Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Patrick Grady and Alex Burghart

Thursday 25th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

With reference to the written questions that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Cabinet Office has answered, can he outline what the Government consider to be the difference between a foreign court and an international court?

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)]

We have answered this question on a number of occasions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Patrick Grady and Alex Burghart

Thursday 2nd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

4. What recent discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on the potential impact of the use of section 35 of the Scotland Act 1998 on the constitution.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)]

Alas, I am a mere junior Minister and I rarely get to talk to my illustrious Cabinet colleagues, but I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the Government used section 35 very carefully and very reluctantly, in order to preserve the balance of powers between our countries.

[Patrick Grady]

If the Government were so determined to resolve their dispute with the Scottish Government, they would publish the amendments that they say would make the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill acceptable to them. Is not the reality that the Tories are prepared to veto and undermine the elected Scottish Parliament because they never really wanted devolution in the first place?

House of Lords Reform

Debate between Patrick Grady and Alex Burghart

Tuesday 10th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Patrick Grady]

That is the point; the pattern continues. We keep talking about but never actually implementing any meaningful or wholesale reform. The report does at least recognise that we cannot tackle one part of the system without tackling all of it. For all the fuss and media fanfare, it will just sit on the shelf and gather dust, as my hon. Friend suggests. Reform of the Lords and of the wider constitution becomes a second-order or a second-term issue, and the Executive can get on quietly putting to use the accumulated powers that they enjoy under the status quo.

That probably helps to explain, at least in part, the current Government’s position. They have said in various contexts that reform of the Lords is “not a priority”, despite the Conservative manifesto saying that the role of the House of Lords should be “looked at”. But now, even the modest suggestion of a cap on numbers, endorsed, as I have said, by the House of Lords itself, is too radical. The Minister who is in his place told me on 8 December at Cabinet Office questions:

“The Government do not have a view on the upper limit of the House of Lords.”—[Official Report, 8 December 2022; Vol. 724, c. 510.]

So there we go. It is quite remarkable—to infinity and beyond, the House of Lords filled with Tory donors, cronies and time servers. I have maybe saved the Minister his entire summing-up because the position appears to be that constitutional perfection in the UK has been achieved, and nothing needs to change again. Indeed, his colleague, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, seems to have said that he does not believe there should be any further devolution of power to the Scottish Parliament, either—now or in the future. Fortunately, it is not up to them to decide.

Those of us who support independence for Scotland are often accused of obsessing about the constitution. We are told that we should focus on the priorities of our constituents—the cost of living crisis, improving public services. I agree—

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)]

Now you are doing my summing-up speech.

[Patrick Grady]

The Minister might be interested to hear this, then. I certainly do agree that those are the key priorities for people, families, businesses and communities in Glasgow North and beyond, but to really address those priorities, we need to address the fundamental systems underneath. One way of putting it would be to say:

“While many of our immediate economic problems can be fixed by pursuing better policies, by stopping the race to the bottom in our economy, Britain needs change that runs much deeper—giving the people of Britain more power and control over our lives and the decisions that matter to us. Changing not just who governs us, but how we are governed, will address a system of government that the British people perceive is broken.”

Those are not my words. Those are the words of Gordon Brown in the introduction to his report on the UK’s future. They make the case that constitutional change is needed if we are to drive radical, social and economic change. The difficulty for the Labour party, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) has said, is that it has been promising that for 113 years, and for 13 of those years, starting in 1997, it had a chance to change it.

At the end of those 13 years, there was a certain amount of devolution across the UK, but there was still a first-past-the-post system that stoked division rather than built consensus, and a system that allowed an individual Prime Minister to appoint whoever they wanted to a seat in Parliament—and there were 92 legislators who still had a seat in Parliament because of who their parents were.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Burghart]

We have already listened very closely to arguments made in the Lords, and we have already started to make policy improvements based on some of their recommendations. That does not mean that the Government will agree to all of the amendments that the Lords have made. The important thing is the debate, because iron sharpens iron. We can pretend that we will get similar expertise—as the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson), said—from a democratically elected second House, but that simply is not true, for the reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes made clear.

There are a great many people in the Lords with huge experience, perhaps towards the end of their careers, who will not want to stand for democratic election. They will not want to put themselves through that and on the doorstep, and I have sympathy with them. I understand. It would be terribly sad if we lost those people from our legislature and if we did not have their expertise. Also, alongside that expertise, there is space for people in our legislature who are of no party affiliation. I know that the hon. Member for Glasgow North has a passionate, political viewpoint. He is a passionate member of his political party, but not everyone in the country is; not everyone in the world is. There are a great many sensible, intelligent people who have a lot to give our democracy, but who do not wish to stand for election under the flag of a particular party. If we were to move to a system of proportional representation, they would have to. There would be no independence in the Commons or the Lords. That, too, would make our Houses poorer and, I think, weaker.

The Government accept, as I think everybody here accepts, that our constitution evolves. It has been in a constant state of evolution for centuries. We are alive to the fact that we will always need to consider changes. The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) and the Opposition spokesperson spoke in favour of radical reform. Were a future Government to undertake that radical reform, it would bring major risks with it. There would not just be the loss of expertise, but a conflict of mandates, as described by the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer), who is no longer in his place. It is very easy to brush that aside and pretend that we will deal with it later or that it does not matter. I can guarantee that in the event that we had a fully elected upper House, it would start to use its mandate against the mandate of the Commons from day one, and voters would not know how long the mandate in one House would last over the other. We would very likely find ourselves in a constant cycle of elections, rather than being in a position where one party or a coalition of parties could be elected for a term and deliver based on their mandate. Those are all risks that we as parliamentarians must be alive to and aware of.

I have greatly enjoyed the debate today. It is important that from time to time we engage in debate on these major issues.

[Patrick Grady]

rose—

[Alex Burghart]

The hon. Member for Glasgow North is about to sum up, but I will let him intervene.

[Patrick Grady]

The Minister said the constitution evolves. As a bare minimum, do the Government agree with the findings of the Lord Speaker’s Committee on the size of the House of Lords, which said in 2017 that there should be a cap on the total number and efforts to reduce from the current number?

[Alex Burghart]

I refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer I gave him just before Christmas. If people do not turn up, they do not get paid. If people turn up and are involved, why not have their expertise? The Government depend on a majority in the Commons on an elected mandate. If there are more people in the upper Chamber who are capable of bringing decent scrutiny to bear on Government legislation, I have no problem with that. As I was saying, I think it is very good that we get to debate these issues, but it is also important that we do not come at debates such as these pretending that there is a perfect system out there—that we pretend that what we are doing here is laughable, and that, in other countries, they have got it absolutely right. What I do know is that, in this country, we have a fine set-up in which there is one House with a democratically elected mandate, and another House whose job it is to scrutinise and which can advise, refine and, if necessary, delay. It is a system that I think has served us well, and I believe can serve us well in the future. That said, the Government are aware that there is always room for evolution and improvement.