European Union (Withdrawal)

Nick Boles Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Ind)]

I rise to support the motion in the name of my friend, the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin).

On the morning of 7 February 2017, I woke up in an isolation room at King’s College Hospital, where I was receiving chemotherapy. My blood counts were rock bottom and the chances of an infection high. Weak as a kitten, I got dressed. My friend and parliamentary neighbour the Brexit Secretary, who was then a Government Whip, met me at the entrance to the ward with a hospital porter and a wheelchair. He took me out to the Chief Whip’s car and we were driven to Parliament so that I could vote for the article 50 Bill.

Since that moment, I have done everything in my power to deliver Brexit with a deal that protects jobs and livelihoods and preserves our national unity and our international standing. I voted for the former Prime Minister’s withdrawal agreement on three separate occasions, while the current Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House were all breaking the Conservative Whip and voting with the Leader of the Opposition. I worked with colleagues across the House to promote an alternative Brexit deal, common market 2.0, and secured the support of Labour, the SNP and Plaid Cymru for a plan that would have taken us out of the European Union’s political arrangements, but kept us in the single market. I am ready to vote for a revised withdrawal agreement if the Prime Minister can secure changes through a negotiation with the EU. Like many hon. Members from the Labour Benches and elsewhere in this House, I still believe that we need to deliver what a majority of my constituents and of the British people voted for in the referendum of 2016.

What I will not do is allow a no-deal Brexit. It would devastate sheep farmers in my constituency. It would be a hammer blow for automotive businesses in my constituency and across the country. It would put our Union with Scotland and Northern Ireland in jeopardy, and it would be the single most protectionist step taken by any democratic country since the great depression, raising tariffs and trade barriers between us and our largest market.

Taking this stand cost me the support of my local party and in April led me to leave the Conservative party, but I have no regrets. I can look people in the eye, knowing that I have done what I believe to be right and put the interests of the country before my own comfort or career. How many members of the Cabinet can say the same?

At the moment, I am the only independent progressive Conservative in Parliament. To those brave souls on the Conservative Benches who face expulsion from the party for voting for the motion today, I say this: your country needs you. Do what you know to be right. Join me on these Benches and together let us build a new force in British politics, and a true home in Parliament for those who believe in one nation.

Business of the House

Nick Boles Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ms Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I am desperately fond of my right hon. Friend and I apologise to him for what I am about to say. He is a previous member of this Executive and a fixer for the Government over a long period, and has on many occasions taken advantage of the fact that there were not necessarily all the checks and balances that he needed to be in place in order to move legislation that he wanted to move in the House. Is there therefore not a slight whiff of hypocrisy that he is now lamenting the lack of those checks and balances? And is not this tiny emergency Bill, without time for proper scrutiny, just here to thwart the process of Brexit?

[Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Ind)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Is the phrase “slight whiff of hypocrisy”, when it is implied that it is coming from the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), in order? I am sure that you will be able to advise me.

[Mr Speaker]

I was diverted by a former Deputy Leader of the House, who was perfectly legitimately whispering into my ear, as colleagues often do when there is a matter of great moment in their minds, and therefore I did not hear it. I am not disputing what the hon. Gentleman has said—

Business of the House

Nick Boles Excerpts

Monday 1st April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

It is a question of who imported whose model. Montesquieu actually thought that he was copying the British system when he created a United States constitution that gives the President a legislative veto and requires a two-thirds majority of Congress to overrule it.

[Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)]

Would my hon. Friend feel the same way if my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) proposed to use Wednesday to legislate in favour of a no-deal Brexit?

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

Very droll. My hon. Friend rather misses the point of my opening remarks that I do not wish to discuss Brexit. I simply point out that he voted for the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, which legislated for us to leave the EU with or without a withdrawal agreement. He put that on the statute book with me, so in that respect, parliamentary democracy has been served.

Business of the House

Nick Boles Excerpts

Wednesday 27th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I will not take any interventions, because this is a Back-Bench day in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset.

For many years the convention has been that it is for the Government, as elected by the people, and with the confidence of this House, to set out the business. It is for Parliament to scrutinise, to amend, to reject and to approve. What today does is effectively turn that precedent on its head: those who are not in Government are deciding the business, and there are inevitable—

[Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. My right hon. Friend just claimed that the people elect the Government; is it not the case that the people elect Members of Parliament who, by majority, decide whether they can form, and support and have confidence in a Government?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I will not give way to everyone because there are only 22 and a half minutes to go, and the spokesman for the SNP, the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), will want to speak. I must be conscious of the rights of minority parties—another important convention in this House.

