Nomination of Members to Committees

Oliver Letwin Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) (Con)]

I certainly do not want to detain the House for long, but I do wish to take seriously the interesting speech by the shadow Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz). I shall comment on its logic and the motive that it betrays, and thereby try to set the debate in its proper context.

Let us observe the logic of the hon. Lady’s remarks. She argued that it was improper for the Government to seek to establish a majority on the Committee of Selection with a view to having either equal or superior numbers in Committee, because, she implied, that would enable the Government to pass legislation that they might not be able to pass on the Floor of the House because, she argued, they do not actually have a majority on the Floor of the House. Let us take that proposition seriously and suppose she is right; let us suppose that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is wrong and we do not have, for the purpose of many Bills, a working majority. Incidentally, there is no evidence so far of that proposition being true: as far as I am aware, the Government have managed to pass all their business so far in this Parliament in good order—indeed, with rather larger majorities than the supply and confidence agreement would imply.

Nevertheless, let us suppose that in general the shadow Leader is going to be proved right. If she is right, when it comes to the Report stages of all the Bills in question, she and her colleagues will have the delight of being able, one by one, to reverse all the amendments against which they voted in Committee. Therefore, if her own argument is correct and she actually holds the majority, she cannot have any reason of substance for caring whether there is a majority for the Government upstairs in Committee. According to her own argument, she has in her hands the power to take such steps as to ensure that the Bills come out as she wants them.

Manifestly, that is not her view. Her view, which was displayed passionately by her desire to prevent the Government from taking a majority on Committees, is that she is at least not sure—in fact, I suspect that she strongly suspects she does not have a majority on the Floor of the House. That leads me to the question of motive. If, actually, she does not believe that there will be any substantive difference one way or the other—indeed, she cannot believe that there is, because it is a clear matter of plain fact that whoever holds the majority on the Floor of the House will prevail in the end—we have to ask why she put the argument she did. What is her motive? We know what it is, because it is the same as the motive of the former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, who was quoted earlier. It is the traditional motive of Oppositions and it is a perfectly respectable position for Oppositions to take.

What are Oppositions in business to do? Incidentally, I do not know whether it makes sense to have a parliamentary system as opposed to a Congress and so forth, but it is the system we have so, in that system, what is the purpose of an Opposition? First, it is to hold the Government to account by causing trouble in the House of Commons; secondly, it is to seek to destabilise the Government; and thirdly, it is to put themselves in a position of having appealed to the people sufficiently so that when the Government are destabilised, the Opposition can win a general election and take power. That is the legitimate role of an Opposition under our constitution. It therefore always falls to the Government of the day —as it did to the Labour Government under the conditions about which Mrs Thatcher was complaining and as it does now to our Government—to seek to assert the principle that Her Majesty’s Government should be able to take the steps necessary to pass their legislation, and not merely in substance but in good order and at a reasonable pace. It is the Opposition’s duty to seek to disrupt that, which is, of course, what is going on here.

The Labour party wishes to achieve not a substantive change in the outcomes of legislation but the delicious prospect of their being able to make it well-nigh impossible for the Government to get any sizeable amount of business through the House, which is, despite all the ritual shakes of the head that are going on at the moment, exactly what any respectable Opposition would seek to do. I congratulate them on it, but there is not the slightest reason why people on the Government Benches should be beguiled by this, any more than the Callaghan and Wilson Administrations were beguiled by Mrs Thatcher’s asseverations at the time. This is a ritual dance that will always occur under circumstances such as those that we now face. We should continue in exactly the way that the Government are doing in order to deliver what the people of this country want, which is the smooth process of Her Majesty’s Government. That is what is in the interests of the people of the country and that is what should guide us.

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[Mr Carmichael]

The right hon. Gentleman will also be aware that constitutional matters such as the question of the future of our membership of the European Union are also dealt with on the Floor of the House, so although the agreement may go slightly further than that which is normally understood by the terms of confidence and supply, it is not a comprehensive deal that gives the Government a majority on the Floor of the House. If it were, the Democratic Unionists would not be on the Bench behind me; they would be on the other side of the House on the Government Benches.

There is no direct precedent for this. There has been talk in this debate about the position that pertained relating to the Labour Government from 1974 to 1979. The clear distinction—this is an important point, of which the House should not be ignorant—is that, on that occasion, when the country was asked to choose a Government, it chose a Labour Government by a very narrow majority. That Government started with a majority—something the present Government simply do not have. I do not like what the Harrison motion did. My party opposed it then, as we oppose this measure tonight, but let us not pretend that it is somehow the same thing.

That takes me back to my quarrel with the right hon. Member for West Dorset. Surely, in advancing a change as profound as this, there has to be something more substantial by way of argument to support it than, “They did it when they were in government.”

