Parliamentary Constituencies Bill (Sixth sitting)

John Spellar Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 25th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Chloe Smith]

The hon. Gentleman—my friend, if I may return his compliments of this morning—has it exactly right. I thank him for aiding the Committee’s understanding on that point. I could give examples of where that kind of wording has been updated in other Acts, but I think I do not need to do so if it is as simply put as that.

As happens now, an Order in Council will be used to give effect to the recommendations, but Parliament will not play a role in approving that order, and the Secretary of State will no longer be able to amend the draft Order in Council that implements the boundary commissions’ recommendations in the event that it is rejected by Parliament.

We heard in the witnesses sessions that a number of respected academics support this change. Countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand use a similar approach. It is the right one to use. We heard from Dr Renwick and Professors Hazell, Curtice and McLean, and there are many more who stand on that side of the argument. One of the most eloquent whom we heard in our sessions was Professor Wyn Jones from the Welsh Governance Centre, who said:

“It is probably better that MPs set the terms of the exercise for the Boundary Commission behind a veil of ignorance, if you like, without knowing exactly what the particular outcomes would be for them as individual MPs.”––[Official Report, Parliamentary Constituencies Public Bill Committee, 18 June 2020; c. 57, Q117.]

I considered trying to get a joke on the record about Immanuel Kant and the ways that that surname could be used, but I thought it would be better not to test the boundaries of that at this stage of the Committee.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke went on to say, witnesses were clear that the independence of the process should not be violated—a strong word, as she pointed out. Whether Professor Curtice was also right to call Committee members and Members of the House turkeys, I could not possibly comment, but it is self-evident that MPs have an interest in the outcome. That is simply a fact.

I now turn to amendments 2 to 4 and the opposition to the clause that I assume goes with them. I disagree fundamentally with the amendments and I urge hon. Members to withdraw them. I recognise the passion with which hon. Members put their arguments. The hon. Member for City of Chester spoke about parliamentary approval being a “safety valve”, but those arguments are wrong-headed. Essentially, they say that a process should be regarded as independent if someone agrees with it, and not if they do not, which is a poor way to approach the question. The changes are important to ensure that the recommendations of the independent boundary commissions are brought into effect promptly, without interference from any political quarter, without waste of public time and money, and without delay.

[John Spellar]

Essentially, the Minister is avoiding the central political reality, which is that because of the way the boundary commission went about its work, whether according to its instructions or not, the Conservative Government fundamentally lost control of their Members of Parliament. Ironically, in 1969, the then Labour Government had absolute control of their Members of Parliament, which is why they voted down the recommendation. The reason that those proposals never got before Parliament was that they were so fundamentally unsatisfactory that the Conservative Government lost control of their Back-Bench Members and some of their Ministers.

[Chloe Smith]

I have huge respect for the right hon. Gentleman; it is a credit to the Committee that we have no fewer than two former Secretaries of State on it. I am afraid that in this case, however, he is not correct. That is not the fundamental point. The fundamental point is that we need to put in place updated and equal boundaries. If his party’s heritage goes right back to the Chartists, as he hopes it does, he ought to be with that argument rather than against it. That is what we need to address today.

I want to make a few points about the nature of parliamentary sovereignty as it operates here. The hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood said that the Government of the day set the parameters and, without the safety net of a further approval stage, we could allow for bad reviews—I think I have accurately reflected her words there. Sir John Curtice also reminded us that someone could introduce an overturning Bill if they wanted to; that is a facet of parliamentary sovereignty. Parliament can do that if it wishes. Indeed, the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) tried to do that in the last Parliament, and we spent many hours considering his Bill.

The hon. Members for Lancaster and Fleetwood and for Glasgow East misunderstand, or misrepresent, the nature of Parliament and the Executive in their arguments, so I want to set the record straight. It is Parliament, not the Executive, that sets the parameters through this Bill; that is what we are doing. I may be on my feet right now as a member of the Executive, which I am deeply honoured to be, but it is Parliament in the form of this Committee and later in the whole House, and in the second Chamber, that does that job.

I merely present proposals. It is for Parliament to agree or deny them. It is Parliament that retains that sovereignty at all times, and if Parliament later disagrees with the measure, it can act. There is nothing here to prevent it from doing so, although I would advise against that for the reasons that I have set out. My right hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell set that out clearly to the hon. Member for City of Chester, who agreed with him, if I understood the exchange correctly.

It is the constitutional position that the Executive are composed of the largest party in Parliament. That is simply how it is. I appreciate that I am the Minister for the Constitution, so I rather enjoy such arguments, but I hope the Committee will bear with me.

It is the case that Parliament has some crossover with the Executive—of course it does; that is how we are set up. In that resides the confidence of the House and the delivery of the manifesto commitments that have put the Government in their place. That is what we are here to do in the Bill: deliver equal and updated boundaries. That is the right thing to do.