Coming to the nub of the issue, taking control of the business away from the Government is a bad precedent because the House is not willing to come to the logical conclusion that today’s proceedings are heading towards. The Government control business as long as, and only if, this House of Commons has confidence in them. My hon. Friends—not the Opposition, who are perfectly reasonable in this regard—should think very carefully about what they are doing, because what they are in fact saying is that they do not have confidence in Her Majesty’s Government. If that is what they think, they should vote accordingly. Our great constitutional convention is that these decisions, if they cannot be decided by this House and by the Government who are legitimately installed, go back to the electorate. The reason my right hon. and hon. Friends are not willing to reach that conclusion is that they are going against the electorate’s will, as expressed in our greatest ever referendum.

[Nick Boles]

I always learn from my hon. Friend, but I must disagree with him on this. I am quite capable of distinguishing between my general confidence in the Government, their measures, their Cabinet and their Prime Minister, and their specific conduct on this issue. Furthermore, I point out to him that on that great referendum, which voted to leave the European Union, I have been consistently voting with the Government, in whom I have confidence, and with the Prime Minister, in whom I have confidence, to give effect to that decision, whereas he has been voting against.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend makes a characteristically Wykehamist point: highly intelligent but fundamentally wrong. I must confess that I have sometimes thought my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin) was more a Wykehamist than of my own school, but we will leave that to one side. The expression of confidence in the Government is through their control of business, not on any individual item of business. That is why confidence and control of business come together. This has been taken away in the past, and my right hon. Friend referred to the assertion of parliamentary authority in the civil war—well, we know how that ended. It ended with Pride’s purge and with people being prevented from voting. The Government, the Executive and the legislature are clean different things. That separation of powers is essential, the conventions of our constitution are essential and it is important that we observe them properly, because the sovereignty of Parliament is not the sovereignty of us, however brilliant we may be, or of the Mace; it is the sovereignty of the British people. They have told us what to do, and we must do it.

Ministerial Statements

Nick Boles Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)]

I have spent only a year and a half of my 46 years inside this place. I have observed that there is no time when the House of Commons makes itself more ridiculous than when it is suffused with self-serving piety. I accept that there is no one here with a greater claim to true piety than the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), and he has made, as he always does, some brave and bold arguments. However, it was with some relief that I saw my hon. Friends the Members for Poole (Mr Syms) and for South Staffordshire (Gavin Williamson) breaking through that self-serving piety with a little common sense.

[Chris Bryant]

I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman is accusing me of self-serving piety. For the avoidance of doubt, let me say that I have no piety about me.

[Nick Boles]

I was accusing the House of being suffused with self-serving piety and giving the hon. Gentleman a bye on the basis that his past suggests that true piety is one of his qualities.

Let me start with where I am in agreement with other Members, including my wonderful hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). Holding Government to account is one of Parliament’s primary functions, but it is not its only function. Parliament is also there to supply and support a Government.

If Parliament’s primary function is to hold Government to account, no Government in recent times have done more to strengthen the power of Parliament to do such a job. It was this Government who introduced elections by Back Benchers of Chairmen and of members of Select Committees. Previous Governments, including the one of which the hon. Member for Rhondda was a member, appointed as Chairmen people who unfortunately needed to be eased out of their ministerial berths, where they had not been a success, and to be bought off for the rest of the term of that Government. This Government have turned their back on that naked attempt to suborn Parliament and have empowered Select Committees through the introduction of direct elections by Back Benchers.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

As a member of the parliamentary Labour party, I have to correct the hon. Gentleman’s assertion. The PLP instigated a rule stating that nobody straight out of serving in government could become a Select Committee Chair. After I left government and served on the PLP, which is the equivalent of the Conservative party’s 1922 Committee, no person coming straight out of ministerial office went into a Select Committee chairmanship.

[Nick Boles]

I am happy to be corrected on that point, but I hope the hon. Lady will confirm that it was this Government who introduced the election of Select Committee members and Chairs by Back Benchers, which significantly strengthened the independence of Select Committees and their ability to hold the Executive to account.

This Government also introduced the Backbench Business Committee, and so far have allotted it about 30 days of debate in Parliament for the subjects of most interest to Back Benchers. It was also this Government who introduced the concept of e-petitions to allow the House to debate not only the subjects of most interest to Back Benchers, but those of most interest to members of the public. It is clear, therefore, that it is this Government who have done most to strengthen Parliament’s ability to hold the Executive to account.

To be fair, we must also acknowledge that Mr Speaker has done more than any recent Speaker to ensure that Parliament can fulfil its function of holding the Executive to account. No Speaker has used urgent questions more regularly to force Ministers to come and account for their decisions and to answer questions from hon. Members.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I am sure that Mr Speaker will be gratified by that vote of confidence—I say this without irony—from my hon. Friend, but does he not agree that it was at least unfortunate that, as Mr Speaker made explicit in response recently to a point of order from me, he felt it necessary to keep the Chancellor of the Exchequer at the Dispatch Box as long as he did during the autumn statement precisely because he considered that the Chancellor had been saying far too much, in far too much detail, about that statement in advance to the media?

