Military Action Overseas: Parliamentary Approval

Debate between James Gray and Bernard Jenkin

Tuesday 17th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I will endeavour to be as swift as I possibly can.

The right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) has, I think, just punched a hole in his own argument. He responded to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), a former Attorney General, by assuring us that in any debate about some putative military action nobody would ask the Government to reveal specifics. I am sorry, but that is what this place does: we ask about specifics. He expects to debate forthcoming military action when the Government would be reluctant to reveal targets, the objectives of the operation and the nature of the deployment. That is ridiculous. I will come back to that point in a minute.

I rise as Chair of the Parliamentary Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which covers both the question of strategic thinking in government and the question of the relationship between the Government and Parliament. My predecessor Committee produced three reports on strategic thinking in government and I challenge my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence, who is in his place, on this. The Government have listened to the arguments and developed their capacity for strategic thinking, but the published literature of government is way behind the curve in dealing with the situations we now face. That underlines how we have to a large extent been asleep and complacent about the security we enjoy in this world. We are effectively now confronted by two great powers who are intent on subverting the international legal order. The problem in Syria is just a symptom of the superpower conflict that is already taking place, and which is simply not reflected in the 2015 strategic defence and security review or the 2015 national security review. I think we need to attend to those matters with some urgency.

I wish to concentrate on the more immediate question about the relationship between Government and Parliament. It is a complete misconception that there is an established constitutional convention that Parliament votes on the question of foreign deployments. This is a relatively new fashion. The Cabinet manual says that, but the Cabinet manual has no constitutional status whatever. It has no legal force. It is merely the expression of the opinion of a particular Prime Minister at a particular time—it was not even drafted by this Prime Minister—and it is vague.

The basis of the relationship between Government and Parliament is that Parliament controls laws and the supply of money to the Executive. Parliament is required to give its confidence to the Government in office for them to continue in office. It scrutinises Government decisions and holds Ministers accountable. However, I say to the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition that accountability is not the same thing as control. This Parliament does not control the Executive. We do not run the country. We hold the Government accountable. Parliament should not seek to directly control the decisions of Ministers.

[James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

Would my hon. Friend not go a little further and agree that if we crossed that boundary and made this into the Executive, we would actually reduce the ability of this place to hold the Government to account because we ourselves are forced, on a three-line Whip, to vote for them?

[Mr Jenkin]

It is ironic that the decision to go to war in Iraq is continually held up as an example of how these decisions should be made, when in fact the determination of the then Prime Minister to bring the decision to Parliament actually blurred the whole debate. It made the debate about a whole lot of factors that were irrelevant to the question of whether it was a sensible decision to go to war in Iraq. It also seems ironic to hold that up as an example of how decisions should be made when so many Members of that House regret taking that decision. It is easier to hold the Government accountable if we say, “You the Government make the decision and we will judge you on your performance after the event.”

When my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister received her seals of office from Her Majesty, she did not just take on the right to decide when, where and how our armed forces should be deployed. She took on the obligation, intrinsic to her office, to exercise her judgment, on proper advice and in consultation with her Cabinet, on military deployments of this nature and then to bring those decisions to this House when she has made them.

The Chilcot report has been raised. My Committee has considered it, and we made recommendations on how Government procedures might be improved to make sure that legal advice is not concealed from the Cabinet and that proper procedures are followed in Government. In particular, on the basis of a proposal from the Better Government Initiative, we recommended that it would be a good idea if the Cabinet Secretary had some mechanism to call out a Prime Minister who was deliberately bypassing proper procedures in Government. The Government have so far rejected that recommendation, but I hope they will continue to consider how we can be reassured that the proper procedures are being followed in Government. However, my right hon. Friend’s commitment to her sense of accountability and proper procedure seems to be absolutely unchallengeable—

Police Recorded Crime Statistics

Debate between James Gray and Bernard Jenkin

Thursday 16th October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Jenkin]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s courage in breaking the rules, as all ex-Chief Whips do; they all finish up ignoring the injunctions of their own Whips.

