Recall of MPs Bill

Debate between Julian Huppert and John Redwood

Monday 24th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[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.

2014 JHA Opt-out Decision

Debate between Julian Huppert and John Redwood

Monday 15th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Today’s debate should be about the very future of the United Kingdom’s democracy. I and many of my right hon. and hon. Friends believe that one of the great duties of a state is to settle on a fair and strong criminal law and to ensure that the crime-fighting resources are put in to maintain that law. We also believe that, in an increasingly global world of criminal activity, those functions can be properly discharged by the Home Secretary in Cabinet and by the police forces of our country only if we have proper co-operation and collaboration arrangements with other countries abroad. We need those co-operation arrangements, not just with other European countries in the European Union or the few countries in Europe not in the European Union, but with every country around the world. I am pleased to say that thanks to successive Governments and Home Secretaries we do have in place a set of pretty good arrangements with the major countries, and we have demonstrated our ability to negotiate successful arrangements for extradition and mutual crime fighting with those countries that are not in the European Union and to find ways of doing that with countries in the European Union.

Let me make it clear at the outset that those of us who do not wish to opt back in to European criminal justice measures are no more soft on crime than anyone else in the House. We believe that there can be an alternative way of ensuring proper co-operation and collaboration with France, Germany and the other leading European Union countries, just as we have those successful co-operation arrangements with countries that are outside the European Union.

Our objection to any of these measures, including the European arrest warrant, is not necessarily about the measure itself, and certainly not its purpose, but about the way in which the institutional structure is developed to back up the measure. We are trying to protect our democracy, this Parliament and future Home Secretaries from the event that the European Court of Justice, once we have opted into any of these measures, can use that opt-in as a device for making good criminal law in Brussels and in the Court that this House and the British people might fundamentally disagree with.

[Dr Huppert]

The right hon. Gentleman talks about alternatives to some of these measures. Is he aware of the formal evidence given by the police, who said that alternatives to the European arrest warrant

“would result in fewer extraditions, longer delays, higher costs, more offenders evading justice and increased risk to public safety”?

Does he accept that that is the police’s advice?

[Mr Redwood]

Of course we can find police and others who take the hon. Gentleman’s view, but I think that it is putting very different weights in the balance. He is giving us an immediate topical problem of view, and I am giving him something fundamental about a national democratic state and the future good government of our country. When I weigh those in the balance, there is no issue for me; of course we must protect our national democracy and then work away at any imperfections there might be in the cross-border arrangements because we have put democracy first.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Julian Huppert and John Redwood

Wednesday 20th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Redwood]

I am delighted that the hon. Lady has made her own case. She is the cause of the problem. She is pricing people out of the market. She is destroying jobs. She is the reason that people cannot heat their homes at a sensible price. She is the deliberate architect of dear and scarce energy, and now she presumes to lecture us and to say that if we generate more energy, it will be dearer and not cheaper. I suggest that she consult her constituents to find out how angry they are about the cost of heating their homes and their inability to get jobs in industry. She might also like to consult a reputable economist to find out what happens to prices when we produce more of something. I think she will discover that the price normally falls.

[Dr Huppert]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Redwood]

I am sorry; I have no more injury time left, and I have more to say. I am sure the Government will be delighted about that.

The Government need to look at the problem of electricity generation. I would like them to go to our partners in the European Union and say that there is no way in which we can close down all our coal-powered stations and still produce enough sensibly priced power in the near future, and that we need a stay of execution and longer transitional arrangements. I believe that the Germans are going to generate a lot more electricity from coal, and they seem to have found a way around the European regulations. I would urge my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench to do the same, because we need to keep our homes warm, keep the machinery of industry turning and keep the lights on in the offices and shops of this country. We are pricing ourselves out of our ability to do that. We are also running the risk of not having enough electricity, full stop, because of the delays and the problems that the previous Government had in coming up with an energy policy, and because of the present Government’s problems in trying to get an energy policy through, given all the European Union restrictions and complications that are placed in their way.

The most important thing that the Chancellor will need to do in the weeks ahead, in addition to the Budget, is ensure that the banks can now create sensible amounts of credit to power the recovery. This is not just about mortgages for homes, important though they are; it is also about loans for bigger items such as cars and domestic appliances. People need to be able to renew their stock of capital, or get their first capital items when setting up a new home, using finance that is available and affordable.

