Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Clegg and Julian Lewis

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Q12. What recent assessment he has made of the position of defence in the UK’s spending priorities.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Our defence budget is the biggest in the EU and the second largest in NATO. This Government are spending 2% of GDP on defence this Parliament—we are one of only four NATO countries to do so.

[Dr Lewis]

That was not exactly an answer to the question on the Order Paper. Given that this country for decades spent more than 4% on defence, does the Deputy Prime Minister not agree that it would be a disgraceful dereliction of duty if the British Government ever fell below the 2% minimum recommended by NATO?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As my hon. Friend will know, we are spending 2% of GDP on defence, and have consistently met and exceeded this NATO guideline. We are spending more than £160 billion on equipment and equipment support over the next 10 years, which will ensure that we have one of the best trained and best equipped armed forces in the world. Decisions on defence spending after 2015-16 will, of course, have to be determined in the next comprehensive spending round.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Clegg and Julian Lewis

Tuesday 9th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will join me in explaining to employers in his constituency that this payment of just shy of £2,300 is available to employers under the wage incentive in the Youth Contract where they take on young people. I hope he will also be aware that the Youth Contract consists not just of those 160,000 wage incentives, but of a funded increase in the number of work experience places—a quarter of a million of them—and a significant increase in funding for apprenticeships aimed at young people.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

How much have the Deputy Prime Minister and his Cabinet Office colleagues cost the public purse in conducting a study of alternatives to Trident that has taken more than two and a half years to show that there are indeed no alternatives to Trident as the basis of our nuclear deterrent?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend must be a soothsayer if he can tell what is in a report that has not been published yet. As he knows, the confidential version of the report has been provided to the Prime Minister and me, and we hope to publish the unclassified version shortly, when he will see that options are available to us. I have always argued against the idea that a total, like-for-like, exact replacement of Trident on precisely the same basis is the only option available to us as a country.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Debate between Nick Clegg and Julian Lewis

Monday 3rd September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The spectacle of Cabinet Ministers voting against a major Government Bill without resigning their positions will surely bring collective Cabinet responsibility into total disrepute. Given that the Deputy Prime Minister believes in making progress by inches, will he not support a single, simple, one-line Bill to allow the exclusion from the upper House of people who have been convicted of serious criminal offences?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As I said before, that barely scratches the surface of the issues that exist in the House of Lords. On the first point, the failure of collective responsibility is a political one in which one party in the coalition Government has not honoured the commitments set out in the coalition agreement to proceed with reform of the House of Lords. Let me be clear—[Interruption.] If I can make myself heard, let me be clear: I have asked Liberal Democrat Members countless times to vote for things to which they strongly object, because they were in the coalition agreement. The hon. Gentleman cannot reasonably ask me to ask Liberal Democrat MPs to continue as if nothing has happened, when the other side of the coalition chooses not to do so on an issue as important as reform of the House of Lords. That is coalition politics, and it will continue until one party—the hon. Gentleman’s party or another—wins an outright majority. That did not happen in the previous election; that is why we have a coalition, and the country is better for it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Clegg and Julian Lewis

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

We rightly take pride in our democratic traditions in this country. We send young servicemen and servicewomen to fight for the principle of democracy elsewhere in the world, and we tour the world talking to other countries about how they should instil greater democracy. I think the rest of the world would look at this great mother of Parliaments and ask why on earth it was not possible for us to practise what we preach.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Why does the Deputy Prime Minister not have the guts to admit that the reason he fears a referendum on this issue is that he knows perfectly well that when people get to examine his recommendations they will utterly reject them, just as they did with the alternative vote?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As ever, my hon. Friend brings to bear a healthy and consistent degree of suspicion. I have set out the reasons why the case for a referendum has not been made. It would be expensive, difficult to justify to the public, who do not think it is necessary, and ill timed when we as a country have a much bigger question to address, which is the future of the United Kingdom, let alone the future of one of our parliamentary Chambers.

House of Lords Reform

Debate between Nick Clegg and Julian Lewis

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Let me make a little progress, if I may.

If we are to continue in the spirit of co-operation, it is essential that we are pragmatic. House of Lords reform has constantly been blighted by an inability to compromise, because of either pessimism on the one hand or purism on the other. Both must now give way. When we differ on the detail, we must not lose sight of our overarching aim, which is a more democratic and legitimate upper Chamber.

Members know my preferences for reform: I support a fully, rather than mostly, elected House and believe that Members should be elected by the single transferable vote to give the other place greater independence from party control. I shall continue to argue strongly for both, but I will not make the best the enemy of the good. I shall remain open-minded and realistic, and I hope that Members on all sides of the debate will do the same. On that note, I give way to the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis).

