Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Debate between John McDonnell and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Committee stage
Monday 30th January 2023 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner). I am a supporter of the Bill. I think it is a good and proportionate Bill, but it is badly written. What the right hon. Lady said about Henry VIII clauses is absolutely spot on. Indeed, should the socialists ever be in government in the future I hope they will remember what she said, because skeleton Bills and Henry VIII clauses are bad parliamentary and constitutional practice.

It seems to me that it is hard to describe the right hon. Lady as having been wrong for tabling amendment 101— I will not vote for her, but I say none the less that she is far from being described as wrong. Clause 3 suggests:

“Regulations under this section may amend, repeal or revoke provision made by or under primary legislation passed…later in the same session of Parliament as this Act.”

On what basis can any Government claim to have the power to amend legislation that has not yet been passed? The only argument for doing so, which no Government would wish to advance, is incompetence. The only way to pass a subsequent Act without amending it before it is passed is if we have not noticed what it was saying in the first place, and I cannot understand why a Government would wish to put such a measure in a Bill. Indeed, I am puzzled as to how clause 3 managed to get through the intergovernmental procedures that take place before legislation is presented to the House. I do not understand how the Parliamentary Business and Legislation Committee managed to approve a Bill with such a wide-ranging Henry VIII clause and which fails to set out in detail what powers the Government actually want.

I will support the Bill because its aim is worthy, but the means of achieving that aim are not properly constitutional. Henry VIII powers, it has been established, should be used exceptionally or when there is no other alternative. During the passage of the Coronavirus Act 2020 it was perfectly reasonable to have Henry VIII powers. Why? Because the Act was brought forward extremely quickly, there was little time to revise it and there was not an enormous amount of time to work out precisely what revisions to existing statute law may be needed. Emergency legislation falls into that category. But this is not emergency legislation; this is a Bill that we in the Conservative party have been cogitating about since at least our last manifesto, if not back to about 2016. I have supported it all the way through. I wanted the Bill to come forward. I think it is the right thing to be doing, but there is no excuse for failing to do it properly.

[John McDonnell]

I think the Conservative party has been contemplating this since the Combination Acts of the 18th century. Anyway, strange alliances have been formed over the years on this issue. If the right hon. Gentleman recalls, an alliance was formed over the Civil Contingencies Bill, and we had a concession from the Government on some of the legislation regarding at least a super-affirmative mechanism that would give the House a bit more influence to amend statutory instruments. Would he be in favour of that?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am slightly more ambitious than the right hon. Gentleman, because I think that, in and of itself, clause 3—I hope Opposition Members will take note of this—is an argument for the existence of the House of Lords. I hope that their lordships will look at the clause and say, “That is simply not something we can pass into law as it is currently phrased.” The Government must accept amendments, and I hope their lordships will vote through amendments that clarify and set out in detail the powers that are desired.

Other than urgency, there are only two reasons for bringing forward extensive Henry VIII powers. One is that the issue is too complicated to determine. That is problematic, because if it is too complicated to determine for primary legislation, how can it be sufficiently set out in secondary legislation? That probably means that the secondary legislation in and of itself will not be well formed. This is where the Government’s interest—the Executive interest—and the legislature’s interest combine, because if the House passes good, well-constructed legislation, it is much less susceptible to judicial review. There is a Treasury Bench interest in good, well-crafted legislation, which, as I have been saying, this Bill is not. That is why the Government should be keen that the House of Lords, in the time available and with the help, I hope, of parliamentary counsel, will be able to specify the powers more closely.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The Bill is, as I said, a particularly extreme example of bad practice with the least possible excuse for it. There are many Bills where we can find some reason why it had to be done in such a way. I sat on Committees looking at Henry VIII powers and trying to stop them, and I often found that, actually, they were needed because that was the only way of doing things. I make no apology for the Energy Prices Act 2022. That was emergency legislation, and it contained lots of powers because energy prices had got so high that something had to be done straight away to save people from financial distress. That was a reasonable balance between the Executive and the legislature, but this Bill is not urgent legislation.

My fear is that, by writing poor legislation, we invite the courts to intervene more. I do not like the fact that, over recent decades, the courts have intervened more in our legislative processes. That undermines the democratic remit that we have to make the laws. However, if that is handed over to secondary legislation, of course the courts will intervene because the level of scrutiny of secondary legislation is so much lower and there is little other protection. So if we take away scrutiny from this House, where else will it go? Then we get judicial review, and then the Executive finds that it cannot carry out its plans for government, so it becomes self-defeating.

[John McDonnell]

I understand and completely follow the logic of the right hon. Gentleman’s argument. I agree with it. However, he is shirking the responsibility of this House by simply passing it to the Lords. In recent months, we have seen the Government withdraw a Bill for further consideration until they got it right. Surely that is the mechanism to get the Bill right; otherwise, we are shirking our responsibility.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, but I think that he attributes to me more influence than I have. My fusillade against clause 3 will not change many votes this evening—including my own, as it happens. Therefore, it will not be the case that the Government will be defeated in the Committee. I think that I went quite a long way in saying that the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne was not wrong on amendment 101; I thought that was pretty generous. However, the right hon. Gentleman is a hard man—he is known as a hard man of the left, and he is a hard man of parliamentary procedure as well.

