Ministerial Statements

Michael Ellis Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

It would be marvellous if this debate were purely about the Procedure Committee’s report, but it is not—it is about the motion.

[Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)]

Is my hon. Friend concerned that people may deliberately make frivolous or vexatious complaints, even if they have no prospect of being upheld by the Speaker, with a view to establishing negative press stories about the Minister involved?

[Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend will be incredibly shocked to hear that there are people in this House who act for political motives and who go about trying to damage right hon. and hon. Members on the Treasury Bench who are trying to deliver the business of the Government. He hits the nail on the head: there would be an awful lot of such complaints, and that is not what we want.

It may be a shock to you, Mr Deputy Speaker but I guarantee that every Member who sits on the Government Front Bench lives in fear of angering or annoying you, and of the displeasure that you might feel towards them, let alone the displeasure that Mr Speaker might feel towards them. I have seen members of the Government quake at the thought that they might be dressed down by the Chair. I cannot think of any greater sanction than that. That is a cast-iron certainty.

What is proposed in the motion does not recognise the realities of today. Often, information has to come out before a statement gets to the Floor of the House because the House does not sit in the early morning. That might be true of a financial statement, world events or wars in different parts of the world. The Government have to respond.

It is vital that Ministers are always duty bound to come to the Floor of the House to respond to such events as quickly as possible. That is why I am so proud of this Government. They have made it clear that it is a top priority for Ministers to be in this House. The relevance of this House is much greater today than it was under the previous Government. One of the first great parliamentary occasions after the Queen’s Speech was when the Prime Minister came to this House to report back on the Bloody Sunday inquiry. It was a moving moment, I think we would all agree, and a moment when the House was united. The Prime Minister summed up the feelings and emotions of this House wonderfully. This Government have made sure that this House matters. The Prime Minister has made more statements to this House than any Prime Minister since 1979, when the great lady, Baroness Thatcher, first came to power. How can we doubt that this Government are putting the right foot forward when they are following in such great footsteps as those of the great lady?

We never need to doubt that it is this Government’s intention to deliver great parliamentary scrutiny and great parliamentary involvement in the decisions of the nation. That is what the Government are doing today and it is what they shall do tomorrow. We do not need this motion. That is why I urge all colleagues to vote against it.

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[Nick Boles]

I agree with my hon. Friend. This House has many opportunities to embarrass and annoy Ministers who seem to act with discourtesy towards us. I am not for a minute arguing that we should not make full use of that; I am just arguing against this motion.

I would like to move on to the example of the autumn statement—which my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) raised earlier—in which, as I think we can all agree, some of the most important announcements of this Session were made. It is true, as we should admit without embarrassment, that many of the proposals in the autumn statement were discussed widely in the media—on television, in the newspapers and in the blogosphere—in the several days before the statement. I have no idea whether that was by accident or by design, but I fervently believe that this ensured that public awareness and understanding of the contents of the Government’s plans and their response to the difficult economic situation in which we find ourselves was far higher than it would have been if nothing had been revealed until the statement was made. I ask Members to ask themselves two questions. First, how many people are willing and able, in their busy working lives, either to watch the autumn statement as it is broadcast on television or to read parliamentary reports? Secondly, how many of them, given the slightly weird way in which we all speak, will understand it when they do?

[Michael Ellis]

Is it not also a rather unsatisfactory and unsafe assumption for those supporting the motion that it is the Minister, or a servant or agent acting for the Minister, who leaked sensitive information? Is it not also possible that the information was accidentally leaked, or in some way given by a third party, against the interests of the Government? Might not passing this motion also open up the sphere for misuse of the complaints procedure, whereby the mere fact of a complaint would bring down adverse criticism on the head of the Government and the Minister?

[Nick Boles]

My hon. Friend is a distinguished member of the legal profession and therefore well understands the ability of people to abuse otherwise well intentioned elements of the law. However, I intend to go further than he suggests, because I argue that we should move away from this idea that it is a leak when the Government decide to announce in advance to the media some elements of their proposals. I believe that it is directly and strongly in the public interest that the public are given a chance to understand the detail of the Government’s proposals and the range of views and arguments that will be expressed, and for Parliament also to contribute to that debate, but not to have the monopoly on first communication.

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[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

I speak as a member of the Procedure Committee. I congratulate the Chairman, who is in his place, and my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman) on their sterling work on the report, alongside the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) and other colleagues.

I have been fascinated by many of the contributions, which have again served as an excellent way of spotting who is on the fast track up the ministerial ladder. It is perhaps with some regret that, yet again, the hon. Member for North East Somerset has put his principles ahead of the greasy pole. However, he reminded me of a fellow old Etonian, Mr Hugh Dalton, who is probably the most obvious example of a member of a Government having to resign over this issue, because the contents of his Budget found their way into a newspaper before being read out to the House of Commons. Everyone is familiar with that story. What they are probably not familiar with is the fact that Hugh Dalton’s reasoning for giving that information—apparently as he was passing through Members’ Lobby on the way into the House of Commons—was that he believed that it would be said to the House before appearing in that day’s London newspapers. Even Mr Dalton, who is often held up as an example, as the first great leaker, said that his intention was for the House of Commons to hear the statement before the public at large. Unlike the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), I believe that it is to the public’s benefit that this House has an opportunity to scrutinise what the Government are proposing first, a point to which I shall return.

