Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Durkan and Nick Boles

Tuesday 15th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

I understand that this risk was assessed as low; nevertheless, it is very important that the company deal with it. My hon. Friend’s local trading standards service has informed us that it is satisfied that the company is taking this matter seriously. I am sure that the company will want to pay particular attention to this constituent since his case has been raised in the House of Commons.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

The Minister referred to the Consumer Rights Act. When the Bill that became that Act was going through the House, I tabled a number of amendments to address the issue of unsafe and faulty electrical goods, and the then Minister gave a series of assurances and arguments that now appear to be hollow when we see the campaigning work by Electrical Safety First and by the Daily Mirror. We were told that the issue would be kept under review—is it under review?

[Nick Boles]

Absolutely. I will make sure that I have a conversation with the hon. Gentleman to understand what continuing concerns he has and to make sure that we address them.

Trade Union Bill

Debate between Mark Durkan and Nick Boles

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Will the Conservative Trade Unionists group, which the Minister mentioned, be able to join online, or, given the dodginess of the internet, will they have to wait five or 10 years for that?

[Nick Boles]

I am tempted to say that they will have to buy a small donkey and write it on the side, but no, of course they will be able to join through the usual routes.

I look forward to engaging with Members of the upper House, alongside my noble Friend Baroness Neville-Rolfe, and we will listen carefully to any concerns they may have. I hope that I have demonstrated through amendments to the provisions on the picketing supervisor and the letter of authorisation that the Government are willing to hear persuasive arguments and to respond. In turn, I trust that noble Lords and Baronesses will respect the clearly expressed will of the British people, which is established not by retweets or by protests in Parliament Square but through the votes of their elected representatives sitting here in the House of Commons.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Mark Durkan and Nick Boles

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

The hon. Gentleman is being a trifle unkind because he knew I was being a little light-hearted and frivolous; indeed he indulges himself in such behaviour. Whereas we allow him to get away with it, he has taken my light-hearted conjectures as a serious suggestion. What he has done, however, is to demonstrate the force of my argument, which is that we should have a proper discussion, separate from the Bill, about the question, “What is the right time period?”

There are many good counter-arguments; the hon. Gentleman has enumerated some of them. My sympathies for those prisoners denied their right to vote are more limited than my sympathies for the other categories of potential postal voter that he mentioned, but I am sure that those prisoners too will have their defenders. Should we not have a separate debate on a separate piece of legislation on this question—if legislation is required? Maybe it is required, but I do not think that we should be making this amendment to a Bill that needs to stand the test of time. It needs to rest as a keystone in our constitution that lasts through the ages and is not eroded by time. I hope, therefore, that everyone in the House will choose to reject the new clauses and the amendments proposed by the hon. Gentleman.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

My childhood, unlike that of the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), was not peppered with bedtime stories of prorogations and other interesting matters.

Before I speak to the two amendments in my name, I want to discuss new clause 4 and some of the other amendments on Prorogation. I accept the point made by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) that anomalies left in legislation can lead to all sorts of continuing questions, and to absurdities and abuses. In so far as we are trying to create fixed-term Parliaments and trying to set out in clear and reliable terms the circumstances in which an election can be brought about early, we should as far as possible have those arrangements as tidy—to use the hon. Gentleman’s valleys word—as possible.

However, I accept the point that the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford made: that the amendments of themselves would not sort out all the questions. If our real fear is that a future Francis Urquhart Prime Minister will exploit these anomalies and devices to create all sorts of problems, we should recognise that the amendments themselves would not fully prevent that, because a Machiavellian Prime Minister who was able to marshal and control votes in the House would be able to do exactly the same with Prorogation. To a degree we are in the realm of,

“There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza”.

Each time we try to solve the problem, we come back to the basic issue of trust and control—the control that a Prime Minister and Whips could have in the House, where things rest on a vote determined by the Prime Minister.

I believe, however, that important amendments tabled by Members on the Opposition Front Bench would at least ensure that there are not open and blatant inconsistencies between election spending windows for different elections that could be taking place fairly coterminously. Simply as a matter of good legislative practice, we should as far as possible try to resolve those problems and keep things squared now.

