European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Oliver Letwin and Alex Salmond

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Let me start by correcting the record. I had something to do with the production of our manifesto, which clearly the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) was unable to read in the time available to him. It made no assertion such as he suggests. It was perfectly clear that what it said about the single market would be superseded were there a referendum with the unanticipated result of the British people taking us out of the EU as a whole. I regret that decision—I voted and campaigned to remain—but the British people voted to leave.

The interesting thing about this interesting debate is that it is one of those moments when the cloak of obscurity is lifted from an issue and the dynamic that is actually going on becomes clear. We have reached the crunch issue. We have reached the point at which we are discussing whether the effect of the Supreme Court judgment should be that Parliament has the option at some future date of overruling the British people and cancelling the leaving of the EU, or whether it should not have that ability.

My right hon. Friend the Minister made it perfectly clear that there will be a vote, but he also made it perfectly clear that that vote will be between the option of accepting a particular set of arrangements that have been negotiated by Her Majesty’s Government, and not accepting those arrangements and thereby leaving the EU without either a withdrawal agreement or an arrangement for the future. He is right to be optimistic that we can reach such agreements, but neither of us can possibly know whether we will. It is therefore right, if one is trying to follow the logic of the referendum decision, that the judgment of this House should simply be about whether the deal is good enough to warrant doing or, on the contrary, we should leave without a deal.

That is a completely different proposition from the one which, in various guises, some on the Opposition Benches—I exempt entirely from this the Opposition Front-Bench team—are putting, which is that Parliament should instead be given, by one means or another, the ability to countermand the British people’s decision to leave the EU by having a vote either on whether we should or should not leave or, in the proposition of the leader of the Liberal Democrats, on whether the people should have a second referendum on whether we should leave. In both of those propositions is a clear determination to undo the effect of the referendum, and we have now reached the point at which that has come out into the open.

[Alex Salmond]

The alternative is just to instruct the Government to negotiate a better deal. The phrase in the Conservative manifesto, which the right hon. Gentleman did not write, was:

“We say: yes to the Single Market.”

That sounds pretty unequivocal.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Not at all; at that moment we were a member of the EU and we said yes to the single market. I campaigned for the single market and I campaigned to remain part of the EU. That was the Government’s position in the referendum. But we also committed to a referendum, and the point of committing to a referendum, which we made perfectly clear not only in the manifesto but in a range of speeches around it, was that if the British people voted to leave, we would leave. It seems to me perfectly clear that the word leave means leave. It does not mean remain. The right hon. Gentleman is an expert parliamentarian, and he has been arguing in many ways, over a long time—the leader of the Liberal Democrats has been arguing it more explicitly—that leave ought to be translated as remain. I deny that that is a translation to which the English language is susceptible.

It seems to me to be perfectly clear that those of us who campaigned to leave and those of us who campaigned to remain have a choice: we can either accept the referendum result or reject it. I accept it, and some Opposition Members also take that view. It may be that some take the view that we should reject the referendum result, and that is a perfectly honourable view. The leader of the Liberal Democrats was effectively arguing, more openly, that we should reject the referendum result. I do not in any way decry his ability to argue that, but everybody who is arguing that should come out openly to that effect, as he did, and not pretend that they are trying to invent some method of parliamentary scrutiny. They are doing nothing of the kind; they are trying to invent a means of undoing the result of the referendum. This House has voted conclusively not to undo the result of the referendum. I think the House was right to do that, but whether it was right or not, it should do that with its eyes open and should not be gulled by anybody into passing amendments that have an effect that it has not signed up to openly.

Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill

Debate between Oliver Letwin and Alex Salmond

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 18th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Yes, my hon. Friend is right. That is the evidence that the Boundary Commission gave, but I was always, as I know he was when he was a Minister, suspicious of claims by agencies of the state that things could not be done on certain timescales, so I went to the trouble for some while to interrogate that set of propositions and to look specifically at all the things that could be done to diminish the elapsed time by doing things in parallel rather than in series, by constricting various forms of consultation, and by accelerating the responses to the consultations. I am satisfied that the Boundary Commission genuinely in this case could do not this with any semblance of propriety. It is not a matter of being able to overcome those problems by giving it more money or more resources. It simply could not do the job. I think the spokesman for the Opposition is perfectly aware of these facts and that it is his intention to ensure that we do not proceed with equalisation.

[Alex Salmond (Gordon) (SNP)]

If we are in the business of practicality, with the right hon. Gentleman’s long experience of contamination in Government, what makes him think that hugely controversial proposals that lack any consensus, that have united the Opposition parties across the House against them and that are opposed by independent-minded Conservatives have any chance whatsoever of getting an affirmative vote and an Order in Council some time in 2018? All this upset and nonsense is for nothing unless the Government start to listen to other voices.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman. My guess is that the proposals will get consent. Time will tell. We will also see whether they get assent in the other place, which is much the greater question. Clearly, we have seen in the past few days the Government withdraw from measures intended to make it easier to ensure that if this place consents, the other place can be made to consent. Nevertheless, my own guess is that both places will consent. We will see.