[John Spellar]

I think that we should explore that constitutional issue, because we also need to look at the procedures of the House. Only the Government can instigate legislation, apart from the rather convoluted private Members’ Bills procedures. Indeed, even when such a Bill may be trying to proceed, it can be held up by not putting forward a money resolution. Government, as the Executive—subject, as the hon. Lady rightly says, to the constraint of a vote of no confidence—are able to stifle any of that legislation, should they so wish.

[Chloe Smith]

And in that will reside the views of the majority of Members of the House of Commons, who know what the right argument here is in this case, which is to deliver equal and updated boundaries. I am only sorry that some of the arguments we have heard this morning seem to express almost a lack of confidence in Parliament’s right and ability to set a framework at the outset and then have confidence that it can be delivered by what is a very high-quality public body, judge-led and acknowledged by witnesses to be among the best in the world in how we run our boundary commissions. Perhaps the hon. Member for City of Chester disagrees.

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[Cat Smith]

The Opposition welcome clause 5. We have argued to keep the number of MPs at 650. I also welcome the Minister’s explanation of why the Government have U-turned and returned to the idea of having 650 Members of Parliament.

The Minister made the argument that the UK population has grown by 5% since 2011. I ask her, and she is welcome to intervene, whether that is an indication that we should expect the 650 figure to increase in subsequent reviews if the UK population were to increase in that time.

I also ask why the number is fixed. We heard in our evidence sessions that one of the difficulties that commissioners have in drawing seats is that they must finally reach the 650 figure. Is there not a strong case for having a target number of MPs that the commissioners should reach within a percentage range? Overall, the Opposition welcome the clause and the decision to maintain 650 MPs.

[John Spellar]

Briefly, several of the factors that the Minister outlined were blindingly obviously after 2015 as well. The population in this country was going up and there had been a referendum to leave the European Union. Was it not, frankly, the shallowness of David Cameron and the stubbornness of the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) that meant that the Government have had to make the change now that they could have made before? We would then have been here representing different constituencies. There is no shame in saying that the former leadership of the party—it is probably unwise to attack the current leadership—got it wrong and that is why they have done a U-turn.

[David Linden]

Can I say what a pleasure it is to see clause 5 in the Bill? I spent about 30 sittings of my life in the last Parliament on the Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill Committee, brought forward by the wonderful hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan). On that Committee were me, the Minister, the hon. Member for Coventry North East, the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood and the hon. Member for City of Chester, with whom I have grown incredibly close over this issue and through the armed forces parliamentary scheme. It is a genuine delight to be on the Committee.

I used to trot along the corridor every Wednesday morning to come and argue that there should be 650 seats. At the time, the Minister, only six months ago, was resolutely opposed to that. So it is with a degree of glee that I hear her talk about that 5% population growth. I know that, on the Committee, I, the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood and the Minister have had children, but I can safely say that we have not contributed 5% population growth in the last six months. Therefore, the U-turn is quite remarkable.

There is also an argument based on Britain leaving the European Union. I accept that. It will be a travesty and bad for Scotland, which is probably why people in Scotland voted against it, but if we follow to its logical conclusion the argument about losing 73 MEPs who used to go to Brussels and debate and legislate on our behalf, and all those laws coming back to the UK Parliament—by and large they are coming back to it as a result of a power grab by the UK Government who are not devolving the powers on to institutions such as the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament—presumably we should increase the number of seats, commensurately with MPs’ increased workload. Like the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood I am perplexed that the number remains at 650.

I want to pick up on the Minister’s point about cutting the cost of politics. One of the things that I tried to bring up in those enlightening Wednesday morning Committee sittings—with more ease some weeks than others—was that the Government’s argument that they are cutting the cost of politics is problematic because of the other place.

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[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am most grateful to the hon. Lady for that intervention. I have often said that if God had wanted Yorkshire and Lancashire to meet, he would not have put a huge lump of granite between us.

However, there is an important point here, namely that the arbitrary nature of local authority boundaries is a strange thing. In 1974, Leeds was the only authority that got bigger; all the other authorities got smaller but the Leeds metropolitan authority swept way out of what had been the Leeds City Council area and took in areas such as Pudsey, West Riding Council and all those areas.

My constituents generally do not consider themselves to be part of Leeds. However, I am a Leeds city MP, in a county constituency and a borough constituency, which gives some idea of how that is defined in the geography of election expenses. Equally, I remember a particular opponent in one of the elections who was trying to establish their credibility to stand in the area. They went to certain parts of my constituency waving the flag about what a strong Leeds Rhinos fan they were, in rugby league. I am not a rugby league fan, and am clear that I am not, but I do know that in the areas that said opponent was talking about being a Leeds Rhinos fan, the people were all Castleford Tigers fans, so I was quite pleased with that bit of electioneering.

[John Spellar]

Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us which football team he does support?

[The Chair]

Order. We are wandering all over the show. Please may we get back to the Bill?

Parliamentary Constituencies bill (Third sitting)

John Spellar Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

To my great relief, our next witness is here in person.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Chair, before we come on to that, we have had several references in evidence to the OSCE report. Would it be possible for the Clerks to get the link for that and send it through to members of the Committee?

