Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill: Committee Stage

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2018 Commons Chamber

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

Here we go again. Yet another debate on the Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill and yet another attempt from the Government to thwart it and stop any sort of progress. I listened carefully to the speech of the Leader of the House, and it was extraordinary. It was a sort of “Know your place, Parliament” assertion of the rights of the Crown, making the distinction somehow that this Government are not going to be accountable to Parliament in whatever this Parliament chooses to do. I have never heard a speech quite like it, and I hope that when the Leader of the House has a look at it in Hansard she will reflect on what she said. I have never known the House to be lectured in such a way about its rights and responsibilities. We are Members of Parliament, elected directly by our constituents, and we come here to make sure that their interest is properly and effectively represented. To be told just to know our place in the House and allow the Government to do whatever they want was quite disgraceful. I hope that the Leader of the House reflects on what she said today.

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that providing a money resolution does not spend the money? All it does is allow Members to discuss the Bill line by line. That is what the Government are not allowing.

[Pete Wishart]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) made that point to the Leader of the House. The money resolution does not commit the Government to anything in money terms. It allows the Bill to progress. At any point during that process the Government can come along with new clauses, and might have legitimate grounds for making sure that the Bill is delayed. I accept and respect that, but let the Bill progress for goodness’ sake.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The Leader of the House said that the Opposition were given a chance last year to become the Government and did not get it from the electorate, but she should be reminded that she did not get it either. She mentioned the Crown and ancient conventions a lot in her speech. She should remember what happened to a king who defied Parliament.

[Pete Wishart]

That is a salutary lesson from the hon. Gentleman. He knows and respects his history, and knows exactly what is being debated here and the impact that that type of speech has.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

This is not an area where I have expertise, but my understanding was that the money resolution enabled money to be spent in preparation for the Bill becoming law. So there is a financial implication of passing a money resolution, even if the Bill has not proceeded to Third Reading and Royal Assent.

[Pete Wishart]

The right hon. Gentleman is right that he is not an expert on this particular issue; he has just demonstrated that by what he said. There is no obligation on the Government to commit money in a money resolution. A money resolution would allow the Committee stage of the Bill to be given the authority that the Leader of the House suggests this motion would not allow. I looked today at some of the proceedings of the Committee. It is like “Alice in Wonderland” meets “Groundhog Day”, without any progress. The Committee seems to come together and adjourn; as quickly as it sits to consider some of the issues, proceedings are abandoned because there is nothing for the Committee to do. What an absolute and utter waste of time.

The key point is not Parliament’s responsibilities and the distinction between Government’s and Parliament’s roles in the House. The key issue is that the private Member’s Bills system is broken. It may be broken beyond repair. This is the fifth Parliament I have been involved in, and I have never known a Parliament to obsess so constantly and continually about private Members’ Bills. Usually they go through without any real issue or difficulty. The Leader of the House mentioned a couple of Bills under the coalition Government for which money resolutions were withheld. In the periphery of my memory, I remember those Bills, but that was about the first time in my 17 years in this place that the Government withheld money resolutions. We are entering a new sort of territory with this Government weapon to stop the progress of Bills that they do not particularly like. The House should consider deeply the increasing use of this method as a blocking tactic for private Members’ Bills before we continue down such an avenue.

[Mr Harper]

I think I can help the hon. Gentleman a little by explaining why there have been several such examples. It is because private Members’ Bills have started to be used inappropriately by people trying to deliver significant constitutional change, which should properly be done in detail on the Floor of the House. Perhaps that is why the Government have reflected carefully on whether they should allow money resolutions at every stage.

[Pete Wishart]

I have a reasonably neat solution in response to the right hon. Gentleman. If the Government do not like private Members’ Bills—if they object to them on constitutional grounds or for whatever reason—they should get up, tell the House and put their case on the Floor of the House. If the House agrees with the Government and finds particular issues and difficulties with a private Member’s Bill, the House can vote against it. If the House says, “No, we do not accept the Government’s arguments”, Members can vote for the Bill so that it passes. That is called democracy. The right hon. Gentleman used to believe in that principle. It is certainly something that I still value.

[Siobhain McDonagh]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) is underestimating the power of private Members’ Bills historically in this House? They have paved the way for very big social change. For example, the Abortion Act 1967 and the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970 by Lord Morris—both very powerful pieces of legislation —came via private Members’ Bills. They have always had a huge and significant impact, so what the right hon. Gentleman says is just nonsense.

