Collective Ministerial Responsibility

Mark Reckless Excerpts

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Chope]

That is a telling point. All I know is that, for one Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Private Secretary who voted against the Government on tuition fees and consequently was forced to resign her position, it was only a few weeks before she was reinstated, and she has subsequently reached ministerial level. That is the rule that seems to apply to minority members of the coalition. As far as those on the Conservative side of the coalition are concerned, I have no information that suggests any Parliamentary Private Secretary who has been forced to resign has subsequently been reinstated, even if their reinstatement would coincide with a change of Government policy.

On the face of it, double standards seem to be operating, which is why transparency on the rules that apply to Parliamentary Private Secretaries is important. I hope my hon. Friend the Minister will be rather more forthcoming than the Prime Minister has been so far, because collective ministerial responsibility is a developing subject. We have already heard the Prime Minister, having initially said that he has not made up his mind, publicly say that, in the event of an in/out referendum in the next Parliament, which we all welcome, it would not be possible for members of his Government to vote for us to leave the European Union if he, the Prime Minister, were of the opinion that we should stay in the European Union. Collective ministerial responsibility apparently will not, therefore, be set aside on that very important issue, on which divisions within the Conservative party, and indeed across parties, go very deep.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

If the Prime Minister were not to achieve the great repatriation of powers that he expects, and if he were to choose instead to lead the campaign to leave the European Union, would the same provisions for collective responsibility apply?

[Mr Chope]

I do not know, but it is a good question. Unfortunately, the only way to receive an on-the-record response to that question from the Prime Minister is by tabling a parliamentary question. So far, there are no responses to such questions on the record, but perhaps the Minister will be able to enlighten my hon. Friend with an answer.

Obviously, a lot of people are saying, “If we are to have a renegotiation, we should wait to see the outcome before deciding whether we wish to leave.” That view is taken, for example, by the Mayor of London, and it seems odd to announce at this stage that in the future, irrespective of how much or how little is clawed back as a result of renegotiation, no one will be allowed to vote against the Government by voting to leave the European Union, without giving up their ministerial position. Of course that is different from when we last had a referendum on the European Union, when it was possible for members of the Government to campaign on either side of the argument.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bayley. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey). I particularly note his assurance that the only alternative to a coalition or a minority Conservative Government is a minority Labour Government and that Liberal Democrats will, under no circumstances, seek to establish a rainbow coalition with the Labour party.

I was slightly surprised by the hon. Gentleman’s attempt to—“lecture” might be a little strong—explain to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) the arrangements and percentages needed to call a general election. My hon. Friend succeeded in securing what is still probably the best-attended Adjournment debate—certainly that I have attended—in which he questioned why the percentage required to trigger an early election under the initial coalition agreement was 55%. We owe him great credit and great thanks for the fact that it was changed to two thirds.

[Sir Nick Harvey]

I entirely agree.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Reckless]

In that case, I shall move on.

There are clearly events that were not anticipated in the coalition agreement; we have heard examples of them today, and Lord Justice Leveson’s report is a good one. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, I believe that we still need greater clarity on how the mechanisms of government should operate in such circumstances. Today, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport was called to answer an urgent question in the main Chamber, and I rushed along, interested to hear what Government policy was on a royal charter. I listened intently, but it was only after 20 minutes that she referred to the fact that she was making a Conservative party announcement. If that was the case, why was she answering for the Government? Clearly, the Speaker will, with respect, have been correct to make his wise decision to allow this urgent question, but I was left in a state of confusion about whether the discussion related to Government policy or to a Conservative party policy that had not yet been discussed, or at least agreed, with the Liberal Democrats.

The same issue arose when, in response to Leveson, the Deputy Prime Minister gave a separate statement immediately after the Prime Minister’s. That struck me as a constitutional innovation. Some people may have mentioned precedents, but they went back decades, if not centuries. I asked the Deputy Prime Minister whether he was speaking for the Government; I was not seeking to be difficult, so I referred to Cabinet responsibility and sought further information about how it was now operating, but I did not get a satisfactory response. As a Back Bencher, I would appreciate clearer guidance, in my interaction with Ministers of whichever party, on whether they are speaking as Ministers or merely as party leaders or party representatives on particular issues.

The coalition agreement is behind a lot of this. It is half incorporated into the ministerial code. Paragraph 1.2 of the code says:

“The Ministerial Code should be read alongside the Coalition agreement and the background of the overarching duty on Ministers to comply with the law including international law and treaty obligations”.

