Nomination of Members to Committees

Debate between Pete Wishart and Tim Loughton

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

I want to make some progress. I have given way on countless occasions, and I will try to give way as I progress through the next 45 minutes of my speech.

The history is quite compelling, and I am fascinated by the previous examples:

“he said that in future Committees must reflect the numbers in the House of Commons? Is the Prime Minister repudiating that?”—[Official Report, 29 April 1976; Vol. 910, c. 551.]

Those are not my words but those of Margaret Thatcher when she railed against the injustices of the then minority Labour Government’s attempted power grab. If this parliamentary jiggery-pokery was an injustice for Margaret Thatcher in the 1970s, it should be an injustice for the sons and daughters of Margaret Thatcher in the 2010s.

[Tim Loughton]

I am intrigued by the hon. Gentleman’s new-found enthusiasm for the blessed Margaret Thatcher, but are there not two solutions to the problem he is trying to set out? One is to have an Opposition majority on Standing Committees, which would inevitably lead to Government legislation being completely chopped up and returned to the Floor of the House in different form, and the second is to decide every piece of legislation in Committee of the whole House. Both those solutions would cause chaos. Is that what he actually wants?

[Pete Wishart]

All these great concerns about chaos and arrangements that will lead to this and that are an indictment of the Members of this House. They say, “If we were to respect parliamentary arithmetic when it comes to this, all it would lead to is chaos.” That says something about the membership of this House. More critically and crucially, it goes against the advice of the Clerks on the membership of Committees. I say to the hon. Gentleman: have a look at what the Clerks determine as to how these Standing Committees should be established. The fact that this House is prepared, in this vote, to overlook the good advice of the Clerks on a matter they are obliged to determine is a shame on this House.

I want to come back to Margaret Thatcher. I never thought I would be quoting her in the House. It is a novelty, and I do not think I will ever get used to it or be comfortable with it. Let me get back to what I was saying about the 1970s and to what Conservative Members are asking us to do here. They are saying that just because the Labour party did something rotten in the 1970s, we must do something rotten too, in order to address this. That is totally unacceptable to Scottish National party Members who say, “A curse on all your houses. Deal with the parliamentary arithmetic. Accept the realities and get on with it.”

I will make two points about the 1970s, and again I was intrigued when I looked into this. The Harrison amendment was introduced in the most despicable way to this House, by subterfuge and sleight of hand, but the amendment created this set of conditions for a couple of months. At that point, the Labour Chair of the then Committee of Selection died and it stopped; we went back to the normal arrangements and for the rest of that Labour minority Administration, the parliamentary arithmetic of the House was respected. The second thing about that minority Labour Administration was that it became a minority Labour Administration––that Labour Government actually won an election. The current Conservative Government never experienced that a few months ago, so we will take no lessons on this.

Let me deal with this “chaos” thing. Sometimes democracy is not all that convenient and it throws up strange results. Sometimes we just have to get on and deal with it. What you do not do is try to circumvent democracy; what you do not do is table motions like this one, which is so disrespectful to the people who voted in the election.

Business of the House (Private Members’ Bills)

Debate between Pete Wishart and Tim Loughton

Monday 17th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

How about the hon. Lady and I campaign to ensure that we get that in place? If she agrees with me—some of her hon. Friends look like they might also agree with her—let us do it, because that is surely the solution we need. Now, we will not get that—the Government have made it clear that it will not happen—so what we need is an arrangement for the existing private Members’ Bills that properly reflects the two-year Session.

We have a long affection for private Members’ Bills on these Benches. We had the first SNP private Member’s Bill last year, when Eilidh Whiteford, the former Member for Banff and Buchan, got her private Member’s Bill on the Istanbul convention through the House—it was probably opposed by some Conservative Members. Last year we had four private Members’ Bills in the top 10 —there were some fantastic ones proposed—but we were really pleased for our former colleague Eilidh Whiteford and proud that she managed to get hers through the House last year. We also have two this time round, and I look forward to the fantastic private Members’ Bills to be proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald)—they are no longer in their places. I look forward to hearing them support their Bills in the House.

We need certainty about private Members’ Bills, because while it is quite easy for some colleagues on the other side of the Chamber to get back and forth to the House of Commons on Fridays, it is not so easy for Members from Scotland. Getting down to the House of Commons to take part in these debates involves getting on a plane which takes probably in the region of four to seven hours. We therefore need certainty about when sitting Fridays will be, and we are grateful to the Leader of the House, who has listed the seven sittings we will secure over the next year.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I declare an interest as the person who came fifth in the private Members’ Bill ballot—the highest on this side of the House. By the hon. Gentleman’s logic, he is arguing for more sitting Fridays, when it would be even harder for people from Scotland to come down here, and nowhere in his argument does he acknowledge the fact that the most important stage of a Bill’s progress is Committee, which can go on for weeks and weeks and is not subject to any of the criticisms of what may happen on a Friday. Surely that is an important part of a Bill’s progress, yet he is making no proposals about that, and it is not being curtailed.