Business of the House

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Ian C. Lucas

Thursday 3rd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I did actually speak to the Lord Chancellor about this matter earlier today and have an answer that, if I may, I will read out because I hope it provides the equivalent of a statement:

“The murder of Ben Bellamy in September 2005 was a terrible crime, for which Joshua Thomas and Joel Taylor are rightly serving the juvenile equivalent of life sentences. Ben’s family are receiving the services provided under the Probation Victim Contact Scheme, as they are entitled to receive under the law. The Probation Service has apologised”—

let me stress that—

“for not notifying the family in 2017 in time that the High Court was hearing Joshua Thomas’s application for a reduction in his minimum term of imprisonment. The family’s Victim Liaison Officer is committed to ensuring that the family are notified well in time to exercise their rights in relation to both prisoners’ future parole reviews.”

I thank the hon. Lady for bringing this to the attention of the House. I believe that the Lord Chancellor has taken this very seriously, that the probation department has taken this seriously, and that this must not and should not happen again.

[Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

Can we have an urgent statement from the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster concerning his ministerial responsibilities? He is denying responsibility for data protection and for electoral reform, which are clearly within his Department, but, again this morning, a Minister confirmed that he thought he was responsible for these issues. If he is responsible for these issues, I consider that he has obligations under the ministerial code, which I have conveyed to the Department. This is a very serious matter, going to the heart of integrity in Government and I would like a straight answer for once.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

All answers are straight answers; they are sometimes simply not the answers that people want. These are two very separate concepts. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has his specific responsibilities, and periodically the Government produce a list of ministerial responsibilities. That has been asked for by my office on behalf of the House of Commons, and we will ask for it again and we will release it to the House when it is available.

Data Protection Bill [Lords]

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Ian C. Lucas

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 9th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The freedoms and liberties that we hold so dear should be preserved, even when they are inconvenient to us. The House may not have heard what my hon. Friend next to me just said. Baldwin’s line was that the press had the “prerogative of the harlot”—power without responsibility. That was his line, but I would rather have a free press in that condition than a Government-approved, propagandised press that took away all our ancient liberties. These new clauses must be wiped out and cut from the legislative book. We must preserve our freedoms.

[Ian C. Lucas]

This has been an excellent debate. I wish to tell the House about a victim of press intrusion. Twenty-one years ago, I represented the bodyguard who survived the crash that killed the Princess of Wales. I made it clear to the press at the time that neither he nor his family wished to be pressured, followed or traced by journalists. They completely disregarded my advice and treated someone who was gravely ill, and his family, appallingly.

When I saw the statements in the Kerslake inquiry last year, I saw that, contrary to what the Secretary of State has said, the situation has not changed. Individuals who were the victims of grave crimes were abused, their privacy invaded and their lives turned around by press intrusion. That was after Sir Brian Leveson had conducted his inquiry, and after he, a greatly respected judge, had told the Government that he fundamentally disagreed with their decision not to proceed with the second part of the Leveson inquiry.

Earlier, I intervened on the Secretary of State and asked him why the Conservative party previously supported the terms of section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013, which it now opposes. For all the eloquence we have just heard, the position is that the Conservative party is breaking a promise that was made to victims of crime by a Prime Minister of this great country, the United Kingdom. Anyone who supports the Government today should be ashamed of themselves, because those victims of crime are the powerless who need protection from the powerful. The powerful are the people who are too close to those who have governmental power.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) said, we know why this decision is being made—why the Conservative party is backing away from the promise made by a Conservative Prime Minister: it is frightened of the press and its influence. It is a shameful step that it is taking. I appeal to all individual and independent Members of this House to stand up for the powerless against the powerful and to support new clause 18. I implore the Secretary of State to be straightforward with the House.

Question agreed to.

New clause 19 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

English Votes on English Laws

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Ian C. Lucas

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Commons Chamber

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

I have received your message that you wish me to be relatively brief, Mr Speaker, and I shall do my best to abide by that and not model myself on Gladstone, whom we have had earlier reference to, and who Disraeli said was a

“sophistical rhetorician, inebriated by the exuberance of his own verbosity.”

