Electoral Registration and Administration Bill

Mark Field Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Dan Rogerson]

I would argue that, in an election campaign, one would hope to have more engagement with the voters before polling day. If we are to have a more meaningful discussion with the electorate, the candidates will need to know where their electors are, so that they can send them literature or perhaps telephone them.

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

Is the thrust of the hon. Gentleman’s argument that he is happy for the system of overseas voting to remain intact when only a relatively small number of overseas electors is involved, but that if that number became so large that it could make a profound difference to particular results, he would be more concerned about the proposal put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown)?

[Dan Rogerson]

I can see why the hon. Gentleman might think that, but no—this has been a source of frustration to me when I have been a candidate at local and national elections and it has not been easy to engage the overseas electors. It would be even more of a problem if their numbers were much greater. This is more about the principle than the number, however, although in some constituencies—and certainly in some local council elections—the majority involved could be very small indeed. Those numbers could affect the outcome in those circumstances. I hope that we can find a process whereby those voters’ addresses could be provided, if the proposal is adopted.

The proposal could also affect electoral spending limits. For example, the hon. Gentleman’s constituency might well contain many people who are involved in finance and travel all over the world. Similarly, the military garrison town represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) will contain much greater numbers of overseas voters. That might need to be taken into account when the limit on election spending is being set.

[Mark Field]

The issue in my constituency is not so much one of overseas electors, although there is the potential for that; it is more one of the electors having second homes, many of which might be in North Cornwall.

[Dan Rogerson]

The hon. Gentleman is tempting me to speak to the amendments to clause 2; the lead amendment, which I have tabled, covers that very subject.

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[Mr Syms]

I rise to support my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown). We all know the history—that the first Thatcher Government implemented legislation, which was then watered down in the wash-up, as a result of which overseas voting has never really taken off. For the reasons already set out, it has seemed to be too difficult and too complicated. Given that there are a potential 4.3 million people abroad who could vote, yet only 23,000 are registered, we ought to be ashamed of the fact that we are not engaging with so many of our citizens.

We live in a global economy. Our future lies in exports and in our companies going abroad. We all know that in getting and undertaking export contracts, we have people in the middle east and elsewhere working for British interests sometimes for years. It is totally wrong if people without a home in the UK who are nevertheless working for British interests abroad do not have the opportunity to vote. Let us not forget that even those who retire to the Costa Blanca or other areas in Spain will have spent a lifetime in the UK working and paying taxes. They will often have family in the UK and still take an interest in what goes on here. Many get British pensions and some in the Costa Blanca even get winter fuel allowance. We seem to be able to pay benefits to retired people abroad, but we have not given enough priority to making a few simple changes in order to empower them by giving them the right to vote.

My hon. Friend argued powerfully about overseas voters registering their last address in the UK, but I am rather attracted to the French system of putting them all into one category and perhaps having an MP at large to represent certain areas abroad. That would make life somewhat easier than the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson) having to e-mail 25 people in Alicante. It is better if the MP represented these people’s concerns, as it might be necessary for the MP to make representations to Spanish local government about what it is doing to the health service.

[Mark Field]

Does my hon. Friend agree that if all 4.3 million overseas electors were to be registered, it would be a matter of some concern that some 7,000 electors would be added to each and every constituency in the UK? Going down the route of designated MPs might well be the right model, as there will be a trigger point somewhere between the current 23,000 and the 4.3 million.

[Mr Syms]

Absolutely, but we would be winning even if got a few hundred thousand registered to vote. What we need from the Government are assurances that they will not only look at the law, but have a long-term campaign to keep those leaving registered and to re-register those abroad. People abroad buy British newspapers, watch Sky television and take an interest in what goes on. I believe that they still have beliefs in what is right for their country. We could argue about modern democracy, electoral reform and proportional representation, but it ill behoves a party that has argued for PR to deny 4.3 million people abroad their vote.

Tower Hamlets (City Status)

Mark Field Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) on introducing this important debate. As he pointed out, I, rather greedily, have two cities in my constituency just to the west of his own. They are also rich in history, and I suspect I could bore Members for some hours by going into the details of that history. It was a great pleasure to listen to the hon. Gentleman’s speech, in which he described, with understandable pride, the great achievements of Tower Hamlets. Although he spoke about its great history, he also had a firm eye on the future.

In light of the previous debate, it might be relevant to mention that one thing Tower Hamlets lacks is a league football club. We might, perhaps, hope that returns to its historical roots at some point by crossing the river again—although I suspect the local constabulary might not be too keen on that idea, particularly on derby days when Millwall plays West Ham United.

However, although the hon. Gentleman made relevant points about Tower Hamlets, I hope we will consider granting city status to other candidates too, so that we do not give the nod to just one new city next year. Reading is my home town, and that is one of the other places in the running, and I also think there is a strong case for Croydon. If it were a self-standing entity rather than a London borough, it would be the ninth largest settlement in the UK.

The case for Tower Hamlets is strong. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, the financial district that has grown up from nothing over the past 20 years makes a great case for its having city status, and so does its great history. For those purists who want there to be a cathedral, there are the three Hawksmoor churches. St George-in-the-East and the others would all happily fit the bill.

However, the hon. Gentleman’s most important statement in promoting Tower Hamlets was that we should look to the future. The great multicultural, multi-ethnic and multi-racial mix that is Tower Hamlets, with the great change we are seeing in that part of our capital city, deserves to be recognised as an example of how our cities should be.

The hon. Gentleman referred to some of the political controversies and difficulties of the 1920s and 1930s, when Poplar was one of the constituent borough councils of Tower Hamlets. Tower Hamlets has also had more recent political problems, and I hope that the prospect of city status will unite all political people in Tower Hamlets over the next year or so. I hope they will focus on that, rather than on some of the high profile difficulties of the recent past.

I wish the hon. Gentleman Godspeed with his campaign and look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to what has been an excellent short debate.

House of Lords Reform

Mark Field Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman has, say, six Members of the European Parliament floating around, as he puts it, in his area already, and I assume that relations are perfectly cordial. I do not want to cast aspersions on the future reformed House of Lords by comparing it too directly to the European Parliament, but the idea that politicians with different mandates, elected on different cycles and different systems, cannot co-exist, is patently not the case. It happens now, and I think it will happen in the future.

By reforming the upper House so that it is more legitimate but still independent, we can ensure that it continues to function as an effective revising Chamber, able to hold Government to account, but with a new democratic mandate. We can preserve everything that is good about the other Chamber—expertise, independence and wisdom—but at the same time we can inject democracy into the mix and reform the Lords so that it is fit for modern times.

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I am probably in a minority on the Government Benches, but I support a democratic House of Lords. Does the right hon. Gentleman not realise, however, that the complications that he has already put in place in the 20 minutes that he has spoken so far will help opponents of reform to frustrate what he is trying to achieve, whether it be 15-year terms, a partly elected or fully elected Chamber, or a proportional representation system? It is literally seven and a half weeks since the people of this country, in a plebiscite, had a chance to say, overwhelmingly, that they did not want a PR system in our Parliament. How can he possibly consider that this is the right way forward for democratising the House of Lords?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The two issues are wholly separate. More than that, if my hon. Friend has other ideas about how we can arrive at our shared objective of a wholly or mainly elected House of Lords, that is precisely why we are now creating a Joint Committee. That is precisely why we have published not a final Bill but a draft Bill with a White Paper and why that followed a process of cross-party discussion in a Committee that I chaired, and which in turn built on many recommendations of a cross-party nature over the years and the decades. It was not just an invention of this Government. The Wakeham commission, the Straw committee and others came up with many of the recommendations that we are now suggesting. If he thinks they are too complicated, I look forward to his suggestions about how they can be made simpler.

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[Sadiq Khan]

My hon. Friend makes his point very well.

Another area that the Joint Committee will have to examine is the transition. What will happen to the existing Members of the House of Lords? One option is to allow them to continue until they choose to leave by their own volition or die. Even the option of a phased move over time leaves the question of which Members to keep and which to ask to leave. That would not be easy to manage and would not be cheap.

