Debate on the Address
John Redwood Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Angus Robertson
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
The UK is the only G7 country to experience rising wealth inequality since the turn of the century. Wealth inequality has risen four times faster in the seven years since the crash compared with the seven years before, and the super-rich in the UK are becoming richer faster than ever. Wealth inequality rose under Labour, and it rose faster under the coalition. Inequality is felt acutely in particular regions of the UK, with regional economic performance the most unequal in the whole of the EU. What is happening to remedy this meaningfully rather than symbolically?
Given those challenges, we need honesty from the Government on their plans for austerity cuts. Where will the £12 billion of cuts to welfare and benefits fall?
Angus Robertson
Who will be affected? Will it be the disabled, like the many impacted by the bedroom tax, or will it be people working on low incomes and in receipt of tax credits? We also need honesty about the Government’s plans to cut above and beyond the fiscal mandate. On the specific legislative proposals in the Queen’s Speech, may I welcome the early unravelling of Conservative plans?
Angus Robertson
I am happy to give way on the unravelling of Conservative Government plans.
John Redwood
I wanted the hon. Gentleman to give way on the money. He said there were going to be massive cuts, but he will see from the Red Book that the Government plan to spend £60 billion a year more in the last year of this Parliament than at the beginning. By how much more does he want to increase public spending, and which taxes would he put up to pay for it?
Angus Robertson
The right hon. Gentleman obviously was not following the general election in Scotland, where the Scottish National party unveiled its proposals for increasing public spending modestly, and where the electorate then took a view on whose plans they would put their trust in—and as he can see, 56 of the 59 MPs returned from Scotland are from the SNP.
I return to the specific legislative proposals in the Queen’s Speech and the unravelling of the Prime Minister’s plans, beginning with the Human Rights Act. It is now clear that the Government cannot secure the majority they were seeking and are kicking the issue into the longer grass. I say to right hon. and hon. Members across the House who, like us, want to protect the Human Rights Act that we will work with them to do so. The Act is enshrined in the devolved legislative framework of both Northern Ireland and Scotland, and although the Government have delayed the Bill, the Queen’s Speech makes it clear that they are still committed to it. However, we will not stand for any diminution of human rights—or indeed, in respect of other measures, of workers’ rights.
The Prime Minister is no doubt delighted—and presumably surprised—that he achieved a majority and does not need to continue in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, but he will be less happy when considering that a 12-seat majority is small in historical terms. With 56 Members, the SNP will co-operate with progressive colleagues to secure positive changes or block bad proposals.
I hope that the early Government unravelling will continue on the EU referendum Bill, for which, incidentally, there is not support among all parties in the House.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
I rise to speak for prosperity, not austerity; I speak for England as well as for more powers for Scotland; and I speak for greater democracy as we seek to wrestle power back from the bureaucratic tentacles of Brussels.
Austerity is what was given to this country in 2008-09. Then we had desperate austerity. We had deep recession and the biggest loss of national income than at any time since the second world war. We had families losing jobs, families losing bonuses, families having to take pay cuts. We saw austerity rampant. Since 2010, first the coalition and now the Government, led ably by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, are about restoring prosperity for the many, growth to our economy, the extra jobs we need, the higher pay and the better living standards that come from creating that world of opportunity.
We speak not just for prosperity but, yes, for aspiration. We speak for aspiration just as surely as some Opposition Members spoke for envy at the time of the general election. The electors told them that they did not want envy; they wanted aspiration. They do not mind other people doing well, as long as they too have a chance to do well. They are not jealous of people who go to good schools, but they want to go to a good school themselves, or send their children to one. They are not jealous of people who work hard and earn a lot of money, and want to keep a large amount of that money to spend on themselves, but they want the opportunity to do the same. I urge my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and his colleague the Chancellor of the Exchequer to press on in supporting those very aims. Spreading prosperity ever more widely is what lifts us from austerity and banishes austerity from our land.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Before the banking crisis hit in 2008, the right hon. Gentleman was calling for less regulation of the banking system. Does he still hold that position?
John Redwood
If the hon. Gentleman cares to read the economic policy review that I submitted to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he will see that it clearly warned of a banking crash. It said that Labour’s regulatory system—introduced by the hon. Gentleman’s party after the 1997 general election—was not requiring enough cash and capital to be held by the banks, and that that was causing enormous strains, which would go wrong. I saw it coming; he took it down. The Labour party changed the regulatory system, the regulators made a huge mistake, and the banking system powered the recession, which was also furthered by the mistaken budgetary policies pursued by Labour. I am very pleased to see that those who now wish to represent the Labour party as its leader have said sorry for the economic and regulatory mistakes that are made by the hon. Gentleman’s party
John Redwood
If the hon. Gentleman wants to have another go, by all means let him do so.
Clive Efford
One of the myths that were put around was that the Labour Government maxed out on their credit card. Will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that before the banking crisis hit in 2008, debt as a proportion of the country’s GDP was lower than the level that we inherited in 1997?
John Redwood
What matters is the rate of change. The Labour Government were borrowing too much at a time when the economy was overheating and collecting a lot of tax revenue, and we have been trying to right that mistake ever since.
