Oral Answers to Questions
Laura Farris Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
What I observe is that actually it was our freedom from the rules of the European Union that enabled us to deliver the fastest vaccine roll-out in Europe and that has enabled us to have the fastest economic growth in the G7. That is of massive benefit to each and every one of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents, and I think he should acknowledge that point.
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is completely right to draw the link between drug addiction and rough sleeping. That is why our drugs strategy is so absolutely vital for tackling this problem. I also want to thank local councils and everybody involved in the Everyone In campaign. Homelessness and rough sleeping are a blight and a disgrace—a shame for our society. I am proud to say that our rough sleeping snapshot shows that levels have fallen by 43% since 2017, although clearly, as we come out of the pandemic in the next year or so, we must make sure that we continue to reduce rough sleeping. It remains an absolute priority for this Government.
COP26
Laura Farris Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
What I can certainly tell the hon. Gentleman is that the 125% super deduction he rightly refers to will be of great assistance to companies across the whole of the UK in investing in new clean, green technology. That is the way forward.
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
One of the most significant diplomatic achievements of the COP was getting 130 countries, including the US and the BRIC—Brazil, Russia, India and China—economies, to agree to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030. However, we have been here before with the New York declaration in 2014, which was ultimately unsuccessful because it lacked any enforcement mechanism. Will my right hon. Friend say how he thinks we can ensure it will be different this time?
The Prime Minister
Yes. My hon. Friend makes an absolutely crucial point. This time it will be different, because at COP26 in Glasgow about 40 leading global financial institutions pledged that they would no longer invest in companies that supported or made their money out of deforestation. We also had the companies themselves, big commodities companies whose names I am sure my hon. Friend will be familiar with, saying they would no longer invest in products grown as a result of deforestation across the world. The agency for holding those sets of businesses to account, both banks—financial institutions—and companies, will be customers, account holders and consumers across the whole world, who will take their investment away from companies if they fail to honour those commitments. That is a huge change taking place across the world.
Oral Answers to Questions
Laura Farris Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Dominic Raab
I am very happy to look at that. We have a record-breaking amount from the spending review, certainly the largest in the past 10 years, for justice issues, and I will be looking very carefully at the support that we can provide for victims. My hon. Friend referred to the work of the charity in question, and it dovetails with what I have already mentioned to the House about the independent sexual violence advisers. We know that, if the victims who have gone through these awful crimes get the support they need, they are less likely to fall out of the justice system. That is one of the important ways that we will secure more prosecutions.
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
On the Home Affairs Committee, we recently heard from Sir John Gillen, Baroness Stern and Lady Dorrian, all of whom have conducted independent reviews into rape or serious sexual violence in some part of the United Kingdom recently. They were unanimous in saying that the single most important factor in preventing a rape victim from withdrawing from the criminal process is the ability to give evidence early under section 28 procedures. I know that my right hon. Friend shares my view on this. Will he tell the House when he expects this procedure to be rolled out across the nation?
Dominic Raab
That is incredibly important not only for the victims of rape, but for other vulnerable victims. The evidence so far from the pilots and the trials needs to be gleaned and carefully evaluated, but I can tell my hon. Friend that this is something that I want to look at very carefully not just because of the ability to secure a more effective prosecution, but to deter defence lawyers from perhaps not the universal practice, but certainly the widespread practice of encouraging the accused to wait until the moment in court before they take the decision on whether to plead guilty.
Judicial Review and Courts Bill
Laura Farris ExcerptsTuesday 26th October 2021
(2 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022 View all Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Lammy
The right hon. Gentleman makes his point very well. He is absolutely right. In each of the cases that I mentioned, judicial review was able to correct a wrong decision by the upper tribunal and enable fundamental injustices to be prevented, as he indicates. If the Government were successful in abolishing Cart, that crucial safeguard would be lost. That would not affect anyone in this Chamber, but it would affect very vulnerable people. Again, one must ask why the Government are attempting to make this change, and why they are using legislative time now to do it.
