Citizens Convention on Democracy

Debate between Mark Durkan and Anne Main

Wednesday 20th July 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I thank you for permitting us to be jacketless in this heat.

I support the case of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) for a citizens convention. Considering the range of issues and developments that have taken place over the past number of years, it is important to recognise that what is deemed to be the constitutional dispensation of the UK has been stretched, bent, twisted, pummelled and has had holes knocked through it, yet people say it is still the same fabric of the unwritten UK constitution. In a modern democratic environment, we cannot go on like this.

In a number of elections, voter turnout has gone down and those who did vote displayed disaffection by voting in a more spread out and, possibly, alienated way. That should send a warning to those of us who care for ensuring that we have a modern, inclusive, democratic platform. We cannot just continue politics as business as usual, drifting along.

The point that I see a citizens convention fulfilling is producing a new democratic charter, written from a citizen’s point of view. Citizens would have, for the first time, something like an owner’s manual so that they could say, “Right, all these elections are held in which we are asked to vote and told we have the chance to vote. What does it mean?” A charter could clearly set out the roles, responsibilities and rights of the different chambers and bodies that people have the opportunity to elect, whether in local government elections, at a devolved level, in the UK Parliament—of course, we had the European Parliament as well—or in other elections such as those for police and crime commissioners.

A charter could also set out a clearer understanding of the relationships between those different bodies because there is often a lot of confusion and tension. We saw that with the Scotland Act 2016 and we have seen it when we have processed legislation affecting Northern Ireland. Parties that were part of the negotiations have reflected different views on the Floor of the House of Commons from what the Government say is intended or meant by the legislation, or what an agreement entailed. We have seen that with the Scotland Act. It is important that we get these things right in a clear and cogent way, because coming up with agreements that we then disagree about does not do anything for people’s confidence in the political process.

The charter should set out clearly the rights of the different Chambers to take revenue, and the principles and ceilings of the funding they are guaranteed as a share of overall UK public expenditure. Because the policy environment changes, the charter should provide for an opportunity for Members to review the relative responsibilities and relationships of those different institutions. As technology changes, the nature and scope of how government might address something will change and evolve as well—we see that in energy and in the movements in broadcasting and digital technology.

The footprint of responsibility between devolved and non-devolved and between local government and others could well change, so we need to build in room for responsiveness to circumstance and change, and responsiveness to review. It should not be beyond us or beyond the political process to do that, but if it is, it is not beyond citizens, because they want to know, in a 21st-century democracy, who they are electing to do what job and who they can hold to account for delivery or failure. At the minute, they do not get that from the political process. It is almost a Tower of Babel—I say that as one of the people who negotiated and wrote parts of the Good Friday agreement.

As for the current situation, we have only to look at the previous election in Northern Ireland. Many of the parties in the course of the election debate sought devolved power and used their relative powerlessness as an excuse. They were saying, “We can’t deliver on some of these things. Westminster did not give us the money for this. There is an austerity agenda and other legislation has gone through.” The people are then at sixes and sevens, because people in the political process are confused and confusing about who has what power.

The welfare reform issue is a classic example. On paper, the Northern Ireland Assembly has legislative power over welfare, but we have ended up with a motion in the Assembly, courtesy of Sinn Féin, the DUP and the Government, to hand that power back to Westminster for a year, to give Westminster direct rule powers to impose something that the Assembly itself would not do. Of course, when the Assembly gets those powers back, there is essentially going to be a power of karaoke legislation. Basically, all the Assembly gets to do is to pass the legislation according to the words and music that have been set in the legislation here at Westminster. That is not edifying for the integrity of a devolved institution and it is not credible or persuasive to the public. It would seem to be a cynical exercise in taking power and being unable to exercise it, handing it to somebody else, and then blaming and criticising them for the decisions they take. In those circumstances, it is important that people know exactly what responsibility Chambers have and how parties and others operating within those institutions are expected to operate.