I think it would be helpful if, in this Parliament, we could have a more grown-up discussion about public spending and tax revenues than we were allowed in the last Parliament, because the meaning of austerity has shifted. It now has a narrower definition than the disaster that hit living standards and individual families in 2008. To the so-called progressive parties, austerity now means not increasing public spending as quickly as they think that it should be increased.
Let me remind the House what successive Red Books—Budget books—have told us about what happened between 2010 and 2015, and what they tell us will happen between 2015 and 2020, subject to the Chancellor’s Budget. It is very easy to remember. Between 2010 and 2015, the coalition Government increased total public spending by £1,000 per person per year, if the final year of those five years is compared with the starting point. The recently elected Conservative Government plan to do exactly the same: they wish to increase total public spending per head by £1,000 per person a year by the end of the current Parliament. That is not a huge rate of growth, but it is not an overall decline or a cut.
Because we inherited such an enormous deficit and could not continue to borrow on such a scale, we were—as a result of VAT increases and the general increase in revenue from some economic growth—charging people £2,000 a head more per year at the end of the last Parliament than the Labour Government did in their last year. This Parliament requires exactly the same increase, without any rate rises but coming from faster growth in the economy. The Red Book’s aim is that we should charge everyone £2,000 extra a year by the end of the Parliament than at the beginning. I think that that is a measured and sensible proposal to rescue us from enormous borrowing and a big debt hole, and I think it can work. I especially welcome the fact that, this time, it will require no tax rises.
Geraint Davies
The right hon. Gentleman may know that the number of people earning over £20,000 is now 800,000 lower than it was in 2010, and those higher-paying jobs have been chopped up into little part-time, low-wage, zero-hours jobs. That is why the tax revenues are not coming in and that is why debt as a share of GDP has gone from 55% to 80%. Admit it: you have failed.
John Redwood
That is a bit rich from the party that crashed the car and did all the damage to living standards in 2008. Would I like it to be going faster? You bet I would like it to be going faster, and so I am sure would the Prime Minister, but it has to go at a pace that can be achievable without taking risks and making it worse in the way that Labour did.
My party is not the party of low pay. We want people to be better paid. It is just that we have an economic policy that may deliver better pay; the Labour Government’s policy clearly did not, because they drove people out of work. They abolished the bonuses and they drove wages down by their dreadful recession, and that recession was caused by a combination of their mistaken economic policy and, above all, their mistaken misregulation of the banks. They should have stuck with the regulation of the banks we had before ’97. We never did anything like that with the banking system. We never had a run on a major bank under the Conservatives. We never had a big recession created by a banking crash. Labour needs to understand the history and understand that in future we have to follow different policies to try to avoid that.
I also wish to speak for England. I am very pleased that the Gracious Speech says that there will be early progress in making sure that those MPs elected for England can make more of the decisions that relate only to England. I hear that the SNP are already saying that that should be in legislation. I think it is entirely right that in the first instance it should be done by amending the Standing Orders of this House of Commons. It can be done simply and quickly, and it is judge-proof and it is proof against challenges from outside this place. If we want a sovereign Parliament, sometimes this Parliament has to act in a sovereign way, and surely we can be sovereign over our own votes and procedures.
Pete Wishart
The right hon. Gentleman is, I think, a champion of Parliament and parliamentary procedures, so surely he agrees that we have to debate this issue. There has to be a Bill; there has to be legislation. It is not good enough just to change the Standing Orders of the House for something so constitutionally important.
John Redwood
Of course there will be a debate, and the SNP can use all the parliamentary procedures, which some of its Members know well, to make sure that the issue is properly scrutinised and debated, but we do not need a great piece of legislation. We just need an agreement on who votes on what. It is not that complicated, it is extremely popular outside this House, and it was clearly offered to the British people by the Conservative party. It was one of several policies in our manifesto which were about twice as popular as the Conservative party itself, and we were the most popular party when people did not really like any of the parties in the election very much. They backed us, but they backed some of our policies rather more.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
I rise to support my right hon. Friend’s extremely relevant comments. The legislation has of course already been passed, in the form of the devolution Act in 1998. That is what devolved the functions. That is why it is necessary and fair to make sure that, through our Standing Orders, the English people know that they get exclusive rights over their own legislation.
John Redwood
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. To those who say we have not thought through this issue I would point out that we wrote many papers on it in opposition and that we thought it through over a 15-year period—it was in the 2001 Conservative manifesto—so the proposals should come as no surprise to anyone who is interested in the subject or who has been following the debates.
The third point I strongly support in the Gracious Speech is that at last we will get a referendum on our relationship with the European Union. Any honest Government picking up the task today should say to the British people that we need a new relationship because now the euro is driving so many of the changes in the EU. Those in the euro need much closer and stronger centralised government; they need to stand behind each other rather more. They are going to need common benefit systems and common cash transfer systems, and they are going to need to send support from the richer to the poorer areas, just as we do within our Union of the United Kingdom—if one part falls on hard times, the other parts pay more tax and send it the money. There is a mutual insurance or solidarity system which should appeal to all those of a socialist mind; it even appeals to me, because I think when some are down on their luck within such a union, they should be supported by others in the union. The United Kingdom has very clearly, and quite rightly, never elected a party that wanted to join the euro. The public have no appetite to join it; they have no wish to start raising more taxes in Britain in order to send financial assistance to Greece, Portugal or Spain, although those countries desperately need it.