When the panel that the Government set up to look at these issues first recommended abolishing Cart judicial reviews, it did so on the basis that only 0.22% of them were successful and that public money could be better spent elsewhere. We know now that that figure was based on wholly inaccurate data. Even the Government now accept that the success rate is likely to be at least 15 times as high as previously thought. It is indefensible for the Government to base decisions that could make the difference between life and death on evidence that is so hopelessly flawed.
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says about Cart judicial reviews, but can he explain why Lord Hope, the retired Supreme Court Justice who sat in the Cart case at the Supreme Court, spoke in the House of Lords on 22 March in favour of abolishing Cart-type judicial reviews? He said:
“We set the bar as high as we could when we were defining the test that should be applied, but experience has shown that our decision has not worked”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 22 March 2021; Vol. 811, c. 710.]
Mr Lammy
That is one reflection among many who sit on the other side of the debate, including those who have looked into this matter in great detail.
Why are the Government still pushing ahead with this reform? If we accept the Secretary of State’s reasoning, it comes down to cost and
“a disproportionate use of valuable judicial resource”.
In reality, however, the cost of Cart reviews is no more than £400,000 a year. That is a drop in the ocean compared with the Ministry of Justice’s overall budget. It is less than the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport spent on its art collection last year. Put another way, the Government Legal Department’s total administrative costs for the last year were £226.7 million, more than 500 times the upper estimate for yearly Cart judicial review costs.
As with clause 1, there could be another, murkier reason that the Government are so keen to abolish Cart judicial reviews. In its press release, the Ministry of Justice said that
“it is expected that the legal text that removes the Cart judgment will serve as a framework that can be replicated in other legislation.”
With those words, the Government let their mask slip. If that is indeed their intention—I look forward to the Lord Chancellor confirming that it is not—that would allow them to insulate whole sections of Government decision making from challenge by members of the public. I am sure that Members on both sides of the House would agree that that would be a truly chilling development. Governments have to be challenged. Governments suffer defeats in the courts. Why would we start to oust Government decisions in other areas, beyond this small but important area of immigration law?
Beyond judicial review, there are several provisions dealing with a shift towards greater use of online procedures and technology. While Labour supports measures that would make the justice system more efficient, we must ensure that no one is left behind and that adequate safeguards are in place to prevent serious injustices. As the Bill currently stands, there is only a vague duty for the Lord Chancellor to provide digital support
“for those who require it”.
Labour feels that a specific commitment to assist digitally excluded individuals would offer better protection. While the creation of an online procedure rule committee is a positive step, the Bill currently puts too much power in the hands of the Lord Chancellor. As it stands, the Lord Chancellor could amend, repeal or revoke any law he feels necessary to create the online procedure rules, and he would only have to consult the Lord Chief Justice and the Senior President of Tribunals before making amendments to them.
The last area I want to address is the coroners court. As with provisions on criminal procedure, any efforts to reduce “unnecessary procedures” or allow for greater online participation must be accompanied with robust protections for those who could be excluded. More fundamentally, there is nothing in the Bill to address the inequality in the inquest system that sees bereaved families denied the legal aid that my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) mentioned earlier, while the state has the benefit of the finest Government lawyers that taxpayers’ money can buy.
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
I, too, will focus my comments on the first part of the Bill, which concerns judicial review. I support the exclusion of upper-tribunal permission decisions from the ambit of judicial review—the so-called Cart decisions. That is a merit-based argument. Briefing notes I received state that removing the option of recourse to judicial review in immigration risks injustice, and I hope Members will not mind if I set out briefly why I do not think that is the case.
It is important to note what clause 2 on Cart decisions does not do. It does not mean that difficult immigration or asylum cases will not end up in the appeal courts. It is the case now, and will remain the case, that the most difficult cases concerning article 3 rights on freedom from torture, and article 2 rights on the right to life, are nearly always adjudicated in the Court of Appeal. That is because they have made a natural progression from the first tier to the upper tier and the Court of Appeal. All the clause does is deal with permission to appeal. The clause gives the applicant first the opportunity to go to the first-tier tribunal and seek permission to appeal, with the threshold being whether the case is reasonably arguable. They fail that. They go to the upper-tier tribunal and again say that they have a case that is reasonably arguable. That is refused. They then go to the High Court and seek judicial review. It is only that upper layer that is being removed.
