Parliamentary Reform

Margaret Curran Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)]

I am pleased to speak under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Benton. I congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on securing this important debate.

There are two aspects to the debate: how Parliament is perceived, and the procedures of Parliament. Parliament is, frankly, often its own worst enemy in terms of how it is perceived. I draw hon. Members’ attention to the fiasco over the resignation of Gerry Adams from the House. Leaving aside the undoubted entertainment value of the UK Government and an Irish republican arguing over an ancient Crown title so that he can resign from a Parliament in which he has never taken his seat, does it not illustrate the fact that it is absolute nonsense that the only way a Member can resign is to be appointed to a non-existent title? Incidentally, it was reported that the Chancellor conferred the title on Mr Adams without him applying for it or agreeing to accept it. Is it really the constitutional case that the Chancellor can appoint someone to an office that disqualifies them from sitting in the House without them specifically applying for it? If that is the case, perhaps some potential Tory rebels should consider their position.

However, there are much more important issues to consider in terms of how we carry out our day-to-day procedures. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion has produced a paper, which I read with great interest, and I agree with a great deal of it. However, there are one or two things I do not agree with. The whole business of family-friendly hours is a red herring. I come from north-east Scotland, and either I am here or I am there. I cannot be here and go home at night. I would like to see how the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority dealt with the travel expenses that would arise if I tried to do so. That simply cannot happen. As the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) rightly put it, when we were elected to the House, we accepted that we would spend much of our lives here. It does not matter to people from the north of Scotland whether we finish at 6 or 10; we are not going home. From my point of view, if we could squeeze the parliamentary week into two or three days and spend more time in the constituency, it would be perfect.

That brings me to the point that there are two visions of Parliament. I suspect that some Members see Parliament as being about dealing with the big issues and holding Government to account, as has been noted. However, another, competing, issue is that many of our constituents want us to deal with problems on their behalf. We all talk about how we must be more accessible and make Parliament more accessible. That is not done by being unavailable to our constituents because we are here discussing the big issues of the day. We have to deal with the issues that affect everyday life. It is true that many of the people who come to our constituency offices come to us with problems that are not strictly to do with Parliament. However, many of us are then faced with the question of what to do. We can try to say, “You need to go and see somebody else,” but that often only results in the person going away dissatisfied and saying, “Well, they wouldn’t do anything for me.” We all make such decisions daily.

I have put my pen through great screeds of this speech to try not to take up too much time. A lot has been said about electronic voting. There is a huge case for electronic voting for the reasons given by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion, the greatest of which is being able to abstain. As a member of a smaller party, I often look at motions tabled by the Government and the official Opposition and say, “A plague on both your houses.” I would love to be able to abstain and be recorded as abstaining, but often we simply do not vote. That is an issue and a lot of hon. Members will feel that way.

I would go further than the hon. Lady. She made the case—possibly to try to engender support—that we should have electronic voting in the Chamber or the Lobby. I disagree. There is no reason why, in the 21st century, when we are wirelessly connected—or not connected, in many cases—to smart phones, iPads and everything else we cannot design a system that is secure enough to allow, although perhaps not on every occasion, people to vote remotely if it is appropriate. I say that because towards the end of last year when we had the dreadful snow, I could not get to London for two whole weeks. I was a member of the Postal Services Bill Committee at the time and missed several sittings—to my great frustration because I had several amendments tabled for debate. I also missed votes in the House. In those circumstances, I do not understand why remote voting cannot be allowed.

We may all kid ourselves that every hon. Member sits and listens to the debate and makes a decision on how to vote, but we all know it is not true. We choose which way to vote for various reasons. Remote voting should be allowed on some occasions, although not in every instance. We have moved a long way from the days when seriously ill people were carried through the Lobby in the middle of the night, but we still queue up for 15 minutes to vote. There is much to be gained from electronic voting. I agree with the point that the design of our Chamber makes it difficult to have voting within the Chamber. It is much easier in, for example, the Scottish Parliament, which is a much smaller Parliament of 129. For a Parliament of 650, the same lay-out is impossible. As I said, in the age of wireless connection, I see no reason why we cannot find a way in which electronic voting can be done. Let us move towards the 20th century, if not the 21st.