Of course we need to define a new relationship with the emerging, closely centralised political union of which our colleagues in the EU now speak all too often, and I am pleased that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is taking on this difficult and tricky task. There will be a range of views within and among the parties on this issue, so a referendum would be a good way of making the final decision. I urge my right hon. Friend to bear in mind that what the British people, and many in this Parliament, want is to restore the British people’s right to make up their mind and their MPs’ right to ensure that the British people’s views are reflected in what happens here. At the moment, it is all about borders, immigration and welfare systems, and at the general election the British people expressed a strong wish for change on those matters. We need Ministers who can deliver those changes, but some of them are neither legal nor possible under our current EU arrangements.
In the future, the British people might want to see changes in other areas. They might want cheaper energy, for example, but they would discover that their politicians were not entirely able to deliver it because energy is hedged by many European rules, laws and requirements. Britain therefore needs some way of dealing with a situation in which, because of European rules, elected Ministers are unable to act on a matter of consummate importance to the British people. We might be able to do certain things, because we can get a special deal through not being in the euro—that relates to how much centralised government the countries in the eurozone, which we must keep out of, are going to take to themselves. Adopting that more widely might help with their other problems, because at the moment we are seeing a series of collisions between the will of the people following the elections in countries such as Greece and perhaps Spain, and what the European establishment is dishing out by way of policy.
If Opposition Members dislike austerity, they should study what has happened in Greece. It has seen very large public expenditure cuts, of a kind that I would not have supported, at a time when its economy was imploding and its banking system was broken, and its GDP has fallen by 25% since 2008. Let us imagine how we would feel if that had been inflicted on us by policies from Brussels. Thank heavens that those of us who made the case against the euro persuaded others to keep us out, because there but for the grace of God would have gone Britain into a euro-scheme that can deliver untold damage and austerity. Who would want 50% youth unemployment? That is what they have in several parts of southern Europe now, thanks to the devastating austerity machine that is the euro. I urge my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to take advantage of our non-membership of the euro to negotiate a democratic settlement for us, so that if we need something for our prosperity, this House will be able to deliver it.
Emily Thornberry
Of course I do, but I still feel British and as part of being British I want our country to remain united with Scotland. I want us to be British and I do not want to see the fracturing of our nation. The irresponsible way in which the Government have played those cards in the past few weeks and months has put at risk our very Union. I do not want to be pompous about this, but I am profoundly worried.
It has not been enough for the Government simply to do that. They have also been playing to their Back Benches, playing the Eurosceptic card and playing for good headlines in the Daily Mail, but they are also playing with the future of our country. The Conservative party seems to me to have moved far away from the Conservative party of Churchill that tried after the second world war to have a future for us in Europe, bound together by common ideals and principles. Those ideals, expressed in the treaty, have been looked after by the European Court of Human Rights over the past few decades. British Conservative lawyers wrote the European convention on human rights, which we have imported into this country.
Over the past few decades the Foreign Office has promoted human rights around the world; I am proud of that and want it to continue. The idea that we will pass a British Bill of privileges—under which certain people will be given rights and others will not, under which certain people will be more important than others, under which we will not have rights simply because we are human and under which we will not all be equal—and that we will not have legislation that fights for the weak against the strong is disgraceful. It is disgraceful that we are travelling down this road. How can we hold our head up high internationally if we are going to pull the rug from under a system of international treaties through which we have promoted human rights? Our legislation, written by us, is essentially part of a form of legal imperialism sent around the world to set a series of minimum standards of which I am very proud.
John Redwood
The hon. Lady might like to note that Churchill, in his Zurich and Fulton, Missouri speeches, made it very clear that the European Union would not have the UK as a member but that we would join a union of the English-speaking peoples. That was also the conclusion of his “History of the English-Speaking Peoples”. He did not write a history of the European peoples.
Emily Thornberry
I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that 67 years ago, Churchill said:
“The Movement for Europe…must be a positive force, deriving its strength from our sense of common spiritual values. It is a dynamic expression of democratic faith based upon moral conceptions and inspired by a sense of mission. In the centre of our movement stands the idea of a Charter of Human Rights, guarded by freedom and sustained by law.”
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving me a few minutes’ advance notice of his intention to raise this point of order. He has raised an extremely important point, on which I shall take appropriate advice, and which, as he would expect, I will give the most serious thought. I hope he will understand that it would not be appropriate for me to say anything beyond that this afternoon. Perfectly legitimately, he has raised it, and that is my response today.
John Redwood
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. If the right hon. Gentleman cares to read the Gracious Speech, it does very clearly say that the Standing Orders will be amended.
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for putting that on the record.
European Council
John Redwood Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
Because the hon. Gentleman has been so persistent, and because he has written me so many letters and I have written him so many letters, I have had another look at whether there is a better way of doing things. I think the truth is that what we do, if there is a group of people involved in an appalling crime like this, is put them our warnings index and stop them coming to our country. The advantage is that we can then be even more expansive. Of course we know who—[Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman wants to ask a question, why does he not listen to the answer? I would have thought that a former man of the cloth had better manners than that; I am trying to answer his question. I am assured that we are actually able to be more expansive. There are people we ban from this country who are not on other countries’ Magnitsky lists. I will write the hon. Gentleman a sixth letter and in that way try to make him happy.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
As the euro area moves towards political transfer and banking union, is there a growing recognition by other EU member states that the United Kingdom will need a new relationship based on trade and friendship because we cannot possibly be part of that political union?