In no other area of law, in either the private or the public realm, does the applicant have three bites of the cherry—not in employment law, not in family law, not in education law, community care, or local government. You cannot leapfrog a decision of the upper court or tribunal to seek recourse through another means. I have listened carefully to the arguments made by those on the Opposition Benches, and no one has yet defined why immigration, and immigration alone, should belong in a special category where people have an extra bite of the cherry.
The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), who is no longer in her place, suggested that it goes against every fair-minded decision of a Government to exclude Cart-type judicial reviews, but that overlooks the difficulty that the Supreme Court had when it determined this issue. Indeed, I say respectfully that it is rare to find such a nuanced decision in the Supreme Court. In the course of that judgment, at paragraph 91, Lord Phillips said:
“My initial inclination was to treat the new two tier tribunal system as wholly self-sufficient… Can it not be left to the Senior President…to ensure that the tribunal judiciary is so deployed as to ensure the appropriate degree of judicial scrutiny of decisions of the lower tier?”
Even Baroness Hale, who was the primary proponent, said:
“There must be a limit to the resources”
that we
“devote to the task of trying to get the decision right in any individual case.”
We on the Government Benches respectfully say that it must be right that, if the Supreme Court were faced with that decision again, it would answer in a different way. We know that because of Lord Hope’s remark in the Lords on 22 March that
“experience has shown that our decision has not worked”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 22 March 2021; Vol. 811, c. 710.]
The other reason I support clause 2 is to do with the overriding objective that lies at the heart of all civil procedure and the issue of proportionality. I know that there has been some disagreement among Members about how many Cart judicial reviews succeed. The independent review of administrative law report put it as low as less than 1%, the Government say it is 3%, and Liberty, which argues strongly in favour, says it may be nearer 5%. However, we have to be realistic. On any reading, we have a system where over 95% of these judicial review cases go nowhere, yet we know that that is the most common form of judicial review.
That is exactly what Lord Dyson warned against when permission was given in Cart. He said that “resources are limited” and that we do not want
“a return to the pre-2002 Act days in immigration and asylum cases when the courts were overwhelmed with unmeritorious judicial review claims.”
Anne McLaughlin
I am a bit confused. The hon. Lady said that taking away Cart judicial reviews would not stop somebody going to the Court of Appeal from the tribunal system, so I just wonder what the route is. Perhaps I have misunderstood.
Laura Farris
For an applicant to end up in the Court of Appeal, they would win or lose at first instance and either appeal or be appealed by the Home Office, the upper-tier tribunal would give permission for that appeal, and it would be heard in the upper-tier tribunal. The applicant would either win or lose again, and then they would find themselves appealed to the Court of Appeal. That will not change where difficult areas of human rights law are engaged.
The issue here is where the upper-tier tribunal says, “No, we won’t give permission to hear your appeal,” and then the applicant goes to the High Court and seeks a judicial review application. It is that narrow aspect that is excluded by the Bill. It is important to clarify that, because I think there is some uncertainty about whether human rights are being excluded, and I am glad that the hon. Lady asked me.
Laura Farris
I will make a little progress, because I know that time is limited.
The Opposition frequently push Government Members on the issue of backlog and delay. In the early days of the pandemic, they were right to do so, but I do not think that they can sustain an argument where they simultaneously criticise delays that have arisen because of the pandemic and advocate a disproportionality in an area of litigation where over 95% of claims are unsuccessful, clearly clogging up court time.
The second issue that I would like to address is the new flexibility in quashing orders, and particularly the issue of suspended quashing orders. I read the IRAL report very carefully. It reached its conclusion by reviewing the Court of Appeal’s decision in the case of Hurley and Moore. When it found that there had been a breach of the public sector equality duty, the Court made a declaration of illegality rather than a quashing order because it wanted to give the Secretary of State room to comply. As I see it, clause 1 is in keeping with that.
