Business of the House

Debate between Oliver Letwin and Bernard Jenkin

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

I would never take offence from my right hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Sir Patrick McLoughlin), who is a very old friend and colleague. We have been through many things together in Cabinets and shadow Cabinets over many years, and although we disagree about this particular constitutional issue, we agree about much else.

It is of course the case that the Standing Orders of the House of Commons are the possession of the House of Commons. It is therefore the case that, as in all other matters pertaining to the House of Commons, a majority may alter them. If my right hon. Friend is asking me the only question that he can logically ask me under those circumstances—that is, whether a majority of Members of the House of Commons can alter the Standing Orders of the House of Commons at any given time should they wish to do so—the only answer I can give him is the only answer that he could give me as a former Chief Whip, which is yes.

Normally, the Government Chief Whip commands a majority sufficient at all times to ensure that the Executive are able, in effect, to change the Standing Orders of the House of Commons, but this is a very unusual provision of our Parliament. In the United States Congress and many other legislatures, it would be regarded as quite intolerable for the Executive to be able to change the procedures of the House using that kind of whipping, to which we are entirely accustomed. However, it is our method, and if the Government of the day have a sufficient majority to be able to do so, they will be able to exercise that method. On this occasion—not in general, but in relation to this particular set of issues—the Government do not command a majority in all cases, as has been frequently remarked by Members on both sides of the House. They may do tonight or they may not; they have not on some other occasions. Where they do not command a majority, it is open to Members of the House of Commons in the majority to alter the Standing Orders.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

There is a danger in the comparative analysis of different constitutions, because of course the United States constitution has a very different method of the separation of powers. As I pointed out in the debate we had on Monday, the President has a legislative veto unless Congress has a two-thirds majority. In any system of government, there is usually an opportunity for the Executive to veto legislation, and that is what our Standing Order No. 14 effectively provides for, with money resolutions, Queen’s consent and that sort of thing. All that is being bypassed in this procedure, which has no mandate or democratic legitimacy from the voters. This is therefore a very questionable process, which is undermining the accountability of how laws are made in this country.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Alas, I think that Brexit will leave behind it a trail of many difficulties for our nation, as we seek to heal the divisions and so on. But I suspect that one of the good things about it is that it will have provoked between my hon. Friend and myself many years of interesting discussion about the evolution of our constitution. My own view is that our constitution is not very well constructed, and does not contain proper checks and balances in a written form in the way in which some better constitutions do. Interestingly, that includes the Basic Law, which we ourselves wrote for the Germans and which is a much better organised constitution; there is not the veto to which my hon. Friend refers, but there are checks and balances through which it would certainly be impossible for the Government to engage in the sort of things that have become usual since 1902—I mistakenly referred to 1906 on a previous occasion—and that have given the Executive too much control over the proceedings of the House of Commons.

Interestingly, some of my hon. and right hon. Friends, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), have for a very long time argued that the Executive have too much control over the House of Commons. It is just that, on this particular occasion, he would like the Executive to have more control—or would have liked the Executive to have more control before yesterday, in any case. I rather think that people’s views on this constitutional matter are currently being overly influenced by their view of what the desirable result is, and I admit entirely that mine are too.

I do not think that this is a minor constitutional wrangle. We could go on happily having this discussion for some years, and ought to in a proper way. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker), the Chair of the Procedure Committee, will want to inaugurate proper discussions of these things at much greater length. At the moment, this nation faces a very serious issue by anybody’s reckoning—those who are in favour of stepping out on Thursday week and those who are against it. We all agree that it is a very important step. The business of the House motion provides for a Bill that has the effect of making it not possible for a Prime Minister to take that step without coming to the House, proposing an extension and trying to obtain an extension approved by the House from the EU. That is the importance of it, and I think that it is actually very important.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Oliver Letwin and Bernard Jenkin

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

Let me deal with my right hon. and learned Friend’s helpful intervention in two steps. If what he said in the first step about the supremacy of the Supreme Court’s rulings is to apply—which is not inequality, but puts the Supreme Court above the ECJ in the interpretation of these matters for retained law—that is a perfectly clear position, and one that I, as a matter of fact, would welcome; but then the Bill should bloody well say so. However, he is right, in that even if we presume that the Bill will be adjusted—as I am sure it will be, in the House of Lords—to make it clear that that is the case, we face the next problem, which is what it is that the poor old Supreme Court is meant to be doing.