The Prime Minister
There is a greater understanding that as the euro deepens with the banking union and other elements—I would argue that countries will one day need greater fiscal union and burden sharing—there is an understanding, which is discussed around the EU table, that the countries that are not in the EU are going to need some guarantees of their own, because otherwise, for instance, we will have a situation where a qualified majority of EU eurozone countries are able to dictate to the rest of Europe what it can and cannot do, and that would clearly be unacceptable. There is a growing recognition that change is required. That is why it is right, after the election, to go into a proper renegotiation and then hold an in-out referendum.
Recall of MPs Bill
John Redwood Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Dr Huppert
As ever, the hon. Gentleman makes a very interesting point, but the new clause does not suggest changes to the code of conduct or making it subject to court proceedings, so his point does not apply to this new clause.
I think that new clause 2 has been substantially improved to address the criticisms levelled in Committee —we can have the discussion about the code of conduct at another appropriate time. Furthermore, as I said earlier, it is not a unique proposal. The state of Minnesota has a similar scheme under which 25 petitioners submit a proposed recall petition stating the grounds for the recall, whether it be malfeasance, non-feasance or serious crime; and a public hearing is held by a judge within 21 days who then reports to the Supreme Court on the test of
“whether the persons proposing the petition have shown by a preponderance of the evidence that the factual allegations supporting the petition are true; and…if so, whether the persons proposing the petition have shown that the facts found to be true are sufficient grounds for issuing a recall petition.”
This then leads to the recall petition, in which case the system requires the signatures of voters equalling 25% of the most recent turnout, which is roughly the same as the 15% we are proposing. This system exists, therefore, and it seems to work, as shown by its operation since it was introduced in 1996.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
How does the hon. Gentleman answer the criticism that the whole point of recall is to give power to the people but that his system gives power to judges?
Dr Huppert
It still starts with 500 people and ends with 15% of the public making the decision. We have to strike a balance—we discussed this in Committee, and I do not want to give a blow-by-blow account of that very long debate—over whether there should be any constraints at all and whether there can be any trivial or vexatious cases. That is the difference.
In Minnesota, several cases have been deemed to be unreasonable. The two most recent cases involved State Representatives Ward and Radinovich, both of whom supported same-sex marriage against the wishes of their constituents, and in both cases, the court concluded that it did not constitute malfeasance, saying:
“Constituent disagreement with how their elected representative exercised discretion, through public statements made or votes taken, does not equate to malfeasance by the representative.”
That is surely a principle the House would want to stick to.
In 2001, the state attorney-general did not take steps to ensure that a ban on sodomy was not struck down—again there were complaints, but the court did not conclude that he had failed to do his job; and in 1999, Governor Jesse Ventura was accused of having done well out of his book by virtue of being governor, but again the court felt the accusation was unsubstantiated and struck it out.
G20
John Redwood Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
In this area, on this occasion, the G20 rather under-delivered. We have made progress on the exchange of tax information, which is vital, and on the idea that every country has to have a process of transparency for beneficial ownership so that tax authorities can find out who owns what, but the hon. Lady is right that the third leg is further progress on the extractive industries and the extractive industries transparency initiative. We made limited progress, but it was not a strong feature of what we agreed at the weekend.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Given that the United States has been the fastest-growing advanced economy since 2009, based on the exploitation of cheap energy, was there any discussion about what we and others need to do to compete with America industrially? We will need to invest in a lot of cheap energy to keep up.
The Prime Minister
There was a discussion about energy, and it is notable now that America starts these interventions by explaining that it is the world’s largest producer of oil and gas. My right hon. Friend makes an important point though: we should not be left out in the shale gas revolution. It has helped American competitiveness and energy prices, and I want to ensure that we do everything in the UK to take advantage of it too.
Recall of MPs Bill
John Redwood Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Greg Clark
The right hon. Gentleman—everyone who has contributed today seems to be right hon. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Of course Parliament, and election to it, should be the subject of significant debate on issues of contention; that is the purpose of Parliament, and of standing for election. Therefore, it is not right to assume that any challenge to an MP would be, in and of itself, vexatious—quite the opposite—but at times it might be possible for people with less high-minded motives to take that approach.
Let me briefly address the principal amendments and new clauses in this group. Amendment 1 and new clause 1, tabled and spoken to by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park, would delete the two conduct-related triggers for the recall of an MP and replace them with a system of petition-based recall for any reason, to be initiated by 5% of the electorate signing a notice of intent to recall. That would trigger an official recall petition that, if signed by 20% of the electorate within eight weeks, would lead to a recall referendum. If the majority of those voting in that referendum voted for recall, the seat would be vacated and a by-election called. There is nothing to stop repeated, or even parallel, notice of recall petitions being lodged, all with attendant publicity and each requiring only 5% of the electorate to sign, meaning that an MP could suffer a prolonged bombardment of negative publicity in that way.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
The Minister said on Second Reading that he thought that the Bill needed to be improved and that there could be amendments. If not these, does he have in mind some Government amendments to deal with some of the issues about democracy?