A number of organisations have written to me to say that, while they perhaps understand the basis of the decision, they are generally opposed to suspended quashing orders where the provisions of a clause will be void. Respectfully, I think that fails to properly engage with what is at stake. The public sector equality duty is a really helpful starting point here. Let us look at the way those cases were litigated through the appeal courts in the early days. We had the library closure cases, with Somerset County Council, Gloucestershire County Council and Surrey County Council all losing public sector equality duty cases. We then had the care home cases, such as South West Care Homes v. Devon County Council, and the mental health cases. All of them were in 2011, 2012 or 2013.
What is most striking about public sector equality duty cases now is that they almost never succeed; actually, I could not find an example of one that had succeeded since 2015. It occurred to me that it is at least possible that the reason the courts will not engage with those cases is that they think it is too onerous to quash. I think that the Bill provides more scope, not less, for some of the progressive principles that can be advanced for a judicial review to succeed if it is not immediately the subject of a quashing order.
I also listened to observations made on the Opposition Benches about retrospective decisions and retrospective effect; what that would have meant in the Unison case and whether the Supreme Court would or would not have ordered the Ministry of Justice to repay the fees paid by litigants who were bringing claims during that period. I just do not think it is possible to read Lord Reed’s comments in that judgment and not find it was absolutely guaranteed that the Supreme Court would order the fees to be repaid. Let us look at clause 1(8) and (9), which set the criteria. The Supreme Court effectively applied them all and found that the repayment of fees was necessary, so I do not think it is a good example.
It is, however, worth recalling the case of HM Treasury v. Ahmed, which the Secretary of State mentioned in his opening remarks. That was a critical case, one of the first cases the Supreme Court heard, because it dealt with important issues of constitutional consequence and public interest. The Labour Government had done what any right-minded member of the public would think was sensible. They found three people who they suspected, but were not convicted, of terrorism offences. As a precautionary measure, they froze their assets. They believed they were entitled to do so under the United Nations Act 1946. They were, in fact, not entitled to do so and the Supreme Court found them to have acted ultra vires and quashed. We know that at least one Supreme Court Justice was nervous about that. Lord Hope said:
“I would however suspend the operation of the orders that I would make for a period of one month from the date of the judgment to give the Treasury time to consider what steps, if any, they should now take.”
What if they had had the power to suspend the order? We know the judgment was handed down on 27 January 2010. By 5 February, Alistair Darling had introduced the Terrorist Asset-Freezing (Temporary Provisions) Act 2010. By 10 February, two weeks later, that had received Royal Assent. It was manifestly in the public interest for Parliament to have the opportunity to legislate on that. How much better if the Court had had the opportunity not to make a quashing order, but to suspend.
That brings me to my final point, which is something I do not think anyone on the Opposition Benches has engaged with at all: what the doctrine of nullity is really about. In private law, the Court has the opportunity to consider and to decide that something is unlawful, but in public law it does not just decide that; it quashes altogether. I am of the view that allowing some discretion, where the effect of a quashing order would potentially run contrary to the public interest or conflict with what might be the will of Parliament, offers a more constructive opportunity to resolve public law problems.
Anne McLaughlin
I thank the hon. Lady for again letting me in. Surely this is ordering judges to have a presumption in favour of prospective, rather than retrospective, quashing orders? We are not giving them the opportunity to use it—we are saying, “You will use it as a default position.” That is the problem.
Laura Farris
I am not sure I entirely agree with that. I do agree that clause 1 sets out the criteria they need to apply, but in reality they are common sense principles and I do not agree that the Court’s discretion is being fettered in the way the hon. Lady suggests.
Oral Answers to Questions
Laura Farris Excerpts(3 years ago)
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David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
Suzanne Webb (Stourbridge) (Con)
Alok Sharma
I thank my hon. Friend for championing the views of young people in his constituency. I pay tribute to the pupils of John Blandy and GEMS Didcot primary schools for their enthusiasm for climate action. I will be delighted to receive their letters and review their ideas; and, through him, I will respond in writing to his constituents.
