Human Rights (Joint Committee)

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

I take this opportunity to pay tribute to Michael Meacher, who died today. We seem to be in the business just now of losing a number of people who were giants of this House in the 1970s and 1980s. We wish to make sure he will be remembered as an assiduous and hard-working Member of Parliament.

Let me say at the outset that we have no issue at all with the establishment of a Committee on human rights: this House should of course have a Committee on human rights. It will have a lot of important work to do, some of which has been mentioned by the Minister. We want a Committee on human rights to be established as soon as possible. It has important business to take care of, and we support its establishment. I do not have a problem with the proposed members on the Order Paper. I am sure they will be assiduous members and work to the best of their abilities to ensure that the Committee carries out its functions. I do not even have a problem with this being a Joint Committee, although I am perplexed as to why the unelected House down the road is being given parity with elected Members—those of us who bother to go to our constituents to seek a mandate to serve in the House. Why are the unelected Members, who represent absolutely nobody, being given equal membership with the elected Members who represent real constituents the length and breadth of the United Kingdom?

No, my objection to the motion is the fact that the third party of the United Kingdom has no place on the Committee. That has never happened before. In the last Parliament, how many people from the third party were on the Committee? Two. There were two Liberals on it, one from this House and one from the unelected place down the road. We have made great progress, as the third party, in this House. We are on practically every institution in the House. I have just come from the Speaker’s Commission on the Electoral Commission. We have served on all these Committees assiduously as hard-working Members. We are on practically every single Committee of the House. We even get to chair some of them—I chair one.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I do not recollect the hon. Gentleman’s party opposing the Committee’s being a Joint Committee in the last Parliament. None the less, in the last Parliament the Liberal Democrats polled 23% of the popular vote, whereas his party polled 4% across the whole UK. Is that not the difference?

[Pete Wishart]

This is astounding. My party supports proportional representation. I am pretty certain the hon. Gentleman does not. We operate under the electoral system designed for this place, and it is called first past the post. We won 56 of 59 seats in Scotland, and we are the third party of the UK, in terms of membership of the House and party membership across the UK.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pete Wishart]

My hon. Friend is quite right: the Committee will have a huge amount of work to do. The Conservative Government are threatening to do away with the European convention on human rights—they are threatening to take us out of it—and now we shall not have an opportunity to scrutinise the issue in the Joint Committee.

Moreover—I am sure that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) will mention this in her speech—the human rights settlement is profoundly important to the devolution settlement in Scotland. It is built into the very mechanics of the Scottish Parliament. No Bill can be passed in the Scottish Parliament without reference to human rights, but no Scottish Member of the House of Commons is a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Indeed, it has no members from north of Derby.

[Mr Jackson]

I think that one would have to have a heart of stone not to feel for the hon. Gentleman. His selflessness on this occasion is quite touching. However, I am trying to follow his logic. Is he suggesting, notwithstanding what the Deputy Leader of the House has said, that we should suspend the Standing Orders specifically to ameliorate the effects of a policy decision by the Scottish National party not to play any part in representation in the House of Lords?

[Pete Wishart]

Let us look at the House of Commons membership of the Joint Committee. We have no representation as the third party in the House of Commons, although we are represented on practically every other Committee in the House. We have 56 of the 59 Scottish seats in Parliament, but no attempt has been made to reflect a geographical spread in securing membership of the Joint Committee.

Let me suggest a couple of ways in which we might be able to rectify the situation. I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will listen carefully. She, or someone, will have to tell me why there must be parity with the House of Lords. The House of Lords has never been held in such contempt as it is now among the British people, who see it as nothing other than an affront to democracy and a repository for donors and cronies in the United Kingdom parties.

I need to know this, Mr Speaker. Why does the Joint Committee have to have six members from this House and six from that House? Surely we could come up with an arithmetical formulation that would allow an input from the Lords? I want to hear from them, because I think that they have a contribution to make. Why can we not have eight members from this House and nine members from that House, and cut the number from the House of Lords correspondingly? Is there anyone in the Chamber now—and I look to the Deputy Leader of the House—who can tell me why that cannot happen? Surely it is up to this House, as the predominant and the elected House, to set the rules and parameters for the Joint Committee.