Recall of MPs Bill
John Redwood Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Zac Goldsmith
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and I will address her points properly, but if she feels that I have not done so, I invite her to feel free to intervene at any point.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
I think that my hon. Friend’s proposals include not having a recall opportunity within six months of a general election, for the obvious reason that there would soon be an opportunity to get rid of the MP if he or she were that unpopular. If we repeal or move on from the law on five-year Parliaments and go back to a system in which the Prime Minister has discretion on when to call a general election, how would that work?
Zac Goldsmith
That would open up a whole new debate, but that is for another time. In the Bill put together by the committee, the six-month limit relates to the start of an election, not the end, so it is possible to have a recall process after an election, but not within six months of an election being called. The reason is that someone may be elected on a spurious basis; for example, on the basis of a whole tangle of lies that are then exposed.
Tom Brake
I need to make some progress.
The right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson) gave a very blunt critique of the Bill, which as a Member who is leaving the House he is perhaps in a better place to do than others.
The hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) asked how we restore faith in this place and was of the view that recall will not help. My view is that it will and, in fact, when the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee considered the issue and commissioned a poll, it found that the public do not understand why MPs can continue to sit if they have committed a serious crime and it also found that a massive nine out of 10 people thought that MPs who committed a serious crime should face a recall.
Tom Brake
I am sorry, but I am not going to give way. I want to pick up on a couple of points that were made by Members who were present during the debate.
The hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) made the point that hon. Members should be protected in doing their duties in this House. I am not sure that the amendments he is supporting will enable that to happen. I was pleased that we had two contributions from expert former Leaders of the House. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr Lansley) put his finger on it immediately when he said that the issue is with Members being subject to a notice of intent to recall and the damage that is associated with that. He also asked a specific question about the Standards Committee. I certainly agree with him that the disciplinary procedures of the House must be robust and I welcome the review that a sub-committee of the Standards Committee is undertaking to consider its disciplinary procedures. These matters are for the House as a whole, but the Government would certainly support any amendments to the procedure that Members felt improved it. That might well include introducing measures that increase the role of the lay members and ensure that their views are properly represented.
My hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh pointed out, quite rightly, that in some states in the US, after a recall petition, rather than a member of another party being elected someone from the same party is appointed to replace them. To draw too many parallels with the US is not very helpful.
Tom Brake
I will not give way, as I still want to respond to a couple of speeches.
I understand why the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) is proposing her amendment, but, in an intervention, the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), who is not in his place, pointed out that simply having the name of the sponsor is not a solution as any vexatious individual or campaign can replace it with another when they need to. The hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) spoke about the need to balance the rights of individuals with the risk of vexatious campaigns.
We were very fortunate to have a contribution from another past Leader of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young), who pointed out succinctly that much of the debate is about cause and conduct. He comes down, as I do, on the side of this being about conduct, or misconduct, not cause. The hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) made the same point about cause or conduct.
The hon. Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns) said, to summarise his speech, that it was time for us to grasp the controls in the cockpit of democracy. I would fully support that.
Finally, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) said that the public feel cheated about the extra hurdles that he suggested we are putting in people’s way. However, I would say that the issue is more with the proposals made by the hon. Member for Richmond Park. They contain more hurdles, and the time it would take to complete them is longer than that proposed by the Government.
I welcome the support of the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) for the Bill on Second Reading and we make no apologies for the time it has taken to introduce the Bill. I would prefer that we had decent, well-researched legislation than rushed legislation. He referred to police and crime commissioners and councillors. Clearly, the Government will want to consider them in the future, but they do not fall within the scope of the Bill. He also referred to the situation in Scotland, but this is clearly a matter on which the Scottish parties need to get agreement.
To sum up, I reiterate that the Bill is about providing public accountability when there have been proven cases of wrongdoing. I have tried to address the points that have been raised. The Bill proposes a recall system that is open and fair and that fits with our unique constitutional system and I commend the Bill to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL
John Redwood Excerpts(9 years, 7 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
To be absolutely direct, I am not claiming that by air strikes alone we can roll back this problem. What this problem requires is a comprehensive strategy, including a well formed Iraqi Government and well formed Iraqi armed forces, because they in the end will be the ones who have to defeat this on the ground.
Where I disagree with my hon. Friend is on the cause of how this came about. As I have said, there is the background of Islamic extremism, but I would say that the two principal causes of this problem are the fact that in Syria Assad has been butchering his own people and acting as a recruiting sergeant for the extremists, and that in Iraq the Maliki Government did not represent all the people of Iraq. I thought that Ban Ki-moon, in one of the most powerful interventions I have heard him make, got it spot on when he said that missiles can kill terrorists but it is good governance that will kill terrorism. We should have that thought front and back of mind as we debate this afternoon.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Does the Prime Minister agree that the Iraqi Government need a political strategy to win over Sunnis and Kurds in their own country, and is he satisfied that they now know how to do it and will get full diplomatic support?
The Prime Minister
In answer to the first part of my right hon. Friend’s question, that is absolutely essential. A lot more needs to be done. I met Prime Minister al-Abadi in New York and discussed this very directly with him. We need to make sure that the Government in Iraq are not just supporting the Shi’a community, but bringing together Shi’a, Sunni and Kurd in a united country, with armed forces that are respected by every part of the community. That has not happened yet, but it is happening and I think that President Obama was absolutely right to delay this action until we had an Iraqi Government with whom we can work as a good partner.