[Mr Jenkin]

I understand the words

“in accordance with any retained case law”

in clause 6(3)(a), but I do not understand the words

“any retained general principles of EU law”.

That suggests that the court must adopt a methodology which has been retained. What we want our courts to do is revert to what they used to do, which was interpreting statute without reference to the jurisprudential and teleological techniques adopted by the European Court.

[Anna Soubry]

No, no.

EU Referendum: Voter Registration

Debate between Oliver Letwin and Bernard Jenkin

Thursday 9th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

My hon. Friend asks a very good question. Unfortunately, I can give him only a very partial answer. We know as a fact that there were, if memory serves, 214,000 applications in the hour leading up to the crash. What we cannot know, because it is in the nature of the computer system that it cannot tell us, is how many people either tried or would have tried to apply during the succeeding 90 minutes or so during which they were unable to apply. The answer is therefore that I cannot tell.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

Have the Government made any inquiries, assessment or technical analysis of whether there is any possibility that some malevolent attack was made on the website at that time, as opposed to there being an incredibly unusual spike in the numbers?

[Mr Letwin]

My hon. Friend will very much recognise that I am not a technical expert on computing, but I am advised by those in the Cabinet Office and the Government Digital Service that, as far as they can make out, there was no untoward event whatsoever. There was simply an incapacity of the system to handle that number of applications. The system is designed to be scoped to deal with a certain number of simultaneous events, and that number was exceeded during that period, so in retrospect, it was not surprising that it fell over. I should add that since that time, as the very first lesson learned, the website has been altered so that it has a larger capacity—I think almost twice as much capacity—to be able to deal with a higher number of simultaneous events than previously.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Oliver Letwin and Bernard Jenkin

Wednesday 27th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

We know that special advisers are required to submit their emails and telephone texts to public view under freedom of information legislation. What is the Government’s policy on the use of WhatsApp, which special advisers are using to conceal Government business from public view?

[Mr Letwin]

I hesitate to admit to my hon. Friend that I have never personally used WhatsApp in my life. I am happy to reassure him that all aspects of Government business are properly recorded and minuted, and are subject to FOI requests as normal, despite the rumours that he has heard.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Oliver Letwin and Bernard Jenkin

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Government Policy and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr Oliver Letwin)]

That is a question on which the Public Administration Committee has focused for a long time, and very welcome it is too.

The creation of the implementation unit in the Cabinet Office has done a great deal to increase implementation capabilities throughout the Government, and I am glad to say that we have launched a series of other initiatives to bring Departments together. We have created the better care fund, the stabilisation unit, the international energy unit and the troubled families programme, and we intend to continue the process.

[Mr Jenkin]

During the inquiry that we conducted on future challenges facing the machinery of Whitehall, we found that, so far, the Government have been very good at imposing departmental spending limits, but there is a capability deficit when it comes to cross-departmental financial planning and management. How do the Government propose to address that?

[Mr Letwin]

I agree that it needs to be tackled. I think that the most signal example is the relationship between local authorities—in particular, adult social care departments—and the health service. We are now focusing on that above all, and trying to prevent circumstances in which a failure to pool budgets leads to worse results for patients. I think that we shall then have a model that we will try to use in many other areas.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Oliver Letwin and Bernard Jenkin

Wednesday 21st March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

The hon. Lady will be aware that, as I mentioned in my first answer, there has been a massive reduction in the headcount of the civil service as a whole. Of course there have been particular cases in which particular people needed to be hired, but the broad effort we have been making has brought down the deficit and increased dramatically the efficiency of the civil service.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

May I remind my right hon. Friend of the findings of the Public Administration Committee report, “Change in Government”, published last autumn, which identified the reduction in resources as just one of the many changes the Government are trying to achieve in the civil service? We await the plan for civil service reform with great interest, because our main conclusion was that the Government need a plan in order to effect this change.