Charter for Budget Responsibility

Debate between John McDonnell and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Wednesday 14th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

I will in due course.

It is increasingly clear that the charter and the fiscal mandate are not economic instruments, but political weapons. This is not an economic debate. It is about the politics of dismantling the welfare state, the closing down of the role of the state, and the redistribution of wealth from the majority to the minority. Austerity is not an economic necessity; it is a political choice.

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

The hon. Gentleman said at the beginning of his speech that he wanted to reduce the deficit, but whenever any cut is proposed, he is against it. What would he cut? What would he do to balance the books?

[John McDonnell]

If the hon. Gentleman bears with me, he will discover the answer. He is renowned for his patience.

Succession to the Crown Bill

Debate between John McDonnell and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Monday 28th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I do not say this with any personal interest, but where does someone who has been excommunicated stand in all this?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am afraid to say to the hon. Gentleman, who I hope is not in that unhappy state, that an excommunicated Catholic would be excluded from succession to the Crown because that person would have been in communion with Rome at some point. It is an absolute. If at any moment in their whole life they were in communion with Rome, they are excluded from the throne, deemed to be dead. That cannot be the intention of the clause that allows a Catholic to marry an heir to the throne. That will simply create confusion and we will not know who the monarch is going to be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I think the monarchy should be an hereditary monarchy and should go through the nearest line that is available. I do not think there should be a character test for the monarch. The great and weighty responsibilities of monarchs turn people into serious-minded individuals capable of that great honour who sometimes in their youth were not capable of it. One thinks immediately of Henry V and also of Edward VII, both men who, in their youth, were relatively irresponsible, but when that great honour of being King of England fell upon their shoulders, they rose to it magnificently—gloriously, regardless of their religion.

All I am trying to do is make sure that in future we know that the monarchy is safe and secure and to whom it has passed—that we do not open it up for the courts to say, “Well, this person once went to a Catholic church. This person had a Catholic baptism. Therefore let us go to my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset (Mr Liddell-Grainger), who is 190th or some such in line to the throne, and who, having been perfectly Protestant all his life, might be very suitable.”

We need to be clear because so many functions of this nation would be thrown into doubt if there were no Crown. If we are risking people being ineligible for the Crown because of shoddy legislation, we then face the prospect of being unable to use the prerogative powers, which might make it quite difficult to open Parliament.

[John McDonnell]

I attached my name to these amendments because they reflect an amendment I tabled for last week’s debate that was not selected. I wish to explain why I did that, for the record and for some of my constituents and other supporters who might find it a bit bizarre.

Apart from my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), those who have participated in the debate so far have had an interest either as monarchists or, in the context of the amendment, as Catholics. I am not a monarchist—I am a republican; I see the monarchy as a complete anachronism—and I am, at best, a lapsed Catholic, as the parish priest optimistically describes me.

Over the past 10 or 15 years, I have sat in this Chamber on a number of occasions when successive Members have tried to remove anti-Catholic discrimination from our legislation. Dr Evan Harris and John Gummer did that when they were Members of this House. The simple reason, they argued—I fully agree—is that we in this House should not allow our institutions and our legislation to be founded on or framed by discrimination. This measure is the last remnant of anti-Catholic discrimination that sits within our laws. Frankly, it is offensive to discriminate on religious grounds, and every Government in recent years has said so. We have legislated time and again to remove such discrimination, so why can we not do it in this case?

The hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) went through a trajectory of 300 years in the space of one speech; it has a been a major breakthrough to bring him into the 21st century. As he argued very eloquently, on whatever grounds this discrimination was introduced centuries ago, it is no longer relevant, and I am convinced that at some point it will be challengeable in other forums and courts. This is an ideal opportunity to say to the outside world that we will not tolerate discrimination of any sort. It is anti-Catholic discrimination that has historically been present in this kind of legislation, but such discrimination pertains to every other religion as well. We have heard potential successors to the Crown say that they are happy to be seen not as defenders of the faith but defenders of faith; if that is the case, so be it. We have an opportunity to send out a message that we are opposed to all discrimination, that we accept that the institutions we establish should not be founded on discriminatory legislation, and that we will remove this stain from the character of this House and our constitution.

John Gummer and Dr Evan Harris argued their cases extremely eloquently, more so than I can. When I left the Chamber after those debates, I thought, “If I were a member of a particular religion and that barred me from a particular office, I would find it offensive.” We might think that this debate is about something that is necessarily insubstantial in the everyday workings of our society and our lives, but it is not; it is about a symbol of past discrimination that must be removed. By removing that stain, we can go forward into a modern society