EU Council, Security and Middle East
John Redwood Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
The weakness of the Iraqi army was based not on its equipment or even on its training, but on the fact that it was seen as a force that represented only one part of Iraq. That demonstrates the importance of focusing on politics as well as on military issues. What is required—I think the Iraqi army will not succeed until this happens—is a Government of Iraq who represent all of Iraq, and Iraqi security forces that can make the same claim.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Do not recent events show the need for us to control our own borders? Should not that be central to our new relationship with the EU, so that its weakest border is not our border?
European Council
John Redwood Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
Well, that is not the outcome that I seek; I want to secure a reformed European Union, and I want Britain to be part of that reformed European Union. I have to say that the problem with the hon. Gentleman’s position is that the Opposition do not seem to see anything wrong with the status quo. It is only those on this side of the House and in my party who know that we need serious change in Europe before we hold that referendum.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
I congratulate the Prime Minister on—[Interruption.] It is now time for all sensible political leaders to argue for the UK. We are not in the euro and we do not want to join the political union. Only with strong leadership can we have a relationship that makes sense for Britain.
The Prime Minister
I thank my right hon. Friend for his remarks. I think that the Opposition were rather hoping that we would all be falling out over the European issue, but they can see that we are absolutely united in doing the right thing for Britain.
Debate on the Address
John Redwood Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was right to say that what matters most in the year ahead is that the economic recovery, which is now under way and speeding up, needs to be supported and developed. The whole House agrees that we want people to be better off. Their living standards were cruelly squeezed in the great recession between 2008 and 2010, and in the early years of the coalition Government there was some further loss of real incomes. It now looks as if that is beginning to change, and the way it can best change is if there are more jobs so that more people move from being out of work and into work. Under my right hon. Friend’s important policy, it will always be better to be in work than to be out of work.
As the recovery extends, wages will go up and there will be more better jobs available. Very often the best way to get a well-paid job is to start off in a not so well-paid job and to work one’s way up. Many of us have had to do that, and it will be increasingly possible as the recovery gets under way. I see that Labour Front Benchers think that that is ridiculous or funny. They should live in the real world and understand that economic recovery is good news for people’s potential living standards. None of us thinks that living standards are anywhere near where we want them to be. We need to develop that recovery.
The Queen’s Speech was right to have a limited number of measures. We have a short year before us and it is often not possible to do things through legislation. We need things to develop as the marketplace has its way.
Mr McCann
Perhaps the reason for the wry smiles on people’s faces is that, although there are opportunities for people to start in low-paid jobs and to progress to higher-paid ones—many people have done that in their lifetimes—in the current economic situation many people who work in my constituency are lucky if they get a few hours a week on a zero-hours contract. It is unlikely, therefore, that they will be able to meet the aspiration of starting off in any paid job, never mind anything else. That is why Members on the Opposition Benches have wry smiles.
Mr Redwood
I think that is churlish. As the Prime Minister has pointed out, using constituency after constituency as examples, people are getting back into work. Some are not in the jobs they would like or for which they are being paid nearly enough, but the way to work on that problem is to get behind the economic recovery.
The Gracious Speech promoted three big things that are important in that connection. I am glad that Labour now agrees with many of us that the opportunity and right to own one’s own home is one of the most important things. Many people have that ambition and all too many of them are not able to afford it at the moment, so measures in the Gracious Speech and elsewhere that can help create more opportunities for young people in particular to buy their first home and for others to improve their home, or even to have their first home in later life, will be very welcome.
Part of the answer is sensible rates of building, which in turn produces opportunities. I visited a construction site in my constituency, where the Prime Minister will be pleased to hear a lot of houses are being built. Not all my constituents are delighted about that, but those seeking a home are. We are already seeing many more jobs for plumbers, bricklayers and carpenters, and wage rates are going up, because those people are in demand. That means that they have a better living standard after the period towards the end of the last decade and the earliest part of this decade in which their wage rates were very badly cut or squeezed.
Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)
Is it not true that by controlling Government borrowing, keeping interest rates low and keeping mortgage rates low, we are giving more people opportunities to buy and own their own properties, to pay lower mortgages and to live the dream of having their own home?
Mr Redwood
Indeed. That is part of the strategy and, as we can see, it is beginning to work, with more house building now being undertaken and more people being able to afford a home.
The next thing we need is more domestically supplied energy and cheaper energy. The two go together, felicitously, so if we can get a bigger energy sector extracting oil and gas in Britain—onshore and offshore—we will have more jobs, some of which will be higher-paid jobs, but also access to cheaper energy. I am very pleased that the Government are going to get behind the shale gas revolution. It is already transforming the American economy, creating higher living standards for many and producing the much lower gas prices that are pricing Americans back into competitive jobs in industry vis-à-vis Europe and Asia, where the price of energy is high. We need the same here.
We need to make sure that all people setting up their own business, or who have already set up their own business but have not taken on many or any employees and are now thinking of doing so, should feel that that is possible and feasible. If we have too much regulation and control—much of it well intentioned, no doubt—the very bright or able can still run a business, because they know how to handle that regulation and control and can get proper advice, but other people find it far more difficult. They are put off, thinking, “I really do not understand all this. I don’t know what it’s all about.” Anything that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister can do to make it much easier for people to start their first business and then to take on their first employee will be extremely welcome and will promote the recovery.
