Recall of MPs Bill
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
I do not know whether my hon. Friend plans to serve on the Bill Committee, but given his knowledge and expertise I think that that would be a great advantage to us. Is not the challenge to try to find something better than the original Government proposals and that addresses the need for the public to feel that they have recall power while protecting people from the political risks of the amendments? Is not the challenge to find something in the middle, perhaps better defining the kinds of offences that would lead to recall—
Iraq: Coalition Against ISIL
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Before I call the next speaker, I advise Members that we will be dropping to a three-minute limit. If people can try to shave a little more off their speeches, we will get everybody in. The limit is four minutes now but will drop to three minutes after the next speaker.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman took seven minutes in speaking. If he wants to intervene, he should remember that other Members have not yet spoken.
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I briefly seek your guidance. A number of hon. Members have been in the Chamber since half-past 10 but are probably not going to be called. A number of hon. Members in the Chamber have not been here all day and are making interventions. Can we have a ruling on that?
Industrial Action Update
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Maude
I point out to the hon. Lady that what the police do locally affects every single resident in the area, and every single resident over the age of 18 has the right to vote in those elections. When unions call strikes that affect local residents, parents and vulnerable people who depend on public services, such people are not consulted. It is not asking very much to require a union, when it calls its members out on strike in ways that damage the public, to have to rely on a vote of substantive quantity, with a majority behind it.
Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
Was it not Lord Hutton, a former Labour Cabinet Minister, who made it clear that as we are all living longer, everyone will have to pay more into their pensions and to work longer? Has my right hon. Friend had any shadow of a scintilla of a suggestion from the shadow Chancellor that if Labour were elected, it would treat either public sector pensions or public sector pay in any way differently from the present Government?
Civil Service Reform
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I call Mr Bernard Jenkin to speak for between 10 and 15 minutes.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
May I suggest to Members that they take up to 10 minutes only?
House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 1, page 2, line 23, leave out ‘one year’ and insert ‘6 months’.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 12, page 2, line 24, leave out ‘it is irrelevant’.
Amendment 13, page 2, line 25, after ‘(a)’, insert ‘it is irrelevant’.
Amendment 14, page 2, line 27, after ‘(b)’, insert ‘it is irrelevant’.
Amendment 15, page 2, line 28, leave out from ‘Kingdom’ to the end of line 29 and insert ‘or Ireland’.
Amendment 16, page 2, line 29, at end insert—
‘(c) It is irrelevant subject to a resolution of the House of Lords whether any of the offence, conviction, sentence, order, imprisonment or detention occurs in any Commonwealth Realm.
(d) It is irrelevant subject to a unanimous resolution of the House of Lords whether any of the offence, conviction, sentence, order, imprisonment or detention occurs in any Commonwealth country.
(e) No offence, conviction, sentence, order, imprisonment or detention that takes place in any non-Commonwealth country is relevant under this Act.’.
Amendment 17, page 2, line 37, after ‘appeal’, insert ‘or is pardoned’.
Amendment 18, page 3, line 8, leave out ‘subsection (9) and insert—
‘(9) This section does not apply to unelected hereditary peers who sit in the House of Lords.’.
Amendment 23, page 3, line 8, leave out subsection (9) and insert—
‘(9) A certificate under subsection (2) in respect of a conviction outside the United Kingdom may be issued only if the House of Lords resolves that subsection (1) should apply; and where the House does so resolve the Lord Speaker must issue the certificate.’.
Thomas Docherty
I am in august company today. It is excellent to be in the presence of the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), a fine example of the Conservative workers party if ever I saw one. However, I must chide him very gently about one matter, about which I have already spoken to him.
Both the hon. Gentleman and I serve on the Procedure Committee. The House recently resolved that, whenever reasonable, Members should publish explanatory statements. The hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) has published such a statement, but I have not, because, as the hon. Member for North East Somerset knows, the Procedure Committee said that it was not necessary to publish one when what a Member was trying to achieve was so blindingly obvious. However, I must gently tell the hon. Gentleman that it took me several attempts to understand exactly what his amendments would do, and that an explanatory statement would therefore have been useful.
Stephen Twigg
I rise to speak to the amendment, but, on reflection, Mr Deputy Speaker, I wonder whether it might be more appropriate for the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) to speak first, followed by the two Front-Bench speakers. I am happy to do it in that order.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
North East Somerset, in the great county of Somerset, is always ready. We are on alert for whatever might come. I am fortunate in that my constituency is not under water, so it is perhaps easier for me to be alert than those in the rest of the county at the moment.
