Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill (Programme) (No. 2)

Mark Harper Excerpts

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)]

I look forward to a rigorous debate on the issues in the Bill during its Committee stage. I am grateful to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee—whose Chairman, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) is in his place—for the report that it published yesterday and for the considerable amount of work that it put into taking evidence from, among others, the Deputy Prime Minister and myself. Concerns were expressed about the amount of time available to the Committee, but that was clearly not a barrier to its producing a comprehensive report, and I thank all the members of the Committee for their diligence.

The motion before us allows for five days of debate on the Floor of the House. I know that some Members have expressed concern that there will not be enough time to debate the provisions in the Bill, and we have tried to keep rigid programming to a minimum. As I said on Second Reading, however, we want to ensure—we have taken steps to do so in the programme motion—that the House will be able to debate and vote on the key issues raised by the Bill. In our view, the programme motion will allow that.

For this 17-clause Bill, we have proposed five full days of Committee on the Floor of the House and two days for Report, which we think adequately recognises the importance of the issues. We have had discussions through the usual channels with the Opposition, who have not presented any objections to the timetable.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the progress he is making with this Bill, but will he explain why there is closure at 11 o’clock this evening? This is a constitutional Bill of vital importance, so why should we not be able to talk for as long as we want on the issues today?

[Mr Harper]

Given the previous Government’s record on this matter, I would have thought that my hon. Friend would recognise that we are allowing extra time today to take account of the fact that we have just had a rightly lengthy and well attended statement. We granted extra time so that that statement did not unduly eat into the time available for debating this Bill. As I said, I would have thought that my hon. Friend, given his concern for Parliament, would have welcomed the progress made. We may not have gone as far as he would have wished, but I think that even he would recognise that we have gone some way further than the previous Administration did. I see him nodding his assent.

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

I accept, and give credit to party managers for ensuring, that we have a certain protection of time up to 11 pm today. However, does the Minister understand our concern that later in our consideration—certainly for the third and fourth day—a significant number of amendments have been tabled, so that we may not have enough time to debate the many issues surrounding exempted constituencies, for example, simply because a guillotine will come into force at 11pm or some other specified time?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes a perfectly sensible point. We have allowed the number of days allotted and included some extra time, but we will clearly keep that under review. He will have noticed that on the fourth day—the same day as the comprehensive spending review—we have allowed an extra two hours for the Committee to sit. We have tried to take that into account, and it is also in the interest of Members to balance the time allotted to different parts of the Bill. As I say, however, we will keep this under review and see how the debate progresses. I have heard what my hon. Friend says, and I will review progress.

[Mr Field]

The Minister says that he is going to keep this under review, so would he consider changing this programme motion in order to grant extra days of debate or put back the end-point? If we vote for the motion today, will it be set in stone, as reviewing it might not satisfy those of us who are concerned that elements of the Bill will not get the full consideration they need?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend will know that on Second Reading, when the House voted by a considerable margin to support the principle of the Bill, it also supported the initial programme motion of 6 September, which set the number of days for debate. I listened very carefully to the wide-ranging debate on that day and picked out the issues that appeared to be of concern to Members on both sides of the House. That is what has driven this second programme motion—to try to ensure that the key issues are debated. Today, for example, we are to debate the date of the referendum and the question that it will put, and those issues will be debated. As I said, I listened carefully to the whole of the previous debate, so I believe we have captured the key issues. The House has already accepted that five days in Committee is the right period for consideration of the Bill.

[Mr Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con)]

The Minister is being very generous, but bearing in mind that there will not be a general election until 2015, surely there is not that much of a rush to get this measure through the House.

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend is right that the coalition Government are strong and that there will not be an election until 7 May 2015, as set out in the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill. The Deputy Prime Minister has made it clear, however, that we want the referendum to take place next year in order to make progress, and we also need to kick off the boundary review, ensuring that it reports in good time before the next election. That will allow parties across the House to select their candidates. We have secured a balance between moving at a reasonable pace, while also allowing adequate time for proper parliamentary debate. I think that we have done so.

[Mr Walker]

But why must we have the referendum in May next year?

[Mr Harper]

We made a commitment in the coalition agreement to have the referendum, and the Government believe that we should arrange to have it at an early opportunity, putting the question to the electors so that they can decide what voting system they want to use in the next election. That is the decision that the Government have made, and that is the view with which I will ask the Committee to agree later today. The House has already agreed with it in principle.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Clause 1 covers five pages of the amendment paper, whereas clause 9 requires 12 pages. Debate on clause 9, however, will occupy only about a third of the time occupied by debate on clause 1.

[Mr Harper]

In my view, it is a question not just of the number of pages, but of the substance of the issues involved. My hon. Friend will note that the Bill also contains a number of schedules, and, given that I have written to him and other Members today, he will know how we propose to deal with the combination amendment. Complicated technical issues occupying many pages may not raise significant issues, while significant issues requiring considerable debate may not occupy many pages. I do not think that the Committee should take a simple page-count approach.

[Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a great presentation. The coalition agreement, to which most of us agreed and of which most of us are very supportive, contained a commitment to a referendum on alternative voting. Will my hon. Friend confirm that the date of the referendum was not included in the agreement, and therefore need not necessarily be part of this process?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend is right. I am glad that he finds my argument compelling, and I am sure that he will support the programme motion if Members feel the need to put it to a vote and test the opinion of the Committee.

It is true that the coalition agreement committed both coalition parties in the Government to supporting a referendum on the voting system, and the Government subsequently decided that 5 May next year was the right date. The House has already endorsed the principle of the Bill, and later this afternoon we will conduct a line-by-line scrutiny of it. I will be asking Members on both sides of the Committee to endorse the date, although I will expect support only from Members on this side.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is being very generous and very reasonable. In that spirit of reasonableness, will he have a word with his unreasonable colleague the Secretary of State for Wales, who is refusing to allow a Welsh Grand Committee debate on the implications for Wales of this major constitutional Bill? We have not been given any explanation for her decision. Would it not make sense to allow time for debate in a separate forum, to enable more time to be made available for debate in the Chamber?

[Mr Harper]

I simply do not recognise the hon. Gentleman’s characterisation of my right hon. Friend the rather excellent Secretary of State for Wales. He will note that I have been joined in the Chamber by her Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the. Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones), who will be supporting me on the Bill. There will be adequate time in the five days that we have provided for debate on how the Bill affects Wales, in terms of both the boundary changes and the referendum, and I feel sure that the hon. Gentleman and his Welsh colleagues—including the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), who is sitting on the Opposition Front Bench—will acquit themselves well in speaking up for Wales during that debate.

The motion specifies the clauses and schedules that are to be debated, and the days on which they are to be debated. Beyond that, it will be for you, Mr Speaker, and for Members themselves, to decide how best to use the time. As I have already said in response to interventions, we have provided extra time on each day to allow for statements. On the fourth day, as we know, there will be a significant statement on the spending review, and having assumed that you will allow questions on it to run for a significant period, Mr Speaker, we have provided the necessary extra time.

I believe that the programme allows the Committee adequate time. I believe that it delivers on the promise that I made on Second Reading to allow the significant issues to be both debated and voted on, and I hope that Members on both sides of the Committee will feel able to support it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

So let’s crack on.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman spoke for longer than I shall, so he can keep shtum for a moment.

It would be better if there were no guillotines in the days provided for debate. As the Minister’s colleague, the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), asked: what is the rush? Does this Bill have to be hurried through because its measures are the glue that hold together the coalition—that is what Opposition Members suspect, and indeed I think that it is what the hon. Gentleman suspects as well—or is there some honourable, decent reason for that? We know the answer, of course.

There is clearly a rush on. The Select Committee report has already said that hasty drafting and no consultation are the hallmarks. In recent years it has been extremely unusual for any constitutional reform Bill to go through this House without any pre-legislative scrutiny. I have also scoured history to find a constitutional Bill of this magnitude and significance that went through with so few days of consultation on the Floor of the House. The Minister says it is a short Bill, and that may be the case.

[Mr Harper]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

The Minister has talked enough, and he wants us to get on with the business in hand. He said it is only a short Bill. However, although it may contain only a few clauses, it is 153 pages long, and it affects major and significant parts of our constitution. Also, he has crafted the motion in a way that allows us remarkably little freedom within each of the days and between the days. For instance, if we finish the business early on the second day, next Monday, we will not be able to proceed straight away with the business for the third day. We will almost certainly need to review that, because the business for the third day is clauses 7, 8 and 9 and schedule 6, which include the topic of precisely how the alternative vote would operate. We must remember that the Bill will never come back to the House if the referendum is carried—although I know that the Minister hopes it will not be carried.

The measures to be discussed on the third day also give us the new rules for the Boundary Commissions, cutting up the rules that have existed for many years. In addition, there is the cutting of the number of parliamentary seats and the decision about how we distribute them. That, too, would never come back to the House for any vote hereafter, unless the House of Lords were to change the provisions. It would be wrong to concertina debate on all that into one single day. It is quite possible that that would mean that there would be perhaps half an hour or 40 minutes to discuss the Northern Irish element of the Bill, including the distribution of seats. That would not serve Northern Ireland well.

As several Members have made clear, there is an additional point to do with the Secretary of State for Wales. I have to say that since becoming Secretary of State she has become far more sour than she was before, when she was a rather more pleasant individual. She has refused point blank to allow a Welsh Grand Committee to discuss the very significant issues that there are in relation to Wales.

Therefore, although the Minister may be blasé, we are not buying any of this.