[Mr Field]

Is there not a precedent from what happened in 1999, when the hereditary peers whittled down their own number from 650 to 92? Will the shadow Secretary of State and his party support a similar situation if there is any sense of frustration from this Bill in the years to come, whereby the massively over-bloated House of Lords is reduced from 800 or so Members to 300, allowing each group, including the political parties and the Cross Benchers, to choose their Members on a pro rata basis? Might that not be an important poisoned pill to ensure that we get reform with some speed and alacrity?

[Sadiq Khan]

It is very unusual for me to be fair to the Deputy Prime Minister, but he did include that very option in the White Paper. The Joint Committee will have to look into that before a Bill is finally published in February, as the Government hope.

We are also faced with the cost. Each peer, as I have said, costs £108,000 a year. The 117 new peers who have already been announced will cost £63 million over this Parliament. A transition that involves a 15-year phasing out of existing peers would therefore result in a substantial cost to the taxpayer. Other areas that need resolution are the size of the second Chamber, the impact of early elections, the electoral system to be used, and the need for a referendum for such a big constitutional change.

Between 1997 and 2010 a number of parliamentarians, including some very good ones, stood where the Deputy Prime Minister just made his speech from and argued for reform of the House of Lords. During that time, we made some progress in reforming the House of Lords. We removed 90% of the hereditary peers, created the post of elected Lord Speaker, separated our judiciary from the Lords by creating our first ever Supreme Court, and created people’s peers. We clearly did not go as far as we would have liked. However, as I am sure has happened and will happen to the Deputy Prime Minister, we encountered opposition to our proposals at every turn, most tellingly from his new political bedfellows. The Conservatives opposed our attempts to remove the hereditary peers from the Lords, most recently in the passage of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010. They undermined our attempts to reach a cross-party consensus on Lords reform throughout our 13 years in government. The irony is that this Government are embarking on Lords reform at a time when citizens up and down the country are more preoccupied with fears about job losses, their pensions and cuts to public services. They expect us to prioritise those bread and butter issues as well.

One great parliamentarian who stood where the Deputy Prime Minister just stood and argued for major change to the House of Lords was Robin Cook. When I look at the draft Bill and the White Paper presented by the Deputy Prime Minister, and when I think of the task facing the Joint Committee, I think of the words of Robin Cook on the evening in 2003 when the House of Commons rejected all seven options for reform that had been presented by another Joint Committee:

“We should go home and sleep on this interesting position. That is the most sensible thing that anyone can say in the circumstances.”

He went on to say that

“the next stage in the process is for the Joint Committee to consider the votes in both Houses. Heaven help the members of the Committee, because they will need it.”—[Official Report, 4 February 2003; Vol. 399, c. 243.]

Reflecting on those comments, I sincerely wish the members of the Joint Committee and the Deputy Prime Minister the best of luck in the challenge ahead.

West Lothian Question

Mark Field Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I have quite significant sympathy with elements of what the right hon. Gentleman has said, particularly as so many of the Welsh-related issues in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill were not even debated in the House, which was highly regrettable. Equally, surely he must understand that one of the problems with the West Lothian question is the idea of over-representation of particular parts of the UK. Does he feel that it is sustainable for Wales to be so massively over-represented in the United Kingdom Parliament, given its population? Does he feel that it would be wrong to have a reduction on a pro rata basis, to ensure that all parts of the UK were equally represented in this place?

[Paul Murphy]

I do not think that Wales is over-represented. I think that in the House of Commons, Wales is represented differently from England, as are Scotland and Northern Ireland. I will come to that in a moment, because the issue of how Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland exist constitutionally within a United Kingdom is very important. That is why I think that Wales’s current representation is right. When the next election comes—assuming that it will be in four or more years’ time—we will have the lowest number of MPs in Wales since 1832. The hon. Gentleman may recall that in the referendums on devolution in 1997 in Scotland and in Wales, part of the settlement on which the Welsh and Scottish people voted was the retention of the number of MPs for both Scotland and Wales. That was in order to ensure that there was proper representation within the Union. By that I mean decent representation, with advice being heard; I am not necessarily talking about numbers, though of course if there are more, there is a better voice.

[Mr Field]

Does the right hon. Gentleman not understand that there is an equally deeply felt concern in England? Not only is there a devolved settlement that gives the Scots a Parliament, and Northern Ireland and Wales an Assembly with additional powers, but there is a relative over-representation, in the sense of fewer constituents for MPs. Does he not see that there is one leg—a rather important leg—of the United Kingdom that feels very much under-represented and unloved, and that that is one of the reasons why the West Lothian question is becoming more high-profile in England?

[Paul Murphy]

It is one hell of a leg, actually, in terms of its size. That is the point; 85% of MPs, 85% of the population, and 85% of the resources spent on public services in the United Kingdom are English. The voices of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, within that enormous big brother, have to be heard, because that is the strength of the Union. I am a unionist with a small “u”; I believe that the Union should be maintained, but it is best maintained by recognising the diversity of our countries and regions within the United Kingdom. A disproportionate loss in Wales of a quarter of our MPs in one fell swoop will, in my view, affect the efficacy and significance of the Union.

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[Paul Murphy]

Of course they do not, but they sometimes get the benefit. There was a time when people from the Minister’s constituency were able to come to Chepstow to claim free prescriptions, although I believe that that has been stopped. I agree with him that cross-border matters are particularly complicated in our part of England and Wales. It is not quite the same on the Scottish border, because very few people live alongside it. However, on the Welsh border, in both the south and the north, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn referred, it is an issue, and the Minister also makes that point. If we start trying to disentangle all of this, we would get into an awful muddle as to who does what, and who votes on what.

Policies developed in England have implications for the rest of the United Kingdom. Look at student fees, for example. When we are elected, we are elected as MPs for our constituencies, but we are also elected to represent the UK as a whole. We represent the UK in the sense that we take decisions that affect the whole of the UK, not just our own constituencies. Also, who is to define what is an English issue? I rather fancy that that would put the Speaker of the House of Commons in a difficult position.

[Mr Mark Field]

The right hon. Gentleman has touched on the idea that perhaps we need to move, in time, towards some sort of federal structure, and I do not disagree with that, but the contributions made by my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) and the Minister go to the heart of the point, particularly on the health issue. Ultimately, it is a fiction that we have a national health service in the UK. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have four separate national health services, one for each of the four constituent parts of the UK. Therein is one of our key problems. Ultimately, we have to be a little more open with the public at large about how that structure operates. It is to a large extent inconsistent, as the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) points out, but it is not enough simply for us to say that we put the UK’s interests first.

There are issues around transport and policing in London on which I, as a London MP, have very little say, and I feel uneasy about that, to a certain extent. I feel uneasy about speaking on some of those issues, given the devolution to the London government. That is not an entire devolution, in the way that it is for the right hon. Gentleman; he does not represent a single person on health matters, because they have been entirely devolved to the Welsh Assembly.

[Paul Murphy]

But I do represent people on health matters because of decisions made by the British Government on health spending. As I said earlier, if they put spending up, that has a direct consequence for the people of Wales: their spending will go down. My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn referred to cross-border implications; the English health service is important to Welsh Members because of those implications.

Let me say to the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) that I voted on the Bill to set up the London authority. I also voted on issues that affected only Scotland before devolution, and all of us could vote on matters affecting Northern Ireland. There were times when those decisions were highly controversial, such as when the poll tax was introduced in Scotland. That was done on the basis of English MPs agreeing to it, but we had to accept that the principle of British MPs voting on British issues was still important, however disagreeable we thought it might be.

Northern Ireland is a good example, because it had its own devolved system from the early ’20s to the ’60s. The Stormont Parliament dealt with all the issues for which it was responsible—education, health and so on—but Northern Ireland MPs still had a say and a vote on matters that affected England, Scotland and Wales. Indeed, it was when Harold Wilson complained in the ’60s that although steel nationalisation was not a matter that affected Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Members were voting on it, that the Conservative party pointed out that all Members in the House of Commons were equal, in terms of their constitutional rights.

Another problem is that of creating two classes of MPs. I quote again from Kilbrandon:

“in our view, therefore, all Members of Parliament, whether or not they come from regions with their own legislative assemblies, must have the same rights of participation in the business of the House of Commons”.

