Joan Ryan
Main Page: Joan Ryan (The Independent Group for Change - Enfield North) Foreign Affairs Committee
Joan Ryan Excerpts
Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Ind)
I rise to speak against the motion, in the main on behalf of the Independent Group of MPs, but I also associate myself with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin). I want to expand a little bit on what was said by the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin), who has moved the motion on behalf of the Selection Committee, and I am clear in my own mind that he did not initiate this motion at the Selection Committee.
We are told by the Library that, at the start of each Parliament, places are allocated to the political parties on departmental Select Committees on the basis of their strength in the House of Commons. There is no Standing Order that governs this process, or which requires that places on Committees be kept in exact proportion to the House at large. That is why there has not been a change every time a Member has been suspended from their Whip, for example, and the Selection Committee is not compelled to act. However, through mutual agreement, Select Committees are appointed in rough proportion to the House. Unlike with General Committees, such as Public Bill or Delegated Legislation Committees, there is no formula that sets out the exact number required.
That advice makes us look behind what is going on here and see that there does appear to be a personal element to this, because the only names being removed are those of Members who declared their independence just a few weeks ago. We are very clear who is initiating this. Suffice it to say—you may want to give your advice on this, Mr Deputy Speaker—I am told that, in something like 35 years, some very experienced Opposition Back Benchers have not known being instructed by their Whip to vote for such a motion of the House. However, they have been told to do so today, as I understand it, on this motion, which is the business of the House. I think that tells us where this is coming from.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
For the information of the House, I would like to read out the text I have received from my Whips: “The motion to change the membership of Select Committees Foreign Affairs will be starting shortly. We remain on a three line whip. We expect a Division in the next hour.”
Joan Ryan
Assuming the Labour Whips represent the Leader of the Opposition and are the vanguard for delivering his will, that gives ample evidence that there is something very personal going on here. May I at some point seek your guidance, Mr Deputy Speaker, on whipping business of the House in this way? Is that acceptable? It is certainly very unusual, as we know.
I think this is a mean-minded parliamentary manoeuvre by Labour. It is attempting to remove, from one of the most important Select Committees of the House of Commons, a man who has served on it for almost two decades, including as its respected Chair. Select Committees are one of the most important parts of Parliament, and they are integral to the way in which MPs scrutinise the work of the Government. They have always operated in a cross-party way and they are at their best when they are consensual. After members of Select Committees are elected to them by their colleagues, they are not ciphers for political parties; they are representatives of their constituents, performing an important function.
Traditionally, members of Select Committees, and especially their Chairs, are treated with respect by political parties and by this House. This motion is utterly disrespectful. That is true for both Members who are the subject of the motion, but let me talk for a moment about my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), because it is especially true for him. He has been a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee since 1992, when he was appointed under the then Leader of the Opposition, Neil Kinnock. He was reappointed to that Committee by John Smith, by Tony Blair, by Gordon Brown, by the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) and by the current Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, who apparently had faith in him then, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn).
In total, my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South has served for 19 years on the Committee, with five years as Chair from 2005 to 2010. During his tenure as Chair, the Committee published reports on Afghanistan, Pakistan, the implications of cuts to the BBC World Service and to foreign language capability in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, relations with Turkey, the Arab spring, human rights, extraordinary rendition, the future of the EU and relations with the United States. And that is not all: in his time as Chair of the Committee, my hon. Friend took evidence from the Dalai Lama, despite Chinese protests, visited Guantanamo Bay, and exposed corruption and intimidation that led to the UK Government suspending relations with the Turks and Caicos Government, and it was only after the Committee criticised the Syrian Government that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office included Syria as a human rights country of concern. My hon. Friend has also been a convenor and for 10 years a member of the quadripartite Committees on Arms Export Controls.
With my hon. Friend in the Chair, the Foreign Affairs Committee always operated as it should, on a cross-party and consensual basis, not least thanks to his strong belief that the role of Select Committees is to hold Government to account and that Committee members are not there as delegates of their parties. He has served actively and constructively under Conservative Chairs, including Richard Ottaway, the former Member for Croydon South, and the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) and the current Chair, the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat).