The second point I want to consider relates to petitions and making Parliament more relevant to our constituents and giving them a bigger say in what we are doing. Again, the issue has been considered by the House in previous modernisations. Originally, the system was that a Member had his or her 30 seconds in the sun presenting a petition in the Chamber, and they then placed the petition in the bag behind the Speaker’s Chair. Sometime later, they would get a brief response from the Department and that was that. As part of the previous modernisation, petitions are now reported to a Select Committee. However, the process never seems to go any further than that and the petition is simply noted by the Select Committee.

If we want to make Parliament more accessible to constituents, we need to consider a much greater forum to allow genuine concerns to be more fully canvassed by Parliament. For example, in my constituency, there is a threat to close driving test centres. I have raised that matter and debated it in this Chamber with the relevant Minister. However, in my constituency, the campaign has gathered a huge number of signatures on a paper petition and there has been a Facebook petition. It will reach the point when people ask, “What can we do with the petition?” The answer is that they can send it to the Driving Standards Agency to be filed there, they can send it to the Minister, probably to be filed in the Department, or they can give it to me to present to Parliament and it will presumably be reported to the Select Committee on Transport. However, again, no action is likely. We desperately need to look at ways that such petitions can be considered in more detail.

In closing down the No. 10 petition website, the Government announced that they will be introducing a new system whereby, if I understand it correctly, the most popular petitions will be converted into private Members’ Bills—although that opens up the difficulty of how those Bills are dealt with. That is an interesting idea but, if it has been reported correctly, the numbers needed mean that only the most controversial matters or the most organised national campaigns will ever get to that stage. I suggest that we consider a petition system that is more akin to the one that operates in the Scottish Parliament. In Scotland, anyone can present a petition to the Scottish Parliament. It only requires one signature and it can be submitted in any language. The petition must, of course, relate to a devolved issue and be relevant on a national level. It is important to note that it does not preclude a local issue where there may be a national angle. To take the example of the driving test centres in my constituency, the issue could relate to how the DSA is dealing with driving tests in rural areas.

In Scotland, a local health issue has been raised on the basis it has been alleged that health boards are not following national guidelines. The Scottish Parliament has set up a Public Petitions Committee that consists of nine MSPs to consider every admissible petition lodged—obviously not all petitions are admissible. That Committee writes to the bodies affected, whether it be the Scottish Government, health boards, police forces, local authorities or whatever, with questions to seek information on the matters raised. It asks the petitioner to comment on them.

[Margaret Curran (Glasgow East) (Lab)]

If I am called to speak, I will make reference to my experience in the Scottish Parliament. May I draw to the attention of the House the effectiveness of the Public Petitions Committee in the Scottish Parliament, and not just in the processing and engagement that it represents? It has led to significant changes in law, most recently on the health service and access to blood. People had been prohibited from getting blood through the NHS and significant laws were changed. That was initiated by the experience of a constituent, through the Public Petitions Committee, so it is effective in changing the law.

--- Later in debate ---

[Margaret Curran (Glasgow East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on securing the debate. I was not sure about her constituency name, and I will refer to my lack of recall in such matters.

I hesitated before taking part in the debate, because we, as politicians, must always be wary of talking about ourselves, our experience and our institutions, when we do not perhaps connect them properly with our representative role. The hon. Lady has put the matter in a proper context, because this is about effective governance. As has been said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), there have been many shifts in the governance of Britain over the past 10 to 15 years, such as devolution. It is therefore appropriate that we consider how effectively we operate.

Many hon. Members have mentioned how pertinent the expenses scandal is, and how parliamentarians must rise to the challenge. If we look at what is happening in the middle east, and at how far people are prepared to go to fight for democracy, how we operate our democracy becomes significant.

