European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Oliver Heald and Yvette Cooper

Committee: 7th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 13th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about parliamentary sovereignty, which was indeed a key issue that was debated in the referendum. In fact, many people argued in the referendum that what they were doing was bringing sovereignty back here, from having shared sovereignty with the EU. I do not think we are arguing that sovereignty should be handed over in a concentrated way to a small group of Ministers instead. That is the responsibility on us. We know that of course there are times when Parliament needs to give Ministers power on our behalf to use through secondary legislation, but we should do so cautiously and sensibly and make sure that the right safeguards are in place. That is the problem with the Henry VIII powers in this Bill, and not just in clause 9 but in clause 7. The challenge, too, is that we are being asked to do that on an issue that will define our country for generations. Each and every one of us will be judged on what we did in this place to get that Brexit deal right.

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Lady agree that it is most welcome that, since my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) tabled his amendment 7, it has been agreed that there does need to be an Act of Parliament? Is not the weakness of clause 9 that there is still no trigger requiring the consent of Parliament to the withdrawal agreement before the regulations can be laid and used?

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is exactly right, and that is why we have a cross-party interest in these issues. Not only is there no trigger on the face of the Bill—clause 9 will still allow Ministers this huge concentrated power to go ahead and implement the withdrawal agreement without Parliament’s agreement—but there is also a second difference, certainly for me in what Ministers have set out so far, about how a meaningful vote should take place. I want to come on to that as well.

New clause 3 says that Parliament will not yet give the Government permission to use secondary legislation to implement the withdrawal agreement, and that instead the Government must set out their plans for primary legislation to implement the withdrawal agreement. If secondary legislation is needed at that time, as part of the implementation process, those powers should be taken in the withdrawal agreement Bill—the second Bill—so that Parliament is not just handing over a blank cheque, but is deciding what powers are needed and making sure that the proper scrutiny and checks and balances are in place at that time.

I do not think this is really a controversial proposal. It is basically saying that Parliament should hand over no more power to the Executive than it needs to and should not hand over power to the Executive until it needs to and until it knows what is going on. New clause 3 also has the effect of requiring a meaningful vote in primary legislation on the withdrawal agreement before it can be implemented. That is not really a controversial proposal either. It simply says that we should have a proper vote on the most important thing to pass through Parliament in a generation—and a meaningful vote in primary legislation, as is fitting for something so important—and that we should do so before and not after we give Government the powers to start implementing it.

Amendment 7, which was tabled by the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), has broadly the same effect. Rather than removing the powers from clause 9, it simply says that they cannot be used until a statute or primary legislation has been passed supporting the withdrawal agreement. Again, that means that Parliament does not blindly hand over powers to the Executive in a trusting way without knowing what the consequences will be or what the agreement looks like.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

I do agree, and I think that goes to the heart of our concern.

It ought to be possible for the Government to agree to my new clause 3, or to amendment 7. Let us think about the points that they have already made. First, they have recognised that there is a problem if too much power is concentrated in the hands of the Executive. They said so yesterday during the debate on clause 7, and I think that they recognise the importance of safeguards on the use of Executive powers. Secondly, they have said that there will be a meaningful vote on the withdrawal agreement. I welcome that, but I think there is still a difference between us on what counts as a meaningful vote. Thirdly, they have said that there will now be primary legislation on the withdrawal agreement, and I welcome that as well. If we put all those three things together in the right way—the commitment to primary legislation, the commitment to a proper vote and say for Parliament, and concern about the concentration of powers—we get amendment 7 or new clause 3. It is the same thing.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Following the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), may I ask whether the right hon. Lady agrees that the statutory instruments that we are discussing relate to matters of constitutional significance—matters of the sort that we normally only debate on the Floor of the House? It would be wrong for those matters to be dealt with in Committee when the House has not necessarily even agreed to the withdrawal agreement.

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is absolutely right. This is not the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, which was all about minor and detailed changes and consolidating legislation through secondary legislation—or that, at least, was its intention. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman says, this is about hugely constitutionally significant legislation and changes that will affect the course of events in this country for generations.

