Stamp Duty Land Tax (Reduction) Bill

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Committee stage
Tuesday 10th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am grateful to the Minister for that intervention. It comes down to how we define, “levelling up”. The point I am trying to make is that, if somebody is buying an average house in Christchurch, or in her constituency of Louth and Horncastle, it should not make any difference in terms of taxation whether the house is going to cost £405,000 or £200,000. Why should the person buying a house in Christchurch who wants to become a teacher or an NHS employee in the area not only have the burden of having the higher house price—she has referred to some of those issues—but have to pay £10,000 in SDLT for the privilege of moving into the Christchurch constituency to purchase an average-priced house? I do not see any justice in that at all. In levelling up, we should be putting those two categories of person on the same level when it comes to their liability for paying transaction taxes.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet made the suggestion, which I have also made, that we should scrap SDLT. If we want to have a transaction tax, we should introduce one based on, for example, the size of a property, because that would be neutral; it would really be levelling up across the country. Obviously, it would be more popular with some people than with others, but it would certainly be very popular with my constituents and it would meet the criterion of levelling up.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

It might be very popular in Christchurch, but it would be very unpopular in Wellingborough and it seems totally unfair to me.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

This is the challenge, because some people think that this would adversely affect them. When we were looking at whether we should change the domestic rating system, we always faced the problem of the people who were going to be worse off, who were always the losers and who were going to complain. I accept that, were this to be implemented in the way I am canvassing, it would create some losers who would be unpleasantly surprised. That leads me to my belief that SDLT and stamp duty should be abolished altogether. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] That is an issue on which we, as real Conservatives who believe in a homeowning democracy, should be able to agree—and it seems from that response that we can agree on it—rather than dividing again in trying to find an alternative to an already unsatisfactory tax.

Let us remind ourselves that, in the 1980s, when we had the beginnings of the property-owning democracy revolution, with more than 50% of people in the 25 to 34 age group being homeowners, we had a stamp duty regime where the maximum rate to purchase any house was 1%. Since this process started under the Blair Government and continued with the coalition—the Treasury is always seeing this as a cow to be milked for taxpayers’ benefit—the proportion of people able to afford to buy their homes has declined significantly. So the challenge I make to the Government, and I hope the Minister can respond to this, is: if we put stamp duty back to 1% as a maximum, what would that do to increase the number of transactions in the housing market, which, as others have said, is ostensibly the Government’s agenda?

On 23 September, HMRC’s policy paper “Stamp Duty Land Tax Reduction” set out the following policy objective:

“This measure is part of government’s commitment to support homeownership and promote mobility in the housing market, in turn supporting economic growth. Increased property transactions also add to residential investment and spending on durable goods.”

Unfortunately, that was withdrawn on 28 November. It would be interesting to know whether that policy objective has been retained by the Government even though the HMRC policy paper has been withdrawn. Another paper issued on 23 September was “The Growth Plan 2022”, which I thought was great, as did many of my constituents. Paragraph 3.30 of the plan stated that the changes to SDLT would

“take 200,000 homebuyers, including 60,000 first-time buyers, out of SDLT entirely.”

Today, however, we are discussing a proposal by the Government, by way of amendments to the Bill, that would put those 200,000 home buyers, 60,000 of them first-time buyers, back into SDLT. Do we really want to do that? Do we really think it will help to move the housing market, boost growth and help people to have the mobility to get to new jobs?

This is not just about people being able to move to a new job by moving house; we also need to think about the damage to the environment being done by the large number of people who are now, having no alternative, being forced to engage in long-distance commuting. Last week, I visited a school in my constituency. The teacher showing me around has been driving regularly from Wales to do a great teaching job in the Christchurch constituency. Fortunately, she is about to move into the constituency, but that is after many, many months of that long-distance commuting. That is highly undesirable. It is bad for the environment and bad for the people involved, because it means that they are sitting behind the wheel of a car for far too long during the working week.