I have heard such talk in a lot of the exchanges on the Scotland Act. There is confusion even yet as to the exact import of the future welfare powers that Scotland will have. The Act makes sweeping presumptions about the agreement that there will be between Scottish Ministers and a Secretary of State, but makes no provision for what happens when there is no agreement between them and when there are difficulties. We need to fix that—otherwise we will have political crisis.

We were told that Northern Ireland had a political crisis partly to do with welfare reform. The UK Government decided that, if the Assembly was not going to automatically pass the karaoke legislation for welfare reform, they would take the budget hostage—they were going to impose a penalty on the devolved budget. That penalty power was not in the Northern Ireland Act 1998—it was dreamed up by the former Chancellor and others and imposed. Someone might try to do that in Scotland. If Scotland fails to reach agreement—

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. Can we focus a little more narrowly on the topic of debate, rather than going down cul-de-sacs?

[Mark Durkan]

I am sorry, Mrs Main. I do not regard this as a cul-de-sac. I am setting out an example of the issues that a constitutional convention could address. We have already been served notice of difficulties, contradictions, confusions and gaps in the constitutional understanding that the current political class is serving up to people. If we have been given those warnings, we should recognise that there might be more difficulties in future, not least in an environment where we have been told that the Brexit result means an agenda of taking control. Let us show what control we are actually giving to citizens. Citizens need to be able to know what control they have as electors and as voters. The first way is to show them the relevance and direct power of their vote in electing the different bodies and the different classes of people that they are allowed to elect. The first thing the citizens convention should do is produce that new democratic charter that essentially gives the citizen an owner’s manual to know where they have power in relation to different Chambers.

Given the experience in Ireland, it is right that parties should be involved in the constitutional convention. In Ireland, as well as citizens being involved, parties were involved north and south. Unfortunately, permission for the northern parties to appoint parliamentarians did not extend to Members of this House—it extended only to members of the Assembly, so I was not able to serve as a member of the convention, but a very good friend of mine, Tom Arnold, successfully chaired that convention. It showed that whenever you have the parties there, the citizens doing the work know that it is not a case of producing something worthy that politicians can then ignore and parties can then drop because it is too hot or too avant-garde. The fact that the parties are involved in those reflective discussions is helpful in giving people confidence that there is some purpose to it. It certainly encourages people to give evidence and submit ideas to the convention—it is not a case of a lot of good ideas going nowhere. There are positive examples.

The convention can also be used to educate all of us about the nuances of the different constitutional understandings that there are in different parts of the UK. For instance, it would be helpful to let people know—a lot of people do not seem to appreciate this—that, in Ireland, the common membership of Ireland and the UK of the European Union was taken as a given when we negotiated the Good Friday agreement. It is written into the fabric of the agreement at various points, as is the European convention on human rights, but some people think we can dispose of both of those without doing any damage, as though it is a stud wall that can be knocked through when it is actually a supporting wall of our political dispensation and peace process.

Similarly, EU law and the European convention on human rights, as far as I know, are a part of the basis of the current constitutional dispensation for Scotland, but, again, potential damage is being done to it. One thing a citizens convention could do is allow people from different parts of the UK to understand the sensitivities and nuances in those key issues, and that they are not simply disposable commodities that can be thrown away without doing damage to the democratic fabric.

There are all sorts of odd questions about second Chambers, which I will not go into. I will simply say that, under the recent constitutional development of English votes for English laws in the UK, it is interesting that the stricture on people from Northern Ireland, Scotland and sometimes Wales voting applies only to elected Members—it does not apply to non-elected members in the Second Chamber, which is absolutely preposterous. Those are the sorts of things that people in a citizens convention might want to usefully look at as well. We have a bizarre situation: English votes for English laws means some of us being told, “You may still be charged, but your vote will not count.” Some measures on which we are excluded from voting will have policy implications for us and our devolved institutions. Again, a citizens convention could be a useful way of ensuring we all have a better understanding of the issues, which is not properly reflected either in this House or in politics at large at the moment.