[The Chair]

That is a splendid idea. Thank you for that suggestion. It will be done sooner rather than later.

I am delighted that Chris Williams is here in person. He is the head of elections and field operations for the Green party. We have until 10.20 am for this session, not as was indicated on the Order Paper. Mr Williams, please briefly introduce yourself.

Chris Williams: I am Chris Williams. I work for the Green party of England and Wales as head of elections and field operations.

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[Cat Smith]

Q I will direct a question to Professor McLean, who I hope now has the right Bill in front of him. Back in 2010, Professor, you wrote an article for The Guardian about the boundary review commencing then. I was interested to see that in it, you progressed the argument that the most accurate way to ensure that every vote counted equally would be to move towards proportional representation. That is outside the scope of the Bill, but it shows up the conflict that we have. Would not the way for every vote in the United Kingdom to count equally be to have just one constituency—the United Kingdom—and a system of proportional representation, even though that comes into conflict with the communities that we represent? Ultimately, if we are to maintain the constituency link, we have to have a percentage variance between seats; we cannot have every single seat with exactly the same number of electors. It is a question of where we draw the line.

How can that balance be struck? Is the 5% tolerance most appropriate, or if we are not moving towards a system of proportional representation, should there be a larger tolerance, so that community ties are considered more important?

Professor McLean: For clarity, it is important to separate the question of proportional representation from that of the 5% tolerance, because they are different questions. As I evidently said in 2010—you have better recall of what I said than I do—a single-member district system cannot be proportional. That is a mathematical truth. Legislators must make a choice, and the choice that the UK Parliament has made is reflected in this Bill and many others: the single-member district system.

I do not think that it would be a good use of this Committee’s time to talk about whether the UK should switch to proportional representation; with your permission, Chair, I would rather duck that part of the Member’s question.

On equality, the Member poses an important question: is it correct that the equality criterion should override the other ones—the ones on local ties, and on the constituency boundaries following local government ones where possible? My view, which is an arithmetical view, not a political one, is that it is right for the equality criterion to override the others.

Becoming somewhat more political, my observation of boundary inquiries is that since local ties are not further defined in the Act, I have observed on several occasions that for a number of very shrewd operators, who will be well known to members of this Committee, Conservative local ties go one way, Labour local ties go another, and Liberal Democrat local ties go yet another. Each of them, because they are paid to do so, makes a plausible case before a commissioner, who in England is deliberately chosen not to be from the area. Moving on from the mathematics, my view as a political scientist is that the local ties criterion is eminently manipulable, whereas the plus or minus 5% criterion is not.

Is the criterion wide enough? In the United States the courts have said that as near as possible to 0%— not 5%—is the accepted tolerance for US congressional districts. So, it is possible to have a tolerance lower than 5%, but that is not in this Bill and it is not in the earlier Acts.

[John Spellar]

Q Should we have districts?

Professor McLean: Well, since we have more time than we thought, we could have a discussion about US congressional districts, but Members may wish to move on.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Q Gentlemen, thank you for giving your time today. As you have probably picked up from reading previous reports, one of the issues this evidence inquiry is trying to get to the bottom of is how we are going to advise the commissions about the best way to do these boundaries.

Building on what you have just said, Professor McLean, about keeping the right size and in terms of communities, about which one can always argue, can we look at rule 5(1)(c) in the 1986 Act, which is about keeping boundaries in existing constituencies? My question, to both witnesses, is about whether the Bill needs to have some clarifications put in it, especially around what we are struggling with regarding the Boundary Commission for England. The evidence from the Boundary Commission for England was pretty much, “We are always going to try and do it with wards, and we will just get the numbers to work.” That overrides almost all the rules in clause 5, including geographic considerations. I gave the example of a North Yorkshire ward that one can only get to by completely leaving the constituency and spending a considerable amount of time on the road, but it would make the numbers work.

Can I probe your minds on the resistance to building outside of the wards, or, in other words, splitting wards down, as they do in Scotland, in order to try to keep existing communities together? What are your views on the different definitions of county constituencies and borough constituencies? How does that play into the building of constituencies? Does the Bill need further guidance to try to equalise the United Kingdom’s approach to how it builds constituencies, with the gold standard of Scotland being a good example?

Parliamentary Constituencies bill (Second sitting)

John Spellar Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 18th June 2020 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

We still have nine minutes with you, Roger, so I will call John Spellar.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Q Thank you, Chair. First, Roger, you were very robust in your declaration of support for 650 seats. Were you as robust in your support for 600 when it was Conservative policy?

Roger Pratt: I always support whatever is the Conservative party line. I am a Conservative party employee.

[John Spellar]

Q You talked about the Isle of Wight as if this issue were somehow absolutely insuperable, but you also talked about the constituency that includes Skye. Until the Skye bridge was built, people had to get across by ferry, so why is it so utterly impossible to have linkage between part of the Isle of Wight—a much bigger constituency, as you have agreed—and part of the mainland, if we have achieved it in Skye?