Stamp duty land tax is targeted against homeowners and it will have an adverse effect on labour mobility. Yet the Prime Minister, in his speech on 4 January, was complaining—I agree with him on this—that a quarter of our country’s labour force is inactive and, in this Bill, he is introducing an additional tax on the very mobility that he should be espousing. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet has said, SDLT is a tax on downsizing: it makes it much more difficult for anyone to receive a significant return by selling a larger house and purchasing a smaller one.

My biggest complaint, though, is that the provision hits hardest those for whom homeownership is least affordable. The latest figures, produced by the House of Commons Library in December, show that, in Christchurch, the average house price is now 11.8 times earnings. The national average in England and Wales of eight times is bad enough, but why are we imposing that extra burden on those buying houses in places such as Christchurch? The latest figures from the 2021 census show that the dream of a homeowning democracy espoused by generations of Conservative politicians since Margaret Thatcher, and first raised in 1975, is not one of this Government’s priorities.

Business of the House Commission Bill

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Friday 28th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bone]

The first reason they should do so—in this particular case—is that it is good for them. This change will happen only when there is a Government in crisis, which is why the Wright reforms produced the Backbench Business Committee and the election of Select Committee chairs; they were all magnificent reforms. We now have an opportunity. Some argue—I could not possibly put this forward—that there is a bit of a crisis going on in the Government at the moment. Maybe one reason is that they have taken Parliament for granted. They have not done what they are supposed to do.

Did the Leader of the House suggest earlier this week that we have a presidential system, and there might have to be a general election if there is a change of Prime Minister? Hang on, we do not have a presidential system, and I happen to know that if the President is removed, there is always someone to replace him—there is never an election, so I did not follow that logic. The real issue, which has driven me and many people in the House up the wall, not least Mr Speaker, is the announcement of Government policy to the media first. That is not behaving properly in this House. That is an extremely unsatisfactory state of affairs and it needs to be changed. If Downing Street is in a listening mood at the moment, which I think it may be, it needs to do something and stop that. I do not want to see any reports announced by “Sky News”, rather than by a Minister at that Dispatch Box.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the issue goes even further than what he is describing, because we have the spectacle today of the Metropolitan police seeking to interfere with the content of Sue Gray’s report on the specious justification that it wishes to prevent prejudice to a criminal investigation, yet the only law on the statute book in relation to prejudicing a criminal investigation relates to proceeds of crime legislation, which is certainly not what we are talking about at the moment?

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I expect that explosions are going off in Downing Street at the fact that the Sue Gray report might be delayed or might never see the light of day. No one has been charged. We do not even know that a crime has been committed, and if it had, it would be something that is subject to a fine.

I appreciate that it is not the Government’s decision in this case, but Sue Gray’s. I would say to the Metropolitan police, “We understand what you are saying and your advice, but we are going to ignore it, because it is in the national interest to publish that report.” I hope that will happen, but it cannot be blamed on the Whips—sorry, I said the Whips by mistake; I normally blame the Whips for everything. It cannot be blamed on the Government.

With this Bill to create the business of the House commission, we can go to where we should have gone before, which is to give Parliament the right to decide on the timetabling of business. It is not right that all the power lies with the Government. We have Backbench Business debates, and hasn’t that Committee worked so well? We have had some really important debates.

I remember David Nuttall proposing that we have a referendum on the European Union back in 2011. The debate was timetabled by the Government for a wet Thursday when no one would be here, they hoped, and then George Osborne said, “No, I’m going to teach those Eurosceptics a lesson. We will bring it forward to the Monday and make it really important.” What happened? Members of this House went back to their constituents. We had a really strong three-line Whip. Whips were threatening careers. They said, “Peter, you will never be a Minister if you support this motion.” Well, they were probably right on that point, although it was not anything to do with that particular vote. Some 81 Conservative MPs voted on a Backbench Business motion that changed the history of this country, because after that, David Cameron realised that we had to have a pledge to have a referendum. The Backbench Business Committee has worked extremely well, but its problem is that it does not know when it will be given the time. Backbench Business time is supposed to be in primetime. That is what the Wright reforms called for.