I hope that my contribution this afternoon will reflect my experience in the Scottish Parliament, where I continue—just about—to be a sitting Member. I have been in that Parliament since its inception 12 years ago. When I go back, I will return the fraternal greetings of the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart), who I am sure will be welcomed back for more vibrant and lively debate. The Scottish Parliament has not been without its controversies, and I do not give it an unequivocally positive response. In my experience, there have been strengths and weaknesses along the way, and it is important to draw that to the attention of the House.

In a sense, the Scottish Parliament was created to address the democratic deficit that was felt strongly in Scotland, because of the United Kingdom’s governance structures. When it was established, we did not want the Scottish Parliament to be a repeat of the Westminster model—we wanted it to be different. Three fundamental strands were embedded in that Parliament. One was accountability, which I shall return to, because the point about Executive power and how it is held to account is important. The other two strands were transparency and accessibility.

Since I came to the House of Commons, I have had some interesting experiences and drawn some comparisons. I cannot imagine what would happen in Scotland if an institution was created where Members were given priority in the queues or had special lifts assigned to them. There would be violent uprisings if that were the case and we considered ourselves so grand that we had to go ahead of others in the queue.

[Thomas Docherty]

(Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab): Perhaps my hon. Friend will wait for the outcome of the Administration Committee’s forthcoming report on catering. She might be interested in some of its conclusions.

[Margaret Curran]

I look forward to that, and I hope that things improve. I wish to make some more substantial points about issues that have been raised in the debate. Obviously, as a Scottish Member, the hours are of great significance to me. I am torn on the issue of family-friendly hours, but I am not sure it is a sound enough argument to say that since hours cannot be family-friendly for all, they should be family-friendly for no one. We should perhaps look at ways in which we can make the hours more family-friendly. I am also disturbed by the argument that states, “I came into this Parliament with my eyes wide open. I knew the hours and I knew I would have difficulties getting back to my family.” That inhibits some people from standing for Parliament in the first place, and the way we work excludes a lot of people, particularly women, which seems counter-intuitive to rational planning.

In my first week or fortnight in the House, there was a debate on rape anonymity, a subject in which I have a great interest and which have worked on in Scotland. The debate was held at about half-past midnight or 1 o’clock in the morning. That was utterly absurd, and anyone with any degree of common sense would agree. That is not a proper and rational way to hold that kind of debate.

Having said that, I think it is important not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. There is a lot that my colleagues in the Scottish Parliament can look to Westminster for and learn from, and some traditional ways of doing things are important. This Parliament has an authority and reach that other Parliaments could learn from. There is no doubt that the British people look to this Parliament as a platform for a national debate and a vehicle for certain views. It does not necessarily always have to reflect their views, but it should be a place where views can be tested and rehearsed, hopefully with great vibrancy or some degree of controversy. I do not say that everything in Westminster is wrong, or that because something happens in a devolved context it is, by definition, more modern or advanced.

My final point is about the accountability of Government. That is a critical matter, and it is an area in which the Scottish Parliament has been disappointing, and there are things that need to be thought through. For example, the current Scottish Government regularly lose votes in the Parliament and are reprimanded by Parliament for their actions. However, that is consistently ignored. There are all sorts of explanations and debates about that, but it is significant in and of itself when the Executive—the Government—do not pay attention to the voice of Parliament. We should think about that in Westminster. Urgent questions and topical questions are more advanced in this Parliament, and I respectfully say to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion, who has made an enormous contribution, that the next stage of this debate should be about how we use Parliament to hold the power of Government to account. We have heard some interesting remarks on that.

I strongly support what has been said about changing the language of Parliament. I am more likely to remember someone’s name than their constituency. Terms such as “honourable”, “Friends” and “Members” are a barrier to common sense and communication, and I hope that the hon. Lady and the Procedure Committee will look at that matter.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) made some significant and substantial points about how we hold Government—and the power of Government—to account, which is a vital debate. We must link the debate to the experience of our constituents and make it about their lives. Somehow along the way, we are beginning to get there.