Roger Pratt: I think I am right in saying that the decision about the Isle of Wight followed discussion in the House of Lords about the previous Bill. The Lords decided that it was wrong for the Isle of Wight to link with part of the mainland. There is quite a large chunk of water. Those two constituencies would be made up of about 55,000 people, as you rightly say, but it is difficult: you have to get a ferry and so on. I appreciate that there is a Skye bridge, but you could not do Skye on its own. I cannot remember what the Skye electorate is, but it is not very large.

[John Spellar]

There are lots of ferries between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight, though. I was recently on a Defence Committee visit there, prior to covid-19, and the ferries are quite regular and quite quick.

Roger Pratt: There are ferries, but if we are talking about communities, I think the Isle of Wight would feel very let down if it were linked with part of the mainland. I remember a boundary commission where it was suggested that there should be a seat crossing the Mersey between Liverpool and the Wirral, and that suggestion was very unpopular and rightly changed as a result of the consultation. With the 12,000 people from Skye, the current electorate of Ross, Skye and Lochaber is almost exactly the same as the seats in the Isle of Wight would be. The Isle of Wight seats would be very slightly larger.

[John Spellar]

Q You conflated the situation in Scotland and Wales, did you not? Was not the reason why Wales retained a degree of what we accept is over-representation precisely so that the Welsh voice was heard in Westminster, because much more legislation regarding Wales was dealt with in Westminster than legislation regarding Scotland? Surely the underlying point is about the integrity of the Union and maintaining a strong voice for Wales, which is still much more directly linked with England than is Scotland.

Roger Pratt: You are right that Wales was not required to use the English Parliament. At that time, there was a Welsh Assembly; it is now called the Welsh Parliament. That Parliament has a lot of responsibility, particularly for health and education, but for a lot of other matters as well. Members of Parliament from England have to deal with health and education, whereas those from Wales do not, so I think it is right that Wales should be on a fair and equal basis with England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

[John Spellar]

Q I agree with you about using the electoral register as the basis for drawing this up. You mention both accuracy and completeness. Would it be right to give greater powers and direction to electoral registration officers to use their access to public data to improve the completeness of the register and, as with registrars of death removing those who have died, the accuracy as well?

Roger Pratt: Certainly it needs to be as accurate and complete as it possibly can be. Some of those matters are beyond the scope of the Bill, but I would support all the measures that the Government are taking, as are the Scottish Government and the Welsh Government, and all the local authorities, to ensure the most accurate and complete register we can possibly get.

[John Spellar]

Q Finally, you mentioned that something like 50% of the initial recommendations were altered. Is that not partly because if they followed an argument in one constituency, because of the 5% margin, there were inevitable knock-on effects on many other constituencies, which could have been perfectly easily accommodated had there been a wider margin of difference? You had a domino effect rather than dealing with a perfectly proper and legitimate cause of local complaint.

Roger Pratt: There were some perfectly legitimate causes of local complaint, but one of the things they had to do was make sure that the knock-on effects were affected. Certainly, the Labour party and ourselves and others always put in an overall plan, so you could look at the overall plan. That is what you must do to try to get it right sometimes.

The Labour party and ourselves and other parties agreed in Dorset. All three of us came up independently with the same alternative plan for the Boundary Commission, so I do believe that it is right. I do not believe that a 7.5% quota is right.

It is a question of balance, isn’t it? It is a question of the balance you strike between getting a quota right and community ties. I think the quota at a 10% variance, rather than at 15%, which you would have under seven and a half, is the right balance to strike.

In the past, the Boundary Commission, in the rules under which you were all elected, stated quite clearly that it needs to get as near as possible to the electoral quota—that is in the Act—but it has been conflicted as to how it uses those rules. Under the new rules, it is not; it knows it has to get everything within 10%, that is 5% either side, but, in addition to that, it uses the rules to make sure that it uses the other factors. It does not need to get as near the quota as possible. Mr Bellringer made that clear this morning.

If I may, Mr Chairman, I have one other point on the 10%. The right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell referred to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights publishes an election observation handbook, which says that,

“all votes should carry the same weight to ensure equal representation. This means that each elected representative represents a similar number of registered electors. For example, in a majority voting system, the size of the electorate should not vary by more than approximately ten percent from constituency to constituency.”

I think that is the right balance to strike.

[Jane Hunt (Loughborough) (Con)]

Q I have a couple of questions about reviews. First, on the proposal for an eight-year review cycle, could you tell me what you think of that, and why?

Roger Pratt: Yes. I think that is absolutely right. When there was an original five-year term, it was linked to the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011. Since then, we have had two general elections not based on the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, and I think it is the Government’s intention to change that Act. So I think eight years is the right balance to strike, so that normally you would have two Parliaments between each review.

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[Jane Hunt]

Q Okay, so you do not think it would make any difference if the Boundary Commission made the recommendations and they went straight to the Speaker.

Tom Adams: Well, the fact that they would go straight to the Speaker is welcome, because that would mean that the Secretary of State could no longer make amendments to them, but I still think they should be subject to parliamentary approval, as I said earlier.