Going back to my point on the commission, it is not about stopping the Government getting their business through; it is about making sure that we have the time to scrutinise it, so that we will not be forced to debate an important thing in an hour. The commission could decide it will have three, four or six hours of protected time. This mother of Parliaments should decide how things are timetabled, not the people sitting in No. 10. If we did that, Minister, we would get better scrutiny, better laws, and would it not be a better place?

In the 30 seconds that I am going to give the Minister to respond, all she has to say is “yes”—[Laughter.] Actually, no; we need more debate, so let us hope that we hit the buffers and we can come back to this next week. As the Minister knows, many of my suggested Bills actually finish up in law, so, at this moment of crisis for Parliament and the Government, would it not be good if we passed this Bill next week? There do not seem to be any Whips on the Opposition Benches, so I think Opposition Members could actually welcome—[Interruption.] Oh dear, there is a Whip over there, but hon. Members will take my point: this mother of Parliaments should run its own affairs. It should not be dictated to by somebody sitting in No. 10.

I really just want to emphasise one more point—

Registers of Births and Deaths Bill

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

2nd reading
Friday 26th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I do not have any evidence on that either way. The whole purpose of the 2009 regulations was that we would still have the hard-copy back-up system. Now, having put those regulations through on the basis that there would be a hard-copy back-up system, the Government say 11 or 12 years later that we do not need one, and can rely on the electronic system. That, I think, is playing fast and loose with the House. Why did the Government introduce regulations in 2009 to amend the system while still assuring the House that hard-copy records would be retained, and why, all these years later, are they seeking to abandon them? I am very concerned about that, but let me now finish the story about my constituent.

As I said earlier, I received a reply on 26 November saying that if my constituent required the return of his documents urgently he could submit a request, but I had already submitted a request for the return of his documents to the Home Office on his behalf. The letter made no reference at all to the fact that while this delay continues, and this muddle continues unresolved, he is unable to work. It is outrageous.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Suzanne Webb) said that this was just one example. I do not want to detain the House with a whole lot of other examples, but we do know that the hacking of computer records is prolific. It is widespread. It has led to large public companies, and indeed Government Departments, suffering severe fines, penalties and reprimands because of their inability to keep accurate data and protect themselves against hacking processes.

Even in the corridor just outside my office in this wonderful building, there is a great big poster—I think it is the only poster up there—about how we in this place are under continuous cyber-attack. If we are indeed under continuous cyber-attack, why are some of my colleagues so relaxed about it? I see no grounds whatever for being relaxed, and I think we should be very vigilant and protective of our paper record system.

[Mr Bone]

The crux of the matter, it seems to me, is that there must be some great injustice in the current system if it needs to be changed. If the only reason for changing it is modernisation, we as Conservatives should not be supporting it—but perhaps my hon. Friend knows what the problem is with the current system.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

That takes me on to the question of how we got to where we are now. For those interested in the background to this, let me explain that one of the former Members for the Christchurch constituency, George Rose, proposed a Bill to overhaul the registration system. He did that in 1812, and Hansard reported at the time:

“It must, he thought”—

this refers to my predecessor—

“be universally allowed, that parish registers were of great importance to all ranks and classes of people from the nobleman to the peasant; and it was highly desirable they should be regularly entered, and safely deposited. At present, instead of being kept in the house of the clergyman of each parish, they were kept in a very slovenly manner in the dwelling of the parish clerk, and he had found, as Treasurer of the Navy”—

in those days you could double up these jobs—

“numberless instances of the widows of seamen, who, from this culpable negligence, were not able to prove their marriages.”