I have had great problems with that in another context. Our highest Court has ruled that we may deport a certain individual—Abu Qatada—but Ministers refuse to do so, on the basis that the Court in Strasbourg does not wish us to do so. I have been referred by the Attorney- General, among others, to that bit of the ministerial code. I do not quite understand its applicability, to the extent that our own highest Court has interpreted the relevant international law and has said that the individual in question can go. I note that the same sentence refers to the coalition agreement, and how the ministerial code needs to be read alongside it. When there is an apparent breach, issues to do with the ministerial code are raised—of which, clearly, the Prime Minister is the arbiter. I wonder whether we are giving too much semi-constitutional significance to the ministerial code—a significance that it is no more designed to bear than is the coalition agreement.

The coalition agreement is a different thing for the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, because the Liberal Democrats took an admirably democratic and participative approach to it. They had a parliamentary meeting, not just of all their Members of Parliament, but of all their Members of the House of Lords too, and agreed, if not unanimously at least overwhelmingly, the coalition agreement and participation in the coalition with the Conservative party. Liberal Democrats act as though our arrangements were theirs, or as though Conservative Back Benchers had the same commitment—moral commitment, at least—to the agreement, which they present as almost contractual.

However, we of course were not party to that agreement. Four individuals, perhaps with the expectation of ministerial office, and the leader of our party agreed it, but it was not agreed by our parliamentary party. We had one meeting, at which there was arguably agreement, or acquiescence—although not all of us were allowed to speak—on the issue of having a referendum on the alternative vote in exchange for equal boundaries. That was the only discussion that the Conservative parliamentary party had, so the Liberal Democrats should not complain if we seek to hold them to that deal. We gave them the AV referendum and took the risk of a change to the electoral system that would disproportionately benefit their party, and won our argument in public, and the other side of the coin was fair, equal boundaries. Now they have welshed on the deal. That was the only deal into which the Conservative parliamentary party had any input.

Previously, the Liberal Democrats believed in, or spoke quite highly of, parliamentary procedures, the importance of Parliament, and the holding to account of the Executive. However, now that they are in coalition, too often it is a question of a deal between the party heads, or the quad, and there are great problems with that. Quite minor issues are pushed all the way to the top of Government. The Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister are extremely busy people, as are the two Treasury representatives, and I fear that that approach has led to yet more power being put in the hands of the civil service—Sir Jeremy Heywood has been mentioned—and that the civil service has its own interests.

I first came across an instance of that in the context of policing finance. There was a White Paper in July 2010 called “Policing in the 21st century”, which was sound in many respects. It included the agreement that Liberal Democrats and Conservatives had reached on what to do in policing. It encompassed the directly elected police and crime commissioners that we wanted; but the Liberal Democrats also wanted the police and crime panels, which we agreed to. The White Paper said that if it was not possible to agree on a police precept, the panel, perhaps by a super-majority, could trigger a local referendum. I thought that was an excellent localisation and democratisation of politics, and I was grateful for the Liberal Democrat input.

However, between the publication of the White Paper and Royal Assent to the legislation that emerged, the referendum element was removed and replaced with a weak power for the panel, which was misleadingly described as a veto. The panel can say it does not like the precept once, and as long as the elected PCC comes back and says something slightly different he can just impose it. That is all that the panel can do. My view was that we did not want that; we wanted a democratic local approach that would permit a referendum if there was strong enough feeling, but I was told that that could not happen because the Liberal Democrats would not accept it, and the Deputy Prime Minister insisted that the panel should have much stronger powers and a veto.

I took the trouble to explain that to the Deputy Prime Minister’s chief of staff, and to talk to other Liberal Democrats, to try to get our mutually agreed view reflected in the legislation. However, I failed, and I believe that that was because civil servants exploited the coalition, and a claim that the Liberal Democrats did not want what we all wanted, to keep power in Whitehall, rather than giving it to local areas. The structures of the coalition are significant in explaining that.

[Hugh Bayley (in the Chair)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman’s discussion of the role of the civil service went a little wider than the debate’s terms of reference, which are collective responsibility. He should confine his remarks to those policy areas where there appears to have been a breakdown in collective responsibility.

[Mark Reckless]

I will of course follow your ruling, Mr Bayley, for which I thank you.

