Business of the House (Today)

Lord Clarke of Nottingham Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

This really is a sorry day for the Government. The motion to allocate time was tabled on the basis either of error or of falsehood. The Whip went round to Conservative Members of Parliament and said that today’s motion would be on regulations including those on the European arrest warrant. My right hon. Friend the Chief Whip is one of the cleverest men in the House of Commons. He has a brain the size of a planet. He is of the highest quality and the most honourable gentleman one could find. I cannot believe that he would make a basic error of this kind.

We have Whips scuttling around the House saying that a vote will be taken tonight that will be indicative of what the House of Commons thinks about the European arrest warrant. That is a procedural absurdity. It is legislative legerdemain. The Government cannot conceivably decide that one vote is indicative of another. What might they decide next? Perhaps that a vote to cut taxes would indicate that we wanted to increase them, or that a vote in favour of longer prison sentences would indicate that we wanted to cut them? This is the way of tyranny, because it takes away the right of the House of Commons to hold the Executive to account.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

We have heard a wide range political views, but I think that everyone here today is unanimous in believing that we came here expecting to vote on a decision to opt in to 35 measures and that that vote would affect that decision one way or the other. Before we all get too worked up and decide that this is the biggest threat to parliamentary democracy since the gunpowder plot, may I suggest that we allow the Home Secretary to explain how the Government are going to give us the debate and the vote that we all want, even though my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) and I do not always see eye to eye and might not vote in the same way?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

My right hon. and learned Friend makes a point that is, as always, worth listening to, but he is in error. This matter needs to be debated thoroughly, because it is my contention that this is not accidental. A letter was sent to the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), saying that we would have a vote. The Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury said to this House that there would be a vote. The Lord High Chancellor and the Home Secretary sent a letter to the European Scrutiny Committee promising us that there would be a vote on the European arrest warrant and all the other opt-ins and opt-outs. Now that we come to it, however, it is proposed that there will be a vote, after extra debating time, on a number of relatively obscure measures that require statutory instruments, and that that will be intended to determine the view of the House. That is not proper parliamentary procedure; it is an outrageous abuse of parliamentary procedure.

I often disagree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke)—and with others, including my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary—on European matters, but this debate today is of a degree worse than our disagreements. Our disagreements are polite and they reflect our fiercely held views, which we discuss in an upright and, I hope, proper fashion. This approach and this motion are fundamentally underhand. That is why there is such anger, not only on the Conservative Benches and among Eurosceptics. The Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), is shocked by this, as are the Scottish nationalists, who think that this is a poor way of behaving.