The legislation was passed, and proved to be inadequate. That ultimately led to the 1875 Act, which is the core of our current system. Under our current system, almost all the people who are born have their details recorded. I think that, according to the latest information available, there are about 20 cases a year in which people are born without having their details accurately recorded.

Fundamental to the issue is that it is a basic legal requirement to have a birth registration, and birth registration—I hope the Minister agrees—is one of our most fundamental human rights. The United Nations convention on the rights of the child acknowledges that every child should be registered immediately after birth. We now say that should be six weeks, and we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden and others that it can be very burdensome for someone to go off and get their child registered.

All I can say is that my daughter gave birth to a little baby girl about a fortnight ago, and she and my son-in-law are much looking forward to going to the district register office in Lymington to record the details, including the name, of their daughter. Whatever happens, that record will be on paper as well as being an electronic record. How sad that it seems to be the intent of the Government that, in the future, people who are lucky enough to have children will not be able to have the privilege of a proper written birth certificate—a hard copy holograph birth certificate. I think that that is quite an unnecessary restriction on those fundamental freedoms.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

What my hon. Friend is referring to is like saying, “When I print off an email, it’s a hard copy.” It is not a hard copy; it is emailed and printed off. The Minister is talking about an electric record that can be reproduced in hard copy form. If we are talking about hard-hard copies, then, as I asked earlier, how does that fit in with the Forgery Act? Obviously, hard copies depend on having holograph signatures, and we hear that in this Bill there is the power for people to be able to register births without having to provide any signature at all unless they can send their signature by electronic means to the registration district. This is a very serious issue.

Without dwelling any more on the history of the Act, let me just say that throughout the mid-19th century, the only blip on issues relating to birth registrations, which were increasing the whole time, was the Vaccination Act 1853, which tied compulsory vaccination of all infants to their registration and gave powers for parents to be fined for non-compliance. As always happens with the law of good intentions, it ended out quite differently because as it was the local registrar who informed parents of their legal obligation to vaccinate their children, parents who feared vaccination avoided the registrar. Plus ça change, as they might say, in the context of today’s attempts to try to require compulsory vaccination for everybody in this country even if it means depriving them of their right to work in a care home or in the national health service.

The Bill itself contains a number of provisions about which I raised concerns with my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield when he brought it forward originally. One of those is the fact that there are lots of regulation-making powers in the Bill. I said to him that I thought it was desirable that those regulations or orders should be available in draft at Committee stage so that they could be properly examined in Committee. He said that he thought that was a really good idea. However, when we got to Committee, no such draft regulations were available.

I presume, because the Government attach urgency to this Bill and more than a year has elapsed, that those regulations and draft orders are available. I look forward to the Minister confirming that they are, but if they are not, why not? When will they be available? Why can we not see them before the Bill goes into Committee? These draconian measures give great power to the Government to set out regulations and change the existing law. It seems bad practice that people should be expected to go through a detailed Bill such as this in Committee without having any inkling of what the Government are hiding away in the regulations that are held in the relevant Department and are not being openly disclosed. I fear that that total lack of transparency is almost endemic in so much of what the Government do.

My next concern about the Bill is that under clause 1(3), section 28 of the 1953 Act, in relation to the custody of registers, would be repealed. That would remove any requirement for registration officers to hold registers. As a consequence, the hard copies that so many people look at when they examine their family history would not be available and accessible. Clause 4 states that such a repeal of section 28 would not affect the requirement that every superintendent registrar should keep records that were already in existence, provided that that did not cover records issued between 2009 and the day when this Bill comes into effect.

I was assured by my right hon. Friend and the Minister, who responded to the debate on the previous Bill, which is on identical terms, that the requirement to keep existing—or what might be described as old—records would not be affected in any way. However, when one looks at clause 6 of this Bill, one sees that the Government are taking the power to make further consequential provisions on any provision of this Act, including clause 4, which is meant to be a safeguard. That power

“is exercisable by statutory instrument”.