[Nick Boles]

No, I do not actually, and I shall explain later why I do not agree with my hon. Friend.

No Speaker has done as much as the current Speaker to place strict controls on Front-Bench waffle during questions, thus ensuring that more Members can ask their questions and get answers on behalf of their constituents. And no Speaker has presided over such long statements, including the Chancellor’s autumn statement, thus ensuring that all Members with questions to ask on behalf of our constituents can be heard. It is clear, therefore, that this Government and this Speaker of the House of Commons have done more in a very short time than any recent Government to strengthen the power of the Chamber to hold the Executive to account.

What puzzles me about the argument put forward by most Members who have spoken is the suggestion that holding the Government to account requires a monopoly on first communication of the Government’s decisions. Surely the days are gone when Parliament should think of itself as and behave like a priesthood that gathers together the only people in the country with the intelligence and education sufficient to consider matters of state. Surely what matters is that Parliament has an opportunity to discuss any announcement by Ministers on the day that it is made or, if it is made over a weekend, on the next sitting day. Is it not our duty, in this place in 2011, to adapt this ancient institution to modern democratic principles, and does that not require that we strike a balance between Parliament’s essential role of holding the Government to account and the public’s right to know what their Government are doing as soon as possible?

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

It seems to me that the best way of tackling the matter is this: when a Minister or a member of the Government needs for urgent reasons to make a statement publicly, he or she should do so and then come here as soon as possible. I am thinking, in particular, about matters in which military forces are involved. I do not see a problem with that. I think that the motion might allow for that—I hope that it does because that is how I interpret it.

[Nick Boles]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important and interesting intervention. I would go further, although I accept that very few people are of the same mind. We make a mistake in thinking that we can somehow reserve to decisions of military or financial sensitivity and urgency the possibility of their being made outside this place and then discussed fully inside this place.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

Does my hon. Friend not agree—from his vast experience in this place, and perhaps also looking from the outside—that although a considerable number of statements are of little or no interest to the House because they are regional, specific or small, perhaps involving one or two MPs, and so on, the decision on that, which the Minister takes, must be subjective, which makes the Minister vulnerable to attack, as we are seeing?

[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.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend makes a perfectly reasonable point. It would be perfectly possible to write a ministerial code that said, “Her Majesty’s Government will take not a jot of notice of Parliament, but will issue statements to whomever they feel like, whenever they feel like it.” If that is what my hon. Friend wants, will he redraft the ministerial code and send it to the Prime Minister?

[Nick Boles]

My hon. Friend asks a cunning question, but one I think I can sidestep by saying that, as I discussed with him before the debate began, I think that the ministerial code is a load of nonsense. The truth about the ministerial code is what he said, which is that a Minister can stay in their job while they have the confidence of the Prime Minister, but as soon as they lose it, it does not matter what the ministerial code says, they should lose their job.

[Thomas Docherty]

On the hon. Gentleman’s point about helping the public better understand, is his argument that the Treasury leaked the entire contents of the autumn statement for the benefit of some public good, rather than because it wanted to get its excuse in first?

[Nick Boles]

First, I have no idea whether it was, in fact, the Treasury that leaked any of the details. Our journalists are cunning ferrets and they have remarkable ways to get information out of the leaky sieve that is a modern Government. However, more importantly—and to take the hon. Gentleman’s concern seriously—I do not know whether that was done for the public benefit, but I am absolutely certain that it was in the public interest. It was to the public’s benefit that there was wide discussion, over several days, on all the leading television programmes and in all the leading newspapers, about proposals that would have received much less attention if they had been left until Parliament heard the autumn statement.

Let us focus, then, on our true duty. Our duty is not to serve ourselves, to puff up our roles as Members of Parliament or to bolster our privileges; it is to serve the public. We do so by holding the Government to account, not by requiring them to leak all their information in this strange room, rather than out there, where people are listening. Nobody in this debate has yet explained why the public are better served by announcements being reserved to Parliament. That is why I will not support the motion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Thomas Docherty]

I am always grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his thoughtful contributions. I know that he has had some experience of the perils of leaks in recent days, and that he shares my concern about leaking. However, there are two types of statement.

The hon. Gentleman will not need to be reminded that today’s Order Paper lists no fewer than eight written ministerial statements. We are not talking about the need for every statement to be made orally on the Floor of the House; it is perfectly legitimate to place written statements in the Library of the House of Commons. Some of them are quite important. For instance, the third on today’s list is a statement from the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the single payment scheme, a vital subject that is of great concern to many farmers throughout the country. As a member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, I know that the Government have repeatedly failed to meet their obligation to ensure that our farmers receive the money that they should receive, and that is a subject to which the Opposition may choose to return. The key point is, however, that such statements should be made to the House—in either oral or written form—before being punted not just to the “Today” programme, not just to “Daybreak” or the programme that follows it, and not just to “BBC Breakfast”, but to the new media. The constant leaking suggests that it is almost a case of “Anywhere but the House of Commons”.