I shall try to avoid verbosity and inebriation at the same time.

It has been said in this debate that this process has been rushed. That things have been rushed is the classic objection to almost any constitutional change, and it is one I am fond of using personally, but on this occasion it would only be rushed for a member of the Roman Curia or perhaps part of the mandarin class of imperial China. The issue we are considering has been debated since the 1880s. I do not think a period of 130 years is unduly rushed. The West Lothian question itself was raised by the hon. baronet the former Member for West Lothian, Tam Dalyell, in the 1970s, but we have had plenty of time to consider and deliberate on these issues.

The second major objection is that two classes of Members are being created. If I believed that to be true, I would oppose this proposal because I think there is a unity within this House that is of fundamental constitutional importance, and, looking at the SNP Benches opposite and considering the contribution its Members have already made since their election in May, it is striking how important that point is: every Member needs to be free to participate in the debates on the laws that we make. That is a reasonable and fair principle.

In a characteristically forthright speech from the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), we have heard that the Scotland Bill does not give Scottish MPs the same type of veto as English MPs, but I think that is wrong. It is a misunderstanding of what the Scotland Bill is doing, because if this Standing Order were already in place, the Scotland Bill would be devolving the issues to Scotland and to English MPs in this House at the same point. Yesterday we debated the Crown Estates and how they would be a devolved matter to the Scottish Parliament. If that goes through the House of Lords, it will be a matter that in England will only be voted on by English MPs, or at least they will have a veto on it. What is devolved to Scotland is equally and simultaneously devolved to England. That seems perfectly reasonable.

[Ian C. Lucas]

Why does the double voting only apply to MPs from England?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The double voting does not only apply to Members from England; it applies to Members from England, Wales and potentially Northern Ireland, if the issue is devolved to one Assembly but not the others. If there is a matter that is not devolved to Wales, Welsh MPs would be involved in that second lock on legislation. That is right and fair, because it ensures that those who represent the relevant constituencies have a say on how the law is made and a block on it, but, crucially, they cannot make the law unless all UK MPs support it in a majority.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Ian C. Lucas

Thursday 18th April 2013 Commons Chamber

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

It is a particular pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Ms Primarolo. I welcome you back, and I am glad to see you in fine health.

I have been spurred on by the hon. Member for East Lothian (Fiona O’Donnell) to speak in the debate and to defend the Government’s policy, which is wise and right and good—[Interruption.] I do not often cheer up the Whips, but if I do so, that will be an added advantage. The amendment tabled by Her Majesty’s official Opposition is completely unnecessary and wrong-headed.

[Ian Lucas]

The hon. Gentleman said that the Government’s policy was wise. He is a moral man, so will he tell me how it can be right for the richest people in our society to have their income boosted while disabled constituents of mine are having theirs reduced?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Because it does not actually work like that. We know from experience that high rates of tax reduce the amount of taxation that is received. The Laffer curve is not a myth. If you put rates up, tax revenues decline.

Further and Higher Education (Access) Bill

Debate between Jacob Rees-Mogg and Ian C. Lucas

Friday 4th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I think the Bill should have said that in the first place. I am even more suspicious of the new Labour approach of a Bill that says one thing initially and then does something completely different.

[Ian Lucas]

The Liberal Democrat approach.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I stand corrected, but I am not quite sure that I can go along with that monstrous slur on our coalition partners.

We must have Bills that do what they say, not ones that set off in one direction, hare off in another in Committee, and then say something that was never intended or given a Second Reading by the House.

Let us consider the question of merit. My right hon. Friend for a Yorkshire constituency—I forget precisely which—talked about how clauses 1 and 3 operate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I absolutely accept what the Minister says in his helpful intervention. I know how tall I am, or was, in terms of physics. Just as many people shrink as they get older, I feel that as I get older I begin to shrink in my ability to do physics, and cannot remember much of it. Universities need to take in people who can go further, and do better than the ability yet measured. To consider the Minister’s comparison and talk about how high people grow, we do not necessarily know how high a 16-year-old will be at 18. One has to make a judgment on it, and that judgment becomes subjective—it has to be, by its very nature.