Two other areas that I want to discuss are Europe and boundaries. As to Europe, the Liberal Democrats had a manifesto commitment to an in/out referendum, and I was disappointed that it was not carried through to the coalition agreement. However, I am delighted that that is now my party’s policy. I am slightly confused about why it is not the Government’s responsibility, given that it is now, at least on the face of it, the policy of both parties.

Similarly, I was delighted to table an amendment and to secure majority support in the House for a cut in the EU budget. I was a little disappointed that the Deputy Prime Minister described it as “completely unrealistic” to expect a cut, not least because he should be subject to collective responsibility on such matters. Apparently it was hopeless for the Prime Minister, or anyone else, to seek such a reduction. We were miles away from other countries on that matter, and it could not be done. Yet yesterday at Deputy Prime Minister’s questions, speaking as the Deputy Prime Minister—with, I assume, collective responsibility—he told us that he supported that approach, and that it was because of him we had got the cut. He had spent months going around Europe pushing that extraordinarily tough stance, while publicly saying that he disagreed with it and it was completely unrealistic. Which is it?

If we have collective responsibility, we should have answers to those questions. I know that sometimes a coalition is difficult, and that the circumstances are new, but we should not take the attitude of sweeping away all the dusty old conventions because they do not matter very much; there is a reason for collective responsibility. I do not accept that there was any breach of the coalition agreement until the Deputy Prime Minister decided that he would welsh on it with respect to boundaries. Then his Ministers voted against it. Yet they stayed in the Government, notwithstanding collective responsibility and paragraph 1.2 of the ministerial code. If the Prime Minister has waived that, and the need to refer to the coalition agreement on all things in government, I trust that he has also waived the part about international law, at least where our own highest Court has said that international law is being respected.

What is the situation with respect to boundaries? I was disappointed that several Conservative Back Benchers voted against the Government, and that my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), for whom I have great respect, was not with us on the issue. His near neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), abstained. However, I was astonished that a Conservative Minister abstained: the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), did not vote in that Division. I knew that she was concerned about various issues to do with boundaries, but she is a Minister. Why did not she vote for Government policy?

[Dr Julian Lewis]

For the sake of fairness, I point out that I believe some Conservative colleagues who voted against the changes did so not because of the boundaries, as such, but because they did not approve of the reduction in the number of MPs with no corresponding reduction in the number of Ministers. In other words, they were concerned that the House of Commons would become less capable of keeping the Executive in check. I think that that was their reasoning.

[Mark Reckless]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point, and I make no criticism of Back Benchers who take that view. I voted for the motion of my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) on precisely that issue. However, I did not consider that occasion to be the point at which to press the issue further.

Ministers have an obligation to support Government measures. As a Back Bencher, I do not have the same level of obligation, although I have a significantly greater desire to do so now that the Government have such a successful policy of cutting the EU budget. At least my party has the policy of holding an in/out referendum. I look forward to being as enthusiastic a supporter as I can be of the Government and what they are trying to do. However, Ministers should vote for Government policy and should not be allowed to abstain. The hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) abstained in a vote on the welfare cap, and then boasted that she did so despite being a Minister, and nothing was done about it.

I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald was responsible for a positive abstention on the issue of Catholic succession to the Crown. I assumed that was because she is also the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities and, as Equalities Minister, she was abstaining because of discrimination against Catholics, but apparently that was not right: it was a mistake. There was also an abstention, however, on the matter of the boundaries, so we had not only the Liberal Democrats voting against Government policy, but a Conservative Minister failing to support it. We need to clarify the position on collective responsibility so that we can all understand it and work with Ministers and our constituents successfully.

[Jonathan Lord]

Does my hon. Friend not think it ironic that the hon. Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey) talked about the transparency of the coalition agreement? The most transparent part of that agreement was the deal for a referendum on the alternative vote, in exchange for fairer boundaries. That was the one promise, as my hon. Friend so eloquently said, that the Prime Minister gave to his parliamentary party. If we voted for an AV referendum, that could have affected the Conservative party adversely, reducing our potential to get a majority Government in future. We crawled through the Lobby on the absolute, cast-iron promise in the agreement and from our Prime Minister that it was in return for fairer boundaries.

[Mark Reckless]

My hon. Friend said he crawled through the Lobby, but I did not see that, because I abstained. I felt that we had been told by the Deputy Prime Minister that the Labour party had offered him AV without a referendum. When my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) found out that that was not the case, first from the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and then from the Deputy Prime Minister, it seemed to me that the deal we had done had been based on something that did not appear to hold water or—

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Correspond with the facts.