Government Reductions in Policing

Debate between Oliver Heald and Yvette Cooper

Monday 4th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right to mention the concerns of the chief constable of South Yorkshire. He is reported as having recently raised concerns about what would happen to crime in many areas as a result of the scale of the cuts in the Government’s plans. The cuts go way beyond the 12% that Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary said could be made through genuine efficiency savings over several years, and they go way beyond the 12% cuts that the previous Labour Home Secretary identified and promised to implement over a Parliament—they are more than 15% in real terms in the first two years alone. The Government are cutting more in the first two years than Labour proposed to cut over a Parliament.

[Mr Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Lady not feel any need to apologise for the state in which Labour left this country? We had the worst deficit in the G20—worse than Ireland and Greece. We are now trying to do something about it, but she criticises every saving. What is the matter with Labour? Do Labour Members not understand that everybody and every economic organisation across the world is saying that we need a deficit reduction package and that what she is saying is nonsense?

[Yvette Cooper]

Government Members have obviously been primed by the Whips today to join the debate but not make any points about policing. They are obviously afraid to discuss the consequences of the cuts for policing and crime in communities across the country, and they are starting to sound like a stuck record. They are cutting too far, too fast, and it is having serious consequences for our economy, the level of unemployment, and police forces. They are going too far, too fast, and communities will pay the price.

The charge against the Home Secretary, as she sits in the dock aided and abetted by the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice, is serious. She is the first Conservative Home Secretary in history to champion cuts to the police as a way to cut crime. What is her defence? First, she tried to claim that she was not at the scene of the crime, and that it was the Chancellor who cut her budget and not her. She then tried to claim that no crime had been committed, saying

“lower budgets do not automatically have to mean lower police numbers.”

Faced with the incriminating evidence of 12,500 fewer police, she changed her story:

“We have been absolutely clear about the need for forces to ensure that the cuts are made to the back office, procurement, IT provision and so forth.”—[Official Report, 6 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 19.]

Her accomplice, meanwhile, said that savings could all come from the back office and the newly defined “middle office”.

The expert witnesses from HMIC have blown that defence away. Instead of proving that cuts could all be made from the back office, they showed that 95% of police officers do not work in the back office. Instead of identifying a wasteful middle office, they said that that office carried out 60% of intelligence support, included the CID specialist crime units, and worked on tackling hate crime, vice, drugs and burglary. Even the Conservative councillor who chairs the Norfolk police authority has switched sides to give evidence for the prosecution. He stated:

“I have to fundamentally disagree with the Minister’s assertion that we can find further efficiencies in the so-called ‘back office’…you can’t take £24.5 million out of our annual spend and still deliver the policing service to the same current standards.”

Jobs and the Unemployed

Debate between Oliver Heald and Yvette Cooper

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The troubling approach that the new Tory-Liberal Government are taking is to cut the help to get people back into jobs and to cut their benefits when they cannot get back into work. The Secretary of State has claimed to be concerned about intergenerational poverty and worklessness, but the truth is that many of the problems that the Government worry about have their roots in the unemployment and hopelessness of communities without work in the 1980s. If they are really serious about tackling long-term poverty, they should act to prevent long-term unemployment now. They talk about broken Britain, but the truth is that their party broke Britain in the 1980s and now they are trying to do the same thing again. Let us look at their actions in the first four weeks: cuts of £1.2 billion in support that was getting people back to work; cuts in the future jobs fund; cuts in the youth guarantee and in help for the long-term unemployed just when they need it most; and a Budget that cuts the number of jobs in the economy so that there are fewer jobs than there would have been, not just next year but in every year for the rest of the Parliament too.

[Mr Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

Many of the previous Government’s measures helped some people into work, but the 3 million workless households where no adults of working age were working were barely touched in the Labour years. It is all very well to talk about the 1980s, but what was happening between 1997 and the last election? Precious little. Many of those people never saw anybody from Jobcentre Plus or anyone else. They were just left to stew.