It includes the powers

“to make different provision for different purposes”

and

“to make transitional, transitory or saving provision”,

and it

“may, in particular, be exercised by amending, repealing or revoking any provision made by or under primary legislation”—

in other words, this is a Henry VIII clause writ large—

“passed or made before, or in the same Session as, this Act.”

Under the powers in clause 6, all the assurances and guarantees on the operation of clause 4 and the safeguards under what is now section 28 of the 1953 Act are completely worthless. We, as a sovereign Parliament, do not have the power to bind our successors, but we do have the power, if we so choose, not to make it too easy for our successors to change the rules against the wishes of the people. That is why I think it is outrageous that the Government should be taking powers to change by regulation the guarantees that they say are in existence in clause 4 of this Bill. That is just the sort of issue I would like to address in Committee, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Meriden will be able to give me some indication that he will accept amendments facilitating those safeguards for existing registers and records.

Another concern I have about the Bill, which my hon. Friend alluded to in introducing it, is the way regulations could be amended to change the requirement to actually sign the register. Those provisions, set out in clause 3 of the Bill, amend the 1953 Act by inserting a new section 38B after section 38A. An extraordinary lack of information is attached to what the Government intend here. It has been alluded to in the speeches of some of my hon. Friends, who seem to think it is really desirable that we should simplify what has been a solemn and historic process of registering births; I will come on later to the issue of registering deaths.

The proposed new section says:

“Where any register of births or register of deaths is required to be kept…otherwise than in hard copy form, the Minister may by regulations provide that—

(a) a person’s duty…to sign the register at any time is to have effect as a duty to comply with specified requirements at that time, and

(b) a person who complies with those requirements is to be treated…as having signed the register”.

In other words, somebody who has not actually signed the register will be treated as having signed it. Are we seriously going to legislate to create the pretence that somebody who has not signed the register has signed it and is deemed to have signed it, that, in the case of a duty to sign the register in the presence of the registrar, they are deemed to have done so in the presence of the registrar, and that accordingly in such a case the entry in the register is to be taken for the purposes of the Act as having been signed by the person when it has not been? Why are we allowing that?

What is one of the biggest safeguards of the integrity of our births register and our deaths register? It is the sanction against forgery. A sanction against forgery is nugatory if we do not require holograph signatures. My hon. Friend who so ably introduced the discussion on the Bill seems to be slightly poleaxed—I think that might be the expression—by the references to that. We have not yet had any help from the Minister on how the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act fits into this, but maybe the regulation-making powers under clause 6 of this Bill will be able to change the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act so that it applies not to actual forgery as we would know it, with people using pen and ink to change something, but to something that is deemed to be pen and ink.

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Will he tell me what happened during covid? Unfortunately, I was involved in registering a death during the covid period and it seemed to me that this was all done electronically, with no signatures required. In the case I was involved in, that did not work particularly well. Does he have any views on that?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

When we were discussing earlier the issue of registration of deaths, I drew my hon. Friend’s attention to the fact that I have had lots of constituents—he probably has the same situation—raise with me the fact that their loved ones were given death certificates that inaccurately reflected their covid status. In a sense, the Government are hoist with their own petard on that, because it was all part of what has been described as a “scaremongering propaganda campaign” to make it seem as though more people were dying from covid than were actually doing so by saying that they may have had covid within the 28 days before their death. Extraordinarily, if one asks questions about whether people have died within 21 days or 28 days of having received a vaccine against covid, the Government get very coy about that. I do not know why that might be, because I think that the more transparent the Government are, the more they will be able to counter the vaccine hesitancy that is an increasing problem in this country as people find out that some things relating to the vaccines are being suppressed if not fully exposed to public view. I will not go on about that, but I referred in this House a few weeks ago to my Covid-19 Vaccine Damage Bill and I do so once again, without going into any more detail about it.