No European country has two-tier MPs. The nearest country to us in terms of asymmetrical devolution is Spain. I asked the Library to have a look at that situation, and it assured me that all Spanish MPs have exactly the same rights in their Parliament as we do in ours, despite the fact that virtually every aspect of domestic policy is heavily devolved to parts of Spain such as the Basque country and Catalonia.

There would be a problem—the hon. Member for Monmouth has left—if we were to accept two classes of MPs, and if Welsh Members could not vote on English issues, whatever they might be. The UK Parliament is in danger of becoming an English Parliament, and that is very dangerous. What about the House of Lords? This has never been an issue, but it may vote on anything, including matters on which Welsh Members of Parliament could not.

The biggest single issue, however, is that when I vote, as a citizen of the United Kingdom who happens to live in Wales, I vote on the policies of the parties as they affect the United Kingdom, but as a Welsh Member of Parliament, I vote on issues that affect, for example, the English health service. That happens in Scotland. All that cannot be disentangled. What would happen if there were restrictions on Members of Parliament and a Government could not carry a majority on English issues, but could on United Kingdom issues? When a potential Prime Minister goes to the palace, having won a United Kingdom general election, does the Queen ask whether they have a majority in England? That is the problem, because there would be a constitutional mess that we have never previously experienced.

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[Paul Murphy]

Whatever the rights or wrongs, a lot of money that would have come to Wales did not, because it went to the London Olympics. I am not saying that that is good or bad; I am merely pointing out that there was disagreement in Wales. That will always happen. It could be argued, for example, that the southern part of England during the 1960s and 1970s, and recently, voted for more Conservative MPs than Labour or Liberal Democrat MPs. They could feel aggrieved that their part of England has been done down by a Labour Government for whom they did not vote. That is the nature of the United Kingdom legislature, and we cannot change that.

[Mr Mark Field]

The right hon. Gentleman must accept that it was precisely that resentment in reverse that led to the devolution settlement. In the run-up to the 1997 election, his party recognised that 18 years of Conservative rule had dismayed many people in Scotland and Wales, and that is why we went down the devolution route. He cannot have it both ways. That was an important part of the momentum that led to the devolution settlement that we have today.

[Paul Murphy]

I think that is probably right, and that was reflected in the referendum result in Wales. People preferred decisions affecting their lives to be taken in Cardiff instead of Westminster, but that was certainly not the only reason for devolution. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland wanted it for various reasons, and people voted accordingly.

At the end of the day, the Government changed their mind, and the Conservative party changed its mind over the years, partly because of such arguments. After all, the Conservatives have only one Member of Parliament in Scotland, eight in Wales and none in Northern Ireland. Is the Conservative party still a Unionist party? I sometimes doubt it. I also sometimes doubt whether, if there were a majority of Conservatives in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, it would have the same appetite for change. I am sorry about that, because the Conservative party has a long and proud tradition in its own right of protecting the Union, but that is not so now. I sometimes wonder whether it would prefer Wales and Scotland to go their own ways. That would be a dangerous step, particularly in view of the Prime Minister’s respect agenda for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, although I am not convinced that that agenda would be respectful if the powers, responsibilities and duties of Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish Members of Parliament were removed. I sincerely hope that the Government will rethink the issue, because it could imperil our constitution, weaken the Union, and do a great disservice to the people of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I shall speak briefly, because I know that many other hon. Members want to contribute to the debate. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) on securing it, because it is important, and such constitutional issues are close to all our hearts. There are no easy solutions.

A major issue would have blown up after the last general election—the right hon. Gentleman alluded to this—if the Conservatives had tried to form a minority Administration. The coalition now has 12 MPs in Scotland, whereas the Conservative party alone has only a single MP, and has won only three contests in total in the last four general elections. The West Lothian issue would have come much more to the fore, and perhaps that would have been good thing.

I hope that the Minister will say a little about what the Government are planning to do in this regard. The past nine months have been a period of substantial constitutional change, and I share many of the reservations on the Opposition Benches, as my voting record shows. I abstained on Second and Third Readings of the Parliamentary Voting and Constituencies Bill, but I voted against the Government on some occasions. I was uneasy about the Bill’s being seen as slightly partisan along the lines that the right hon. Gentleman pointed out. I was one of three Conservative MPs who voted to retain the overall number of constituencies at 650, although I would try to equalise them, and we are now moving towards that.

We should consider the whole constitutional issue much more broadly, and it is regrettable that we are making significant changes to the House of Commons when we all know in our hearts that this rapid pace of change will not be represented in any of the changes that will be presented to the House of Lords. There is much speculation that the Deputy Prime Minister, particularly if the AV vote does not go the way he wants, will be given the House of Lords issue and rush ahead with it in the second half of the year. I think we all know that not only is there division in the House of Commons, there is probably rather less division that we would like in the House of Lords, and I suspect that many life peers on both sides will want to retain their position, and will stall on any fundamental reforms.

I shall explain what I would like, which is a pipe dream at the moment, but touches on solving some of the issues that the right hon. Gentleman pointed out.

[Paul Flynn]

The hon. Gentleman seems to measure his party’s support in Wales and Scotland by the number of MPs it has. In two of the last four general elections, the Conservative party had 20% of the vote in Wales without a single MP. Would he not be better engaged in proving that first-past-the-post is a rotten, out-of-date electoral system, and campaigning for AV to obtain justice for his party?

[Mr Field]

However much the hon. Gentleman would like to tempt me in that direction, I will not go down that path as it does not apply to today’s debate. However, he makes a serious point. In many ways, devolution was the saving of the Conservative party in Wales in the immediate aftermath of 1997, or at least after 1999 with the Welsh Assembly elections. We now have a stalwart group of Welsh MPs, roughly one quarter of whom are present today—that is until the boundaries change. [Laughter.] I will not be unkind to my colleagues. The Minister is blanching at the prospect of a cross-border Welsh-English seat if some people have their way.

[Mr Harper]

That is not possible.

[Mr Field]

Thankfully, I do not think it is possible with the legislation that has been carefully put into place.

I know that other hon. Members wish to speak, so I will say just a few words about what I consider would be the ideal situation. It is very much a pipe dream and an ideal. I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) said in his earlier contribution. We need to move towards the idea of an English Parliament. We do not need a whole lot more politicians—I hasten to add—but I would like to see all parts of the United Kingdom come under a federal umbrella, with identical powers for the Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and English Parliaments. There would also be the United Kingdom Parliament into which Members of the constituent parts would organise themselves on a pro rata basis. The United Kingdom Parliament would look at bigger strategic economic issues such as foreign affairs and defence. Many things that are already taken for granted in Wales and Scotland, such as policies on transport, health and a whole range of issues that are dealt with through the Assembly or the Scottish Parliament, would be tackled at national level. That is important because a huge amount of resentment is building up in England about what is seen as an unfair arrangement. Having a Conservative-led Government has probably helped to assuage that in the short term, but I fear that sense of resentment will become stronger as we go forward.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman presents a measured and characteristically sensible argument. Does he agree that England is a large country containing very disparate regions? I was born in the north-east of England, which in many respects has more in common with Wales than with Essex. Therefore, the type of targeted health policy that makes sense in Wales would not make sense in England because the needs of the various regions are so different that they could not be adequately dealt with by an English Parliament.

[Mr Field]

There may be something in what the hon. Gentleman says. I was describing my ideal, but I recognise the chief concern that, unlike any other federation, having a single group that contains 85% of the land mass or population, and its Members, would present some difficulties. The Federal Republic of Germany was set up as a post-war construct. Even after the reintegration of East Germany in 1990, there were essentially smaller units. There are particular areas of power—for example, Bavaria is strong due to historical factors and is a powerful Land, and North-Rhine Westphalia is the big industrial heartland, but even the smaller states have an important role to play. Safeguards exist in the United States of America in that each state has two Senate seats, irrespective of size. That means that states work closely together despite great disparities in size and economic power. I accept that point, but as the hon. Gentleman knows, coming from the north-east, there is not much love or great affinity between that region and the area of the United Kingdom immediately to the north. By the same token, when the people of the north-east had the opportunity some seven years ago to sign up for their own government, that move was overwhelmingly defeated. It had been anticipated that that region would have been the most likely to go down the route of a devolved English Government.

[Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)]

I think the hon. Gentleman has hit the nail on the head. Does he agree that the major problems we have had with devolution are because we have never looked at it from a constitutional point of view? Perhaps there is an argument for some sort of written constitution with a Bill of Rights and a clear separation of powers.

[Mr Field]

There is very much an argument for that. It is not particularly a Conservative party idea, but I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman. The nub of his point is correct. We have tended to look at devolution as a political settlement. In 1997, after 18 years of Conservative rule from which the Scots and Welsh felt disfranchised, political momentum allowed devolution to go ahead in a way that would not have happened 20 years earlier.

[Chris Ruane]

If the logic of the Conservative party—not necessarily the hon. Gentleman’s point of view—is that Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs should not be allowed to vote on health and education issues that affect London, should that logic be carried forward to London MPs who have the Assembly?

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[Mr Field]

I think it must be to an extent. As I have said, I feel slightly uneasy about issues of policing and transportation. In the dim and distant past when I was on the Front Bench of my party, I was asked to be a transport spokesman. Because of this issue I did not feel able to take up such a role, and I was offered something else instead. It is an issue, although it is a more byzantine and mixed situation. The Home Secretary still has overall control of London policing—

[Chris Ruane]

You wouldn’t know it

[Mr Field]

One would not necessarily know it from articles in The Daily Telegraph from the past 24 hours, but it is a slightly more complicated situation and therein lies part of the difficulty.

I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about these issues. From my point of view—this is my individual point of view, rather than that of my party—it is regrettable that we have not looked at all issues concerning the constitution so as to try and obtain a relatively logical patchwork. I accept that historical analysis of such matters means that logic is often thrown out of the window. The worry is that we have moved ahead with breakneck speed in a way that will have a big impact on the House of Commons and affect our relationship with our constituents and within our countries. The House of Lords has not been part and parcel of that, and 117 peers have been added at the same time as we needed to reduce the size of the House of Commons on cost grounds. That is illogical. We may have considerably more peers given that the coalition agreement mentions equalising the proportion of peers for each party based on the vote at the last general election. That suggests there will be another couple of hundred peers, and some older Members of the House of Lords are very hacked off at the idea of not getting a seat in their own Chamber. It is regrettable that we have not looked at that matter, and I hope that as part of the West Lothian question, we will look at all those constitutional issues together and try to obtain a position for the whole constitution over the years to come, including an analysis of the separation of powers referred to by the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans).

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Lucas]

For present purposes, I will resist that temptation because I am talking specifically about Scotland and Wales. We know that the Conservative party has done very badly in elections in Scotland since 1997 and still has only one Member of Parliament in Scotland, despite huge numbers of relaunches in that country. We know also that even last year, the share of the vote that the Conservative party secured in Wales when it ended up forming a Government with its friends the Liberal Democrats was less than it secured in 1992. It has not made the progress in Wales that it would have liked to make.

The lesson that I would have liked the Conservative party to learn from that is that it needs to reach out more to the peoples of Scotland and Wales than it has done. My view is that it has done exactly the opposite. It has withdrawn from the battlefield. We saw, for example, that the Secretary of State for Wales did not feel able to make her position clear on the recent referendum in Wales before it took place. The Prime Minister is in effect treating Scotland and Wales at the moment as a franchise—something that is given over to someone else and that does not really affect the person who gives it over. It is the political equivalent of SUBWAY.

[Mr Mark Field]

The hon. Gentleman, in an otherwise thoughtful speech, is being a little unfair to the Conservatives in Wales. Clearly, since 1859 we have been a minority party in Wales. As the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) pointed out, we got 20% of the vote even in 1997. However, it is fair to say that the Conservative group in the Welsh Assembly has worked very hard to make the Assembly work. Obviously, there has not always been agreement, because it has spent the past 12 years in one form of Opposition or another. None the less, it has made it work. The Welsh Conservative party is not only doing its best to make the Welsh Assembly work, but playing a very important part in the whole polity of Wales within the United Kingdom, so the hon. Gentleman’s criticism is rather unfair.

[Ian Lucas]

As always, the hon. Gentleman makes a very interesting point. The Welsh Conservative party may be seeking to take matters forward as far as devolution is concerned. For example, the Conservative group in the National Assembly for Wales felt able to support the recent referendum. However, the key point is that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom did not feel able to support the Conservative group in the National Assembly for Wales. The Secretary of State for Wales did not feel able to support the Conservative group in the—

[Mr Field]

rose—

[Ian Lucas]

Give me a moment. The Secretary of State for Wales did not feel able to support the position of the members of the Conservative group in the National Assembly for Wales. That is why they are a franchise. They are out in the wilderness as far as the national Conservative party is concerned. They are of no concern to the Conservative party based at Westminster, because that party does not take heed of any of the MPs from Wales who represent it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David]

Yes, where is she, and what is the point of the Wales Office? The Wales Office has a point; there is a need for a Secretary of State for Wales, but he or she has a job to do. That job needs to be promoted effectively, which is not being done at the moment.

I want to pick up something said by my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas). As someone who passionately believes in devolution—as power should rest close to the people—and who believes in Wales and the United Kingdom, my concern is that there is almost an unholy alliance, an inadvertent alliance, between Welsh nationalism and the Conservative party. Although they might sometimes be pulling in different directions, the common ground is the break-up of the United Kingdom. The Conservative party is becoming an English party. That worries me intensely. It goes against the whole grain of history. Nevertheless, it is becoming an objective truth.

[Mr Mark Field]

The fact is we have eight seats; the Conservative party is the second party in Wales. As the hon. Gentleman will know, only two years ago, we got more votes in the European election than the Labour party, for the first time in living memory. I do not think that there is any sense that the Welsh Conservative party wants to break away. In many ways we are very committed to the United Kingdom and to Wales.

[Mr David]

Yes, but my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham made the important point that it spoke volumes when the Secretary of State for Wales had no opinion in the recent referendum. That shows the attitude of the Conservative party towards Wales. At the very least, it is not interested. It does not want to know.

That brings me to the last point I wish to make. It is extremely important to have this England and Wales debate and to recognise that the United Kingdom has particularities, but there are also many things that unite us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) on securing this debate.

It is particularly interesting that the West Lothian question is being debated without the benefit of advice from Scottish Members of Parliament. The Liberal Democrats were here briefly, and three Conservative Members joined the debate briefly and then left. The level of passion and excitement that some Conservative Members say that there is on the subject is not quite as evident as they suggest. It is interesting that it took a Welsh Member of Parliament to bring the matter before the House. I also congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Wrexham (Ian Lucas), for Caerphilly (Mr David), and for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) on their important contributions to the debate.

Although many people think that Welsh MPs have been attending Parliament since 1542, it is worth bearing in mind that Wales had representation before then—but only in the shape of four bishops, who attended from the very first Parliament. In 1327, 24 Members of Parliament from north Wales were invited to attend, but only from the north. They were to attend the Parliament that was meant to depose Edward II, but because Isabella thought that they might vote the wrong way, half of them were arrested and kept in captivity. They were not allowed to attend Parliament, which seems to be rather the sort of attitude that the Government now hope to advance. As we have heard, Scottish MPs arrived in 1707 and Irish MPs in 1801, although with the creation of the Irish Free State the number changed.

Two contradictory political forces are at work, not only in British politics but elsewhere in the world. The first is globalisation, in that every street has the same sort of shops, we all see the same images on television and, broadly speaking, everyone has similar experiences. As a result, people regularly say that they do not want a postcode lottery. They resent the fact that one town may be able to get a drug on the NHS that is not available in other parts of the country. We were reminded earlier that tuition fees are not being imposed in Wales because of the decision by Welsh Assembly Government, but that they are being hiked up to £9,000 in England. The second is this: people resent the postcode lottery, but at the same time a passionate desire is pulling in the other direction; people want much more local decision making, and want to be able to decide what happens to the configuration of local services. In the end, one of the biggest problems is the pushmi-pullyu force that we are seeing in British politics.