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

As the right hon. Gentleman says, we have had a long period of co-operation, and he was a fine Minister. However, did he not notice that my argument was actually that this proposal is necessary for the smooth conduct of business, subject to a clear check on the Floor of the House on Report? Does he not agree that, under those circumstances, it is perfectly reasonable for a Government to seek to govern the country smoothly?

[Mr Carmichael]

Of course it is reasonable for a Government to seek to govern the country smoothly, but the right hon. Gentleman seems to think that what happens in Committee is just some administrative inconvenience. It is not; it is much more fundamental than that. It is the job of this House—not just the Opposition—to hold the Government to account. That is why I say to right hon. and hon. Members on the Government side, many of whom I hold in high regard, and many of whom I regard as personal friends, that they know that what they are doing tonight is wrong. They also know that if it was being done to them, they would oppose it root and branch.

We know why the Treasury Bench—the payroll—will support this measure, but those on the Back Benches have a duty that is higher than their duty to their party: it is their duty to their constituents and to this House —their duty to democracy. I ask them to consider that duty before they go into the Lobby this evening.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

rose—

[Helen Goodman]

The right hon. Gentleman promised to let me intervene and then refused, so I do not feel I need to give way to him.

Just to make another point about the remarks made by the right hon. Member for West Dorset, he has been saying that it does not matter if we do not agree with all the clauses in the Bill—if we agree with the principle of the Bill, we should vote for it. That would be like a person going into a restaurant and saying, “I didn’t like the soup, and I didn’t like the beef, and I didn’t like the apple pie, but I thought it was a great meal.” The right hon. Gentleman seems to be making completely absurd speeches these days. Anyway, the central point is that the Government’s game has been revealed by what has been said. It is all about getting a hard Brexit through. It is not about the consensus building that the Secretary of State for Brexit has been promising us for the past 15 months. The tail is wagging the dog in the Conservative party. I am sorry to tell Conservative Members that they are not taking the country with them on this. The general public are quite clear that this motion is about packing Committees. We have all had endless letters from our constituents, and I am not going to vote for the motion tonight.

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[Patrick Grady]

I am conscious of the fact that there is not very much time. The Government should instead use the Committees for precisely what the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) suggested. We saw plenty of Government Back Benchers yesterday voting reluctantly for the second reading of the Brexit Bill, because they wanted that Bill to be improved up the stair in Committee. If the Government reflect the balance of power in the House in Committees, parties will genuinely be able to work together to improve legislation that is dealt with in Committee.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I am very sorry to delay the hon. Gentleman, but because he has repeated something that some Labour Members have said, I think it is important to note for the record that the entire Committee proceedings on the Bill to which he refers will be on the Floor of the House, not in a Committee room.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

If the Leader of the House and Conservative Members are so confident about having a majority on the Floor of the House, as they have told us tonight, they should use that majority to overturn on Report any amendments that they do not like. They certainly do not need to start fiddling the system.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

rose—

[Christian Matheson]

I have only just started. The right hon. Gentleman must give me a moment.

That is actually part of the problem, because this is not a one-off situation. This is the latest in a series of measures that this Government have taken since 2015 to move the goalposts, change the rules and fiddle the system in one way or another in aid of their own party advantage when they find they cannot get around this in any other way. There was the example—

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Christian Matheson]

Oh, go on, just the once.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

The hon. Gentleman is very generous in giving way. Has he calculated how much extra time would be spent on each Bill if the Government had to reverse on the Floor of the House all the amendments made in Committee? How smooth a process of government would we then have?

[Christian Matheson]

I have not calculated that, but my advice to the right hon. Gentleman would be to win a general election with a proper majority next time and then he would not have that problem.

Last night, we saw a power grab. We know there was a power grab with the so-called Henry VIII powers and with the Government giving themselves the authority to pass any order on any matter. However, that was only the most recent aspect of the twisting of the rules.

We saw the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014, which required charities not to get involved in politics and potentially prevented them from scrutinising the activities of this Government. It did not apply to corporations or to newspapers, which are so keen to tell us how to vote, but only to charities and trade unions.

We saw the Trade Union Act 2016, which fundamentally altered the structure of the relationship between trade unions and the Labour party, thereby cutting funding for opposition to the Conservatives, even though there was no call for that from within trade union membership, and even though funding was not denied to any other political party. We saw the length of the Session doubled by the Leader of the House, but she has not doubled the number of Opposition days—and nor the number of private Member’s Bill days—to provide for scrutiny of the Government, including by Back Benchers. We have seen proposals to alter the number of constituencies, with very tight limits being given to the Electoral Commission. Apparently, that would give 30 extra seats to the Conservatives. Once again, they were changing the rules in the same way they are seeking to do tonight.

There is a clear authoritarian streak in what the Government propose—an anti-democratic streak. They seem to be running scared.