By virtue of his position, my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South has been a representative of our Parliament at home, welcoming foreign delegations, and abroad, liaising with diplomats and Governments. To this day, he continues to be active in the Committee, playing a role in amending draft reports and regularly meeting international visitors on behalf of the Committee.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
I hope the right hon. Lady will forgive me; I was chairing a sitting of the Committee just now, hence I missed the beginning of the debate. I echo her words, because she is absolutely speaking the truth. More than that, to a new Member who has had the good fortune to chair one of these great Committees very early on, the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) has been an amazing rock to lean on. His wisdom, his courtesy and his judgment have been of great value to me and, I hope, the whole House and the whole Committee, as he has helped to guide not just me but us all through some complex moments of foreign policy, where there have been very few more important subjects for our House, so I echo completely the right hon. Lady’s words.
Joan Ryan
I thank the hon. Gentleman, the Chair of the Committee, for those remarks, which I think are well received and well deserved by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South. I take them as an endorsement of all that I am saying about the way in which he has served the Committee, the House and the country. I know that the Chair of the Committee and, for that matter, all its members do not want this to happen and have made that clear in their own way.
Membership of Select Committees is fundamentally a matter for the House of Commons. It should not become the subject of mean-spirited manoeuvres by party leaderships who do not brook dissent. Labour’s move is the latest indication of how its leadership is unable to handle criticism, alternative viewpoints or any dissenting voices—a very worrying development in a democratic Parliament. This Parliament works through the Commonwealth, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and the Inter-Parliamentary Union to help other Parliaments around the world to learn from our examples and our experience to be good, democratic Parliaments, to strengthen democracy and to strengthen parliamentary democracy in particular. This move by the Leader of the Opposition absolutely cuts across and undermines all those aims, all of that mission and all that work.
Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
As a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee both in this and the previous Parliament, I support the Members who are on it presently and particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), who I have known for over 40 years. He has been an excellent member of the Committee. He has great knowledge and expertise and, as the Chairman said, he has been a rock to many of us in the Committee. Because of his experience and wisdom, he is an essential part of the Committee. Not for the first time, I will vote against the Whip—if there is a three-line Whip asking us to vote for the expulsion of those Members, I will not do it.
Joan Ryan
I sincerely thank my hon. Friend, as I am sure her hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South will, for those remarks and for her courage in saying that she will not follow this Whip. I hope that other Opposition Members, many of whom I know are not happy about this move, will show their displeasure and vote against the motion. I also hope that will be true of Government Members.
Members from inside and outside Labour who have raised serious concerns about Labour’s direction will not want to see the silencing of an experienced voice from the Foreign Affairs Committee at a time when the leader of the Labour party’s foreign policy has come under intense scrutiny. From Venezuela to Syria and Russia, the positions taken by the leader of the Labour party and Labour Front Benchers have been a concern to MPs on both sides. This attempt to remove a platform from one of Parliament’s most experienced voices on foreign affairs should be opposed. I want to refer back to what my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North said about his reasons for leaving, which are virtually identical to my own—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. This is a debate about replacement. I understand the frustration and anger, but unfortunately, I have to chair the debate on what it is about, which is the replacement of people on the Foreign Affairs Committee. The subject is narrow. We have broadened it a bit and I have been generous in trying to do that, but this cannot become a personal attack on one person by every speaker—unfortunately, we have to stick to what we have.
Joan Ryan
Thank you for your guidance, Mr Deputy Speaker.
The reasons my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South left the Labour party have a direct bearing on his work as a member of the FAC. He stated three reasons: Brexit, antisemitism and Labour’s foreign policy on Syria, Russia and Venezuela.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. Being a member of the Speaker’s Panel, you know I have to keep the debate within the scope of the motion, and the scope does not allow us to go into the reasons; it is about the replacement of members. I do not want to be hard, but I have to keep to the agenda.
Joan Ryan
Can I seek your guidance, Mr Deputy Speaker? There are a few things I want to say about Select Committees that I think are relevant. I understand what you are saying about the narrowness of the debate, but there is the broader context of who is being removed and who has not been removed in the past. There is an underlying reason that is obviously about the people who left the Labour party a couple of weeks ago, and it is difficult to address this matter without being able to address the reasons it comes before us. With your guidance, I will attempt to continue, but I am sure you will tell me if I am wrong.