Mr Deputy Speaker
I know that the hon. Gentleman has great knowledge of these matters. He will know that he is allowed to mention such people as long as they are not Members of the House of Lords.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am extremely grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am also rather troubled, because that means that I can be rude about hereditaries who are not in the House of Lords. That would be deeply upsetting, however, and I would be shocked if I did such a thing. Anyway, the point about Nevada was that a judgment made there was not considered to be authoritative.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. I think I can help the hon. Gentleman on that: we are not going to enter into a debate on the royal family. We are going to get back to the subject that Jacob Rees-Mogg has in hand.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is inconceivable that anyone would ever want to be rude about the royal family.
So, Nevada was not taken seriously and Earl Russell was found guilty of bigamy. My amendments distinguish between the jurisdictions of a variety of foreign countries, and with good reason. The reason for including Ireland along with the United Kingdom is that it matches the form used for exclusion from the House of Commons, and there seems to be a logic in maintaining that. It is also set down in statute that we recognise the unique relationship that the United Kingdom continues to have with Ireland. Irish citizens are the only ones other than Commonwealth citizens who are always allowed to vote in United Kingdom elections, and travel from the Republic of Ireland to the United Kingdom does not require a passport. Ireland is not viewed as a foreign country in the same way as other countries are.
The Commonwealth realms are either serious nations such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada that have a legal form based on ours and that follow the legal traditions of the United Kingdom which they inherited from us, or they are smaller nations, nine of which have the Privy Council as their court of appeal. We can therefore say that any conviction within the Commonwealth realms will be of such standing that we can recognise it because it has been made in a nation with which we have the friendliest relations and the tightest of historical links.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I suggest that the hon. Gentleman visits Singapore; he will remember that people there drive on the correct side of the road. They know how to do things there. It is a wonderful country.
Breaking obscure laws that it is unreasonable to expect people to have knowledge of ought not to exclude people from the House of Lords. Uganda has been in the news recently for its stringent laws against homosexuality. Are we really to say that peers who end up in Uganda and get into trouble with the law there should be banned from the House of Lords? They could get a life sentence. Is that really a way of deciding who is in a legislature of the United Kingdom? What happens if a lord displays a flag in Kiribati? Someone who displays a flag in Kiribati or wears a uniform in connection with a political object can be sentenced to a year in prison. Lords would suddenly be excluded for doing all sorts of minor things that in this country would not be an offence.
Rather splendidly, in Swaziland it is illegal for any female under 19 to shake the hands of a man; I do not know what the punishment for that is. Under the Bill, a peer could be convicted, regardless of when the offence took place. A 90-year-old peeress, who as a 19-year-old girl had shaken hands with a gentleman in Swaziland, could suddenly be deported to Swaziland, put in jug for a year and excluded from the House of Lords.
There is a tremendously serious point in this. It is that around the world there are hundreds of countries. I have a list of them: Afghanistan; Albania; Algeria; American Samoa; Andorra; Angola; Anguilla; Antigua and Barbuda; Argentina; Armenia; Aruba; Australia; Austria; and Azerbaijan. That just gets us to—
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. I think we got the message after the first five. I do not want to hear the rest; I think we have a flavour, without a fully detailed world atlas.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Mr Deputy Speaker, I think you are a mind reader. I was going to read out only the As, so your intervention came at absolutely the right moment to help me to continue.
We know remarkably little about many of those countries. We have not carefully considered their legal systems. What is the law in American Samoa? What offences could lead to somebody being sentenced to a year in prison? If a peer went there on a parliamentary delegation, would they randomly find that they had committed some offence? What if somebody has a gin and tonic in Saudi Arabia? They may get lashed, but—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 21, page 3, line 44, at end insert—
‘(9) A person who ceases to be a member of the House of Lords in accordance with sections 1 and 2 of this Act may not be elected to the House of Commons during the course of the next two Parliaments.