Is it not always dangerous to put legislative constraints on subjective judgments? How does one then take them through the courts? How do they become justiciable? It is simply replacing one person’s judgment with another’s, and we cannot tell who was right until after the fact. I therefore have my doubts about the early definition of merit. Potential is even more subjective. We may think that the person whose height we are considering will grow to be a giant; we may be wrong. We cannot guess the qualities that we are talking about from an interview or a series of examinations.

We can, however, get a broad feeling or understanding, and a tutor can understand whether a person is someone whom they can teach. That is obviously important, because some dons at Oxford—I tend to stick to Oxford because I know it, but I am not speaking to the exclusion of all other universities—want to be able to get on with the people whom they are to teach. If a person comes for an interview and the tutor dislikes them at first sight, they may find that teaching them for three years would be neither to the pupil’s nor the tutor’s benefit, because it will be a constant battle of wills, with hostility and difficulty, without the tutor being able to express their knowledge to the pupil, or the pupil being able to learn from the tutor. The question of potential is even more deeply subjective than that of ability, and aptitude is, in a sense, the same.

[Ian Lucas]

The hon. Gentleman is making an interesting speech, and I speak as an Oxford graduate, so my experience is, in that respect, somewhat similar to his. He has touched on an interesting issue as far as the attitude of the tutor, and his resistance to someone different, is concerned. Does that not support a transparent admissions policy, in which the student, and the institution presenting the student to the university, are aware, before the student applies, of the criteria that will be used?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his helpful intervention. That is absolutely right. Transparency is, in a sense, everything. As long as people know where they stand, they will be able to see what they ought to do. It is a tremendously beneficial reform for the Russell group to have said which subjects it views as being proper subjects, because now pupils from across the country can say, “If I do history, classics and double maths, I have a really good chance of getting in, if I do well; but if I do knitting and photography, I won’t have a very good chance of getting into the top-rate universities. My chances and opportunities will be limited.” It is absolutely right to let people know at an early stage the way that they ought to be going. Understanding the interview process when one applies to a university is also extremely helpful. If one is going from a public school to Oxford, one will be very well trained in what to expect in the interview, and that should be made as widely available as possible to people from other schools and backgrounds. I agree with the hon. Gentleman on his point on transparency.

We have, I think, established that in terms of merit, the Bill has a lot of waffle in it. What it says is fundamentally subjective, cannot work in practice, and, if taken to the courts, would be impossible to adjudicate on. It is hard to see where the Bill is going, in that respect. The exemptions are glorious, because they are so splendidly old-fashioned. By and large, I rather like things being old-fashioned, and I do not normally use it as a term of disapprobation, but in this case it means that one could reintroduce the closed scholarships. At New college, Oxford, which has a close connection with Winchester, places could be reserved for Wykehamists. People may think that that is all fine and dandy, but as an Etonian, I would feel that I was being prejudiced against, and that it was wrong to give places to Wykehamists rather than Etonians—or, more seriously, to deny them to people from all over the country. Allowing the reintroduction of a system of closed scholarships cannot be what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is really trying to do. That cannot be an advance for universities, and it does not make this a sensible Bill to pass.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I thank the Minister for that intervention, although I must say it was rather depressingly negative and uncharacteristic of him. What we really want to be thinking about is lifting people’s spirits. In the middle ages, people saw the joy and virtue of learning.

[Ian Lucas]

Most people did not. Many people did not achieve, not because they were stupid but because there were not enough scholarships. I went to Oxford, but I did not have a scholarship and if I had not received a grant and had my fees paid I could not have gone to Oxford and I would not have achieved. That is progress, and although I am a great admirer of the past, I think the hon. Gentleman needs to see that sometimes progress can be made.