Also in response to what the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford said, if we are serious about the Bill being a fixed-term Parliament Bill, and if its purpose is to prevent people from being surprised into an election or an election from being called at a stroke, it could help if we had clear fixed time limits for Prorogation, such as those that are being suggested. I am somewhat like the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) in that I come from a political tradition that does not particularly like caps being doffed in the House of Lords or anywhere else, so I would prefer to avoid the constitutional eccentricity of Prorogation, but if that is part of the chosen furniture and architecture of this place, at least let us ensure that we do not trip over it in a dangerous way.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Mark Durkan and Nick Boles

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

I am second to no one in this place, even to the hon. Gentleman, in my respect for the Scottish Parliament. I am a Conservative who always believed that we should have had a Scottish Parliament, and I am delighted that we have one. However, I hold the Scottish Parliament in as much contempt as I do all our political elites, in that we do not necessarily reflect the interests, concerns and priorities of the people whom we represent when we discuss politics itself and how elections are conducted.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Is the hon. Gentleman’s argument that politicians are not good at deferring to the people when they argue about politics? That is not exactly a case for saying that politicians should campaign in elections on the day when the electorate are choosing the democratic process that gives them their power of choice in the future.

[Nick Boles]

Absolutely not. That is actually the contrary argument. The argument should be that if somebody can present me with evidence that people other than politicians, stakeholders, returning officers and anyone involved in all the other bureaucratic paraphernalia of getting ourselves these jobs would prefer—

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Mark Durkan and Nick Boles

Monday 13th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)]

rose—

[Mark Durkan]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Boles]

I certainly agree with the right hon. Gentleman on that point—I should like to call him my right hon. Friend; I am very keen on people joining the coalition, as Members might know—but I am not sure whether the courts are any more capricious than Members of this House. Is that a terrible thing to say?

I am troubled by the proposal of the Clerk of the House, and I fear that those on my own side who advance it are doing so not because they really think that he has a better way to secure fixed-term Parliaments but because they do not believe in fixed terms, and they want to undermine the Bill. If it is going to be brought in, they want it to be introduced in as weak a form as possible. So let us not be deluded by that argument.

I want to turn briefly to the argument about election dates. I shall approach the subject with great deference to those who represent parts of the other nations of the United Kingdom, because they of course must be the ones who speak for their constituents. However, in the United States—a place where individual states have much more power and at least as much sense of their own independence and individual character—all the elections always happen on the same day. In that fine democracy, they happen on the first Thursday in November, either every four years or every two years. In the United States, people would consider it a constitutional outrage if elections were to happen on any other day.

If elections were held on different days, minor elections—I do not venture to suggest that elections to the devolved Assemblies are minor; I am talking about any that people thought were minor—might be used to express an opinion about a major subject, such as the economic policy of the UK Government. It is only by having elections on the same day that people can be guaranteed an ability to express their opinion on every issue that matters to them, be it local, regional or pertaining to their state, their governor, their mayor or the Government of the day. The same applies to referendums, which is why I also support the idea of their being held on the same day. I venture to suggest that hon. Members should really question whether they are assisting the independence of their local elections, and the autonomy of the decision making on the issues in those elections, by proposing separate election dates. I fear that they might achieve the reverse.

[Mark Durkan]

The hon. Gentleman referred to the United States of America, where there are no rules on media balance and supposedly no statutory protections for parties in the broadcast media or anywhere else, and where massive amounts of money are spent. The electoral climate in the United States is entirely different from ours. If he is suggesting that elections to our devolved Parliament and Assemblies and to this Parliament should be conducted in the way they are in America, what does he think the turnout would be?

[Nick Boles]

If people have to go to the polls only once and have to take seven decisions that will affect every single part of government, I suggest that that will make them more likely to vote in the “lower” elections than they would if those elections took place on their own, particularly when people might be busy, have to take the kids to school and get to work. I suspect that the turnout would advance, but let me make it clear that the Deputy Prime Minister has said that he will want to understand the concerns and that the final decision will be made in consultation with the devolved Assemblies.

In the remaining time available, let me deal with one suggestion—for an amendment to the Bill—made by the Select Committee, of which I am lucky enough to be a member. I hope that the Government will consider it in further stages. The suggestion was that, after an extraordinary or exceptional Dissolution, to avoid any jiggery-pokery or any attempt to engineer a Dissolution to the benefit of one party, the term of whatever Government came in after that Dissolution would be just for the balance of the normal term. If the extraordinary Dissolution came after three years, there would be only two years left for the succeeding Government. I think that might go some way to reinforce the Bill’s intention to ensure that a Dissolution is not done in a frivolous, arbitrary or partisan way.

In conclusion, let me say that that is the only amendment that I would propose and that I propose it in the spirit of improvement rather than criticism. I very much hope that Members will see fit to support this fine Bill.