Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill

Debate between Jonathan Edwards and Patrick Grady

Committee stage & 3rd reading
Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

Diolch yn fawr, Dame Rosie; it is a pleasure to contribute to this debate, to serve under your chairmanship and to speak to my amendments 4 and 5. I welcome the provisions in the Bill that put certain safeguards in place to protect against a clash between ordinary Westminster and Senedd elections. My amendments go one step further and would remove regulations from the Government of Wales Act 2006 that allow the Secretary of State to combine a UK general election with an extraordinary general election to the Senedd. Although these are probing amendments, I would like to set out why the possibility of even an extraordinary election to the Senedd taking place at the same time as a Westminster election is a cause for concern.

The introduction of the Elections Bill has put Wales and Westminster on a rapidly diverging path when it comes to empowering and engaging citizens in the democratic process. In Wales, 16 and 17-year-olds are allowed to vote in Senedd and local elections, rightly having a say over critical issues that affect their future. In Wales, any legal citizen, no matter their nationality, can vote in Senedd and local elections. It is telling that as Wales and, of course, Scotland extend their franchise, this place seeks to do the exact opposite. In Westminster elections, the introduction of mandatory ID cards risks placing an additional barrier between voters and democratic engagement, especially for younger people and minority groups.

This all comes at a time when the Conservative Government here are intent on slashing the number of Welsh MPs from 40 to 32. Not only is this part of a relentless anti-devolution power grab from our Senedd, but it will cause practical confusion, as many will find themselves living in different boundaries for the Senedd and Westminster. In addition, if both elections were held at the same time, headlines would inevitably be dominated by the Westminster election, prejudicing the national debate in Wales. Despite the fact that we will celebrate a quarter of a century of devolved Welsh governance in a few years’ time, there continues to be a lack of understanding about which tier of government is responsible for which policy area. Simultaneous elections would therefore only increase confusion, a phenomenon probably encouraged by some political parties.

I gladly admit that there has yet to be an extraordinary Senedd election to date, but it is not completely out of the realms of possibility. Indeed, further reforms to the Senedd may make this outcome more likely. For example, the expert panel report on Assembly electoral reform, chaired by the formidable Professor Laura McAllister, made a strong case for the introduction of the single transferable vote system—a system that could vastly improve how connected voters feel to the democratic process but which would make coalition Government in Wales inevitable. Although I believe such cross-party governance to be a good thing, it could increase the likelihood of an extraordinary election.

[Patrick Grady]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent point in his speech and with his amendment. It is not entirely clear from the answer that he got from the Minister why the Government would not simply accept the proposal, for the same reason that I cited in my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara)—the potential of a UK general election being used to manipulate the date of a referendum, the date of a Scottish election or the date of a Welsh election. Once again, it is the power grab that the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) spoke of.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention and his point about the pre-eminence that Westminster would have over these major democratic events in Wales and Scotland.

Although these scenarios are currently hypothetical, we cannot but be vigilant when living in an age where the British Government had no shame, only a few years ago, in unlawfully proroguing this House to avoid scrutiny and parliamentary debate on the biggest political decision that the UK has faced in generations. I would appreciate it if the Minister, in closing, could shed some light on why the Secretary of State needs to retain the powers to combine extraordinary general elections to the Senedd on the same day as UK parliamentary general elections when provisions in section 5 of the Government of Wales Act allow the Senedd to dissolve itself and the Presiding Officer to propose a day to hold an election.

Before I bring my comments to a close, I would like to speak in support of other amendments and particularly new clauses 2 to 4, which would empower the legislature over the Executive and give a semblance of balance to a Bill that is inherently about enabling the Executive to dominate this House. A healthy democracy requires checks and balances between the Government and Parliament. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, which the Bill would repeal, was good for democracy as it strengthened the hand of this House in the governance of the UK.

The excuse for this Bill is the events of the 2017 to 2019 Parliament. Although I acknowledge that the current Prime Minister and his team skilfully used the deep deliberations of that time to present a Parliament in paralysis, I firmly believe that future historians will look very kindly on the role of this House during that period. Members of a legislature should never offer unequivocal support for the actions of an Executive. Our job is to scrutinise and challenge. During the period in question, this House was dealing with a hugely complex issue and carefully, through detailed deliberation, working its way through the various options. The tragedy of the events of the last Parliament is that the Opposition fell into the trap set by the Government by agreeing to the early election.

What we saw towards the end of the last Parliament was a Government willing to thrash parliamentary democracy to achieve their political goals. The amendments put forward by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) seek to insure us against such similar acts in future. If he chooses to divide the Committee on his amendments, he will have my support.