On the earlier point about why the Prime Minister is the wrong person to oversee things, the hon. Member for North East Somerset mentioned a rather good British Broadcasting Corporation programme, “Yes, Prime Minister”, and the famous and funny episode about a leak. For those who can recall it, the Prime Minister’s office was leaking against a member of his Government—something that I am sure the Leader of the House will tell us never happens in this Administration; they use tweets, apparently—if their fingerprints are not found on their iPhones. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman requires no reminder, but the outcome of the episode to which he referred was that the whole farce was brought to an end by a leak inquiry, which, as Sir Humphrey reminded the Prime Minister, would result in no evidence being found, no guilt being established and nobody losing their job. As is too often the case in this place, comedy—in this case, BBC comedy—imitates life. The problem is that, despite some incredibly serious leaks of Government statements, on not a single occasion during the 18 months for which the present Government have been in office has a single civil servant, special adviser, parliamentary private secretary or Minister been found to have breached the rule. I believe that in the last month alone no fewer than three Secretaries of State have been admonished by Mr Speaker for the fact that serious leaks have occurred, but as far as I can tell, their best excuse was, “It wasnae me. I didnae do it. A big boy did it and ran away.” Responsibility was mentioned earlier. It is the responsibility of a Secretary of State to ensure that information is not leaked from his or her Department.

[Michael Ellis]

Is the hon. Gentleman interested in the principles of natural justice? Does he believe that people ought to be guilty until proved innocent, or that people ought to be innocent until proved guilty unless they are in this Chamber?

[Thomas Docherty]

I am conscious of the danger that we will slip into the subject of our next debate, but I believe that Members of Parliament, including those who have the privilege of serving on the Treasury Bench, should be held to the highest possible standard, and I regret to say that that has not always happened in the case of a small number of Secretaries of State and their Departments.

The hon. Member for Poole (Mr Syms) cited Neville Chamberlain. Let me first remind him that what Chamberlain said was “peace for our time”, not “peace in our time”. Given the hon. Gentleman’s close association with the Secretary of State for Education, who I understand is very keen on British history, that is the kind of thing that we should expect him to get right. What he did not mention, however—[Interruption.] I hear a mobile telephone ringing. It is probably The Guardian, asking for the latest statements.

What the hon. Member for Poole did not mention was that the then Prime Minister, having left the airport tarmac clutching his piece of paper, went straight to the Chamber of the House of Commons, where he gave a detailed account of events in Munich and responded to questions over a substantial period during which he was subjected to considerable heckling from Members on his own side.

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[Sir George Young]

First, the motion did not do that and the hon. Gentleman did not table such an amendment. Secondly, if he listens to the rest of what I have to say, he will understand that the Government have other difficulties with the motion.

Similarly, the motion contains no acknowledgement that announcements of policy that are the subject of international agreement must often be made simultaneously and on terms acceptable to the other parties to such agreement. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister successfully negotiated an agreement among the 16 realms at Canberra about the royal succession, and being able to announce that decision together with other Heads of Government at Canberra was part and parcel of the negotiation. The motion, if agreed to, would limit the Government’s ability to reach and announce joint or multilateral agreements—my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) also made the relevant point about military intervention.

The motion also seeks to establish as a protocol the requirement that any information that forms all or part of an announcement to Parliament should not be released to the press before such a statement is made to Parliament. That would be very difficult to interpret where the development of a policy has gone through several stages, some of them in the public domain. As my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham pointed out, the inevitable increase in statements, both written and oral, that would result from a blanket interpretation would risk squeezing the House’s other business, including Opposition day debates and Back-Bench debates, as well as putting at risk the effective scrutiny of Government legislation. That is one of the central tasks of the House; it is not an optional extra.

[Michael Ellis]

The ministerial code of conduct makes it clear that all Ministers are equal, even those in the other place, so is the Leader of the House not concerned that this motion is particularly in error because it is silent about the Ministers in the other place?

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct and I believe that I touched on that a moment or two ago.

The motion would create new, enforceable rules of the House, and that is a novel step. In 1995, the House passed a resolution setting out the principles that should govern the conduct of Ministers of the Crown in relation to Parliament. The resolution referred to broad principles of accountability, and the duty not to mislead Parliament and to be as open as possible. It made no mention whatsoever of a duty to make statements in the House first.

I shall now deal briefly with the process outlined in the motion, which my hon. Friends did not touch on. The first step in any case where a Member believes the standards had been breached—