[John Spellar]

Q Do you find it interesting that a Government with a majority of 80 are so concerned about their inability to get through a boundary review? Might that indicate that the underlying reason for the previous review not going through was because it caused so much discontent in their own ranks—in other words, because it did not respect local community interests and local boundaries?

Tom Adams: That gets at one reason why Parliament should ultimately have to approve boundary reviews: if you cannot even get half the House to agree to them, clearly there is not sufficient MP backing for them—not enough MPs agree that it is a sensible process. Last time, the proposed reduction to 600 seats clearly had a big impact on that backing. Keeping the number at 650 will mitigate that somewhat. I agree that that is one reason why it is important that Parliament has that oversight. If it struggles to get half of MPs to vote in favour of the proposal, that implies that people do not broadly think it would be a good outcome.

[John Spellar]

Q In your work, do you find that there is an underlying problem, in that while many Conservatives can understand the issue of local identity for rural areas and small towns, they have a complete incapacity to understand the effect of identity on neighbourhoods and communities in conurbations, which they see as sprawling, shapeless continuous masses?

[The Chair]

John, I do not think you are entitled to have fun with the witness.

Tom Adams: I would not want to comment too much on that, but clearly there are still community ties in large urban wards, yes.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Spellar Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It was a disgrace that that was being used as a defence in criminal cases of murder. I pay tribute to Members from all parties who have run an effective campaign and congratulate the Ministry of Justice on taking action on the issue.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I am pleased that the Prime Minister is in the wings to hear this question. We know that the Disclosure and Barring Service sometimes bars people from work for decades and is, frankly, unfair and discriminatory; we know that the Windrush scandal is still ongoing, and there is dither and delay in the Home Office; and we know that in health and care services there has been a disproportionate impact on those from BME communities, especially among women in nursing and care roles. We do not need another commission to decide this; what we need is some action. What is the Minister going to do about it?

[Elizabeth Truss]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a fair point about the Disclosure and Barring Service.

Census

John Spellar Excerpts

Wednesday 6th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

Frankly, this measure is a slap in the face for the Sikh community, a community that has contributed so much to our country not only in recent years, but over the past couple of centuries of our joint history. As we know, this sizeable, dynamic community is contributing in business, the professions, the armed forces—we recorded last year the huge contribution and the vast number of deaths in world war one—politics, the media and medicine. Only a month or so ago, that was highlighted by the death of Manjeet Singh Riyat, the A&E leader at Royal Derby Hospital. Clearly, the Sikh community feel strongly about this: in the 2011 census, 83,000 ticked the box saying “Other” and wrote in, “Sikh”.

Why does this matter? First, because Sikhs have been legally recognised as an ethnic group for nearly 40 years, since a House of Lords ruling in 1983. The ethnic group set question was only introduced in the 1991 census. At that time, the Office for National Statistics stated that it was introduced to help public bodies assess equal opportunities and develop anti-discrimination policies. Ethnic group data, not religious data, is what is used by public bodies to make decisions on the allocation of resources and the provision of public services. The Prime Minister’s most recent race disparity audit indicated that there were 176 datasets spanning sectors from housing and education to employment, health and the criminal justice system, but no data on Sikhs. Effectively, they are invisible. As the covid-19 crisis has shown, there has been no systematic collection of data on the number of Sikhs tested as positive or on the number who have tragically died, even though we are inquiring into the question of differentiation in different groups of health outcomes. Although they come to prominence when a key worker dies, nobody is actually properly collecting the data. Quite frankly, we either need to change the local practice of how this is assessed and how Departments work, or we need an additional box in the census. I would argue that one is probably quite a bit simpler than the other.

I am frankly still perplexed by the Government’s stubbornness on this issue. It seems perverse of the Government to marginalise and ignore this important community and our society. The Minister mentioned bringing forward further orders on the census at a later stage, so I ask her, even at this late stage, to restore the Sikh community to their proper place in the census.

I will also touch on another matter: how we run the census in the first place. The Minister rightly indicated some improvements and changes, but fundamentally, the basic way of collecting the census remains unchanged over the last couple of centuries. My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) said that this is a snapshot. It is, but as public bodies, we are still using data from 2011, and in many of our constituencies and right the way across the country, there have been very significant changes. Are we capturing that or is there a better way of doing this? Would it not be better now, in the modern age of technology, to look at, for example, creating a virtual national register and having up-to-date information undertaken by sampling and polling?

A whole number of areas are going to be changed by the coronavirus epidemic, including travel to work, work patterns and holiday patterns. A huge range of changes will take place, and we need to be able to capture those in real time. I therefore ask the Minister to look at that, and, by the way, there is an additional layer of her responsibilities where this would be an advantage: we could end up with a much more accurate and comprehensive electoral register, and do it much cheaper.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Spellar Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I notice that there were no facts in that question. If the hon. Member looks at the facts, he will see that a greater and growing number of small and medium-sized enterprises are registering to become suppliers. He will see that 12 Departments in particular are massively increasing the amount of work that they are doing with small enterprises. Rather than criticising my Government colleagues, he might like to start standing up for small businesses in his constituency.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

I think there is unanimity across the House about the need to improve access to Government contracts for small and medium-sized enterprises, but I would prefer it if they were British small and medium-sized enterprises. What action will the Secretary of State take to amend Government procurement regulations so that Departments can start to prioritise British firms, British products and employment of British workers?