George Freeman
My right hon. Friend is making a very eloquent case about how the best and most sustainable means of raising the standard of living is by developing sustainable jobs. Does he agree that one of the most damaging things we could do is to raise the tax on jobs as represented by employer’s national insurance contributions? That is being considered by Labour Front Benchers, but it would be hugely damaging.
Mr Redwood
That is quite right. The point has been made before. Lower taxes on enterprise and effort are generally a good thing. We want people to keep more of the money they make or earn when they set up businesses or get good or better jobs, and we also want to make sure that the Government do not deter employers from creating more jobs by over-taxing work.
I am pleased that the Gracious Speech refers to the need for more and better roads. In the past 15 years, our road building has fallen well behind what needs to be done to support the economic recovery and to promote industry, commerce and more jobs around the country. I look forward to seeing the detailed proposals.
What I primarily wish to do this afternoon is to speak for England. [Interruption.] I am glad that at least two hon. Members agree with that proposition. We speak too little for England in this House of Commons; yet a majority of us are English Members of Parliament.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
I heartily encourage this movement from the right hon. Gentleman. Let us hope he can do more and more of it post-March 2016, when Scotland becomes independent.
Mr Redwood
I will have to disappoint the hon. Gentleman. The Gracious Speech of course invites us to talk about this matter by referring to the possibility of more extensive devolution of powers to Scotland—in the likely event that Scotland votes to stay in the Union, which many of us want to see—and of the extension of powers to Wales. However, the Gracious Speech makes no mention of extending devolved powers to England, and we cannot carry on with lop-sided devolution without considering the business of England.
As many hon. Members will know, I believe in being economical when it comes to public expenditure on the business of politics and government. I do not want a new expensive building and a whole lot of new English MPs down the road, in the way that Scotland has for its Scottish Parliament. This sacred plot has been the site of the English Parliament for many centuries. This Union building is now for the Union Parliament—built for an empire and a great Union—but it could again be the site of the English Parliament under the United Kingdom Parliament. Like me, I am sure that many colleagues who understand the need for value for money for taxpayers would be happy to do both jobs. We would be prepared to come here under your skilful guidance, Mr Speaker, to talk with our Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish colleagues on all the matters of the Union, and to come here on other occasions to deal with the business of England without their help, guidance and certainly their votes. I think that there would be justice in that.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is a great shame that after primary powers were devolved to Wales so that it could take more command of its own affairs, we did not reduce the number of MPs in Wales, as the last Labour Government did in Scotland, purely because, as I understand it, it was objected to by our partners in the coalition?
Mr Redwood
I take my right hon. Friend’s advice on that, because she is more current on those arguments than I am.
I would like English MPs to be able to settle English issues on a fair basis. Labour gave us a cruel inheritance. The Prime Minister is wrestling with the bodged constitutional reforms on a huge scale that were made in the previous decade, which have left us with lop-sided devolution. Many in Scotland are hungry for more devolved powers and many in England feel that the settlement is very unfair. Labour also left us with three mighty federalising treaties with the European Union, which have left this Parliament struggling for power in many important areas of policy that matter to voters, as we saw on 22 May. This Parliament no longer has the power to make all or, in some cases, any of the important decisions in those areas.
Mr Redwood
Indeed. The parties that voted against the boundary proposals have a lot to answer for. Again, that is unfair to England and to those constituencies that have many more voters than the average and that looked for some justice to be brought in through sensible reform. If this place is to work, we must surely work towards a world where we all represent roughly the same number of people. That is the kind of proportional representation that I believe in.
I hope that Scotland votes to stay in the Union. I think that that is likely because, had there been a tidal wave of opinion in favour of independence for Scotland—if that really was the wish of many people in Scotland—surely in the general election of 2010, the Scots would have voted in 30 or 40 Members of Parliament who were rooting for independence for Scotland. We would have taken that seriously and would have had to listen to them.
The Prime Minister
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for allowing me to intervene. May I say how much I agree with him that in the next Parliament, we must address the issue of equal-sized constituencies? I ask his forgiveness for the ultimate insult, which is that I will leave his speech to depart for Brussels. Sadly, that is what I have to do because the G7 is starting in a few hours and I do not want to be late. I do not want to do him any discourtesy, so I wanted to point that out while commending his strong passion for equal-sized constituencies, which are a key democratic reform.
Mr Redwood
I am grateful to the Prime Minister for his courtesy. He has been courteous to stay as long as he has given that he has such pressing engagements. He illustrates the point that I wish to move on to, which is how much Brussels dominates our proceedings and our government, but I will first complete my Scottish point.
The most likely need that we will face after the Scottish referendum is the need to look at the question of lop-sided devolution. I would be happy to extend more powers to the devolved Scottish Parliament, but I want to be a voice for England and I do not think that we can carry on doing that without England having a settlement as well.
In the less likely event that the Scottish nationalists get their wish and there is a vote for independence, I will be one of the first to congratulate the Scots and help them in any way towards a smooth transition. However, I will want them to be genuinely independent. I will not want us to pretend that there is some kind of special relationship that is rather like a federal system. If people wish to be independent, they should be independent.