Police and crime commissioners or elected mayors have been agents of change in this debate; I have witnessed it myself. They are there as people to talk to who are directly accountable to their publics, albeit that the turnouts were lousy and the by-election was a fiasco. There is great opportunity to build for the future. I hope that the shadow Minister will reflect on the fact that we want more democracy and more accountability, not less. Let us see how we can improve the institution, not just go back to what was there before—to anonymous, ineffective police committees that may have contained many worthy people, but people who did not have the profile, legitimacy or resource to carry out the function of local police accountability that we need them to carry out.

I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), who brought our attention to today’s ONS release about the crime figures, and to the difference between police recorded crime and the crime survey for England and Wales. That early pointer should perhaps have led to more action more quickly on this subject, because it indicated that police recorded crime was falling fasting than the survey suggested could be justified, and that should have been acted on sooner.

The hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), whom I nearly call my hon. Friend because he sits on the Committee with me, emphasised rightly that we want a society in which we can live without fear of crime, and where we can send our children out to play in the streets without fear. I certainly had that kind of childhood, as he did. I suspect that most of our constituents can still give their children such a childhood, but the fear of crime drives people to be risk-averse and fearful. That is why police and crime commissioners should be setting targets on how to reassure their public that they live in safe neighbourhoods, safe counties and safe cities. Essex, for example, is one of the safest counties to live in, but on talking to people about crime, it is clear that they do not believe that. We do not talk about crime in terms of reassurance; we tend to highlight what is going wrong and mount campaigns to defeat crime, which just increases fear of crime. The hon. Gentleman raises an apposite point.

I am grateful to the shadow Minister for speaking so comprehensively in support of this report. I am mindful of what he said about the crime survey for England and Wales. We had some evidence, but did not feel that we had enough to make comprehensive recommendations. The Committee may embark on another inquiry, although possibly in another Parliament, because we are running out of time in this one.

There is an issue about how to keep the crime survey for England and Wales up to speed and, indeed, how to keep its sample large enough so that we can have regionally and locally specific information. At the level at which we conduct the survey, local information is completely meaningless, because the sample sizes locally are much too small. In that regard, we are entirely dependent on police recorded crime to tell us what is going on, which is why those are such important statistics.

Again, I commend my right hon. Friend the Minister on his comprehensive reply to this debate. He emphasised that nobody has an interest in having inaccurate crime statistics. I recognise that, as do the police. He listed a number of actions being taken, including the responsibility of Ministers to clarify the respective roles, responsibilities and tasks—the various component parts of the system—in relation to producing crime figures. The Home Office is now taking much more responsibility for that, and laudably so. In my conversations with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, she responded positively to this report. I am grateful to her and to my right hon. Friend the Minister for their responses.

The Minister mentioned the force crime registrars. I reluctantly accept that the practicality of our recommendations in that respect could have been refined. I welcome his point on reporting; access to the chief constable is vital and the relevant people should be able to go directly to the chief constable when they are concerned. Their training is important, too.

The Minister emphasised the obligation to report a crime, even if it is subsequently to be no-crimed. He does not question that that discretion has to exist. He talked a bit about the target-driven culture, but said this was a matter for operational independence. It took a long time—for me—for the penny to drop in respect of how wasteful it is for organisations to try to function without the necessary trust and integrity in relationships between the people working within them.

On this business of misreporting crime, I cannot emphasise enough to the House that when all that was in the media, I walked around the Palace, my constituency and London and spoke with police officers. I asked them, “What do you think of police recorded crime? Have you heard about this?” Absolutely to a man and a woman, they would say, “Oh, we all knew that that was going on.” The cynicism with which they expressed their contempt for their command chain for allowing something to continue under its nose, month after month, year after year, because it was in its interest, cannot be overstated.