I admit that there is concern in England about what seems to be the unfairness of Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish Members being able to vote on matters that substantially affect England, but English Members not being able to vote on matters that affect only Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. I say to those who want to go down the route of change that that is a meretricious argument. In this context, all that glisters is not gold. For a start, it is difficult to decide precisely what is England-only legislation.

The Minister will know that I have used this example before, but it is an important one. The Health Act 2006 was going to introduce a ban on smoking in public places, among other things. When it was being debated, I remember saying to a Welsh group of Labour MPs and then in the Chamber that if we voted in a particular way it would mean that clubs and pubs in Wales would not have the opportunity to make special rooms available for smokers. Everybody disagreed with me; the Clerks disagreed, and the Speaker disagreed, but in the end I was proved right. That is a problem when trying to advance legislation; all too often, the complexity with which it is drafted means that it may seem to be an England-only matter when, in truth, there is a real debate to be had. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen said, if the Speaker decided what was England-only legislation, there would be a danger of bringing the Speaker into party political debate—into debating the substance of how to advance the legislation.

We could instead choose another route, and multiply the number of Bills. However, when drafting, we would have to be rigorous in ensuring that we never allowed a single clause that related to Wales or Scotland, or that had financial implications of any kind. To take up the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen, any financial implication is an implication for the whole of the UK, so any legislation with financial implications must by definition be UK legislation. If we wanted to draft legislation solely for England, we would have to have extra Bills that were Wales-only, Scotland-only and Northern Ireland-only. The multiplication in that process would be a real problem.

[Mr Mark Field]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I shall give way, but I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be quick.

[Mr Field]

The core concern for many English voters is this: the hon. Gentleman referred to health, but he does not speak for any of his constituents in Rhondda on the subject because health is a devolved matter, yet he is able to influence decisions that are made throughout England. Health, of course, is a particularly incendiary problem because of the whole idea of a national health service. The concern of many English voters is not so much that people in Wales have the opportunity for a broader range of services and free prescriptions, but the perception that English taxpayers are footing the bill.

[Chris Bryant]

I know that the hon. Gentleman is a fair man, so I hope that he will explain to his constituents that it is not quite as simple as that. I know that the vast majority of our constituents could not describe the present constitutional settlement. As a result of devolution, they could not say who is in charge of policing, or who is in charge of this, that or the other element of environmental policy. A case in point is that the terms and conditions of GPs are not a devolved responsibility. When decisions are made about what GPs do in England, Welsh Members have to be able to vote because implications for Wales will follow from them. If the Speaker had to decide that Welsh Members could not speak in a debate, there would be a terrible row. That would be a problem.

Libya/European Council

Mark Field Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I will certainly look at the suggestion because I am absolutely clear about what the conversation was and that the current Chancellor did not support the action being taken by the previous Chancellor.

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

The Prime Minister rightly points out that the Budget last week went into some detail about the support that we were going to give to small and start-up businesses. Will he go into a little more detail about the work he did this weekend in the European Council on micro-businesses, which will clearly be important organisms for growth in employment in the years ahead, both in Europe and throughout the world?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Businesses that are either starting up now or are yet to start up will provide a lot of the growth in jobs, investment and opportunity here and elsewhere in Europe. What was encouraging about this European Council was that the Commission itself, in response to the letter that we had produced with other countries, brought up its own proposals, one of which was a moratorium on certain regulations for all new businesses for a specific period. That does not go quite as far as what we have done in the UK, but to hear the Commission talk about deregulation, cutting the burden of regulation and taking regulations off new small businesses was, I thought, very good progress.

UN Security Council Resolution (Libya)

Mark Field Excerpts

Friday 18th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point, and we have to consider all of these issues. The point I would make is that the reason why Gaddafi is weakened and insecure is because his people rose up and said that they wanted no more of him and that they wanted to have a more open and democratic future. I believe that in response to that we have been right, and others have been right, to encourage the Arab world and the north African world to move in a more democratic direction. She is absolutely right to say that from a national security perspective we have to consider all the implications of what is happening in Libya. The Home Secretary will be looking at the consequences for migration and we need to look at the consequences in terms of security policy too. The hon. Lady is entirely right in that view.

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

Although today’s statement has understandably focused on military and diplomatic issues, a huge humanitarian crisis is already taking place, with a large number of Libyans having already fled and crossed the Mediterranean to Malta, Italy and other places. I was very encouraged by what the Prime Minister had to say about the role of the Department for International Development. Would he recognise that many of us in this House and countless millions of our constituents are equally proud of the very strong soft power that our nation is able to utilise and which we hope it will utilise in these difficult weeks and months ahead?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point, and I will stress again what the International Development Secretary will be doing. Obviously, he will be looking at what has been happening on Libya’s borders—we have discussed that before—but he will also be looking at the issues within Libya itself. There is no doubt in my mind that in this situation soft power has had an enormous effect on giving people a sense that a better future is available to them and that they do not have to put up with the regimes that they have had to put up with for so long. Despite the fact that there may be difficult days ahead, as we grapple with implementing this UN Security Council resolution, we should lift our heads up and believe that there is a more hopeful future for this region and, therefore, for our world.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Mark Field Excerpts

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman was asking two questions. On the first, I have not had those discussions with the boundary commissions and I do not think it would be appropriate to do so. On the second, I am not sure that the direction would make the difference that he suggests, but he should put his question to the boundary commissions, rather than the Government.

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

Could the Minister clarify the precise situation, because this is slightly confusing? Surely if England is to be divided into regions, each of those regions would have to contain a set number of seats, given that a particular day would be pinpointed. The notion that a particular constituency could cross a regional boundary must be nonsense. We have to work on the basis of a particular region having a certain number of seats, for example, 35 or 45. Any decision taken at the 11th hour for a constituency to cross a regional boundary would have a huge knock-on effect on all the other seats within that region.

[Mr Harper]

No, the process for allocating the fixed number of seats in the Bill is by country. So the 600 seats will be allocated between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland by the fair and impartial process set out in the Bill, which is generally accepted to be the best one for doing these types of divisions. The boundary commissions wanted guidance in the Bill about how to divide up England so that they did not have to do it all in one go. So they will use regions as a starting point, but nothing constrains their ability to cross regional boundaries if they think that that makes sense, taking into account the factors that they are able to consider. The regional boundaries and the allocation of seats to regions are not hard and fast things set out in the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I can understand why hon. Members are asking me these questions, but these are matters for the boundary commissions. One of the things that we made very clear in the debate when we were being accused of gerrymandering by the Labour party was that in our system the boundary commissions draw the lines, whereas in some other countries those lines are drawn by political parties in legislatures. We have set the guidelines for the boundary commissions and the rules are in the Bill, which we hope will be passed by Parliament and thus enacted. The detail of how the boundary commissions go about that work is a matter for them and they are experienced in doing such work. When they have these public hearings, having published their proposals, they will set out the nature of the scheme under which they are going to listen to people, and they will be very clear about how they have reached their decisions. These are matters for the boundary commissions. I can understand why my hon. Friend is trying to tempt me on this, but it would be wrong for Ministers to try to get involved in directing the boundary commissions on how they carry out their work.

[Mr Mark Field]

Does my hon. Friend not appreciate the concern that when we are discussing whether there should be any variance, be it of 5% or 7.5%, it is important to know how the process operates? If the entire United Kingdom—its 650 seats—were to be considered at once, there would be almost no need for any variance. If things are considered on the basis of smaller clusters, one can see the relevance of having that sort of variance, particularly if there is also a desire to avoid crossing ward boundaries. We do need to have an understanding of the process. If we do not have at least a basic understanding of how it will operate, it will be difficult for us to make any value judgment as to where the variance should lie, which is the subject of amendment 19.

