Private Members’ Bills: Money Resolutions

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Monday 21st May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) on securing this important debate, and I thank you, Mr Speaker, for ensuring that it has been granted. It is unfortunate that we have to have such a debate under Standing Order No. 24, and the way that the Government have responded to it has been, to say the very least, disappointing.

There are lots of things I call the Leader of the House—I call her charming; I call her helpful; I call her a bit Brexitish—but I think she has been less than sensible in the way that she has approached issues to do with money resolutions in the House, and to continue to defy the majority opinion and view of this House consistently and over a period of time does her no credit whatsoever. The House has made a decision on these money resolutions, and it is incumbent upon the Government to ensure that the rules of this House are progressed.

Where we are just now is very disappointing, not just for the important private Member’s Bill of the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton, but particularly for that of my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil). There is strong and great cross-party support and consensus right across the House for his Bill and for this matter to be progressed to ensure that his Bill at least gets through.

There has been a pattern to what the Government have been doing since they were elected as a minority Government in 2017, which is their failure to acknowledge that they are a minority Government. They already do not appear to engage properly in Opposition day debates, and they certainly do not vote in the vast majority of them; they have stuffed the Standing Committees of this House with a majority of their Members even though they are a minority Government; they have done their best to ensure that the Democratic Unionist party has been given its £1 billion to ensure some of their legislation gets through; and the way they have dealt with private Members’ Bills is consistent with that approach.

But we are not going to let the Government get in the way of our private Members’ Bills. We should say to this Government loudly and clearly, “Get your grubby hands off our private Members’ Bills, because they are far too important and valuable not just to this House but to our constituents right across this country.” Private Members’ Bills are increasingly valued by our constituents, and they want to see legislation progressed through this mechanism; we increasingly see that reflected in our mailbags.

The arrangements for private Members’ Bills are bad enough, what with being at the mercy of the likes of the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and, although he has changed his coat today, the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) who consistently do what they can to block and filibuster on such Bills. Instead of thwarting private Members’ Bills, it is incumbent upon everybody in this House to ensure that they are properly enabled and supported, because they show this House at its very best.

All of us in this House have a passing interest in ensuring that private Members’ Bills are dealt with properly, because we all want to be champions of private Members’ Bills; we would all like that little bit of a legacy, where we have been able in some small way to shape legislation as a small contribution from our time as Members of Parliament.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend share my frustration that the Procedure Committee in the previous Parliament, and I believe in the Parliament before that and in the current Parliament, has spent a considerable amount of time looking at the private Member’s Bill system and has come up with sensible proposals, such as allowing the Backbench Business Committee to allocate the first four Bills so that Bills that command support from across the House can make progress? That is not dissimilar to the sensible system in the Scottish Parliament where, again, provided that there is consensus, Bills can move forward instead of the Government having an effective veto.

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. He really gets to the point of what this is about. Private Members’ Bills are popular things. Our constituents like them. This is the kind of work they want to see us doing. They want to see us working consensually together, progressing Bills that are of interest to them. I commend the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) for going about this in exactly the right way and asking the people of this country what they wanted his Bill to be about, given that he was No. 1 in the ballot. That is the kind of approach that our constituents increasingly want us to take, rather than the usual stuff that we observe, particularly during set-piece opportunities such as private Members’ Bills. Instead of thwarting the progress of these Bills, let us get behind them and support them. Let us ensure that this country gets what it seems to want.

To be successful with a private Member’s Bill, there are three really big tests that a Member has to overcome. First, they have to beat all the rest of their colleagues to get on the ballot. It is remarkable that nearly 95% of Members of this House applied to bring in a private Member’s Bill. That is how popular they are. The Member will have to get into the top 10, or possibly the top 20, in the ballot just to get their Bill to a Second Reading. The second test involves the tough task of getting it through its Second Reading debate. They will need 100 Members down here to ensure that they get the closure motion, but the debates are held on Fridays when we are traditionally with our constituents, hard-pressed as we are to respond to our constituents’ interests. The Member will have to work cross-party to ensure that they have a range of support across the House. They will have to work consensually. They will also be at the mercy of the filibusterer, our good friend the hon. Member for Christchurch, when he gets to his feet to try to ensure that the Bill is blocked and disrupted.

If a Member can do all that and get their Bill through its Second Reading, they will then face the third test: does it meet the approval of the Government? At that point, the Government can simply decide that they do not like the Bill and refuse it a money resolution. That will effectively kill it off, or at least put it into private Member’s Bill purgatory. That is what has happened just now with the Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton. Why are we accepting this? Why are we prepared to allow this Government to block the democratic decisions of this House and to stop something that is clearly popular?

I have a neat and elegant solution: we need to take the decision out of the Government’s hands. If a private Member’s Bill passes its Second Reading, a money resolution must automatically follow. I have heard the Leader of the House saying, consistently and ad nauseam, that money resolutions are within the gift of the Government. She has talked about the Government’s opportunities and obligations, and she has talked about “Erskine May”. She has told us what the convention is. That does not matter. We could not care less about all that. If there is a convention, we must make a new one. If there is a tradition, we must start to do these things in a new way. If it is in “Erskine May”, let us revisit and review “Erskine May”. If it is in the Standing Orders of the House, let us change them. Let us ensure that we deal with this, because at the moment our arrangements for private Members’ Bills are letting the House down and letting our constituents down. Let us take back control. Now, where have I heard that before? Oh yes, that is what this House is supposed to be doing. How about we demonstrate it in relation to these Bills?