[Mark Reckless]

I was trying to find the appropriate parliamentary language. I thank my hon. Friend for “correspond with the facts”, if that is allowable, Mr Bayley.

The Deputy Prime Minister, then only the leader of his party, promised a real referendum on Europe—an in/out referendum—but now he is stopping us from having one. Furthermore, he said that it was absolutely hopeless to try to get a cut in the EU budget—completely unrealistic—and he gave us all a hard time for even trying to do that. Now, when we achieve it, when the Prime Minister gets what Parliament mandated in response to my amendment, he claims the credit.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bayley. I was not originally going to speak; I just came to listen to a fascinating debate. The concept of collective responsibility is interesting, but when the hon. Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey) said he saw a future world in which coalition Government would carry on ad infinitum, for years and years, I found myself losing the will to live slightly. I will explain why.

I am taken aback by the Prime Minister’s decision, of which I was not previously aware; he seems to have said that whether he is in favour of a yes vote or a no vote in the referendum, he will compel Conservative MPs, whether Ministers or not, to campaign in exactly the same way. That is taking collective responsibility to a ridiculous level. At the same time, on many other issues, he is allowing collective responsibility almost to disappear through the floor. That is completely different from the position in the 1975 referendum, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope).

[Mark Reckless]

I am not aware of the Prime Minister saying that. I understood that what he said applied only to Ministers, who will be expected to support the position, while Back Benchers would be able to campaign to leave the EU, even if that were not the Government position.

[John Cryer]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I misunderstood what the hon. Member for Christchurch said and thought the concept applied to the whole of the Conservative parliamentary party. Even if it applied only to Ministers, the position remains different from 1975. When Harold Wilson called for a referendum on the basis that he had renegotiated Britain’s terms of entry to what was then the Common Market and won a great victory—although it turned out that he had not; we might see a similar set of circumstances in 2017 or 2018—he allowed Ministers to campaign in whatever way they saw fit. I was only 11 years old at the time, but I remember Tony Benn and Michael Foot, for example, campaigning on the no platform, while other members of the Cabinet and shadow Cabinet were campaigning for a yes vote.

As has been mentioned extensively, a number of Parliamentary Private Secretaries were forced to resign over the vote on the in/out referendum a few months ago. I can remember the first rebellion against the Labour Government in 1997, which was on single-parent benefit. We probably all remember that, and it was a particularly scarring experience—I was one of those who voted against the Government. A large number of PPSs and one junior Minister were forced to resign as a result. At the time, Prime Minister Tony Blair got a lot of stick for being a control freak, but I had no problem with that. My view was that people either abide by collective responsibility and back what the Government are doing, or they resign and go on the Back Benches with the rest of us, so that they are free to criticise, but people cannot have it both ways.

Many Ministers, over many years, not only in this Government but in previous ones, have tried to have it both ways. In previous Governments, some have taken the route of giving off-the-record briefings to the press. Certainly when we were in power, that was done an awful lot by certain Cabinet and junior Ministers. That is completely unacceptable, as is, although I am not directly involved, the current idea that Ministers can more or less do what they want and let collective responsibility simply disappear.

I tend to be a less than unqualified fan of coalition government anyway. I am not a fan of proportional representation, although I do not want to go too far into that subject, because you will probably stop me, Mr Bayley. One of the great problems with PR—this has been debated a lot in the main Chamber—is that we would get coalition Governments, and they tend to undermine faith in democracy, because what then happens is deals behind closed doors, with a lack of accountability. After an election and the subsequent negotiations, Ministers emerge and say that they stood for election on this or that issue or policy, but have completely ripped up their manifesto, because they have done a deal with the lot who stood against them.

My view, although this is not directly my business, is that minority Government is a much more honourable way to go about things. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Steady on! Hon. Members might not like what I have to say next. The minority Labour Government of 1976 to 1979 went about things in a more honourable way. There was not a coalition, but there were disadvantages: every vote was on a knife edge, and there were tragic stories. The story of Doc Broughton springs readily to mind: he was extremely ill, but had to be driven to Parliament in an ambulance to take part in votes before being driven back up the M1 to hospital. It would not be the same now, because we do not have all-night sittings, and we sit after 10 o’clock only on rare occasions. That is another issue, of course; I voted against programming and am against it to this day. The circumstances of a minority Government, however, are far more accountable and clear, and they tend to bolster people’s faith in democracy, unlike a coalition Government, in which decisions are made in private.