Mr Deputy Speaker
I think you know what you have to do, given your experience of chairing Committees. The reasons certain people left the Labour party can be debated some other time, but this debate is not about that; it is about replacing existing members. I do not want to put words into his mouth, but I presume that Mr Wiggin will establish why the representation of political parties should reflect the make-up of the House when he winds up. This debate is about the replacement of two, let’s be honest, very popular Members. There is no doubt about that, but it is about their replacement, so it is quite narrow. I have allowed some freedom, but it cannot be a personal attack on one person.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
I had not planned to intervene, given that I am in my pink-and-no-tie mode—but hey, we’re a modern Parliament! May I tell my right hon. Friend—I will call her that—that when there was a move some years ago to get me off the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, for reasons I will not bore hon. Members with now, I was told by the then Chairman, the late, great Sir Gerald Kaufman MP, that a Member of Parliament was elected to a Select Committee for a Parliament. It might have changed, but, regardless of shenanigans, I think the principle still stands.
Joan Ryan
The hon. Gentleman’s intervention echoes where I started: there is no formula setting out the exact required number. It is not entirely without precedent, but it is extremely unusual for this to happen.
I will try to move on. More widely, this attempt highlights some of the difficulties with how the main parties have a stranglehold on how Parliament works—from the way debates are scheduled to the party political carve-up on Select Committees. The dominance of the House of Commons by the Whips and the usual channels does our democracy a disservice. Minority voices are squeezed out and those who dissent from the view of the Front Benches can be summarily dismissed. If we are to reach across outdated tribal lines and agree on workable solutions to the challenges that we face as a nation, we must look again at how we organise Parliament. We must do that if we are to change politics, and we must change politics.
Removing newly independent MPs from Select Committees undermines and runs counter to the spirit of reforms made in recent years to reduce the influence of political parties over Select Committees. Those changes are widely considered to have strengthened the Committee system. For instance, the Wright reforms, implemented after the 2010 election, removed from party Whips the power to appoint Select Committee members, and introduced their election by their parliamentary peers.
Let me quote some of what former and current Members have said about these matters. The background to the first quotation is a rebellion against removing Select Committee Chairs Gwyneth Dunwoody, the former MP for Crewe and Nantwich, and Donald Anderson, then the MP for Swansea East and now, I believe, a Member of the other place. The right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), now Leader of the Opposition, said that appointments to Select Committees should be taken out of the hands of Whips. He said:
“I thank the Leader of the House for giving way. Before he completes his contribution, will he say what thought he has given to the Liaison Committee report ‘Shifting the Balance’, which is about the future appointment of Select Committees and appointments to vacancies that might occur in this Parliament? Does he accept its recommendation that those should be taken out of the power of the Whips Offices of all parties?”—[Official Report, 16 June 2001; Vol. 372, c. 45.]
That was very clear.
Angela—now Baroness—Browning, then the MP for Tiverton and Honiton, put the Tory Front Bench view that the power of the Whips to appoint was
“past its sell-by date.”—[Official Report, 16 June 2001; Vol. 372, c. 40.]
It is hard to disagree with that.
Robin Cook, the former MP for Livingston and a very respected and eminent Member of the House, and the Labour Government allowed free votes on Select Committee matters, because they were matters for the House. Will Labour do the same now, and if not, why not? I do not think that any free vote will take place today.
During the same debate, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) said:
“There is a message to my right hon. Friend. The Government might get away tonight with sacking two hon. Members who should be members of Select Committees, and they might think little of it, but in the last Parliament, and in this Parliament, sadly, they continue to present an image of what they are like which, I am sure, is totally inaccurate. The image suggests that they believe that one can ride roughshod, and grab and take anything. The impression of a belief that we rule, no matter what people say, is being marked down on our card outside. When we are in difficult times, we will find, like the shambles of the Conservative party, that it is too late to reform. The electorate will have marked our card indelibly, and when the moment comes, retribution will be visited upon us.”—[Official Report, 16 June 2001; Vol. 372, c. 61.]