[Mr Harper]

I do not agree with my hon. Friend’s analysis that if we were conducting a single review across the whole United Kingdom, we would not need the plus or minus 5% flexibility at all. We would still need it. At the extreme, we could say that every constituency had to be exactly the same size. We would then end up with a map with lots of straight lines on it, but I do not think anybody would think that that was satisfactory. We therefore set a plus or minus 5% variance, so that the boundary commissions can get seats pretty close to that quota, in order for votes to be of equal weight, but they can also take properly into account the things that hon. Members and those outside this place think they should be able to consider. I do not believe that he was in for the earlier debate, but he will know that the former Member for his constituency had an amendment in the other place proposing that the boundaries of the City of London can be explicitly examined, and I hope that he will welcome that. These are matters for the boundary commissions and we should not be prescriptive about how they carry out their work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew George]

I wish to make a few brief remarks on this most inflexible and rigid part of the Bill. The amendments would move things in the right direction by giving the boundary commissions greater latitude and flexibility than they would have had under the original Bill. In my view, that is a result of the intransigence of the Prime Minister, rather than the Deputy Prime Minister, in insisting that we adopt a situation in which there are just 600 MPs. A more flexible approach would have been to say that there should be no more than 600 and to allow the Boundary Commission the latitude and flexibility to interpret that alongside a clear instruction to work towards more equalised constituencies.

The Government have won that argument, and certainly the current range in electorate sizes across constituencies is intolerable and more effort must be made to achieve greater equality across constituencies. However, to do so in the sanitised, homogenised, rigid, inflexible and intransigent way that the Government propose is not the solution, because that will continue to create a wide range of significant anomalies across the country.

Given some of the interventions that we have heard, particularly from Government Members, it will be interesting to note how the work of the Boundary Commission will dawn on those Members as it does its work. They might believe that the whole town they represent, or the whole part of a shire county, for example, which they feel comfortable with, will not be changed, other than a little nibbling away at the boundaries, which they can tolerate. However, the Government’s approach will mean that we will end up with lines being drawn straight through those constituencies, and the associations that have been established over years between Members of Parliament and their towns will be divided as a result.

I do not know how it will all pan out. As we have heard, although there will be guidance for the Boundary Commission to work within what I call the Government zones, but which others have described as regional boundaries, there is no absolute requirement for it to do so.

[Mr Mark Field]

Surely the hon. Gentleman must realise that every major boundary review, including those that took place before the 1983, 1997 and 2010 elections, resulted in more than half of all constituencies changing, often substantially. That is the nature of any boundary review.

[Andrew George]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, but I think that the inflexibility of the proposals will result in much more significant changes across the country. Having argued that we should have far fewer MPs than even proposed in the Bill, I am not averse to the idea of significant changes being made at one time to the process by which MPs are elected, but I do not think that it should happen every five years, irrespective of what has happened before. That will happen across the country every five years, and as a result of these proposals the changes will be very significant indeed.

All I am asking is that the Government take a less intransigent and more flexible approach—the 7.5% figure is a reasonable extension, frankly. In order to be able to address many of the anomalies, from Argyll and Bute to the Cornish seats and the highlands, the Boundary Commission will need to be given a great deal more latitude than the amendment proposes, as the Minister has rightly said. We had the opportunity to extend the exceptional geographical circumstances of the Western Isles—

Community Cohesion

Mark Field Excerpts

Wednesday 26th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to hold this debate under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I called this debate because I am deeply concerned about the communities in which I live and in which I grew up. At a time of public sector cuts, declining rates of growth are exacerbating the efforts of the north-east to help rebalance the economy. In County Durham, Sedgefield could suffer the same fate this decade that it did in the 1980s. There was hope, because the previous Government drew up a plan to halve the deficit, but that has now been replaced by a strategy to eradicate the deficit. As a consequence, unemployment is rising, economic confidence is damaged and growth is starting to stall.

When we left power, unemployment was falling and home repossessions and business bankruptcies were only half what they were in the 1980s and 1990s. The previous Government were acting in the spirit of the big society. In the 1980s, unemployment in Sedgefield stood at 5,500, 40% of whom were out of work for 12 months or more. Then the figures were massaged, so people were taken from the unemployment register and put on incapacity benefit and whole communities were closed down. If you met someone in the street, you never asked them if they were well; you asked them whether they had a job. Lessons are being learned. As the Government cut deep into public services with a fury, we do not want their mantra, “There is no such thing as society”, thrown back in our face. Some argue that the Government’s notion of the big society is a cover for the cuts, but it is, I believe, worse than that. I accept that the Government believe in a big society—after all they cannot be against fresh air. However, their deep cuts into the grants awarded to the third sector will inevitably prevent them from building such a society. Those who want to build a big society will not be able to do so, because they are denied the proper tools.

Charities have always had a role in society. People have always volunteered, but the need for charity and for volunteers becomes more acute when society fails its people. You only need to look at the coal mining traditions of County Durham in the late-19th and 20th centuries to prove the point. As A. J. P. Taylor said:

“Until August 1914 a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state beyond the post office and policemen.”

Perhaps some would like to return to such an age, but let us look at what it meant to the mining communities of that time.

Colliery owners provided housing from which colliers could be evicted at any time. Thousands of miners died at their jobs—sometimes hundreds of them died in a single incident, because of the lack of mine safety. Education was provided by charities, the Church and sometimes by colliery owners. At the opening of his school in East Hedleyhope colliery towards the end of the 19th century, Sir Bernhard Samuelson said:

“If elementary schools were being built for the working population, colleges and secondary schools were also being erected for those who employed them.”

Life expectancy for miners was poor. In the 20th century, 27% of miners were disabled before they retired. Health care, which was provided at the county hospital in Durham city, was funded by miners’ subscriptions. It was a time of great volunteering, of banding together and of mutual help. It was driven not just by altruism, but by enlightened self-interest.

In the 1890s, some 52% of the adult population—the highest figure of any county—belonged to a co-operative and were known as co-operators. Some 130,000 miners in Durham joined together to form the Durham Aged Mineworkers’ Homes Association, which built homes for miners, so that they could live out their retirement in dignity. They were able to live in a “haven of rest” rather than go to the workhouse.

The miners also formed a trade union and, as we all know, the trade union movement itself helped to form the Labour party. Keir Hardie, one of our founding fathers, believed in “a communal consciousness”, which is what we today would call a big society. It is this belief in community that has always driven my politics. I am proud of what the miners did for themselves and I am proud of their heritage, but you could argue that they were practising the big society.

It is obvious that the miners did not live in a big society and that they did what they had to do. They risked their lives every day of the week, and there was no one there to help. As they left the pit, they had to run charities and raise funds to look after themselves. They put into practice the belief that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone. To me that is what a society that is fair, big and good should be doing.

For the big society to work, there must be more than just volunteering and charity, because there must be a democratically elected Government who act on behalf of the people and the community. People will be able to live secure in the knowledge that society will work with them to provide the environment for health, work and education.

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

With respect, the hon. Gentleman’s seat is very different from the one that I represent. None the less, I have some big problems in my own area, too. He makes the case for the history of Sedgefield and brings it up to the current day. Did he not agree with the Prime Minister when he said that there was such a thing as society, but it was not necessarily the same as the state? That is not to say that the state has no role, but that it should not have an exclusive role.

[Phil Wilson]

I do not think for one moment that anyone is saying that there is no place for charity or for volunteering, but both must work in hand with the state if we are to have a fair and just society. We cannot have one without the other. I use the miners as an example, because what they were practising is what we would see today as the big society. Self-interest made them behave in such a way, because there was no one there to help them and the state would not take part. As A. J. P. Taylor said, the state was nowhere. The only time you came across it was when you went to the post office or when you met a policeman in the street. A strong society is what we need, and it is something that the Labour party has helped to build over the years.

The big society cannot only be about you and what you do for yourself, because it is also about what you can do for others, which is something with which we can all agree. The greatest acts of volunteering and charity will come where there is the greatest need, such as in the coalfields of County Durham in the 19th and 20th centuries, and I do not want to return to those times. The Government thought not only that they did not have a role but that they should not have a role either. A lot of volunteering and charitable work goes on today, which the Government have acknowledged. Volunteering levels have remained stable since 2001 with 40% of people volunteering once a year and 27% of people volunteering once a month.

Citizen Survey, which has been quoted by the Government, also states that 83% of people perceive their community as cohesive and agree that their local area is a place in which people from different backgrounds got on well together, which is an increase on 2003.