Palestine and Israel

Debate between Mark Durkan and Anne Main

Monday 13th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who, like other Members, touched on the human realities of people whose lives are afflicted in this conflict. The question for this House is: where do we stand on the basic, core question that constantly runs through this problem?

Every time there is violence and every time the attempts at a peace process fail, fall into a lull and are followed by more violence—whether it is from Hamas or the excessive efforts of the Israeli defence forces, as we have seen this summer—people ask what the western world is doing about it. Where does the international community stand when human rights are sacrificed again and again, and what is its will when international law is violated again and again? Of course, we hear from the Dispatch Box and elsewhere that the Israeli Government are told not to be disproportionate and warned against occupations, and yet the situation continues.

People are increasingly fed up with this screensaver politics, where shapes are thrown, images projected and impressions generated, but nothing real goes on in relation to the substantive issue. People in our constituencies find it frustrating, but the people for whom it must be most frustrating are those moderate people in the middle east, including those in Israel who know that their security will never come from drenching people in Gaza with bombs, and those in Palestine who know that their peace, rights and liberation will not come through lobbing rockets into Israel. They want a peace process and they know that at the heart of that peace process there has to be a two-state solution, and that two-state solution has a better chance of happening if there is at least a semblance of a two-state process. When there is no two-state process, we are wasting our time talking about a two-state solution.

The Minister told us today, once again, that the British Government will recognise the state of Palestine at a time when it is most beneficial to the peace process, but then he went on to say that a negotiated end of occupation is the most effective way of having the Palestinian aspiration for statehood realised on the ground. Is he telling us that the British Government will move on recognising the state of Palestine only when there is a negotiated end to the occupation, whenever that is? If he is, that is no argument against the motion, and nobody could accept it as a reason for voting against the motion or the amendment.

[Mrs Main]

Does the hon. Gentleman share my suspicion that we will not have a vote tonight? It looks suspiciously as though there is consensus. If we do not have a vote, the House will not speak with the grand voice in the way he hopes.

[Mark Durkan]

That may well be, and it may add to people’s frustrations. We will see whether it happens. We want to flush out a proper declaration, because there should be no obfuscation. There is a clear choice. One of the beauties of the motion tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) is that it is clear—for the purposes of providing absolute clarity, there is the amendment tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw)—and the issues have been well distilled in a very good debate.

A couple of attempts have been made to cloud some of the issues, including by the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley). He tried to suggest that the experience of the Northern Ireland peace process somehow means that we should not recognise the state of Palestine now, but leave everybody to sort everything out and then recognise it. The truth is that he and his party opposed the peace process throughout and did so shrilly. They said that the sky would fall in. They opposed American involvement. They opposed what the British and Irish Governments did to create the framework for a solution, and they opposed building a solution based on three sets of relationships—institutions in Northern Ireland, institutions in Ireland and institutions between Ireland and Britain.

The point is that people outside a conflict sometimes have to help to create some of the givens in a process. In the give and take that we expect in a negotiated process, particularly in a historic conflict, it is not in the parties’ gift to do all the giving; that is where responsible international input can create some givens and new realities.

Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between Mark Durkan and Anne Main

Tuesday 13th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan]

The other point the Government make is that this will be the subject of a European directive in a couple of years’ time. I would only make the point that we should not have to wait for a European directive, and that it would be better if a meaningful European directive were transposed through existing legislation. New clause 15 would provide exactly those powers and that legislation.

[Mrs Main]

I would like to speak to new clauses 13 and 22, and make a small reference to new clauses 18 to 21.

New clause 13 was explained so eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) as being a matter of consumer choice. I have a huge degree of sympathy with that, but I will explain why I cannot support him today. We should all know exactly what we are eating. We should have a good deal of information about how animals have lived and died. I have major concerns that Europe does not have the same high standards of animal welfare that we have in this country, yet we import meat from those animals that have been raised with living standards we do not find acceptable and have outlawed, such as farrowing pens for pigs.