In this debate we are not talking about whether or not the other place will consent. We are talking about whether we should adopt legislation that would prevent any chance of our having the opportunity even to assent. My point is that if we do not have that opportunity, we can be sure that we will not have a more equalised set of seats. Of course, the right hon. Gentleman, who is one of the canniest politicians in the United Kingdom over a very long period, very well knows that that is the case and he has a very great interest.

I want to address our party interests for a moment. It is as clear as day, although many Members who have spoken have been coy about being explicit about it, that there are party interests on both sides of the Chamber. It is perfectly true that equalisation would remove a bias in the electoral system that has existed against the Conservative party for a little while. It used to be the other way round at one stage; these things happen over time. The fact is—it is quite an important fact—that it is not in the interests of a political party to have the boundaries redrawn for 2020. As things currently stand in the polling, the Conservative party will have a massive majority in the House of Commons after the 2020 election and—[Interruption.] No, indeed, not in Scotland.

If things go terribly wrong between now and 2020, I do not believe that these changes will protect the Conservative majority under those circumstances. My whole experience of politics, which I suspect is shared by the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond), whose experience is longer and deeper than mine, is that when the mood of the country shifts, it does not make too much difference what the system is—it shifts pretty decisively one way or the other. So, although there are party interests here, they are not nearly as important as either side may believe, and we should be trying to do a sensible and right thing, rather than something that is in the interests of one party or the other.

[Alex Salmond]

I am sure the right hon. Gentleman is totally disinterested, but I am also sure he is aware that the Scottish proposals, which would be of great interest to me, would mean that, on the same votes as at the last election, the SNP would have all the seats bar one in Scotland. Does he not understand, in a disinterested way, that I am trying to save the last Conservative MP in Scotland?

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Actually, no. With his typical brilliance, the right hon. Gentleman is alluringly enticing us to avoid noticing that there would be a reduced number of Scottish Members altogether in this House. As his party currently controls almost all the Scottish seats, it is to his advantage to maintain the number of Scottish Members and, indeed, a system in which Scottish electors are typically over-represented by the number of their Members of Parliament, almost all of whom are from the SNP.

As I say, I do not actually believe that that is the material question. The material question is whether having the current set of proposals being operated by the Boundary Commission would equalise better than not having them, the answer to which is clearly yes. Is it right to equalise more rather than less? The Opposition and the Government appear to agree that that is right, and even my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough agrees that it is right. Are we going to equalise more or less if we proceed with this Bill rather than the current arrangements? The answer is clearly that we are more likely to equalise better if we proceed with the current arrangements rather than the Bill.

I want to turn now to the second question, about the number of Members of Parliament. There was a very interesting contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough, and the Opposition spokesman made some echoing remarks about it. Both of them were really trying to argue that 650 is a better number—incidentally, I do not suggest that either of them suggested that there was a perfection about 650—than 600 for the purposes of doing what they each described as holding the Government to account. That is obviously a serious argument, in the sense that in a House of Commons in which 99.9% of its Members were on the payroll, the 0.1% of its Members who were not on the payroll would have some difficulty holding the 99.9% to account.

I do not personally believe that the difference between 650 and 600—or, while we are at it, 600 and 550, or 600 and 500—makes terribly much difference to the effectiveness with which this House is able to hold the Government to account. My experience is that one good MP, one effective Select Committee or one Opposition spokesman who knows what they are doing can hold a Government to account very powerfully, and a very large number of incompetent and inadequate people sitting on these Benches can wholly fail to hold Governments to account. I do not believe there is any clear relationship, still less any systemic relationship, between the number of people entitled to sit on these green Benches—most of whom, mostly, are not here—and the amount of actual, effective scrutiny of Government. It is quality, not quantity, that affects the scrutiny of Government.

It seems to me that we should address a different question in looking at whether 650 is a better number than 600 or vice versa—of course I accept that neither is a perfect number, and there is no absolute standard in terms of the right numbers. I think there is a certain myopia on this. We have to open our eyes and ask ourselves just how we look to the world. People have mentioned the other place, which, incidentally, I think is ludicrously structured altogether and is definitely in need of reform. Indeed, I tried very hard to get it reformed into a proper elected Chamber, and I shall go on arguing that case, because it is the only thing that will save that part of our democracy and actually create some checks and balances in our system. People have observed that the other place is now the largest legislature other than that in China, which obviously has more than 1 billion people in it. That may be true, but there is another legislature in this country that is almost as large—it is here. We have 650 Members of Parliament seeking to be the primary source of legislation, if I can put it that way, for 60 million people. In the United States, there are 100 Senators, who are counterpoised against, roughly speaking, the same number of representatives as we have in this House. If we add the two numbers in the United States together, the total is not that much greater than our 650, but those people are looking after the interests of 300 million people, instead of 60 million people.