When people are content, there is little likelihood of their feeling the need to volunteer. It is a testament to the efforts of the previous Government that they put so much into community cohesion.

Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Mark Field Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) has performed a signal service to the House by initiating this debate. I congratulate him on his pertinent and important contribution.

I declare an interest. I am one of the 128 MPs who are no longer able to claim expenses for accommodation in London, even though—my hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Mr Gale) rightly alluded to this—my journey time correctly measured from my front door to my House of Commons office door is some two hours, and that is on days when it is not snowing.

I want to make five quick points. First, under section 5 of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009, IPSA is under clear statutory consultation obligations. I believe that IPSA was in clear breach of those statutory obligations in respect of MPs like myself whose constituencies were not specifically identified either in the Kelly report or in IPSA’s own consultation document as constituencies where the MPs were likely to be deprived of their London accommodation expenses, virtually without notice. I consider that the treatment by IPSA of this group of MPs, particularly those who have rental contracts, has been wholly unacceptable.

The chronology ran as follows. On 29 March this year, IPSA published its MPs expenses scheme, and the MPs concerned learned, out of the blue, that they would no longer obtain reimbursement for their rental contracts. The expenses scheme was brought into statutory effect on the very same date by Mr Speaker laying the expenses scheme before the House. A few days later, on 12 April, Parliament was dissolved, and the MPs concerned therefore lost any ability to contest or to object to the provisions that had been included in the expenses scheme.

Polling day was a few weeks later on 6 May, and the IPSA expenses scheme came into legal effect on the following day, 7 May. Those MPs with rental contracts found themselves unable to claim reimbursement for their rental payments under those contracts with immediate effect. I believe this was a serious breach of IPSA’s statutory consultation obligations. If any employer, whether in the public or the private sector, had treated their people in the same way, they would face serious liability for damages in front of an employment tribunal.

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

I hope my right hon. Friend will recognise that we are not employees in any sense. We are self-employed. Had he lost his seat on 6 May, there would have been no question of reimbursement from public funds for his rental contract, however much time remained unfilled.

[Sir John Stanley]

There is an important point on the status of MPs, to which I shall come later. If they were self-employed, they would determine their own expenses scheme. They emphatically are not doing so.

The second point is that in its expenses scheme, IPSA produced a schedule of what it described as “fundamental principles”. An important fundamental principle is fundamental principle 2. It reads:

“Members of Parliament have the right to be reimbursed for unavoidable costs where they are incurred wholly, exclusively, and necessarily in the performance of their parliamentary duties, but not otherwise.”

It is an illustration of the sad and regrettable fact that the IPSA board members have not adequately informed themselves about what is involved in the work of an MP that that principle, which IPSA says is fundamental, has not been complied with in a number of cases. I want to explain one such case.

As all of us know, what are deemed to be outer London Members—which includes a huge swathe representing constituencies in the home counties—regularly make day visits to their constituencies wholly for parliamentary purposes, such as to attend a school or a meeting with their health authority, but none of the travel costs for such trips are reimbursable under the IPSA expenses scheme unless the Member goes to his or her constituency office, which might be wholly irrelevant to the purpose of the journey. That is one illustration of IPSA failing to comply with what it describes as a fundamental principle, and I have no doubt that other Members can think of further situations when they have incurred expenses

“wholly, exclusively, and necessarily in the performance of their parliamentary duties”

that have not been reimbursed.

My third point is about a term with which we are all very familiar: maladministration. In the Westminster Hall debate initiated by the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick), countless examples of maladministration by IPSA were given. It is very regrettable that in putting together the legislation that is the basis for IPSA, the previous Government failed to apply to IPSA as a statutory quango the same right of redress as applies in respect of a host of similar bodies—namely, the right for an individual to make a complaint of maladministration, in this case to the parliamentary ombudsman. It is equally regrettable that the current Government have thus far failed to address that.

I submitted a written parliamentary question on that point to the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, which was answered this week:

“The remit of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration (the Parliamentary Ombudsman) is updated annually. As part of this exercise, consideration is given to whether bodies established in year should be brought within the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s remit.”—[Official Report, 29 November 2010; Vol. 519, c. 560W.]

The parliamentary ombudsman’s remit is under constant examination, and I believe IPSA should forthwith be brought within its remit so that Members of Parliament—and possibly others, such as Members’ staff—can make a complaint of maladministration against IPSA to the parliamentary ombudsman.

My fourth point is that in any properly functioning democracy it is, of course, essential that Ministers and Members of Parliament are not in any way above the law, but equally in any properly functioning democracy Members of Parliament should have the same rights in law as are available to other individuals who are engaged in their occupational work. Under IPSA, however, Members of Parliament are uniquely disadvantaged in law. IPSA is effectively performing the functions of the employer: in any walk of life it is the employer who determines what expenses can be claimed for, how they should be claimed for and so forth, and those are exactly IPSA’s functions. In any other walk of life, the employee—the person working—would be able to go to an employment tribunal. Members are not self-employed; we have employed status for tax purposes. IPSA is the employer in that it determines the expenses framework, but Members are, I believe, the only occupational group in this country who have employed status but no right of recourse to an employment tribunal. That should change, and we should have the same rights as every other occupation group, solely, I stress, in relation to IPSA and the performance of its expenses function and emphatically not—I repeat, not—in relation to the electorate.

My fifth and final point is about parliamentary privilege. Of the privileges that we have, one of the most important for the benefit of our constituents is the fundamental privilege of freedom from obstruction in the performance of our parliamentary duties. In our debates about IPSA, Member after Member has referred to the way in which they as Members, or their staff assisting them, have been obstructed by IPSA—by its bureaucratic processes, failure to answer the telephone and the 1,001 things to which Members have referred—in terms of the severe loss of time while dealing with the authority and its procedures. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor, in his House magazine article on 8 November, said of IPSA:

“It actively obstructs Members in their efforts to represent the people who elect them,”

and he was absolutely correct.

I am in no doubt that this issue—the relationship between IPSA and parliamentary privilege—should be brought before the Standards and Privileges Committee. As the House knows, under current procedures, which in my view are outdated and urgently need to be reformed, the only way in which an individual Member can put a complaint about a breach of privilege in front of that Committee is by means of making a precedence motion application to Mr Speaker. Most right hon. and hon. Members know that I have made such an application because there is no doubt whatever in my mind that many Members are being materially obstructed in the performance of their parliamentary duties by IPSA, but my application was, sadly, unsuccessful.

I hope that right hon. and hon. Members in all parts of the House will not be deterred by the fate of my application; I hope that other Members will consider making an application to Mr Speaker; and I very much hope that their persuasions in relation to Mr Speaker on this issue are superior to my own.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

No one could accuse my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) of lacking bravery in introducing this debate. I suspect that not many votes can be found in bringing up IPSA once again, so it is to his credit.

We all faced difficulties through IPSA’s teething problems—even me, as a central London MP. I have no need for a second home, but obviously I have had an office to run, like all other Members. My big concern is that all parties promised the British public a new politics in May’s general election, which was supposed to draw a line under the calamitous expenses scandal. I am increasingly alarmed that after everything there is a sense among the public that the political class still do not get it. We will have some high-profile High Court cases and I am sure that we will see a number of parliamentarians imprisoned in the course of the next six months. The whole issue will not go away quickly.

I did not agree with much of what the hon. Member for Chippenham (Duncan Hames) had to say, but my biggest concern is for many of the new intake and I am glad that he took the opportunity to give us his views today. I know that many of the new MPs to whom I have spoken are suffering the most and are suffering genuine hardship. I feel that, in a way, they are paying for the sins of a past generation under the old system, which was so disastrous.

I have to say—I know that I will be the only person saying this—that I agreed with quite a lot of what the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) had to say. We have crossed swords on this over the years. He is right that the Executive and their insistence on taking control of these issues has led us down a path to disaster.

I am sorry to say to my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) that this is not just about the most recent party leaders—it goes back some 30 years. The use of allowances as a substitute for salary increases, in particular, had been independently recommended and was used by successive Governments going back to the mid-1980s.