I believe that the reason is quite straightforward. Let me return to a point made a few moments ago by the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford. This is actually about softening bad news—about trying to get the Government’s version out there. As was rightly pointed out by the hon. Member for North East Somerset, there are hundreds of press officers, employed at taxpayers’ expense, whose job is to try to soften that bad news. Unfortunately the country will be given a great deal more bad news over the next three and a half years as the Chancellor’s economic policies continue to fail, as the economy continues to flatline, as the Government refuse to accept the need for a plan B, and as week after week the Chancellor is forced to come back and downgrade his growth forecast. That is why the Government do not wish to come to the House: they do not wish to scrutinise themselves.

Those of us who are historians, or history buffs, often enjoy taking our constituents around the Chambers of both Houses. One of our great pleasures, which I am sure you have experienced, Mr Deputy Speaker, is taking our constituents to the Chamber in the other place and showing them the table at which Winston Churchill stood during the years when the House of Commons Chamber was unavoidably out of action following the bombing in May 1941. We can see the mark on that table that was made when Winston Churchill, who I would argue had more on his plate than any other Prime Minister—not just his Sunday lunch, but all the matters with which he was dealing—banged his hand on it. He came to the House, made himself available for scrutiny and answered questions for hour after hour, because it was important for the country to feel confident that the House of Commons had exercised due diligence and scrutiny.

The hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford—in one of the most creative speeches that I have heard for some time, during which he tried to justify his former flatmate’s leaking of the whole autumn statement the previous weekend—claimed that this was about the public interest.

[Nick Boles]

I am forced to intervene because the hon. Gentleman has accused me of two things in the last 10 minutes: of being an old Etonian, which I am not, and of having been the flatmate of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which I never was.

[Thomas Docherty]

I apologise on the second count, although I suspect that it was the Chancellor’s loss rather than the hon. Gentleman’s. As for the first, I was referring to the hon. Member for North East Somerset, who is sitting next to him, and whom I know to be the finest old Etonian currently serving in the House—bar one, obviously. I am sure that he will have an equally long career.

A fundamental point was made earlier about the public good and about debates. As the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford will know, every Budget is followed by a Finance Bill, which requires the exercise of due diligence and is debated at some length. I am sure that if he has not had the privilege and pleasure of serving on a Finance Bill Committee, the Government Whips, who are doubtless paying attention, will be more than happy to introduce him to the process, which allows outside stakeholders, representing the interests of his City friends and those of the country at large, to make their cases to Members.

[Nick Boles]

Would the hon. Gentleman care to enlighten us as to how many members of the public attend sittings of the Finance Bill Committee?

[Thomas Docherty]

I have served on only one Finance Bill Committee, as a researcher many years ago, and the public gallery was packed. Of course, there is a wider debate about how we can further open up our Bill Committees to the wider public, but it is not just about the debate itself; it is also about the process post-Budget, pre-Bill Committee, when all interested groups can make representations. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman and hon. Members on both sides of the House received many representations on the Budget from constituents. That is the correct forum for having a good discussion about the merits of the Budget, not the Sunday papers and the Sunday programmes beforehand.

That is the problem with the Government: they have no regard for the House, the public at large or the many interested groups. They have got it back to front. The first thing they should do is lay their policy before Parliament; then they should allow the House to have scrutiny; and then they should welcome proper consultation on their policies—three things that they have repeatedly failed to do.

I am conscious that my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) and the Leader of the House need to respond to the debate. This is not a light matter. It is genuinely about whether we want a Government, regardless of their political hue or whether they are a rainbow coalition, who believe that they are accountable to the people through the House, or a Government who continue to be accountable to a handful of editors of newspapers and TV programmes. It is genuinely about whether the House remains the primary point at which the Government will be held accountable.

Business of the House

Nick Boles Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

The hon. Gentleman will have heard what the Prime Minister said yesterday. The referendum cannot be held in October because the outgoing Administration made no preparations for it, so it will be held next year. How people vote in that referendum is a matter for the people of Wales.

[Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)]

Many of my constituents were outraged when my predecessor, who was elected as a Conservative, defected to the Labour party and did not stand down to cause a by-election. Will the Leader of the House make time for a debate on whether hon. Members should be required to cause a by-election if they defect to a different party from the one on whose manifesto they were elected?

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend says that many of us were outraged. I think that many people in the Labour party were rather surprised when that transition happened. He proposes a major constitutional reform of the role of Members of Parliament and their independence, and I do not think we should embark on that without thoroughly considering the implications. At the moment, we have no plans to do that.