Laura Farris [V]
My right hon. Friend and I both have the privilege of representing seats in Berkshire, where many young people are passionate about climate change and are active in local groups such as the West Berkshire Climate Action Network. This is their first real opportunity to see UK leadership in action. Will my right hon. Friend confirm how those young people can access the youth council that he just described and other mechanisms to feed their ideas into the COP later this year?
Alok Sharma
I thank my hon. Friend for the work that she does to promote climate action. I would be very happy to hear from young people and youth groups in her constituency. We will be engaging further with schools in relation to COP26 to unleash the enthusiasm and energy of young people across the UK and tackle climate change.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Laura Farris Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con) [V]
There is nothing inevitable about high unemployment. Even when the storm has raged as violently as it has in the last 12 months, we have seen what the Government can achieve. Twelve months ago, the term “furlough” was completely unknown to us. Today, more than 30 million people have had most of their wages paid by the Government for most of the year.
To me, the most moving part of the Chancellor’s statement earlier was from the OBR—that it had revised its forecast that unemployment would peak at 11.9% and estimated that Government action had saved 1.8 million jobs in this country. That matters to me personally because, when I made my maiden speech on 24 February last year, I closed by saying that the jobs and livelihoods of my constituents would
“guide my work in this House.”—[Official Report, 24 February 2020; Vol. 672, c. 88.]
That has not changed.
There are three issues I want to touch on this evening. First, I want to talk about what this Budget means for female employment, which I have looked at carefully in my role as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on women and work. There are different reasons why women’s employment has been particularly affected by the crisis, but some of it is sectoral. Hospitality, retail, leisure and the beauty industry employ disproportionate numbers of women and have been particularly hard hit. In this Budget, every business in those sectors can claim a restart grant of some kind, whether it is £6,000 or up to £18,000. Taken together with the continuation of the furlough, that will be a huge factor in sustaining and rebuilding opportunities for women in the labour market.
The second point I want to raise is linked to training and apprenticeships. The kickstart scheme, which we heard about last year, was directly focused on young people and their opportunities, but today’s announcement went wider. It links apprenticeships to the lifetime skills guarantee and incentivises businesses to offer apprenticeships irrespective of age. That is hugely significant. It is fair to say that, whenever long-term structural unemployment has taken root in any period since the second world war, Governments of whatever party have tried and failed to tackle it. The reason for that has always been the long-term attrition of workers’ skills. This is the first time, to my knowledge, that any Government have put training and skills at the front and centre of the recovery package, and I welcome that.
The jobs that exist in 10 years’ time will depend on our choices today, their impact on the labour market and our readiness to react to changing circumstances. The super deduction, the offering to innovators through R&D tax credits, the visa reforms for highly-skilled workers and the work on productivity through the Help to Grow scheme are all welcome. I represent a part of the world that sits at the heart of the—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I am sorry Laura, but we have to leave it there.
Oral Answers to Questions
Laura Farris Excerpts(3 years, 3 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
Clearly, what we need to do for coastal communities—as we are doing, working with the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford)—is to make sure that childcare is available for every child. That is why we are, in particular, keeping early years open, and why the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is working to make sure that we protect jobs and create new job opportunities for those in coastal communities.
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
The Government have taken significant steps to support employment opportunities for women, starting with protecting jobs. The coronavirus job retention scheme has supported 4.5 million jobs done by women, the self-employed income support scheme has issued grants to 1.4 million women, and we are providing an extra £4.6 billion to support sectors required to close during the lockdown, which predominantly employ women.
Laura Farris [V]
Female employment is highest in the services sector and has been hit particularly hard by redundancies in hospitality, retail and leisure. The new deal announced by the Prime Minister in June focused on house building, road building and infrastructure—all vital sectors, but heavily geared towards male employment. Can my hon. Friend confirm whether there are equivalent plans to stimulate female employment in the months ahead, and will he meet me to discuss this?
Paul Scully
I thank my hon. Friend for what she is doing to encourage such employment. We are committed to having a fair recovery for all. During the crisis we have rolled out unprecedented levels of support to protect jobs for both women and men. Yes, of course I would be happy to meet her to discuss what more we can do to stimulate employment, including female employment, in the months ahead.