(10) A person who ceases to be a member of the House of Lords in accordance with this Act remains entitled to all the other privileges state degree style title and honour of peerage.’.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
Amendments 19 and 21 aim to deal with the issue of Members of the House of Lords going from the Lords to the Commons. As the Bill was initially drafted and as we debated it on Second Reading, it would have been possible to have a revolving door or ping-pong back and forth, depending which phrase is preferred. It would have been possible for someone to leave the Commons, go to the Lords, leave the Lords, come back to the Commons and go back to the Lords again. I am glad to say that that was amended in Committee, which has at least to some degree ameliorated the situation. But there is a problem with the House of Lords being changed into a place that can be used as a way of preparing people for political life before bringing them to the Commons. As more and more professional politicians come through—I know this is a matter of concern to the electorate—people can have the following career path: becoming special advisers, going to the Lords and then coming to the Commons, without any real pause in between. As the Bill stands, it would be possible to resign a seat in the Lords immediately before the close of nominations for the House of Commons at a general election—
Thomas Docherty: There is already some precedent for somebody leaving the House of Lords, going straight to the House of Commons and then back to the House of Lords. I think I am right in saying that Alec Douglas-Home did exactly that in 1963 and was elected in Scotland to a seat that he represented for a number years and then became a life peer.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
The devolved Parliaments are different, because the simple logistics of needing to be in Edinburgh or Cardiff and also in the House of Lords make it much harder to work on that basis than between these two Houses, where the role, the position, the place of activity are so very similar. It is perfectly reasonable to foresee someone who has just lost a seat spending five years as a Lord preparing to campaign for it again. As it becomes clearer, and parties are well aware of this, that to win seats we have all modelled ourselves on the Liberal Democrats—I say that with not a single one present in the House now—we have worked out that to win marginal constituencies—[Interruption.] I was not aware that there was anyone that I could see in the Galleries.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The hon. Gentleman knows that we make no mention of the Galleries, only this Chamber.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
That is why I did not see anybody in them, Mr Deputy Speaker. Although, there is, as you know, the right to speak from the Gallery in the event that the House is full. Sadly, it is not full today.
Mr Deputy Speaker
I can help the hon. Gentleman a little more. It is also up to the Chair to decide who speaks, and on this occasion I have decided to hear a little more from Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am very grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker, although I will let you into a secret: one of my ambitions is to speak from the Galleries one day. I think that it was last done in the 1950s.
To return to my point, it has been established that the best way to win marginal seats is to select candidates early and have them working in the constituencies for a long time in the run-up to a general election. That presents difficulties, however, because candidates have to earn a living, need to find the resources to finance their campaign and have to put other parts of their life on hold. If they can do that from the House of Lords, that is an enormous advantage. It gives them an income of sorts and it gives them status, which they can use to intervene in constituency affairs—a local council or Government body will take a letter from a peer just as seriously as a letter from a Member of the House of Commons. There is the risk of setting up an MP and an unelected peer to fight for a constituency for five years, with the peer simply standing down before the election to put himself forward and conceivably take the seat and go back to being a Member of the House of Commons. That seems to me to be fundamentally undesirable.
Members may say that the risk is slim and that that will never happen, but we are becoming a more professional political class. There is certainly evidence that length of campaigning in constituencies helps. There is currently a very good proposal from “ConservativeHome” to provide candidates with funds to help them with that. How much easier it would be if there was a nice, cosy billet in the House of Lords from which it could be done. Admittedly, that could not be done again, because the peer would have burnt all his bridges in relation to returning to the House of Lords, but that is not too bad, because they would still have got 15 years out of the system: one Parliament as an MP, one as a peer and, if they are clever, another as an MP. It begins to look like a means of forming a political career.
If that system becomes a means of forming a political career, it also becomes—I return to what I said earlier—a means of the parties asserting more control over their lordships’ House. A key thing about being in their lordships’ House is that there really are no further baubles the Government can offer. There are very few carrots and no sticks. That encourages independence of mind. It encourages peers, once they get there, to be more rigorous in considering the merits of the issues before them and to act in the proper way of a revising Chamber. The more possible it is for Governments to encourage, coerce and persuade peers to stick tightly to the party line, the less use their lordships’ House will serve, because it will be unable to do its job as a revising Chamber effectively.
Even if the risk is relatively slim and the numbers involved will not necessarily be huge, it seems to me that some sort of stop ought to be placed on that and that people go to the Lords knowing that they have accepted it for life, as we have already discussed, and that it disbars them from the House of Commons. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that people should face the consequences of decisions they have freely made. That is where it is different from hereditary peers and disclaiming, because a hereditary peerage is not a decision freely made; it is an accident of birth. However, any life peer has received a letter from the Prime Minister saying, “Do you want to be a life peer?”, has had letters patent issued by the sovereign and has had to pay Garter King of Arms to draw up the paperwork. They have had to do something to get that noble status. They know, because they have been told, that it excludes them from the House of Commons, by their voluntary choice.