[Penny Mordaunt]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. He knows this Administration are focused on increasing opportunities across every part of this country. Now that we have left the EU, we will have new opportunities as we design the future procurement rules. I hope that both sides of the House can come together behind that work, so that we have maximum opportunity for every part of the UK.

Draft Police and Crime Commissioner Elections (Amendment) Order 2020

John Spellar Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2020 General Committees

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Police and Crime Commissioner Elections (Amendment) Order 2020.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. With your permission, I will make a few introductory points about what the statutory instrument does.

The draft order seeks to make important improvements to the electoral framework and processes that underpin police and crime commissioner elections. It will introduce two changes. First, it will ensure that expenses that are reasonably attributable to any candidate’s disability, and reasonably incurred, are excluded from the candidate’s electoral spending limits for PCC elections in England and Wales. That will have a positive impact on individuals seeking elected office who have a disability.

The order will mean that candidates may incur disability-related expenses without it affecting their spending limits. Examples would include British Sign Language interpretation for hearing-impaired candidates, the transcription of campaign material into Braille for visually impaired candidates or other specialist equipment, to give a non-exhaustive list of examples.

The order will ensure that standing for PCC elections is made fairer for disabled candidates. It is an important step in making our democracy more accessible and representative of the British public. About one in five of the UK population has a disability but, as we are all too well aware, disabled people remain under-represented in our elected offices.

The draft SI follows the coming into force of the Representation of the People (Election Expenses Exclusion) (Amendment) Order 2019 in February last year. That exempted disability-related expenses from the spending limits of candidates at UK-wide elections, including UK parliamentary general elections—a number of us were present for the debate on that measure and found it helpful. Today’s instrument will complete the set, of which I am very proud.

Secondly, the draft order will introduce changes to election forms to reflect where an order has been made to give PCCs the power to undertake fire and rescue authority functions. That is relevant currently to Essex, Staffordshire, North Yorkshire and Northamptonshire. That part of the order is in relation to changes made to the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 by the Policing and Crime Act 2017, which allow PCCs to take on the responsibility for fire and rescue governance where that is in the public interest and in the interests of economy, efficiency and effectiveness. The measure will ensure that the relevant election forms, including poll cards and ballot papers, are clear as to what functions the person being elected will have. That will help voters to be fully aware of the role of the office for which they are voting.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

What possible evidence is there that voters have any knowledge of, or interest in, the role of police and crime commissioners? When there are stand-alone elections, the turnout is appalling. Should the Department not look at whether the elections serve any purpose—and, indeed, at considerable expense?

[Chloe Smith]

No, today the Department should not be looking at that; today, the Department should be—and the Committee is—looking at whether we can make it clear that the forms reflect the functions to which the candidates aspire. I support ensuring that voters are well informed, as I am sure do most members of the Committee.

We consulted the Electoral Commission on the draft order and, as one might expect, we worked on it across Government between the Cabinet Office, the Government Equalities Office in respect of disabilities, and the Home Office in respect of police and crime commissioner policy. All those consulted were supportive of the proposals. We also kept the parliamentary parties panel informed of the changes. It meets quarterly to discuss electoral issues and consists of representatives of each of the parliamentary political parties that have two or more sitting MPs.

It is important that the draft order is in place as soon as possible, so that it may apply in the build-up to the PCC elections on 7 May. The instrument will therefore come into force on the day after the day on which it is made.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Spellar]

Although election day may be 10 weeks away, a considerable number of people in many parts of the country—particularly where there are high levels of postal votes—will receive their postal votes some three or four weeks earlier.

[Cat Smith]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct; I cannot argue with his logic at all. These elections are far sooner than many of us might think.

Legislation should be clear at least six months in advance, so this is clearly very late in the day to make changes. What conversations has the Minister had with the Electoral Commission regarding support for disabled candidates who claim the financial exemption provided for by the draft order?

While Labour Members are happy to support the draft order, we believe that there are many more barriers to remove before disabled people can participate equally in politics. I suspect the Minister knows what I am about to say—we have had this discussion before—but it is imperative to recognise the huge financial barriers that penalise disabled candidates. The support provided by the Government to mitigate that is completely insufficient, and we know why.

The Conservative Government’s decision to cancel the access to elected office fund was completely unjustified and severely damaging. The Government’s own evaluation highlighted the fund’s positive impact on disabled candidates, enabling many to stand for election, and noted that the Geneva-based Zero Project selected the fund as one of the top global innovative policies to support and encourage political participation by people with a disability. Despite that, the Government repeatedly refused to listen to disability campaigners who rightly called for the fund’s reinstatement, which the Labour party fully supports, as does the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The EHRC said:

“The UK Government should reopen the Access to Elected Office Fund in England, and work with the Scottish and Welsh Governments to explore options for making the scheme, or similar funds, available across Great Britain.”