Briefing from the Eurogroup for Animals, published in 2011, gives some interesting information about European standards of animal husbandry and, indeed, animal slaughter—much of the meat involved enters our own food chain—and makes it clear that many of us should be very concerned about those issues. That organisation opposes the slaughter of all animals without their being stunned beforehand. The briefing states:

“In 2010, the European Commission requested from Member States official data regarding numbers of animals ritually slaughtered within their territory.”

Unfortunately, there was a real lack of data. According to the briefing,

“most of the countries do not have reliable figures available as no traceability exists to differentiate between animals”

when it comes to how they have been slaughtered. Of course, I am concerned about how they have lived as well. There is also a significant over-slaughtering of animals for halal and kosher meat within the food chain to allow for the amount of demand that might arise in countries that import such meat, which means that there is no way of showing what happens to animals that have been killed in that way and where they end up in the food chain.

This is indeed a labelling issue, but I must say to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley that, according to some of the information that has been gleaned through the examination of people who do not wish animals to be killed without being stunned, it is almost impossible to trace the meat involved, and that without Europe-wide traceability, his proposal will be totally unenforceable. I appreciate that many consumers would like to know how the animals were treated, where and in what conditions they were raised, the extent of the confinement in which they were placed, and how they were slaughtered. While I agree with my hon. Friend’s sentiments—I, too, believe that consumers should know exactly what they are purchasing—I therefore cannot support his new clause.

Let me now say something about the tenancy issues that have been raised. I quote my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley a great deal, because he talks a lot of good sense, and his heart is often in the right place. However, I believe that if we put all the onus on landlords when it comes to any fees associated with the checking of tenants—they often have to be checked now because of the rules on residency, which govern whether they have the right to rent in this country—those fees will go into the chain, and other ways will be found to put up rents. I cannot believe that the Labour party wants that to happen.

A small letting agency in St Albans, which contacted me about the Labour party’s proposal, is deeply unhappy about it. Given that the agency provides a service enabling people to go into its office, choose from the properties that are advertised, be shown round and so on, why should a fee not be incurred for the benefit that the potential tenant enjoys? The landlord may enjoy a different benefit in the form of the checking of the tenants; the benefits are not always exactly the same.

I suggest that the Government should be extremely cautious before accepting any blandishments from the Labour party, which constantly tries to impose all the cost on businesses. We, as consumers, also want a degree of protection.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Debate between Mark Durkan and Anne Main

Wednesday 22nd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan]

In what I have read, Government officials have said that the new advisers will not be special advisers—they might be specialist advisers, but they will not be special advisers. They will advise on policy. We are told by the Ministers who back the idea that it is about trying to break the logjam in Government and move policy along decisively. They will therefore have a key role in moving public policy along. It is Ministers, not Opposition Members, who are planning to have this new breed of advisers—this addition to the ecosystem of government and the networks of advice—so if the Government have not worked out what class of beast they will be, they cannot condemn the rest of us for asking and wondering. As legislators, we are meant to think forward to things that are planned and that are likely to happen.

The Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee has said that the reason he will not press amendment (a) to a Division is purely to afford the House time to discuss the issues in part 2 of the Bill that need to be discussed. However, I want to stress the merits of amendment (a). I hope that in future Ministers will not abuse the fact that a proposal is not being pressed to a Division out of courtesy to the Chamber because it has other serious concerns to discuss to make out that Members do not care about the issues or that the issues are not serious, as they have done today. These issues are serious. In my view, the Government have deliberately used the audacity of their proposals in part 2 as a human shield to cover the paucity and weakness of their proposals in part 1, which will apply only to those who present themselves in the Yellow Pages under the heading “Consultant Lobbyists”. People can engage in the business of professional lobbying on any other paid basis, whether it is in-house or for any of the big accountancy or legal firms, which provide all sorts of services.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

I tabled amendments earlier in the Bill’s progress because I was very concerned about private lobbying and private lunches with friends, which can have a great deal of influence through the chains that the hon. Gentleman is describing. That is a weakness with this part of the Bill. I am only sorry that we do not have longer today to listen to the important nuanced arguments that are being made.

