Collective Ministerial Responsibility

Debate between Mark Reckless and Hugh Bayley

Wednesday 13th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[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?