Does the Minister agree that the access to elected office fund was a success, and that its abolition has weakened the support available to disabled candidates? Will she do the right thing and work with disability campaigners and the Scottish and Welsh Governments to reopen the fund? The current approach simply is not working. The funds recently provided by the Government to support disabled candidates have been inadequate. The EnAble fund for elected office, launched in 2018, was intended to support disabled people seeking election in the May 2019 local elections and the May 2020 police and crime commissioner elections, yet the fund ends in just over a month, on 31 March. It is not a long-term solution to the substantial under-representation of disabled people in public life, and there is considerable confusion among disability campaigners as to what Government support, if any, will be available after it ends.

Whatever happens, the Labour party will do all we can to support disabled candidates. However, in the absence of long-term Government support, many smaller and financially precarious parties will struggle to provide the necessary financial assistance, and the case against disabled people standing as independent candidates speaks for itself. The Government have in effect insisted that it is the responsibility of political parties to meet the disability-related costs of their candidates, and as a consequence many general election candidates were forced to pay those extra costs themselves.

When it comes to encouraging the participation of disabled people in politics, the Government cannot continue to offload the responsibility on to political parties alone. That will not lead to the progress that we so desperately need. I commend the Government for the draft order, which we support, but I implore them to restore the access to elected office fund and to provide proper support for disabled candidates, now and in the long term.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Spellar Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

14. Those fine words will mean nothing if the contracts do not go to British companies, so will the Government take the opportunity at last to give priority to British firms and get local authorities and other public bodies to do the same? Let’s give business to British firms employing British workers.

[Michael Gove]

I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for making the case that was made so eloquently by Vote Leave in 2016. There is more joy in heaven over one Member for Warley who repenteth than over many others who still take a different view. He is absolutely right; one of the many benefits of Brexit is that we can buy British and put British firms, British workers and the whole United Kingdom first.

Debate on the Address

John Spellar Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2019 Commons Chamber

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

I could not find the result as I listened to the closing remarks of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner), but I think the Brexit Party received substantially more votes than the margin of his majority—do correct me if I am wrong—so he was saved, if you like, by a split in the Brexit vote. I hope that he will reflect on how little his voters respected the Labour party’s position on Brexit.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I congratulate you on your sudden elevation, and may I also congratulate Mr Speaker on his election? I also congratulate the Prime Minister not just on achieving a stunning outturn to a difficult election, but on striking such a sensible and moderate tone at the moment of victory. He humbly accepted the responsibility, and his comments were far from the triumphalism that he might have indulged in and that, in fact, is not part of his character.

There has been much speculation about the long-term significance of this result. Is 2019 going to be like a 1945, 1979 or 1997 watershed? It is far too soon to be certain about that, but it is rightly the Government’s ambition to make it a watershed by changing the nature of the Conservative party, with its new intake and the new constituencies that we represent, ensuring that we deliver in constituencies that have not been represented by the Conservative party for a very long time, if ever.

It is certain, however, that this is a watershed moment in our relationship with the European Union. I still hear among many of the comments a reluctance, perhaps, from the Opposition parties to accept this, but the election result represents a substantial consolidation of what was decided in the referendum. Incidentally, the effect of leaving the European Union will be far less about economic and social matters. It is far more significant in terms of its political and constitutional intent. It is about the intent of the British people and a signal of our national determination to be a self-confident country, to take control of our own affairs, to make our own laws, and to navigate our own way in the world, as the sixth largest economy in the world is perfectly capable of doing. Yes, there will be problems of transition, but most countries are not in the EU and they are absolutely fine. We will find our way out of the European Union probably in a manner that most people in this country will not even notice in terms of immediate policy effects, but they will understand that they voted for us to be a self-governing nation.

The election converted the direct mandate of the 2016 vote to leave into a clear representative mandate, and that was always going to have to happen, because direct democracy does not sit comfortably in our system of representative government. This election represented that transition: not just to leave the EU in principle, but a mandate to deliver the deal negotiated by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. The election decided how we are going to leave the EU, as set out in our manifesto.

Incidentally, we are leaving with a deal. It is quite extraordinary that a narrative is developing that we will somehow leave without a deal in a year’s time. We might leave without a free trade agreement, and the Prime Minister has made it absolutely clear that we are leaving at the end of 2020 come what may, but that puts us in a far stronger negotiating position than we would be in if our hands were still being cuffed by a House of Commons determined to inflict defeat on the Government at any cost and to subvert the referendum result and the election result. We are now in a position to negotiate more effectively than we have ever negotiated before and, with the experience of the previous negotiation, is it not apparent that there has been a sea change in the attitude of the other members of the European Union? They want to get this done. They are not against free trade. They are not in favour of protection for its own sake. They are not in favour of inflicting some kind of vengeance Brexit on the United Kingdom. They will want their exporters to benefit just as much as our exporters will benefit, and we are in a strong position to achieve that.