[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to remind us of some of the really important private Members’ Bills in the history of the House. She will remember her colleague, Tom Clarke, who got two private Members’ Bills through Parliament: one on international development and another on disability. We owe a great deal of credit to Tom Clarke for what he did to ensure that those Bills were brought before Parliament. The Governments of the day were not prepared to consider those Bills, but Members of Parliament thought they were important enough to bring to the House, and to spend time and effort on getting them through. There are also really important private Members’ Bills in this Session. My hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) is not here, but his Refugees (Family Reunion) (No. 2) Bill is really important. Again, that Bill has been stalled by this Government refusing to provide a money resolution.

[Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman accused the Government of having an aversion to private Members’ Bills, but he also said that he has been here for five Parliaments. In fact, 22 private Members’ Bills were passed in the 2005 Parliament and 31 were passed in the 2010 Parliament. If we include the 2015 and 2017 Parliaments together, more than double the number of private Members’ Bills have been passed than in 2005. That is hardly an aversion to private Members’ Bills.

[Pete Wishart]

I do not think that I ever made the charge that this Government have an aversion to private Members’ Bills. If the hon. Gentleman wants me to be accusatory, I will accuse the Government of blocking Bills that they do not like. That is what we are getting to here. There are lots of Government-sponsored private Members’ Bills, a couple of which I have personally sponsored and that I want to see progress, so I am not saying that they have an aversion to them. I think that they value them as much as possible, but the system is broken just now. The current way in which we do this business is not satisfactory, and every Member of this House should be concerned about that.

[David Linden]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the reasons that the Government, under the current regime, are putting through so many private Members’ Bills is because they skip over the ones that they do not like. In the case of the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan), his Bill was 13th in the queue. The Government just decided that they did not like it, so they went to the Health and Social Care (National Data Guardian) Bill of the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), which was 92nd in the queue. We cannot have a situation whereby the Government decide just to skip over Bills. The Leader of the House spoke about overriding centuries-old tradition, but the centuries-old tradition is that we go to the next available Bill, so it is the Government who are riding roughshod over the procedures of the House.

[Pete Wishart]

That is right. I am trying to be helpful to the House, as always. You know me, Madam Deputy Speaker; if I can think of a way in which to bring the House together so that we can try to make satisfactory process, I will offer it to the House. I see it as part of my job, obligation and responsibility as a Member of Parliament to see whether we can broker a solution. I suggest to the Leader of the House that the system is not working. I think that she and I would agree on that. She can nod her head if she wants.

[Andrea Leadsom]

indicated dissent.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pete Wishart]

She is not nodding her head; she thinks that it is working satisfactorily. Okay, I may be on my own. In my view, and probably in that of most Members on the Opposition Benches, something is wrong. Something is not working with the system of dealing with private Members’ Bills. There is real disappointment and anger in this House about how all this is working out. This is the third time we have debated it, as the Leader of the House said, and it is not getting any better—if anything, it is getting worse. After her lecture to the House today, it feels a lot worse to Opposition Members.

If money resolutions are a sticking point, how about we try to design some sort of solution? I have tried to suggest this notion to Conservative Members: if they do not like something, they should come here on a Friday to oppose it and get their way; and if they do not get their way, they should accept the role of the House. We are going to have to try to find a way round this. We cannot continually come back to the point where Members secure support for their Bill from this House, believe that they are making progress with it, and then are ultimately blocked by a Government who do not like it and so are not prepared to give it a money resolution.

I do not know how we might do this, but may I suggest to the Leader of the House that we try to get a cross-party solution? I know that it has been suggested that the matter should be put to the Procedure Committee. That has happened twice in my time in this House. We have had the Procedure Committee consider private Members’ Bills, and maybe it should do so again. How about if all the parties got together and tried to see what we could do to ensure that we get round some of these very tricky issues? The current situation is not good enough.

I was out in my constituency campaigning over the weekend. Our constituents look at these sorts of issues and get more and more concerned. We have a particular issue in Scotland. People in Scotland are furious about the disrespect that this Government have shown to our nation in taking about 15 minutes to turn the devolution settlement on its head. However, they are also seeing some of these issues about private Members’ Bill going through. [Interruption.] I know that Conservative Members do not like it, but this perception is building up. I saw over the weekend that there is bewilderment more than hostility. What is the House of Commons doing? Why cannot we properly debate issues that are really important? Why cannot we consider private Members’ Bills?