Those are words to which the current Leader of the Opposition should perhaps pay a bit of attention.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
The right hon. Lady has mentioned the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), who, to the best of my knowledge, resigned the Labour Whip. Is she aware of any moves by his previous party to remove him from the chairmanship of the Work and Pensions Committee? That question plays into the argument that she and I, and others, have been making that this is a very partial and personal attack.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Ind)
My right hon. Friend will remember the reforms introduced by an ex Member of the House for Cannock Chase, Tony Wright. Does she agree that this motion, and a whipped vote on it on the part of the Labour Benches, goes completely against the spirit of the Wright reforms, which we voted upon in the 2005-2010 Parliament?
Joan Ryan
My hon. Friend is absolutely right and I could not agree with her more. This undermines those reforms in total, and also calls into question the ability of Select Committees to work in a consensual, non-tribal, cross-party way to properly scrutinise the business of government.
Tom Tugendhat
Does my right hon. Friend, as I will accurately call her, agree that equality before the law is one of the principles of British justice and that this House of all places should demonstrate that principle of equality? Does she not therefore feel it is slightly odd that the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) has not been singled out and the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) has not been singled out, yet the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin), who has spoken very clearly about antisemitism, and the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), who has again shown his courage in this matter, should be the two who are singled out?
Ian Austin
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the shadow Deputy Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris), to sit there muttering away, shaking his head every time a contribution is made yet not say a word from the Dispatch Box about why the Opposition have imposed a three-line Whip on their MPs to vote in a particular way in this debate? Stand at the Dispatch Box and explain yourself.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I think we should lower the temperature here a bit—that is not a matter for the Chair. What I would say is that this is about the replacements on the Select Committees and there is quite a lot of muttering going on, and it would be much more polite if we could listen to what the right hon. Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan) is saying. But I remind this House that this debate is focused on the issue of the Select Committees.
Joan Ryan
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
To finish addressing the point made by the Chair of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling, as to whether all Members are equal before this House, some are clearly more equal than others. When I resigned on the basis of the Labour party becoming institutionally antisemitic and the fact that I could only say that I considered the Leader of the Opposition not fit to be Prime Minister, I made the point that Labour’s founding principle is equality, so I can only agree that that founding principle has been desperately undermined by the current Leader of the Opposition.
The Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee also mentioned my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) and it remains seriously concerning that Labour has sought names to replace her on the Health and Social Care Committee; that is on its list of vacancies where it seeks a replacement. Although the party has briefed that there are no plans to replace her, it has begun the process by seeking nominations, and presumably it remains the case that if someone from the parliamentary Labour party puts themselves forward Labour will submit their name to the Selection Committee. It is not right that my hon. Friend faces this situation; she is on maternity leave. What would we say to other employers who took punitive action against an employee on maternity leave? I think we would take a very dim view of that indeed.
I have said a lot about my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington—or rather my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South. [Interruption.] I think I have said a lot about both, frankly, and I wanted to say a few more words about my hon. Friend—my very, very good friend—the Member for Dudley North, who I very much wish was part of our group because I very much enjoy working with him, but I understand his reasons why he is not.
Leaving aside members of the Independent Group, it is concerning that Labour is moving against the hon. Member for Dudley North, whose resignation from Labour over antisemitism was brave and principled. The fact that Labour is responding by seeking to remove him from the Committee shows how the party’s leadership still does not understand the seriousness of the issue it faces. I really think it needs to listen today to what is being said and to the views of this House.
There cannot be independence as long as there is this system of patronage; the House itself needs to take this issue on. However, nobody in this place should endorse these mean-minded, petty actions by the Leader of the Opposition. Beyond that, if they do, they will appear to be endorsing the most despicable views that have infected this Labour party around racism against Jewish people—antisemitism—and not just the inability but the refusal of the Labour party to deal with that. The House needs to express its view on what I consider to be institutional antisemitism. This motion should be resisted at all costs. It has far, far greater implications and consequences than perhaps everyone is seeing at first glance.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
I will not detain the House for long, but I felt the need to stand up and be counted on both the specific and the general contents of this debate.
