Private Members’ Bills

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I join others in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) on securing this important debate. I thank all my colleagues who have spoken passionately on this procedural subject. In particular, I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) and my hon. Friends the Members for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes), for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) and for Burnley (Julie Cooper) on their contributions. It has been valuable to hear the experiences of those who have tried to introduce their own Bills and who took part in the lottery that we were all excited about at the beginning of the Session, only to find that it is a cruel joke not only on the public, but on us as individuals starting our adventures in Parliament.

It is clear to the majority of us that the current system for debating and voting on private Members’ Bills is undemocratic. It looks outdated to the public and it needs to change. Individual MPs currently have virtually no chance of influencing legislative change. This place has nothing to fear from the duly elected representatives from all parts of this nation raising important issues that are a high priority for constituents or large sections of society.

As the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Sir Alan Haselhurst) mentioned, other parliamentary systems make specific provision for individual Members to be able to create, generate or better influence change to legislation, and now we have the opportunity to do that ourselves. Since the election, Bill after Bill that could have saved lives and money, and helped those who most need it has been blocked. That is not only damaging to those pieces of legislation that have not passed into law; it is hugely damaging to our democracy, because they were blocked by filibuster and were not even voted on.

[Dr Huq]

Is my hon. Friend aware that there is currently an e-petition called “Reform the rules on filibustering or ‘talking a Bill to death’”? It has 50,000-plus signatures. This has gone beyond an anoraky issue of constitutional reform.

[Melanie Onn]

I am well aware of that. It just shows the importance of the issue to members of the public. I would urge anybody who is tuning into Parliament TV today to sign up. Maybe we will have a private Member’s Bill on private Members’ Bills at some point.

I do not want to echo comments that have already been made too much, but it is really not fair that one Member of this House can block legislation from being voted on and possibly becoming law. We never hear a defence of the filibuster rule. We hear objections to changes to the procedures and we hear Members justifying their actions by working within the rules, but very rarely do we have an outright defence of the system. That is because it is unjustifiable for one or two MPs to deny the representatives of the rest of the country a voice on important and potentially life-saving legislation.

Very often—we have heard examples of this—it is a Government Minister who does the filibustering and not some rogue Back Bencher, which often seems to be the general impression. An Education Minister blocked the Bill that would have made it compulsory for children to be taught emergency first aid at school, and the Minister for Community and Social Care talked out a Bill to allow the NHS access to low-cost medical treatments for conditions such as multiple sclerosis, cancer and Parkinson’s. The same Minister prevented a Bill from passing that would have exempted carers from paying hospital parking charges.

[Simon Hoare]

I have much sympathy with what the shadow Minister and her colleagues have been saying, but we all have to accept, whether we like it or not, that it is a misnomer to talk about private Members, because none of us is. We are all part of a party machine. If the Government of the day, irrespective of what stripe they are, do not support a Bill—irrespective of how we change the Standing Orders and whether we sit on a Tuesday, Saturday or Thursday—and do not want it to go ahead, it will not go ahead.

[Melanie Onn]

The important thing is that we should at least have the opportunity to vote on these things, which we do not have at the moment. If we are going to run a Parliament and say to people, “We’re here to influence change. We can properly represent you,” and then be denied that, it is the time for change.

As long as the Government are able to veto private Members’ Bills before they are voted on, the only Bills that will be allowed to pass are the ones that the Government are in favour of, but if the Government are in favour of them, they could just as easily introduce the legislation themselves. Why do they not just do away with the nonsense—that is how it is viewed at the moment—of private Members’ Bills?

Other speakers have said that it would not be right to allow the small number of Members who turn up on a Friday to decide the laws of the country, but I think that the current system for private Members’ Bills actively discourages Members from being here on a Friday because, as there are no time limits on debates, it is impossible to know which legislation will be reached and debated, let alone what will be voted on. Most MPs, including me, would rather spend an extra day in our constituencies than stay in Westminster on the off-chance that their Bill will reach a meaningful discussion or even a vote.

[Sir Alan Haselhurst]

I made clear my position on the need for reform, but we have to be careful. If we are going to say that private Members’ Bills should have the same degree of scrutiny as all measures brought before the House, Members will have to commit to rather more time at Westminster than there has been an appetite demonstrated for in recent years.

[Melanie Onn]

I am particularly concerned about the time we have to discuss this. We have changed the system. In the previous Session, there was a change so that petitions that reach 100,000 signatures can be debated in the House of Commons. We can make meaningful changes when we really want to. Although many people will be pleased that debates can take place, what they really want to see is change. Our legislative process is long overdue an upgrade. Is it not time that we put an end to this cruel joke that we are playing on the public?

Hon. Members have suggested several different changes to the way that we debate and vote on private Members’ Bills, and I hope they will be heard fully. The suggestions are an improvement because the processes are based on the reality of the system as it operates today, rather than a notional way, as has been suggested by Conservative Members, that is just not based in fact or reality.

I await the Procedure Committee’s forthcoming report and recommendations because we are open to further suggestions. The hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) suggested that perhaps this debate is in some way premature. I would say entirely the opposite: this is a very timely debate. We do not want yet another report that does not get anywhere; we would like some commitment to change, which will hopefully change things for society for the better.

To challenge the point about private Members’ Bills always being about matters of conscience, I am not clear where there is a matter of conscience in higher education information or the fitness of homes for human habitation. Private Members’ Bills are not always about matters of conscience. I support the comments of the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford): some of them are about social reform matters and are important to many people.

The most important thing is that the Procedure Committee and the Government should recognise that the current system does not work and needs to change. The Procedure Committee’s second report said that it would not be putting its proposals to the House and that, instead:

“This is an idea whose time has not yet come.”

Following the passion Members have shown today, I entirely disagree with that statement. This is entirely the idea’s time, and I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will commit today to allowing the whole House at least to debate and vote on the Committee’s proposals once they have been published.