[John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)]

What my constituents and most people in Scotland, I think, got frustrated with and annoyed by was the pantomime performance we saw last week of SNP Members storming out of the House, not representing the interests of their constituents or of Scotland. The Leader of the House spoke very well about the importance of the Government keeping control of financial resolutions. I would be interested to know if the right hon. Gentleman would advocate the same proposal for the Scottish Parliament with regard to how the Scottish Government manage similar matters.

[Pete Wishart]

First of all, I am not a right hon. Member. For some reason, Scottish National party Members are not made Privy Counsellors, regardless of how long we have served in this House. I thank the hon. Gentleman for the promotion, but I have never actually secured that position.

I wish that the hon. Gentleman had been on the streets in Perth, as I was, on Saturday. He would have seen the deep frustration and anger that there was with this House after the massive disrespect demonstrated to our Parliament—the Scottish Parliament—which secured 15 minutes of debate before its devolution settlement was turned on its head. There is a growing frustration with this House as more and more people, particularly in Scotland, are seeing—because they like watching us speak—how this House is treated. There is real bewilderment about what is going on.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

I hesitate to move the hon. Gentleman off one of his favourite topics, but does he agree that there is another fundamental point that is being missed? The current boundary review is inaccurate because its formulations do not include the many extra voters who have gone on to the electoral rolls since the Boundary Commission did its basic analysis. This needs to be done again, and that would strengthen our democracy.

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I know that a lot of people want to speak, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will try to make a bit of progress if I could be allowed to do so.

I hear what the Government are saying. Of course, there is the news that we will have the report of the Boundary Commission before we come back in September. However, my feeling—perhaps it is just me again—is that what the House decided on the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) trumps what the Boundary Commission is about to deliver, because it was a democratic decision of the House that favoured his Bill and wanted to see it progress. My understanding is that that should come first. I think that outcomes decided on the Floor of the House—

[Mr Harper]

rose—

[Pete Wishart]

I will not give way. I have given way to the right hon. Gentleman before, and I know that Madam Deputy Speaker wants me to rush.

I believe that outcomes decided on the Floor of the House take precedence over anything that the Boundary Commission review will conclude. As hon. Members have said, there is not a majority for what the Boundary Commission is proposing. At some point, that will have to be tested in the House. The House will either have to agree that we should cut the number of our constituencies to 600 or say to the Government that we need 650 Members.

There are good reasons why the number should stay at 650, and they have been outlined. We will lose our 73 Members of the European Parliament in March next year, so all their responsibilities and duties will have to be prosecuted by Members of this Parliament. The point was also made about the relative imbalance that there would be between Members of Parliament and the Executive if there were 600 MPs, with more Ministers per Member of Parliament. That is a real point. Then there is the absurd circus down the corridor—the House of Lords. We are talking about reducing the size of Parliament, while there is one new Member of the House of Lords after one another. We have to be very careful about all those things.

The key point that the Leader of the House made today was that this is all about precedent, because it is in “Erskine May” and the Standing Orders of the House that the Government have the right to introduce money resolutions. Let us take that out of their hands. Another solution that the Leader of the House might want to consider is that once a private Member’s Bill passes its Second Reading, a money resolution should be put forthwith to the House. If the Government disagree with the money resolution, they should put forward their reservation at that point, which would allow the House to make a decision. What is the point of this private Member’s Bill purgatory that the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton is experiencing? It is not fair to him, for a start. Why can we not do that at the outset of the process?

Lastly, this is about the democratic outcomes of the House and how we do our business. We dispense with that at our peril. We have to look carefully at how we are organised in this House and how it is being observed. Private Members’ Bills are a feature of this House that our constituents like. The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) mentioned the big, important pieces of legislation that have been passed as private Members’ Bills. We mess with them at our peril. They are broken just now; they are not working. Let us see if we can work together to find a solution that will allow us to continue to enjoy bringing pieces of legislation to the House as ordinary Members and make sure that they are not obstructed by Government. For goodness’ sake, surely we can achieve that.

[Several hon. Members rose—]