Engagements
Debate between Nick Clegg and James Gray(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
The Deputy Prime Minister is a great democrat as well as a Liberal, and I salute him for that. Will he therefore stand by the precise wording in this very fetching Liberal Democrat leaflet that I happened to find on my desk this morning, which says:
“Only a real referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU will let the people decide our country’s future.”
Will he now stand by that solemn pledge to the people of Britain and join us in the Lobby tonight?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I fully stand behind the position that I took then and my party has taken ever since, that when there is a change in the rules and new things are asked of the United Kingdom within the European Union, there should and there will be a referendum. Not only that, we have done better since we issued that leaflet in 2008: we legislated to guarantee that to the British people for the first time in primary legislation just two years ago. We spent 100 days debating that in this House at the time. If my hon. Friend wants to reinvent it all over again and keep picking away at the issue, what will he give up from a fairly crowded Queen’s Speech? Will he tell his constituents that we will not put a cap on social care costs; we will not deliver a single tier pension; we will not pass legislation to have a national insurance contribution cut for employers? I think that we should stick to the priorities of the British people, which are growth and jobs.
[Official Report, 15 May 2013, Vol. 563, c. 635-36.]
Letter of correction from the Deputy Prime Minister:
An error has been identified in the oral answers given to the hon. Members for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray).
The correct answers should have been:
The Deputy Prime Minister: I know the hon. Gentleman hates to be reminded of things that he and I have actually done together when we have been on the same side of the argument, but we spent 100 hours in the early part of this Parliament passing legislation, opposed by the Labour party, that for the first time ever gives a guarantee in law about when a referendum on Europe will take place—when the rules next change or new things are asked of the United Kingdom within the European Union. The hon. Gentleman and his colleagues in the Conservative party are perfectly free for their own reasons to move the goalposts, but this legislation is in place and the people of Britain have a guarantee about when a referendum will take place, and that is what I suggest we should all go out and promote.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nick Clegg and James Gray(11 years, 6 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
What does the hon. Gentleman think happened for 13 years under Labour? I am hugely sympathetic, as I am sure everybody is, to the plight of people who are unable to trace a liable employer or insurer against whom they can bring a claim. We announced our intention to bring forward legislation to introduce the scheme on 25 July 2012, and it is from that date that people have a reasonable expectation that if they are diagnosed with asbestos-related cancer and they meet the eligibility criteria they will receive a payment. But because we have also decided to pay dependants of people who have died from that cancer, the scheme will not be able to pay dependants of every person who has died, and that is why we have taken the approach we have.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
The Deputy Prime Minister is a great democrat as well as a Liberal, and I salute him for that. Will he therefore stand by the precise wording in this very fetching Liberal Democrat leaflet that I happened to find on my desk this morning, which says:
“Only a real referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU will let the people decide our country’s future.”
Will he now stand by that solemn pledge to the people of Britain and join us in the Lobby tonight?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nick Clegg and James Gray(12 years, 1 month ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
So there are to be Christmas cracker jokes from the very beginning.
No; we will pursue this. As the hon. Gentleman may know, we are already pursuing it, along with 15 other Commonwealth realms, but the process is very complex legally. Although the idea is simple—ending male primogeniture in the succession rules and allowing successors to the monarchy to marry Catholics, removing that discriminatory rule from the current arrangements—it is proving to be quite difficult and time-consuming to align all the legislative processes across all the realms, but I know that the New Zealand Government are doing all they can to expedite that.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
Unlike the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex), I have every confidence that my right hon. Friend will do a brilliant job in introducing these long-overdue reforms. Is it not ironic that, had the Queen had a younger brother, she would not be Queen at this moment? Is it not time to introduce the other reform to which my right hon. Friend referred briefly? At present, not only a monarch but anyone in the line of succession may not marry a Roman Catholic or, indeed, become one. That is an absurdity, and we must surely do away with it as soon as we can.
The Deputy Prime Minister
I certainly agree that the current rules are anachronistic and explicitly discriminatory. That is the point of the reforms. It should be borne in mind that the new rules, particularly those on male primogeniture, came into effect from the moment that the declaration was made in Perth. Although some painstaking work is needed to extend the legislation to all the Commonwealth realms, it has already taken effect.
House of Lords Reform
Debate between Nick Clegg and James Gray(13 years, 4 months ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of House of Lords reform.