Some argue that that is against their human rights, which is an absolutely ridiculous understanding of human rights. I know that it has been argued that it is against their human rights to stop them coming back to the House of Commons, but they are the ones who chose to be ineligible for the House of Commons. Surely with rights go responsibilities, and surely people must face the consequences of their actions.
I think that the failure to include that exclusion in the Bill is a mistake. It is something that ought to be remedied, because it could lead to problems in future. It could damage the standing of the House of Lords. It could easily be misused by a powerful political party, because obviously the party in government is more able to decide who the working peers will be, and therefore to use it for its marginal seats, to the detriment of opposition parties. No party is in government for ever, so it is always worth all sides bearing those difficulties in mind. It also fundamentally takes away from someone the consequences of their actions, which I think is wrong. I think that people should bear those consequences, and once they have been elevated they should not be allowed to sink back down, at least for a period.
Dr Thérèse Coffey
I rise to commend the Bill to the House and to our noble Friends in the other place.
The Bill makes a sensible reform. I was pleased to be invited by my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) to help prepare and bring in the Bill, and to serve on the Public Bill Committee.
When a previous version of the Bill was discussed, it did not get past Second Reading, even though it had a significant majority at that point. A number of issues have been raised through amendments today and in Committee. I thank, in particular, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), who is one of the great champions of constitutional propriety, but who also recognises the need for appropriate reform.
I sincerely hope that the other House passes the Bill without undue delay.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I call Jacob Rees-Mogg, to speak from the body of the Chamber.
Deregulation Bill
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Mark Lazarowicz
My hon. Friend makes an important point, and if the Minister wishes to intervene to clarify the issue, I am happy to let him do so.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. May I help a little? If we are to have interventions, could they be a little shorter, because some of them are almost turning into speeches?
Mr Letwin
I am sorry, Mr Deputy Speaker. I accept this is a slightly odd way to conduct a debate, but it seems to me to be productive, so bear with us.
There could of course be a general duty to have regard to sustainable development instead of all the duties on all the regulators—we could say that we do not need any other duties—but all the other regulators have lots of other duties, and by introducing economic growth not as an override but as a balancing consideration, that precisely induces them to consider the totality, namely sustainable development.
Tributes to Nelson Mandela
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I know that Mr Speaker mentioned the number of Members who wish to speak. We will not impose a time limit, but I suggest that Members should limit their speeches to five minutes, because I do not want to see anyone miss out.
Apprenticeships and Skills (Public Procurement Contracts) Bill
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be speaking only in English today.
Philip Davies
That is a relief to me, Mr Deputy Speaker. Perhaps my Yorkshire accent is causing the confusion; I am not entirely sure. I have tried to set out why I am not convinced that the Bill will achieve what people want. I made it abundantly clear that I agreed with virtually everything that the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish said in his opening speech, but I am not sure that the Bill matches the speech.
Philip Davies
The hon. Gentleman seems to be arguing that procurement policy will solve every ill in the country. I do not see that. He will be telling me next that public procurement contracts could eliminate illegal immigration. It just does not work like that. Let us focus on how we can make effective progress on individual areas.
As I have said, I think that the Government are doing a very good job at increasing the number of apprenticeships and at making sure that they are proper apprenticeships and that they lead to worthwhile jobs. The Government are already making good progress. We should encourage, celebrate and enhance that work.
The problem with procurement is that public bodies often do not get the best value for money for the taxpayer, so that is what we should focus on. Once we have done that and local authorities and public bodies have iron discipline in getting the best deal for the taxpayer, perhaps then we could look at how they could use procurement to advance some of the public policy areas mentioned by the hon. Gentleman. My point is that we—particularly Bradford council—are a long way from that. Let us get back to basics to start with and start negotiating some good deals for the taxpayer.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I am a little bit worried about Bradford council. I know, as you have pointed out, that you are not too keen on it, but I think we ought to move beyond Bradford council. Let us keep to the point of procurement generally and apprenticeships and skills.
Philip Davies
Of course, Mr Deputy Speaker. My lack of enthusiasm for Bradford council was clearly getting the better of me.