Public Health
Laura Farris Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
I think that any decision the Government made tonight would have left them open to criticism. I cannot improve on what Lord Finkelstein said in his comment piece in The Times in October:
“If Boris Johnson persists with targeted measures for small areas, you can complain that the patchwork is almost impossible to understand and you would be right. Yet if he simplifies the whole thing, applying restrictions across big regions, you can…point out that he has bundled together places with different infection rates. And you would be right with that criticism, too.”
If he closes pubs and keeps schools open he is killing hospitality while the kids spread the virus through the playground, and if it is the other way round he is putting booze over education. The point is that there is no right answer. Every choice carries risk and causes collateral damage.
My constituents have made some very compelling points to me. Some say that in an area such as West Berkshire, where the rate of infection is 63 per 100,000, the risk is now exaggerated, but that misses the fact that between 1 October and 1 November the rate of infection quadrupled, mirroring the national picture. We learn from paragraph 3.5 of the impact assessment published yesterday that, by the end of October, England
“was on a trajectory to exceed total NHS capacity in England within weeks”,
with a mortality rate of 24% for all hospitalisations, so we cannot be complacent.
The second point that is made is that the cure is now worse than the disease. I treat with respect and deference the emails I have received from pubs from The Pheasant Inn in Hungerford in the west of my constituency to The Old Boot Inn in the east. They say that they were relying on their Christmas custom for their very survival. I will always fight for the livelihoods of those I represent, but I ask the House this: if the hospitals were overflowing, as they are in Naples, would people really be going out to meet their mates in the pub? If we got to January and had no choice but to enter another national lockdown, would that be better or worse? We know the answer.
I prefer the Government’s approach of slowly taking our foot off the brake. They know that they need to sustain their moral authority, and they must do that by providing a clear road map between tiers and working with local directors of public health. When we are on the brink of getting a vaccine approved—we now know that it is effective—in my view it would be a catastrophe to fall at the final hurdle.
Covid-19 Update
Laura Farris Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
The hon. Member makes an excellent point. It is precisely to protect cancer services and to ensure that non-covid patients get access to the treatment they need that we have to put in place the package of measures that we have announced today.
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con) [V]
I understand that the data leaves the Government with no choice but to enter a national lockdown, but given the huge consequences that that entails, can my right hon. Friend give assurances that the new tools at his disposal, particularly the 15-minute tests, will be sufficiently ubiquitous and effective in the coming weeks to avoid any future national lockdown after November?
The Prime Minister
That is certainly the intention, and that is why we are massively ramping up the tests in the way that my hon. Friend describes.
Parliamentary Constituencies Bill (Sixth sitting)
Laura Farris ExcerptsThursday 25th June 2020
(3 years, 10 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020 View all Parliamentary Constituencies Act 2020 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 25 June 2020 - (25 Jun 2020)
Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman picks up where I was cut off by the time limit in my Second Reading speech, and I could not agree with him more. When I was preparing my Second Reading speech I looked at the Hansard report of the debate from the late 1990s on reform of the House of Lords under Tony Blair. I was struck to see such familiar names as Ted Heath. Giants of the British political scene made arguments that we make in exactly the same form today. I looked into the cost of the House of Lords, and it is not the same as the cost of House of Commons, but it is not far off. There is no right of removal, and we avert our eyes from what is inappropriately still a hereditary principle, when we all know that is not a good enough reason for anyone to hold status in public life any more. I hope that a bold, reforming one nation Government will have, at some point in the next five to 10 years, an eye on that, because it is the elephant in the Palace.
David Linden
I have watched the hon. Lady in the last couple of weeks in the Chamber and she has been incredibly thoughtful. I suspect that the Government Whip is probably wincing slightly but the House is all the richer for people who are willing to stand up and say, “If we are going to talk about the future of the UK constitution we need to address the fact that in 2020 we still have people who have been there many years and have never been subject to a vote.” She is right to say that.