[Mr Letwin]

My hon. Friend, the Chairman of the Public Administration Committee, is absolutely right. My right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General and I have had meetings with the Prime Minister, the head of the civil service and the Cabinet Secretary, and under the aegis of those two very senior officials the review to which my hon. Friend refers is now being carried forward. There will be a strategy—much beloved of the Committee—that will emerge from that review, and once it is available Ministers will consider it and produce a plan for further changes in the civil service.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Oliver Letwin and Bernard Jenkin

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

We believe that social impact bonds have an enormous role to play. The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), who has responsibility for the civil society, and I recently had a round table meeting with a group of social entrepreneurs and investors who are interested in investing in social enterprise. We are encouraging that and we are taking further steps through Big Society Capital to promote the use of social impact bonds. Of course our payment-by-results systems also make use of social impact bonds.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

8. What plans he has for the future of the role of the head of the civil service.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Oliver Letwin and Bernard Jenkin

Wednesday 7th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

My hon. Friend has actively and aggressively pursued several Government Departments about these issues and I hope that he will continue to do so. He is absolutely right that too much of this still goes on. My right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office, who has taken the lead on the issue and deserves great credit for that, has not tried to keep the issue secret—on the contrary, he has tried to open it up.

We have introduced a “mystery shopper” scheme, which allows suppliers to challenge Government procurers when they see overly bureaucratic processes. I am delighted to be able to tell the House that during the first three months of the scheme, 23 cases of things such as huge telephone-book-sized contracts were investigated and 11 have led to immediate reductions in tedious bureaucracy. All the information about the scheme has been published on the Cabinet Office website.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

Has my right hon. Friend had a chance to read the Public Administration Committee report “Government and IT—‘A Recipe For Rip-Offs’ ”? It points out that we cannot rely on the large systems integrators to involve small and medium-sized enterprises. The Government themselves have to employ people from that sector so that the Government can engage with it directly. That is the only way in which we will get SMEs involved in Government procurement.

[Mr Letwin]

As with every product of the Select Committee in which my hon. Friend is so notably involved, we do indeed pay enormous attention to that report. My right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office has already taken that set of steps and is already intending to ensure that we have the expertise to do exactly as my hon. Friend recommends. It is absolutely crucial that we get to grips with every large project, and some of them are central to the Government’s policy agenda—in welfare, for example.

Open Public Services White Paper

Debate between Oliver Letwin and Bernard Jenkin

Monday 11th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

Yes, in the sense that this White Paper sets out a programme not to enforce diversity of provision, but to enable it. If the community wishes to leave a particular service that is provided by only one provider where it is, that will be for the community to judge. If the community believes that in some cases it is worth having a diversity of suppliers, that is what the community will be able to do. I am speaking now about areas that are mainly devolved, as the hon. Gentleman said; hence, I am speaking about England. I leave it to him and his colleagues to deal with those in Scotland. In the case of the Work programme, there is a diversity of suppliers; indeed, there had to be, in order to create competitive pressure to ensure that those who succeed also succeed in being paid, and that those who do not succeed are quickly replaced by those who will, because it is a payment-by-results programme and the aim is to get people back to work. We want the providers that are best at getting people back to work to be those that remain in business.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement and the excellent White Paper, which lays such emphasis on choice for individuals in the type of public services they wish to have. Does he agree that we cannot say that we are in favour of choice and then insist that a particular service be run by a monopolistic local authority? Nor can we say that we are against competition if we are also complaining about too much public procurement going to large private sector companies that were in favour of more competition, not less.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Oliver Letwin and Bernard Jenkin

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Letwin]

Social enterprises can take a wide range of different forms, but the common feature is that they do not seek to make a profit for shareholders. I think there is a widely understood definition of voluntary and community sector groups, and the big society bank will be organised in such a way that it can identify those and make sure that the funds that it is providing to social investors and social lenders go only to those groups.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

May I commend the intellectual ideas behind the whole concept of the big society? May I also commend to my right hon. Friend an article by Tim Montgomerie that appeared on ConservativeHome earlier this week entitled, “Conservatives can win the poverty debate but not if the Big Society is our message”? Is the big society more accurately described as a label for a collection of policies rather than a policy itself?

[Mr Speaker]

I hope that the Minister will answer with particular reference to private sector applications and the big society bank.