[Mark Durkan]

I recognise the hon. Lady’s concerns, which she specified so well in earlier stages of the Bill’s progress. In the spirit of acknowledging the profound concerns of other Members, I will draw my remarks to a close.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Debate between Mark Durkan and Anne Main

Monday 9th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan]

What my hon. Friend describes absolutely trivialises the claims that the Government are making for this Bill, especially when we consider what bearing it would have on the amount of lobbying of the Government and what would be registered. If we consider the Bill in terms of transparency, the slight, little bit of translucence that will emerge at the very edge of the current lobbying business is hardly what would pass for transparency in any meaningful sense of the word.

[Mrs Main]

If some of those meetings are not captured, the only thing open to hon. Members is parliamentary questions and so on, yet quite often the response we get says that the cost of finding out whether somebody met someone else would be disproportionate. That is a problem. Once we get past that gatekeeper, we have no opportunity to explore what conversations were had or what impact they might have had.

[Mark Durkan]

The hon. Lady makes an excellent point. The point of transparency and registration is about being able to say that, if all such engagement is absolutely above board and matter of fact, there is nothing to hide and nothing to worry about. When the picture is created, or when it can be canvassed by some, that there is something untoward about such contacts and representations—that they are an attempt to get undue influence in pursuit of a particular vested interest—the whole public policy system and Parliament suffer. That is what happens when those suspicions abound. We are trying to protect ourselves and the public understanding and trust of Government and parliamentary processes by ensuring we have a more meaningful Bill.

That is why the amendments before us are important, not least amendment 48—which, as we know from the Chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, will probably be put to a vote—and the Opposition amendments, beginning with amendment 2, which basically take to task the Bill’s deliberately narrow definition of “consultant lobbying” by replacing it with a wider term, “professional lobbying”. This group of amendments also contains amendment 161, which stands in my name, which also tries to add more definition to the type and character of lobbying that we want the Bill to capture. Indeed, the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon said that there are issues with lobbying activity that is clearly carried on in firms and on behalf of firms. Such lobbying is a dedicated, professional wing of activity on the part of corporations, and it should be captured in any appropriate Bill.

Equitable Life (Payments) Bill

Debate between Mark Durkan and Anne Main

Wednesday 10th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan]

Yes, I do. There is no escaping the constraints that the cap will create. In the last group of amendments, we considered the questions that arise when the cap comes together with the cut-off. That conspires to create a pretty selective injustice for a group of people who are then left with very marginal compensation.

Even a very independent process, such as that proposed in the amendments, will be constrained by the cap. However, people would trust a credible independent process applying that cap with due consideration for all the concerns, rights and needs of policyholders more than they would trust the Treasury. In the last debate some Government Members said confidently how impressed they had been with the Treasury since they came into the House. That might well be—we are in the early stages of this Parliament and this Government and the first few pages of the exercise book are lovely, neat, impressive and perfect—but degeneration creeps in later on and even the Treasury will revert to its traditional roots and habits.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

I have confidence in the Treasury trying to sort this out—I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to hear that. However, I am concerned about anything that pushes this matter into the long grass. We do not need any more delays caused by trying to set up other bodies. That is why I would like to say, “Get on with it and get the Treasury doing it.”

[Mark Durkan]

I do not believe that the hon. Member for Harrow East, for example, is trying to sow or fertilise long grass. This is about getting something that is credible, competent and reliable and the Committee should try to help in that regard. That is the spirit of these amendments.

There has been much criticism of the underperformance, to put it mildly, of the previous Government on this issue over more than one Parliament. Let us remember that those Ministers were not deliberately ignoring the plight of their own constituents who were coming to them or the problems highlighted by many of us from constituencies across the United Kingdom. They were constrained by the advice that they were getting from the same Treasury that people are now so happy with. The Treasury was advising that serious precedents and problems would be created.