On 17 May, the Government published a draft Bill and White Paper proposing a reformed House of Lords. Since then, there has been considerable debate on the content of the proposals—I, of course, welcome that debate. These are significant constitutional changes and so demand proper and full scrutiny. As the debate unfolds, however, it important for us to step back for a moment and remind ourselves why we are doing this. First, very few people seriously believe that the status quo—an unelected second Chamber—makes sense in a modern democracy. [Interruption.] Most people agree with that, anyway.
During last week’s debate in the other place, someone said that elections are not
“the only form of democracy”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 June 2011; Vol. 728, c. 1165.]
The suggestion that democracy can somehow exist without elections reminded me that there is a fundamental principle at stake here—a basic choice. Do we believe that people should choose their representatives in Parliament, or do we not? Should citizens choose the people who make the laws of the land, or should they not? Every hon. Member must now decide which side of the argument they support.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
I apologise for intervening so early in the Deputy Prime Minister’s speech, but it is important to pick up his statement that everyone presumes that the status quo is not an option. What evidence does he have? The status quo is precisely the option for which I will vote.
The Deputy Prime Minister
If I remember correctly, my hon. Friend voted for 100% election to the House of Lords when this subject was last up for discussion, which suggests that he might be more willing to entertain change than his question implies. Even the advocates of minimal change—even those in the other place, as was witnessed in last week’s debate—accept that some change is now unavoidable.
We have all promised change—every major party committed to Lords reform in their manifestos last year—so there is a legitimate expectation that we will now deliver it. Liberals and Liberal Democrats have long pursued Lords reform as part of a wider renewal of our political arrangements; the Labour party has advocated it as a blow to patronage and privilege; and the Conservative party has, especially in recent years, pushed for putting more direct power in the hands of voters.
The Deputy Prime Minister
The two issues are wholly separate. More than that, if my hon. Friend has other ideas about how we can arrive at our shared objective of a wholly or mainly elected House of Lords, that is precisely why we are now creating a Joint Committee. That is precisely why we have published not a final Bill but a draft Bill with a White Paper and why that followed a process of cross-party discussion in a Committee that I chaired, and which in turn built on many recommendations of a cross-party nature over the years and the decades. It was not just an invention of this Government. The Wakeham commission, the Straw committee and others came up with many of the recommendations that we are now suggesting. If he thinks they are too complicated, I look forward to his suggestions about how they can be made simpler.
The Deputy Prime Minister
If I may make a little progress, because I know many others wish to speak.
Our proposals are a comprehensive blueprint for change—there are 68 clauses and nine schedules. There is a lot to discuss. The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) will respond to points raised in the debate in his closing speech.
The next stage, as I have just mentioned, is pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill and White Paper on a cross-party basis by a Joint Committee of both Houses. I am sure that the Committee will take note of today’s debate in its deliberations, and we look forward to hearing its conclusions in due course. The Government’s plan is then to introduce a Bill next year in order to hold the first elections to the reformed House in 2015. There is clearly a lot of detail to be hammered out between now and then, and I hope that both sides of this House and of the other place will work together constructively as we move forward.
The truth is that no one seriously supports the status quo. [Interruption.] The vast majority of people do not support the status quo. I am delighted, by the way, by the enthusiasm for change from Opposition Members, which is excellent progress compared with the previous debate. Everyone has committed to change and we must now be pragmatic on the detail, never losing sight of the basic principle at stake: in a modern democracy, people must choose their representatives. Let us complete the long journey of Lords reform once and for all.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Nick Clegg and James Gray(14 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
Order. This sounds like a suitable subject for an Adjournment debate.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
T10. [11091] Just this morning, the Deputy Prime Minister sent us all a very helpful letter about the forthcoming Bill on the alternative vote system and so on. In it, he wrote: “The Government also believes it is important to give people a choice over their electoral system.”Given that, why will the forthcoming referendum offer only a choice between first past the post and AV, which he himself described as a pathetic excuse for a voting system? Why will it not also offer the single transferable vote?
The Deputy Prime Minister
Let me remind my hon. Friend that, during the general election, there was a party, the Labour party, that wanted to press ahead with the alternative vote and another party, the Liberal Democrats, that believed in a more proportional voting system. As is the nature of a coalition agreement, we reached a compromise—[Interruption.] Opposition Members talk about pluralism and choice in politics, but only if it is on the basis of things that they want, not what anybody else wants.