorry to disappoint him that that is not how life is in North East Somerset. I am afraid that the picture he conjures is false. That situation does not arise under the Bill. Ingenious though his vision is, it does not get away from the fundamental point that Governments have a duty to spend taxpayers’ money carefully. They also have a duty of trust to ensure that taxpayers’ money is not misspent on purposes for which it was not intended. The Government, who are very powerful when in office, have a particular obligation not to fund their friends who can then use the money they receive to support the Government’s efforts to remain in office. That is a risk that the Opposition have pooh-poohed, but it is a real risk.
Mrs Main
My hon. Friend is being generous in giving way, but he did not really answer the question of what problem he is trying to fix. If there is no proof of that happening, then it is a bit like me saying that I will stop kicking my dog when I do not own a dog. I am concerned that he is coming up with a complex and technical solution to a problem that may not even exist, although it may, in theory, potentially exist.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
If my hon. Friend had been listening to all of the debate outside the House, which I am sure she has been, she will have seen that many bodies contributing to it are publicly funded. They receive money from the state that they are now spending on lobbying the state. It is therefore not the greatest leap to assume that there are bodies in receipt of money from the state that might be interested in elections. Why? Because they are the ones complaining that the Bill is so unfair on them. If they are complaining that the Bill is so unfair on them, it must be because they intend to spend some of that money on elections. My hon. Friend must therefore see that the case is made by the people she is oddly supporting. They have given a warning about what they intend to do. Having been warned, it is surely sensible to stop this happening and to say that it is wrong for taxpayers’ money to be used to fund third parties’ election campaigns.
Commission Work Programme 2013
Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Anne Main(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Jacob Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is no manifesto; nobody stands for the European Commission saying what they want to do and the programme they wish to propose. No, no—it comes down from on high. Is it not interesting that that which has the appearance of power has none whereas that which has the reality of power uses it as far as possible by stealth?
Annex I contains 58 recommendations, 38 of which are legislative—including some elements that are non-legislative in bits of them. One rather splendidly requires “soft law”, a term that I have not heard before. I wonder whether when up before a judge one could say, “I am not sure whether I broke the law, because it was only soft law—does it have to be hard law?” Another is a negotiating directive that is not law by first degree but becomes law a little later.
Annex II is on simplifications and 17 out of the 18 proposals are legislative. Is it not interesting that when the European Union simplifies, it has to pass more law? It does not just repeal things—not a bit of it—but passes more laws. It reminds me of that quip: “Big fleas have smaller fleas upon their backs to bite ’em, and little fleas have lesser fleas and so ad infinitum.” We go on and on legislating, apparently making things simpler, but it seems to me that we are just being bitten by the fleas of the European Union.
I know that time is short, so I want to go to the absolute heart of the matter, which, as so often, is in the introduction, which refers to the state of the Union speech by Mr Barroso—that reference is wonderfully grandiloquent and makes it sound as if he is President of the United States and a democratically elected and important figure rather than a minor panjandrum—and states:
“The State of the Union speech launched ambitious ideas for the long term framing of the EU—a deep and genuine economic union, based on a political union. This vision must be translated into practice through concrete steps, if it is to address the lingering crisis that continues to engulf Europe, and the Euro Area in particular.”
These are concrete steps about creating an economic union based on a political union; they are not in the interests of the United Kingdom.
London Local Authorities Bill [Lords]
Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Anne Main(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Jacob Rees-Mogg
Absolutely right. I thought it might not be a bad idea if they had the relevant council’s coat of arms.
Mrs Main
Does my hon. Friend have any suggestions as to how this would be promoted, because my constituents, should they come down to London, might not be aware of the purpose of these people in bowler hats or other uniforms and might not be aware of their powers in the regulations.
Eurozone Financial Assistance
Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Anne Main(13 years, 6 months ago)
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European Union Bill
Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Anne Main(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Jacob Rees-Mogg
New clause 11 is extremely interesting and worth looking at with care, because it comes out of a mix of genius and anger. The genius of it is that it has succeeded in initiating a debate on the question of an in/out referendum, which is clearly not the purpose of the Bill. I know that deft parliamentary draftsmanship was required to have such a proposal selected for debate, and I am full of admiration for that and for the genius that is generally the attribute of my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), who is a great parliamentarian. Every time one listens to him, one is inspired by the thought that people care about the powers of this House and of the people who send us here.
The proposal is also, however, the product of anger—a righteous anger that the British people have seen their powers given away, but been denied the opportunity to decide whether that ought to have happened. Whether that was done by the Single European Act, or by the Maastricht, Lisbon, Nice or Amsterdam treaties, does not really matter. The British people were not properly consulted, and many of them are upset about that.
Unfortunately, that combination of genius and anger leads to a proposal that makes no sense, which is why—reluctantly—I oppose it. The difficulties are manifold, but the main problem is that it proposes that one thing leads to another automatically, without any consideration of the first thing. My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) made the very obvious point that we cannot have it both ways. Under the new clause, we could decide by referendum not to transfer powers, and then follow that up with a vote to stay in altogether. If we vote to stay in altogether, surely we would be signing up to everything with gusto, but that is the last thing we would want to do if we had recently objected to a treaty that gave more powers to the EU. Therefore, if we vote to stay in, we could contradict a no vote that we had just achieved.
Mrs Main
I am following my hon. Friend’s logic, but it is possible to say, “I want to stay in the European Union, but I am not happy with that transference of powers.” I do not see that a no vote on a transference of powers and wanting to stay in the EU are mutually exclusive.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, but I think there is a slight confusion. If we have an in/out vote, and it is won by the pro-Europeans, it is a vote for the EU as it exists and with all the powers that it has. Those of us who support this referendum lock Bill do not want further powers going to the EU or to get accidentally into a situation in which we sign up to things we probably opted out of. That is the complication of having an in/out vote that is won by the “in” side but not on the issue discussed and subject to the referendum lock. That is the danger; that is the unintended consequence.
The unintended consequences go further than that. Should there ever be a Labour Government again—I am sorry to say that there probably will be, although possibly not in my lifetime—those of us who support the Bill would want them to accept it and ensure that the referendum lock held as an important constitutional change. We would also want any change to the powers of the Europe Union to be subject to a referendum of the British people. However, if the Government concerned were unpopular, as happens to Conservative Governments too—and even, possibly, to coalition Governments—and felt they had to sign up to some marginal European treaty requiring a referendum, but knew that it could result in an in/out vote, they would be more likely to repeal the Bill lock, stock and barrel and say, “Look, we cannot do that because we would then have a vote against us at the second stage.” The second unintended consequence, therefore, is that we would weaken the whole effect of the Bill by making it less likely to become the accepted constitutional practice, which is what I would very much like to see.