In that event, I propose that the House of Commons should immediately pass legislation saying two important things. The first is that the 2015 general election will not apply in Scotland and the current Members of the Westminster Parliament from Scotland should continue for as long as it takes to complete the process of separating the countries. There would be no point in having the expense and nonsense of a general election in a country that was leaving the Union. The second thing, which the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) might like less, is that the Scottish MPs should play no part in any discussions about non-Scottish business in this place and no part in forming the response of the rest of the United Kingdom to their wish to be independent.
Mr MacNeil
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene again. I agree with him wholeheartedly on that point. In the SNP we have a self-denying ordinance of not taking part on English issues and non-Scottish issues because we believe, and I am sure the right hon. Gentleman is demonstrating this, that England is as good as France and Germany and can run itself amply, without any help at all from the Scots.
Mr Redwood
Very good. I shall now move on and speak for the United Kingdom. The hon. Gentleman might find that we are back here together still arguing about these matters after the referendum, but I hope he will accept the verdict of that referendum, as I will do, because we cannot go on arguing about this.
Jim Shannon
I support the unification of the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—that is, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England together—so will the right hon. Gentleman tell me whether he recognises the contribution that the MPs from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland bring to this House, and the knowledge that they bring from their own regions, which can help to formulate Government policy to benefit the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?
Mr Redwood
Indeed. I am a Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom Parliament, and proud to be so. I would like my country to stay together, but I do not want people in it who are not keen to be in it. If a democratic process is gone through and we discover that a part of the United Kingdom wishes to leave, as democrats, we must realise that that is the answer. We cannot keep on pulling up the plant to see where the roots are. I hope the referendum will be a one-off and that it will settle the issue for a considerable time.
Mr Redwood
I am glad to see the Scottish nationalists agreeing.
I come on to talk about the United Kingdom and its relationship with the European Union. We have today again witnessed a very important ceremony in this House. That ceremony is designed to remind us all of the battles and struggles of our forebears to ensure that this House of Commons had the power to limit the Crown—had the power to make the authority of government in this country accountable to this House of Commons—and a very moving and important ceremony it is. But we have a new struggle on our hands, equally important though not one, fortunately, for which we will need muskets and musket balls. We will need words, actions and independent thinking.
Our struggle is that this once great and sovereign House of Commons now is not sovereign or great in so many fields because the European Union has powers to instruct, overrule and command. There is a particular case that I would like the Government to consider in this next year in the legislative programme. The case is that of the human rights convention and the list of human rights therein. It was a Labour Government, when signing us up to the treaty of Lisbon, who expressly said in their motion on the treaty and in the Act of Parliament that they put through on the back of it that we were not going to consolidate all of the convention on human rights—that this House and this country would make up its own mind on human rights. That was reflected in the legislation that we passed—an act of sovereign legislative activity to say that we did not want it all dictated from the European Union.
What has now happened under a European Court judgment is that the European convention on human rights is being absorbed into the corpus of European law and will become an instruction on this House, against the wishes of Labour and against the wishes of the rest of us in the House at the time. I think the House should now move an amendment to the European Communities Act 1972 expressly ruling out that grab of power by the European Court of Justice on this issue, reflecting the words of the treaty we signed and reflecting the words of the legislation that this House passed. Unless this House is prepared to do this at some point on some important issue, this House is in no sense sovereign any more. We can claim to be sovereign only because all the powers of the European Union today are technically the result of our passage of the 1972 Act, but if we are never going to amend or revisit that Act, those powers have gone and we are completely under treaty and ECJ law.
Another area that we may need to look at is the promise by Governments of all persuasions that matters relating to taxation and social security would remain national issues, because they involve the money of our taxpayers and the money going to people in our country who most need help. Surely this Parliament should control our taxation, and our expenditure of substantial sums of it on benefits.
Mr Stewart Jackson
My right hon. Friend is making a characteristically powerful speech. Is not another mark of a sovereign nation that it controls the integrity of its own borders? Is it not high time that, even if we fall foul of the European Court of Justice, we look again at the ramifications of the free movement directive and possible changes to it? Should we not employ some of the changes that Spain, for instance, has made, to protect the integrity of our borders within the European Union?
Mr Redwood
I agree, although I do not think the legal case is quite so clear on that matter, which was why I concentrated on one on which were given assurances that a power had not been transferred. I believe the previous Government transferred a lot of power over borders, so it might be more appropriate to consider the matter by way of renegotiation. However, if my hon. Friend has particular examples of the ECJ or the Brussels Commission exceeding the powers that were granted to it, exactly the same argument will apply as with the human rights convention. We need at some point to make changes if we cannot effect them by negotiation and agreement with our partners. When negotiating, it is always a good idea to have a plan B just in case they do not see it our way. I always find that that concentrates the mind somewhat.
The Gracious Speech will reinforce the recovery, and that is what matters most to many of our constituents, who wish to have better jobs, better living standards and access to better housing. We are the inheritors of mighty constitutional turmoil, and we can no longer put off the business of England. Whatever result comes from the Scottish referendum, this House must engage earnestly with the business of England as surely as it has, on and off, with the business of Scotland and that of Wales and Northern Ireland in recent years. Above all, because we need to be in control of our own destiny and represent our people in ways that our forebears would respect, this House needs again to say that there are limits to European Union power, which will be prescribed here and dictated from this House. We can then look the British people in the eye again and say, “Yes, we will redress your grievances. We still have the power to do so, and we have the political will to act.”