In this election, people also voted for this rather mobile concept of “one nation”. Actually, one nation, as somebody recently reminded me, was a term coined not by Disraeli but by Baldwin. Disraeli talked about the two nations—the rich and the poor—but Baldwin fused it into a political philosophy about forging one nation, so that the divide does not exist. My right hon. Friend was right to emphasise that that has always been the role of successful Conservative Governments. In fact, poverty has generally declined under the Conservatives, and inequality tends to increase under Labour Governments, because they try to tax people too much and, in the end, the taxes fall on those least able to pay.

This election result was not about those who made the biggest promises. If the party that won the election was always the one that made the biggest promises, we would never win an election. The fact is that some of the Labour party’s promises, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) was saying earlier, were irresponsible. They were not credible, and they looked cynical. Those kinds of promises do not work. People vote for a track record. There has never been a Labour Government that did not leave office with a higher rate of unemployment than they inherited from their Conservative predecessors. That is a fact, and people remember that. The election reflected the fact that common sense prevailed over the temptation to allow extravagance that the nation could not afford and over a continuation of the institution-breaking paralysis that a hung Parliament had inflicted on the Government at this particular juncture in our history.

This election result is a defeat for the idea that we should somehow move to a more proportional voting system. The advantage of our voting system is that it distils a decision so that hung Parliaments are rare. This election demonstrated that the nation does not like hung Parliaments. It likes decisive government. The nightmare possibility of a continuing state of paralysis encouraged people to vote tactically and make a judgment about how they wanted the political deadlock to be broken. They did not want it to be left to a lot of politicians on lists filling smoke-filled rooms and stitching things up for themselves. It was not just that period of government that was unpopular, because the coalition between 2010 and 2015 turned out not to be very popular in the end.

I welcome the Gracious Speech. The withdrawal agreement represents a compromise Brexit, which we now all must live with, and all can do so because it is a good compromise. There has been much speculation about the European Research Group, which I do emphasise is primarily a research group, and about whether we should rename ourselves the “manifesto support group” because we are not at loggerheads with the Prime Minister. We are not holding him to ransom. We supported his deal before the election. It was remainers who were trying to destroy his Government before the election, and they will now hopefully lay down their arms and sue for peace, because this has been resolved. That is what our voters expect.

I am just as interested in the proposals in this Queen’s Speech for a constitution, democracy and rights commission, which will have a large agenda after a period of constitutional strain in which so many of the norms and conventions of our constitutional settlement were just simply thrown aside in the battle over Brexit. The Select Committee on Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs, which I chaired before the election, has looked at electoral law, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, the role of the Electoral Commission—maybe we should look more at that role—constituency boundaries, the royal prerogative and the Supreme Court judgment, alongside the nature of our civil service. I am pleased the Prime Minister is considering how the effectiveness of Whitehall can be improved.

Now we have a mandate and a majority to address all these matters, we need a careful and consensual approach so that we do not make the mistake of previous changes, like the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. That Act was a rather grubby deal to try to cement the coalition into office, and it had all sorts of unintended consequences. We must legislate on the constitution very carefully to avoid making such mistakes in future.

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman mentions the redistribution of boundaries. There was a strong feeling in the previous Parliament that it would be a huge mistake to reduce the number of Members of Parliament and the number of constituencies from 650 to 600. Does he think that ought to be revisited?

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I certainly do. On Second Reading of the Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill, the private Member’s Bill introduced in the last Parliament, I spoke in favour of the compromise that seemed to be emerging for a variation of 7.5% instead of 5%, so as not to corral constituencies into artificial shapes, and for 650 seats instead of 600. Overwhelmingly, the objective should be to re-establish consensus on boundaries through the usual channels. Boundaries should not have become a politicised issue. We could not get any boundary changes through because it had been politicised—another clumsy mistake by the coalition Government.

We have to recognise that this cavalier fiddling with the constitution and this period of paralysis have left the public with much less confidence in our political institutions. There has always been cynicism about politics, but never about Parliament as an institution. The public were becoming very jaundiced about Parliament as an institution, and this majority Government is an opportunity for all sides to recognise what the rules are and to make this place work for the benefit of our constituents, whether we are in opposition or in government.

I also welcome the emphasis on the national health service in Her Majesty’s Gracious Speech. I was at a roundtable at Conservative conference a couple of years ago to discuss the staffing crisis in the NHS—this was before the staffing crisis had moved up the political agenda—and I asked who is accountable for workforce planning in the NHS. A variety of opinions came from the various professional bodies around the table and, actually, some of us persuaded the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care that he should make himself accountable.

We then got an interim people plan for NHS England that was extraordinarily thin on numbers and analysis, so I welcome the breakthrough into numbers that appeared in our manifesto. I am a little sceptical about how easy it will be to achieve 50,000 more nurses, and I immediately pressed the Secretary of State to explain exactly what 50,000 more nurses means and how it will be achieved. That is yet to be fleshed out in hard policy detail, but we have set ourselves the challenge and we have to deliver it.