Official Development Assistance and the British Council

Debate between Jonathan Edwards and Patrick Grady

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Grady]

Absolutely. Indeed, if we had that kind of appropriations process, we could vote to amend the budget lines. I agree again with the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield on that, but at least we should be thankful that it is not just listed as “a giant cash machine in the sky” in the budget. Of all the offensive, dismissive and belittling expressions used by the Prime Minister, both before and since his election to office, that description of the UK’s aid budget and everything that went with it—to dismiss so frivolously and contemptuously the leadership that it showed, the cross-party consensus that it represented, the diplomatic weight that it carried—tells us everything we need to know about the ideology behind the decision to walk away from the 0.7% target and slash spending by over £4 billion. It has nothing to do with the pressures of covid on the economy and everything to do with an ideological distrust of what aid is supposed to achieve.

But aid works. Aid saves lives. The 0.7% was not a magic number; it was agreed by developed countries in the 1970s as the result of working out how much was needed to address global poverty at the time and how much those who could afford it should contribute. It helped to shape the goals of those days that eventually became the millennium development goals and the global goals for sustainable development—goals that the UK helped to devise.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that those in Wales and Scotland who believe in an ethical foreign policy and who support humanitarian aid will see this as skewed priorities? When over £200 million is to be spent on a royal yacht and yet there is a cut to international humanitarian aid, what message does that give to the people of Wales and Scotland?

[Patrick Grady]

Absolutely. Aid was supposed to be one of the great benefits of the Union. DFID in East Kilbride and the UK’s global leadership were presented to people in Scotland in 2014 as a reason to vote to stay in the United Kingdom, so I do not know what message the Government think they are now sending to people in Scotland by slashing aid. I noticed that a high proportion of Members of Parliament from Scotland and Wales are down to speak in this debate. Perhaps the Government, if they want to protect their precious Union, should reflect on that as well.

Aid is not a cash machine in the sky. It cannot be turned on and off like a tap without consequence. Cuts and closures today simply cannot be undone tomorrow or when the fiscal situation allows, whatever that is supposed to mean. The abrupt end of many projects, not least those supported by the British Council, will do long-term damage that is not easily fixed. Indeed, to undo the damage or restart the programmes will end up costing even more in the long run.

A recent cross-party meeting hosted by the STOPAIDS campaign heard from incredibly brave activists and service providers from Kenya and Indonesia whose projects are at risk from these cuts. That means more people at risk of contracting HIV or going without treatment. The Government’s own Aid Match programme, which they get plaudits for and which allows charities to put the UK aid logo on their publicity, is under threat. Many projects are on hold. Members of the public have donated in good faith to charities such as War Child and Mary’s Meals, thinking that every pound they donate will be matched by another pound from the UK Government, only for those charities to be told that they and their partners delivering projects overseas will have to wait for the money and wonder whether it will arrive at all.

Just today, the former President of Malawi, Professor Arthur Peter Mutharika, who the all-party group on Malawi hosted here in Parliament in 2018, has joined 32 other former Heads of State and Heads of Government from Africa in calling out the very cuts to neglected tropical disease funding that the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield spoke about. The WHO said about the cuts that there is no obvious alternative source of funding and that they will literally lead to tens of thousands of otherwise preventable deaths.

In my constituency, at the University of Glasgow, Professor Alison Phipps and her collaborators working to tackle violence against women in Ghana, Palestine and Zimbabwe have had their work paused, again without notice. Professor Phipps said that

“people were in tears…we are being offered advice from people in other countries who have experience of working with governments who are corrupt or cancel contracts with impunity.”

Well, so much for the soft power superpower. In the year that it hosts the G7, the UK is the only G7 country cutting its aid budget. In the year that it hosts the global climate conference, it is stepping back from global leadership, but it can always find money, as my friend the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) says, for a new royal yacht. There is also always money for weapons of mass destruction on the Clyde.

The Government have been boasting of late about vaccine stocks, ventilators, and certain amounts of funding they are making available to developing countries to fight covid. It would be helpful to hear from the Minister today whether this is additional to the aid budget, because if it is not we will diminish the small pot that is there for the aid budget anyway. If it is additional, then will it get classified as ODA, and how does that work in the overall accounting of things? [Interruption.] The Minister can address this in his summing up, but it would be interesting to know exactly what effect this covid assistance will have on the overall aid budget.

As we have said, debating estimates on estimates days is an improvement on the previous scrutiny, but the Government should be relieved that these motions are not amendable. If there were a votable amendment today to recommit the Government to the 0.7% target, everyone knows that it would be carried by the House. Perhaps this is just another example of where the Government do not really want Parliament to take back control after all.

As we have said, this was supposed to be one of the great successes of the Union. It has been a pledge of the SNP ever since the target was set that an independent Scotland would meet, and even seek to exceed, the target of 0.7% GNI for aid. In the recent Holyrood manifesto, the SNP Government have pledged to increase their relatively small, but highly effective, international development budget, which, incidentally, the UK Government then quite merrily account for as overall UK ODA spend.

Even in the face of economic difficulty and the global pandemic, the Scottish Government and we in Scotland recognise our responsibilities to those less fortunate than ourselves. That is the difference between the inward, introspective little Britain attitude that this Government’s aid cuts demonstrate, and the outward, internationalist vision that more and more people in Scotland have of their country as a good, independent global citizen.