Above all, this is about ensuring that much better finance is available for stock, work in progress and capital equipment in our small and medium-sized enterprises. The banks say that there is no demand for loans from the SMEs—or, at least, no demand that they are not meeting. We all know that our constituents do not think that that is the case, and we have seen many cases that imply the opposite. Let us be charitable to the banks, however. I know that most of my colleagues here are not, but I wish to be, because I think that banking is an important source of export earnings and income. Many good people work in banks, and we need to support them as well. We need to understand that the banks are now charging so much and imposing such tough terms on loans—they are doing so because they are under a regulatory cosh to lend less and hold more capital, relative to the amount of their lending—that people are simply not bothering to ask their bank manager for a loan because they assume that none will be available. Also, businesses sometimes do not foresee increases in demand ahead and, wrongly, lack the confidence to go out and borrow money.

Of course it is not easy for the United Kingdom Government to rebuild confidence when we are part of the European Union and live close to the continent of Europe, and when we can see the spectacular crash that the EU is designing, thanks to the way in which it is mishandling its single currency and common banking arrangements. I can scarcely believe that we are meeting today against a background of part of the European Union having its banks closed for days on end and unable to carry out transactions to give the business life in Cyprus an air of normality or allow the people in Cyprus to withdraw their hard-earned money.

This is happening within the European Union because it has got its system of bank management wrong and it cannot decide who should pick up the bill when there is a crisis in one part of the eurozone. The Germans say that it is not their problem and they are not going to lend more money. They think that Cyprus ought to be taught a lesson. Cyprus says that it is under EU and eurozone control and that it built a big banking sector that now needs recapitalising. It requires money on a scale well beyond the ability of the Cyprus people to pay, so we have an impasse.

I shall give the House a flavour of the numbers involved. We have heard from a Minister in a recent statement that the proposed bank deposit tax represents 33% of Cypriot national output and income. In UK terms, that would be like saying that we had to impose a one-off levy of £500 billion on people’s bank accounts to put the position right. [Laughter.] Everyone here is laughing nervously. I do not think that many of us would be up for voting that kind of thing through, and I am not surprised that the Cypriot MPs did not vote their measure through.

We are now seeing a desperate idiocy in part of the European Union. Germany thinks that it can ring-fence the situation, and I hope it can, but if we are not careful, it will spread. That would undermine confidence in banking deposits in other parts of the eurozone and drive them deeper into recession. It would do more damage to our export market and, yes, there could even be a little collateral damage to our much better funded banks because of their relationships with EU banks. We need to be in there saying, “For goodness’ sake, sort it out and come up with a fair way of recapitalising those banks, so that the Cypriot people can to return to a normal economic life.” Meanwhile, our Government are right to say that we need to export more and more outside the European Union. With all this going on, and with a forecast of a deep and long recession on the continent, there will be no relief from the European markets through our exports.

Our banking resolution, which is making progress, needs to be speeded up. I urge the Chancellor of the Exchequer to revisit the issue of RBS. I do not believe that RBS is a natural unified bank. It is far too big, and it has far too many businesses in it. We should split it up, sell it on and make it more competitive. We need more competitive banks on the British high street that are capable of financing our recovery. We are trying to build the private sector-led recovery with weak, broken banks in the state sector and not enough banks outside in the private sector. We are also trying to do it under European regulation, which does enormous damage to banking and energy costs, and therefore to industry. Britain is partly free of that regulation, but please, Government, make it freer and get on with the task of creating the jobs and the growth that the British people rightly expect.

Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill

Debate between Julian Huppert and John Redwood

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Redwood]

No, I am talking about people in very similar circumstances—those either in low-income employment or out of work—where the two numbers are much closer together. They are closer together than any of us would like, because we want it to be that much more worth while for people to work. The hon. Gentleman has to accept that, at the lowest income levels, there was a problem because the benefits went up by much more than the wages. What would the best answer be? It would be for all wages to go up more. The second best answer would be for the prices not to go up so much. But we are where we are and we have to work to try to come up with a fair settlement for the future.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

The right hon. Gentleman highlights the 5.2% increase last year. I have not yet heard Opposition Members congratulate the Government on that, but I congratulate the Government now. Does he agree that one of the worst things—for decades far too little was done to fix it—was the benefits trap, whereby people discovered that when they started to work part time, they ended up with less money than they had before? I hope that this entire House could agree that that is fundamentally wrong. It has affected some of my constituents and has not yet been fixed sufficiently.