It sounds as though I am being very hard on police leadership and saying that they are all very bad people. I have been taken to task by senior police officers and police and crime commissioners for being too outspoken on this matter, but I believe that we have an opportunity to release the energy pent up in the anger and frustration on this issue, and use it to ensure better policing and that we use our resources much better, instead of hiding information within the system and suspiciously looking up and down the command chain and fighting the authorities within the police. A genuine atmosphere of openness and co-operation would release energy and resources to serve the public better.

Essex police is having a real root-and-branch think about how it applies the ethics code. It is releasing people to have conversations about how they regard and treat each other in a way that has not happened before. That needs to happen in every constabulary. There will be some people who feel threatened by those conversations and think that they undermine their historical position, their authority or how they have done business, and they will fight it. They are the ones who need to go. The vast majority of police officers will feel, “At last, we are talking about the real stuff and we will get stuff done better than we have ever done it before, because we will tell each other the truth.”

It is the lack of truth behind these statistics and the way that they have been falsified—in some cases very badly—that indicate that all has not been well in the culture and ethics of the police, and that is why I lay so much emphasis on the recommendation that the Committee on Standards in Public Life holds an inquiry. Public confidence demands it. We have had Hillsborough, Savile and the Lawrence affair. So many things have left a big question mark and a deep scar on the public’s confidence in policing. It is not that the police are bad people; they are good people who might have got into some bad habits. That happens in every organisation. To change habits and behaviour is the hardest and most painful thing to do in any change programme in any organisation, but it has to be done. We have the opportunity to do it on the back of this inquiry. I am not sure that the Minister has yet grasped the scale of the problem and the scale of the opportunity to improve policing. I leave it at that.

I am grateful to the Minister for reiterating the points he made in his letter to me on whistleblowers. He emphasised the need to consider immunity from disciplinary proceedings for whistleblowers. That is incredibly important. What we are doing in the health service, with the post-Mid-Staffs inquiry and all that, is exactly parallel to what we need to do in the police, and to what is happening in our fire service in Essex. It is about empowering people who have to tell the truth. At their best, that is how the armed forces have always worked. There is a belief sometimes that in the uniformed services, it always has to be about command and control, instilling discipline and people doing as they are told. Relationships in the armed forces at their best are not transactional in that way; they are about sharing intent, understanding objectives, supporting each other through tasks and then reviewing and learning from the mistakes.

Everyone makes mistakes. I spoke to a rather more traditional senior police officer, who is now in the House of Lords, who told me that his philosophy of police leadership was that provided the officer could explain that what they did on the night was the right thing to do on the basis of the information they had at the time, he would always back them. It is that kind of supportive leadership that most chief constables understand and aspire to, but it obviously has not existed for police recorded crime. It does not exist all the time in all police forces in the way that it should, which is why we have such an opportunity. Whistleblowers are an important part of leadership by involvement, listening, understanding and supporting. The shutting down of people who try to tell the truth is one of the indicators that an organisation is not functioning optimally. That is what we want. [Interruption.]

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order.

Amendment of Standing Orders

Debate between James Gray and Bernard Jenkin

Monday 2nd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gray]

Does my hon. Friend feel that this evening’s activities bode well for the oft-promised introduction of a House business Committee?

[Mr Jenkin]

I suspect that if I moved on to the question of the introduction of a House business Committee, Mr Speaker, you might begin to twitch and suggest that I was straying beyond the remit of the motions before us. I see absolutely no sign that the Government will fulfil their commitment, written into the coalition agreement, that after three years, a House business Committee would be established. Perhaps the Front Benchers could say today when they plan to table motions to do that.

It is worth reminding hon. Members that we in this House have no power to lay a motion before the House to change Standing Orders. We are entirely dependent on the Front Benchers’ beneficence in tabling motions to make such changes. That power was lost much more recently than people imagine; I cannot remember the exact date, but it was long after the beginning of the timetabling of business at the time of the Home Rule debates in the 19th century.