I oppose the removal of my hon. Friends the Members for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) and for Dudley North (Ian Austin) from the membership of the Foreign Affairs Committee. That is not because I oppose my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) or my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) being members of that Committee in future. I am sure that they will, in future, make fine members of the Foreign Affairs Committee should they wish to stand for it. This, for me, is about people being removed because they have held their heads up and said that the membership of the party in which they entered this House no longer represents their values and their views. Because I know both those Members, I know how hard and how difficult that was, and I commend them for their bravery. Over the past almost 22 years of my membership of this House, I have had little interest in the rules of the House, of debate, or of memberships of Select Committees—for me, what matters is what I do in my constituency and how I represent my constituents. I appreciate that people have different views of how they do the job. Surely that is the point, and the strength, of our system.
The hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) may like to look at evidence from the House of Commons Library about how members of Select Committees are dealt with if they leave their party and transfer to another. On 2 March 1981, Robert Maclennan defected from Labour to the Social Democratic party. He was a member of the Public Accounts Committee at the time. He remained a member until the end of the Parliament. On 2 March 1981, John Cartwright defected from Labour to the SDP. He was a member of the Defence Committee at the time. He did not leave the Committee until 31 March 1982—a year later. On 7 October 1981, Tom McNally defected from Labour to the SDP. He was a member of the Defence Committee at the time. He remained a member until the end of the Parliament. On 7 October 1981, James Dunn defected from Labour to the SDP. He was also a member of the Defence Committee. He did not leave it until December 1982, over a year later, and even then he was replaced by an SDP Member.
On 2 December 1981, Ronald Brown defected from Labour to the SDP. He was the Chair of the Committee of Selection at the time and remained so until the end of the Parliament. On 18 December 1999, Shaun Woodward defected from the Conservatives to Labour. He was and remained a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. In 2005, Paul Marsden returned to Labour, having previously defected to the Liberal Democrats. He was and remained a member of the Transport Committee. I would therefore suggest to the hon. Gentleman that the experience in this House, even in the days when Whips had more control over who was on Select Committees, suggests that people could remain.
We all know that this measure is a vindictive one. It shames our Whips—I say that as somebody who has been a Government Whip—to be involved in this manoeuvre today. There is no suggestion that either my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South or my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North have not done their job well, been regular attenders or argued their point of view. They are not being removed for any disciplinary issue or for not being up to the mark. They are being removed because of their politics—because my party has become intolerant and unwilling to listen to other voices.
Joan Ryan
As evidence to support what my hon. Friend is saying in the most powerful way, members of the Independent Group who left the Labour party just a couple of weeks ago and who sit in the Council of Europe, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe have all been threatened with removal by the actions of our Whips. The Whips cannot remove all of them, because they have a term of office, but that more than demonstrates the fact that this is, exactly as she says, about intolerance.
Siobhain McDonagh
I thank my right hon. Friend, who is my friend in this place in the true meaning of the word. One of the most shocking things is that attempts were going to be made to remove my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) from the Health and Social Care Committee while she was on maternity leave. Those were attempts by the Labour party —the Labour party of Barbara Castle, of Mo Mowlam and of the late, great Tessa Jowell. The party that introduced statutory maternity leave was considering removing a Member from a Committee while she was on maternity leave. Is that not an indication of how much we have lost our values and sense of who we are?
Whether it is the Conservative party having to remove people because of Islamophobia or the Labour party having to remove people because of antisemitism, we all have to stand up in our parties to extremism and totalitarianism. I say that with regret, but I hope that Government Members do not believe that I do not mean them too—I do. They need to watch their constituencies and their membership. If we move away from where the quiet, moderate majority lie, they will become disaffected with our politics.
Membership of the Foreign Affairs Committee is a small, arcane matter for this House, but it exemplifies the problems that all parties are experiencing. However uncomfortable it is and whether or not it means that some people on our side of the House will choose not to speak to us after this debate, we have to stand up, because for evil to triumph, it only needs the majority of us to say nothing.