Philip Davies
In many cases, public bodies are already co-operating with businesses, and further intervention could have a negative effect. The Minister for cities, the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), has confirmed a second wave of city deals, and that strategy goes a long way towards achieving what the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish wants. I am, therefore, not entirely sure that the Bill is needed in that respect.
My right hon. Friend has issued a written statement about the Greater Ipswich city deal, which is about addressing youth unemployment, increasing the skills level of the local work force and making sure that local businesses, local authorities, colleges and the Government co-operate in order to provide opportunities, ensure that
“dedicated support is available to match young people with jobs through a youth jobs centre…Expand the number of jobs and apprenticeships in local businesses”,
and increase
“local investment in skills training”.—[Official Report, 30 October 2013; Vol. 569, c. 49WS.]
It is not that anyone disagrees with the agenda of the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish, but the Government, through their city deals, are already doing an awful lot to address it. They should be allowed to flourish and continue their work, and I hope they will be successful. The Bill will not necessarily help; it may get in the way of, or even repeat, that work.
I think we would all agree that the Federation of Small Businesses is a leading business organisation of small businesses and the self-employed. It was formed in 1974 and has about 200,000 members, so we should listen to what it has to say. The Federation of Small Businesses is very supportive of apprenticeships:
“We believe apprenticeships can transform a young person’s life and give them access to bespoke training and often a highly skilled job as a result. Apprenticeships should be recognised as vital introductions to careers that can take individuals all the way to the top in the business. We need to see reforms continue to strengthen and protect the image of apprenticeships which, over the years, has been damaged by constant change.”
The Federation of Small Businesses shares the opinion with me and the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish that apprenticeships are valuable, but that they must be high quality. I agree with the FSB that that has not always been the case., but it also welcomes the Government’s “commitment to quality apprenticeships”.
The FSB supports the
“intention behind the Bill, which is to drive up apprenticeship numbers.”
As I have said, it would be difficult to oppose the sentiment behind the Bill. However, it also says that it is concerned that the Bill
“might hamper the progress being made and unintentionally harm the image of apprenticeships by reinforcing the perception that apprenticeships are a government driven work scheme of limited value. It is for this reason that we oppose the use of procurement to boost apprenticeship numbers.”
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is right. It is not clear whether or not apprentices in subcontracts count. Is there a requirement on a subcontractor bidding for a proportion of a contract? If the subcontract is for more than £1 million—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The hon. Gentleman has mentioned that he is coming to the end of his speech. Other hon. Members want to speak and I am worried about getting them in. It might be helpful to him if I say that, if you bid for one contract, the subcontract is within the main contract, so it does not apply.
Philip Davies
I am grateful to you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am not entirely sure what part of the Bill states that, but you are far more wise in these matters than I am, and I happily accept your judgment. However, when the hon. Gentleman sums up the debate, he might wish to address those points, so hon. Members can be clear on what we are voting on.
To go back to my initial point, I agree with what the hon. Gentleman wants to achieve. I admire his passion for improving the lot of young people, developing their skills and fulfilling their potential. My fear is that the Bill will not clear up the confusion he has identified, but add to the confusion of local authorities and public bodies. In addition, it could damage small businesses that want to bid for contracts and devalue current apprenticeships. I am sure that he wants none of those things, but that is my concern with the Bill. Until he can answer those questions and deal with those concerns, I am not sure that I can support his Bill, even though I absolutely agree with his thoughts on apprenticeships and what he would like to achieve.
House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Chope
Yes, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. This is another issue on which there might be amendments. I am concerned about how the Bill will proceed, assuming that it gets its Second Reading today, because if it does not go to a Committee of the whole House, it is quite likely that there will be so many amendments that people will want to move and debate that the Bill could end up taking up all the time available for discussion on Fridays; that is another good reason why it should go to a Committee of the whole House.
I should not sit down before commenting on what my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset said about the potentially ageist nature of the reference to retirement in the legislation. I have the privilege of representing the constituency with the largest proportion of residents aged over 65; the proportion is just over 35%. Obviously, that means that a much higher proportion than that are able to vote in elections, because those under 18 are excluded from doing so. I therefore have a particular reason for saying that it is important that the older generation be properly represented in this House and the other place.
