Government Policy on the Proceedings of the House

Lloyd Russell-Moyle Excerpts

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

This House is rather archaic. Many of these things I can live with: the pomp and circumstance, the wearing of funny clothes—I am one of those who wears their own style—and the walking around with a giant mace. What I cannot abide, however, is when rules and procedure are used, in what seems like an underhand way, to reduce the ability of constituents to hold us to account. Constituents can agree or disagree with their local Member of Parliament, but it is important that they know how their local Member of Parliament views an issue and how they vote on that issue when it comes before them. Voting in that sense is a cathartic process: it allows us to support the process of democracy even if we do not support our particular representative. The problem with not bringing an issue to vote is that it undermines the very process of you, Mr Speaker, hearing the ayes and noes. That will lead to the Opposition forcing votes. It will lead to us wasting time unless it is clear that the silence on the Government Benches is a silence of approval, rather than a silence because they are afraid.

We have heard today that the Government agreed with the two motions, which is fantastic. [Interruption.] On the example we heard about earlier, the House agreed and the Government agreed. I applaud the Government on their turnaround. We heard earlier that in 2009 the Labour Government were defeated on the issue of the Gurkhas—the defeat was quite right in my view. On that very day, the Labour Government came to this House and made a statement on how they would change their course as a result of the vote of the House.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

There is another example: the Conservative Government after the coalition were defeated on the vote over whether we should bomb Syria. The then Prime Minister made a statement from the Dispatch Box to clarify the situation. His words were, “I get the message.” This Government have not got the message yet.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Exactly. It seems that the Government have not got the message that they should be accountable to this House. It is of course welcome that they have announced some minor changes—at the Conservative party conference and to the press lobby—on tuition fees and the public sector pay cap. But the problem with decree through press release is that it reduces the ability of this House to ensure that the detail of the volte-face is actually as the House wished.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

On a simple point of fact, the announcement on the public sector pay cap was a written ministerial statement. It is important that we do not pretend otherwise and that a Government who use legitimate procedures are not misrepresented.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Yes, but the suggested tuition fees amendment was not.

The subject of how we challenge statutory instruments is important in the light of our discussions on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. I sat through a lot of those discussions and Government Ministers tried to reassure me time and again—not that they were very reassuring—that we should not worry about processes through the negative procedure. They said that we should not worry about statutory instruments because if the will of the House was clear, the House would have the opportunity to review and rescind, and to ensure that statutory instruments that overstepped the mark would not be allowed on the statute book. However, what we see here is parliamentary jiggery-pokery.

[Jeremy Quin]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

No. This parliamentary jiggery-pokery was used not only to ensure that the debate did not come in time to be able to withdraw the statutory instruments, but to prevent a vote in the House. Therefore, the will of the House seems less strong to members of the public. That is the reality of what happened.

If the Government had stood at the Dispatch Box that day and said, “We won’t be calling a vote because we agree on the two issues”, there would be no problem. The problem was that Government Members spent the whole day arguing against the content of the motions, but then did not vote on them. That is the concern. It is fine—in fact, I am more than happy—for the Government to change their mind after listening to our compelling arguments. I applaud them for that, but let us have a statement about how their mind has changed and, therefore, how policy has changed.

It is no good that members of the public are unclear about the position of this House and that people are left in limbo. They need to be able to hold their politicians to account. They need to be able to hold their Government to account, and the Opposition parties and Back Benchers need to be able to do that too. Therefore, I call upon Members of the Treasury Bench to stand up and make a statement about how and when they reflected on the motion passing unanimously, when they will bring forward the changes called for in both motions and the details of how they will do it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

I contribute to this debate from quite a privileged position, as someone who has served both my Parliaments: as a Member of the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood in Edinburgh; and as a Member of our Parliament here in Westminster in London. Of course, in both Parliaments, I have served under minority Governments, so I am well placed to speak about how Oppositions deal with debates in both Chambers.

We hear a lot from our Scottish National party colleagues about minority government here at Westminster, but very little about the fact that their party is in minority government in Holyrood—we heard a couple of sentences about it today from the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), but not much before that. It is therefore worth repeating that Nicola Sturgeon went into the last Scottish parliamentary elections with a majority and came out with a minority, largely because the number of Scottish Conservative MSPs more than doubled—from 15 to 31.

The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire said many interesting things. After 13 minutes of criticising and attacking the Government and Conservative Back Benchers, he told us that he was being helpful and consensual. That was the only helpful thing he told us, because up until that point it did not seem that he was being particularly helpful or consensual. He also said—I wrote this down because I was very interested—that nobody expects the Government to change policy after being defeated in an Opposition day debate. That was quickly followed by an intervention from the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), who disagreed entirely. That just shows the confused position among the Opposition parties in today’s debate. It is perhaps because the party of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire has a minority Government in Scotland that he does not believe that Governments should change policy due to a defeat in a Chamber.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

It is nice to hear about the Scottish example, but I am interested to know whether the hon. Gentleman thinks that the Government should change course when they are defeated in a Chamber, instead of just hearing him attack the SNP, which I do not have much truck with either.

[Douglas Ross]

I am a Scottish Conservative Member representing a Scottish constituency, so if the hon. Gentleman bears with me, I will speak about Scottish issues in the House of Commons. I will also speak about Governments being defeated when this Government are defeated. They have not been defeated in this House, but the party of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire has been defeated. I want to come on to the point that I tried to make when I intervened on his speech. Hansard will show that I asked clearly about the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012, but that the hon. Gentleman never once mentioned that piece of legislation in response.