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The Deputy Prime Minister is being very courteous in giving way. Does he accept that to elect two Houses by different electoral systems will lead to arguments over relative legitimacy? Will he put this particular voting system to a referendum? Why should we have a referendum on the voting system for this House and not one on the voting system for the other House?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

On the first point, we have an array of different electoral systems already in this country, from that used for the European Parliament to that used here in London and those used in the devolved Assemblies. Those systems all co-exist. I do not think that we need perfect consistency of electoral systems, as we do not have it anyway. On the second point, when all three parties have committed to something in their manifestos, such as House of Lords reform, the situation is unlike that with electoral reform to this place, so there is not a similar case for a referendum.

A range of issues will no doubt come up today, and many of them have been brought up already. There are two particular areas of concern, however, that have frequently come up in debates so far, and I want to address them in turn. The first is that the Government’s proposals risk creating a second Chamber that is too powerful and the second is that Members will be elected but not properly accountable.

On the question of the balance of power between the two Chambers, it is simply not the case that the other place will rival the Commons—with 300 Members, it will be half the size. That is the number that we judge to be right, although we are listening to views on that question. Whatever number we settle on, however, the Commons will remain significantly larger, as is the case in the vast majority of bicameral systems around the world. Members of the other place will serve long single terms of 15 years with no prospect of re-election, keeping them a step removed from the electoral cycle of this House. They will be elected according to a different voting system, which will be proportional and will have, we propose, larger multi-Member constituencies, giving them an entirely different mandate from MPs. Their elections will be staggered, so that they will be either elected or elected and appointed in combination in thirds. That will mean that they will never have a more recent mandate than the Commons.

The two Chambers will remain entirely distinct. The Commons will continue to assert its authority through the Parliament Acts, through MPs’ decisive right over the vote of supply and through the Government’s need to retain the confidence of MPs in order to remain in office.

House of Lords Reform (Draft Bill)

Debate between Nick Clegg and Julian Lewis

Tuesday 17th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

When asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) how one would resolve a clash between the two Houses, the Deputy Prime Minister said, “Well, this is why we are going to have different electoral systems, with proportional representation for the reformed Chamber.” Given that he believes that proportional representation is more democratic than first past the post, which of the two Chambers would he believe to be taking the correct decision if there were a clash on the basis that he outlined?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

As I said earlier, as is set out clearly under the Parliament Acts and in line with the convention that the Government are held to account primarily by this Chamber, the supremacy of this House would remain.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Clegg and Julian Lewis

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

1. What process he plans to follow to develop and implement proposals for a wholly or mainly elected second Chamber.

[The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)]

I am chairing a cross-party Committee to look at all aspects of House of Lords reform. We plan to publish a draft Bill in the coming period for pre-legislative scrutiny by—we hope—a Joint Committee of both Houses. Then it will be for the Government to decide on the introduction of the Bill.

[Dr Lewis]

Given that an all-elected upper House would, in effect, double the number of MPs while resulting in hundreds of highly skilled and eminent men and women being thrown out, what effects does the Deputy Prime Minister think will be applied to the legislative process as a result of this brilliant idea? Will it lead to greater effectiveness, greater prestige or just more machine politics?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

My own view, as someone who has always supported greater democracy in the other place and greater accountability to the British people, is that the legitimacy of the other place would be enhanced. There are plenty of other bicameral democracies around the world that have two elected Chambers of different size with different mandates, elected even by different systems, which work extremely well in striking the right balance between effectiveness and legitimacy.

Constitution and Home Affairs

Debate between Nick Clegg and Julian Lewis

Monday 7th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The coalition agreement, which binds the Government as a whole, is very clear that we want to see fixed-term Parliaments. We will table legislation for a fixed-term Parliament. We will table a motion before the legislation is introduced to make sure that the political commitment to a fixed-term Parliament is made completely clear. There is consensus across the whole House on the virtues of fixed-term Parliaments. This is another issue on which the hon. Gentleman and so many others on the Opposition Benches, having failed to introduce this change for the past 13 years, are coming up with a series of synthetic reasons why they should oppose something that they themselves used to propose.

We also want—[Interruption.] I shall make progress. We want people to be able to initiate debates here in the Commons through public petitions, we want a new public reading stage for Bills, we want people to be able to instigate local referendums on issues that matter to their neighbourhoods, and we want people to decide directly if they want to change the system by which they elect their MPs, which is why there will be a referendum on the alternative vote. I will announce the date of that referendum in due course.

Electoral reform should, the Government believe, also include—

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for giving way. He will have heard the answer that the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) gave when I asked him whether it had been the case that the outgoing Labour Prime Minister had offered, during the coalition negotiations, to ram through the alternative vote without a referendum. I am not giving away any trade secrets when I say that Conservative MPs were told that that was the case. The Deputy Prime Minister is in a position to know. Were the Liberal Democrats offered by the Labour party the alternative vote without a referendum? Can he set the matter to rest?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The answer is no. The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) was right. That was not offered by the Labour party in those discussions. The hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) is right—I should know whether it was offered or not.