Quite a lot of people see it as their objective in life to try to bring in, directly or indirectly, a restriction on the age until which people can participate in our democracy in a representative capacity. We should be hostile to those moves. That is another reason why I have always been against the idea of a retirement scheme for their lordships that is based just on age. The proposal in the House of Lords (Maximum Membership) Bill, to which I referred earlier, would not require people to retire based on their age; retirement would relate to the date when they first became Members, which can be a completely different kettle of fish.
As my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire said, the Bill is, on any view, a modest measure, but many modest measures have been brought before the House. Some of the Bills in my name further down the Order Paper are very modest measures—two clauses at most—but that does not mean that they will find favour with the Government Front Benchers.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Just to help, if the hon. Gentleman were to finish speaking now, we might be able to get to those modest measures.
Mr Chope
I am not that naive; there are two Bills after this one before we get to any of mine. The Government have already indicated that, although the House of Lords (Maximum Membership) Bill has received the Queen’s consent, that does not mean that it has their support. I live in hope, but as I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans), who is in charge of the next Bill to be discussed, nobody’s performance or career in this House should be judged on how many private Members’ Bills they have been able to get on the statute book.
Mr Chope
We can test it in due course.
The Bill, albeit modest, would need a great deal of change before it would be worthy to go on to the statute book. Once again, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire on introducing it. This debate sends out a warning shot to those in the other place that if they send to this House Bills relating to their own House which they want us to endorse, we will not do so unless we have had a chance to consider them fully.
Emily Thornberry
I ask for your ruling, Mr Deputy Speaker, on whether this is correctly a point of order. The inconsistency that has been shown this afternoon is extraordinary—
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. It is absolutely not a point of order. I thought that it might have been something relevant.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 63)(2),
That the House of Lords Reform (No. 2) Bill be committed to a Committee of the whole House.—(Jacob Rees-Mogg.)
Debate on the Address
Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. There are 11 speakers to come, and there are no time limits, but to ensure that everybody gets in, may I ask Members to exercise some self-restraint?
Mr Davis
That was the last intervention I was going to take, Mr Deputy Speaker.
The simple truth is that we must be wary of doing something we do not intend to do, under political pressure. More generally, in our approach to difficult economic decisions in the next year or two, I hope that this Government, of all Governments, will work hard to balance the fairness against the difficult decisions. We are going to make hard decisions, which will lead to huge opprobrium from Labour Members for all sorts of reasons. That does not bother me, but what does bother me is that we get the balance of fairness right.
Bill Esterson
The Institute for Fiscal Studies is clear that the lowest 20% of income groups are being hammered by the Government’s various changes. How can the right hon. Gentleman justify disabled people being hit, as they have been, by a combination of the bedroom tax, the council tax localisation scheme, work capability assessments followed by their appeal, and having their benefit cut during that lengthy process?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. We are now on 17 minutes. I was working on speeches lasting no longer than 16 minutes per Member.
Simon Hughes
I was conscious that I was giving way too much so I will answer that intervention very quickly and move on. Many people with disabilities have had their benefits protected. For everybody there is now a scheme that will make sure they are reassessed—fairly, we hope. The so-called bedroom tax does not apply to people who need a live-in carer and other categories have now been exempted, not least because of internal discussions in the coalition which delivered that outcome. But I am very conscious that we need to do better for the people in the bottom 20% of income. I have argued that within my own party and in the coalition and will go on arguing it. We need to end up with a much fairer society than the Conservative Government or the Labour Government left us. We are trying to make that fairer society, which for us is a priority.
The priority is to make sure that we have a strong economy and a fairer society and that everybody has the opportunity to get on as they wish. To do that, the priorities are very much the ones that the Government have enunciated. Further priorities are social and affordable housing. For many the cost of getting their own home is prohibitive and homes to rent are unavailable. We need to carry on dealing with tax avoidance and the inequalities of wealth at home, but we should not think that the solution to all our problems is to become little Englanders or little Britishers and not to see our future as being within the continent of which we are a part, where we can trade, work, gain and make progress, and within the world of which we are also part.
It is good that the Queen’s Speech makes it clear not only that we will defend people who have been loyal to us, such as Gibraltarians and Falklanders, but that at the G8 next month we will argue for a fairer world, transparency and accountability, conflict prevention and bigger efforts to bring peace to those parts of the world such as the middle east, which have suffered for too long. Abraham Lincoln said:
“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other”.
The coalition is resolved to help Britain succeed and become a strong economy again, and Liberal Democrats will play their part in making sure we do that as well as possible.