After the Derek Conway case of January 2008, we had a promise that there would be root-and-branch reform, but there was nothing of the sort. We collectively had the opportunity at that time to make the changes and we all felt that we could continue to pull the wool over the public’s eyes and went through the calamitous collection of High Court cases in which the Speaker’s Commission—including some senior parliamentarians in this place and in the House of Lords—took the view that we should fight that fight. It turned out to be an absolute calamity. At that juncture, the freedom of information case concerned only 12 Members and former Members, but once it had gone to the courts the whole situation was opened up. It turned out to be an absolute calamity, and we have ourselves to blame.

My biggest concern is, again, for the new generation of MPs. Because of a genuine sense of hardship and a sense of frustration about the whole process, I would not be surprised if quite a few did not stand at the next election. We will have a lot of one-term MPs, and voluntarily so, which is a terrible indictment of the fact that we have not got the system sorted out correctly. It has been a catalogue of disasters.

I have some sympathy with what my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough said. In the House of Lords, a daily allowance is paid across the board, without any need for receipts or for an IPSA-type bureaucracy. I know that that is not an ideal scenario, but it seems to me that if their lordships have gone down that route and it seems to be working pretty well, we should not necessarily exclude it ourselves.

I wish to say one last thing about IPSA’s workings. It has promised that there will be a review of the broad issue of salaries early next year, in conjunction with the Senior Salaries Review Body. I know that the Minister spoke earlier, but I wish to say—I hope he is listening—that I hope he will now be able to provide assurances to all Members that we will not go down the route of the Executive taking control of these matters yet again, and therefore having ever more incentives, albeit that it would be much more difficult to have incentives as salary substitutes.

I hope that when IPSA comes up with its report, as it is bound to do by the end of next year, that report will not sit gathering dust either in the Speaker’s Office or at No. 10 Downing street, but that the Government will act on it immediately to ensure that it is properly published and that the recommendations are implemented without amendment.

We have had a very interesting debate, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor would like to say a few final words in summing up, but I finish by saying that I hope we will be able to make some genuine progress on IPSA and on the whole issue of salaries, so that we can put this squalid episode into the past.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Mark Field Excerpts

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Edwards]

I fully agree with my hon. Friend. That is the intention of some of our proposals and I am grateful to him for that important contribution.

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman makes the reasonable point that there is a risk of confusion, but will he cast his mind back to the situation that pertained in London in 2004? We had a mayoral election, a Greater London assembly election, which featured a top-up list, and a full European election on the same day. The reality was that there was no sense of any great confusion among Londoners. I am sure that the Welsh electorate is no more stupid than the London electorate, and therefore that it would find a way to make the proposals work.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Obviously, my fears might come to nothing, but I see no reason why democracy should be held hostage to fortune in that way. The complication, of course, is how the media report different elections. That is the big difference between London elections and those for the devolved Administrations.

We are aware of the potential pitfalls, and I see no suitable way of dealing with them except by holding the different elections apart from each other. Of course, those are the known unknowns. As yet, we have no way of knowing the unknown unknowns between now and the next set of elections.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Shepherd]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support. I believe that that will be the wider judgment. What was reflected in a previous Bill is emphasised in this Bill.

The Bill has not, of course, received pre-legislative scrutiny in the traditional way, but nor did Asquith’s Bill. That Bill was an attempt to bring together the threads of our constitutional history. What distresses me most about this constitutional arrangement, and the actions of the coalition Government, is that they think that we are all back-of-the-envelope legislators who set aside the traditions and history of our own constitution. They are trying to legislate for something that I believe is unnecessary. A Government last for as long as that Government can command a majority in the House of Commons: that is a fundamental constitutional proposition in the Parliament Act.

[Mr Mark Field]

My hon. Friend will know that I share many of his fears about the Bill, along with the other constitutional change that has been proposed. However, in so far as we are to have fixed-term Parliaments, might it not be regarded as even more cynical if we moved away from the five-year norm which has, as my hon. Friend says, been in place for the last 99 years, even if that five-year norm is a maximum?

[Mr Shepherd]

The point is that the coalition Government have set their heart on five years, so that is the proposition that we are examining. I was trying to advance the arguments that were presented to the House as recently as 1911, but the post-1945 chart, featuring 17 or 18 elections, shows that, in all but four cases, the average length of a Government has been about four years. The principle behind that is fairly closely related to what Asquith said. It is right that there should have been a recent renewal of a Government’s mandate; it is right that a Government should be mindful that they face an election. But if we are to adopt fixed-term Parliaments, what is the right period, given that the Government concerned command a majority in the House?

[Mr Mark Field]

In fact, there have been 17 elections since 1945, and the average length of a Government has been three years and 10 months. Does my hon. Friend agree that when the four-year term has been the norm, that has been because a Government have gone to the country at the time that they feel is best for them, whereas when a term lasts for the full five years, that has generally been because the Government in question had very little choice? In other words, there has been an element of expediency—one might even call it cynicism—behind the actions of Governments who have used the maximum five-year term for their own benefit.

[Mr Shepherd]

There is, of course, no question about that in my mind. Governments will try to engineer an election at the moment that is most convenient for them, although it may not be the best point in the cycle of public opinion, or relate to the sense of the House as a settled House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Shepherd]

I am sorry if that is the case. I am speaking in support of those amendments that call for a four-year Parliament, as opposed to the Government’s position, which is that there should be five-year Parliaments. I accept, of course, that Governments face exigencies. We well remember that Mr Blair postponed an announced date of an election because of a nationwide country alarm over foot and mouth disease. There has to be an element of flexibility for such circumstances. War would clearly alter the schedule for elections too, and Parliament has within its means the ability to extend the period at such times, because this is the sovereign body for the United Kingdom. That point should be borne in mind: however much I may rejoice in Scotland and the Scottish Parliament, in Wales and the Welsh Assembly, and in the arrangements in Northern Ireland, the Westminster Parliament is the fount of the authority under which national elections for this place are held. Therefore, although the House should bear in mind any exegesis on inconveniences, ultimately it is for those of us who are sent here by the people to represent them to decide what is in the interests of the United Kingdom as a whole in the formation of a Parliament that holds to account the Government whose Members sit on the Treasury Bench in this House. That is all; I am, in truth, making a very simple argument. I think four years is more appropriate than five. That is what this is about. I think there is sufficient flexibility.

I have cited certain authorities, such as Professor Blackburn and Asquith. I do not want the argument to be lost to a lot of academic writers, however. Professor Hazell at University College London is a former civil servant; he worked in the Cabinet Office. I want to hear about the great constitutional writers who informed past debates, but that is singularly missing when this House comes to discuss what is right. We do not talk about the experience of previous times.

What is the reasoning behind this clause? It appears to suit the personal convenience of a coalition. Most people I meet see and understand that perfectly well. Why would we support such a measure if we are representing the people and the interests of this House of Commons? That is the burden of the arguments I am putting forward for a four-year term rather than five years.

I also want to repeat that I regret that the Government have made no case for five years. That has been a major omission in all these constitutional debates. They assert, without authority or reference to anything, that the needs are such that five years is somehow a more suitable period. By and large, I do not believe in international comparisons, but I note that most modern democracies—the United States, for instance, with its 200-year-old constitution and President—work to a four-year cycle in determining who is to be their chief executive. The United States works to a six-year cycle, with third terms, for the Senate, and a two-year cycle for its equivalent body to our House of Commons. Our tradition has been different.

[Mr Mark Field]

Does my hon. Friend not appreciate that if we are to have a fixed-term for this Parliament, five years is the only acceptable period? If any other term had been proposed, that would have been felt to be entirely cynical. Is not my hon. Friend’s argument essentially that these changes should be put in place only for future Parliaments? We were all elected on 6 May on the basis of a set of rules for getting rid of a Parliament and for the terms and duration of it. These proposed measures for fixed-term Parliaments should take effect for future Parliaments; they should not bind this one.

[Mr Shepherd]

I was elected under the law as it then stood, and I expected that the length of term in place at the time would apply. I also expected that any Prime Minister would make decisions in that context. As well as my question of the relationship of the electorate to the House of Commons to the Executive, there is another that hangs over this entire argument: why do we need any of this? What improvement does it bring to the current position?