There is a real problem if the Government put provisions in a Bill and then are not willing to spell out all the implications. What do the explanatory notes say about clause 3? Obviously, in the absence of anything else, one looks at the explanatory notes, but they do not help, because the notes on clause 3 just repeat the content of clause 3 without explaining what the Government have in mind. Why are we in that situation? Why has no cost-benefit analysis or regulatory impact assessment been published in respect of this Bill? We know that the requirement to do this does not apply to private Members’ Bills, but if such a Bill is, in essence, a proxy for a Government Bill, is there any reason at all why those things should not be published? Again, the Government are intent on bringing this measure forward, but wish to do so without sharing with the House and the public all the implications that flow from it and the Government’s thinking about what might happen.

[Mr Bone]

I have been thinking long and hard as the debate goes on. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill does appear to be a Government Bill but not in Government time, so it does not have an impact assessment? For that reason alone, when we vote later, I urge hon. Members to reject it to make sure that the Government bring it forward properly for proper scrutiny in Government time.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s suggestion and it would be interesting to hear what the Minister has to say in response. [Hon. Members: “Hurry up, then!”] If the Minister wishes to intervene, I shall happily give way.

It is the Government’s prerogative to bring forward their legislation to the House. When they do so in the normal way, a Bill has a regulatory impact assessment, a cost-benefit analysis and so on. The Government should not avoid that system, and avoid the need to be transparent, by using the proxy system whereby a loyal Back Bencher takes on a Bill as a handout Bill.

My hon. Friend the Minister is a man of absolute integrity who has participated in almost as many Friday debates as I have over the years. In all those debates, I have not once found him wanting in terms of dealing straightforwardly with the subject matter under discussion. It is open to him to say that he will bring forward a regulatory impact assessment before we get to Committee so that we can examine it and we know the Bill’s full implications.

There is obviously no discipline or requirement on the Government to publish the impact assessment if they think that they have a majority of 80. I imagine that the Government will now bring forward the Bill as a Government Bill because my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and I are expressing concerns about it and it is not making progress in the House as quickly as they might wish. If they do that, there will be a proper Second Reading, Committee and Report, which is fine.

I hope that we will then have the regulatory impact assessment in front of us and we will be able to assess what the Government have in mind and what they are hiding from us. Having had the experience in the previous Session of being told one thing in the House by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) about what would happen when we got to Committee, and those promises, or certainly expressions of intent, not materialising, I am very suspicious about the Bill.

People up and down the country will wonder why we are spending so much time discussing the issue of removing proper paper records of births. What will we do about all the people who will be adversely affected by that? I have another example of a constituent who is a South African citizen whose child was born in the United Kingdom and is therefore entitled to United Kingdom citizenship. To take his child to South Africa, he has to provide a hard-copy, holographed birth certificate. How will he do that in future if those hard copies do not exist?

That is another practical example of how the Bill’s provisions will adversely affect people of foreign citizenship who have children born in this country for whom they wish to have an old-fashioned birth certificate rather than one that has been put on a—

Covid-19 Vaccine Damage Bill

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Friday 10th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Yes, but perhaps it would be more convenient if I actually read out the answer that we received from the Minister. He said:

“Data on the number of deaths reported of people who have died within one, two and three months of having received a COVID-19 vaccination since 1 January 2021 is not available in the format requested.

Public Health England (PHE) monitors the number of people who have been admitted to hospital and died from COVID-19 who have received one or two doses of the vaccine and will publish this data in due course.”

That data has not yet been published. It is very important that we are able to put this issue into context. There is a lot more damage being done to our citizens as a result of covid-19 vaccinations than in any other vaccination programme in history. That does not mean to say that it is not worth while, and I am certainly not an anti-vaxxer or anything like that, but what is important is that, if people do the right thing, they should not be denied access to compensation.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a very strong case. Does he agree that we do not want to send a message from this House that vaccines are a bad thing? Vaccines are right and we should be vaccinated. Equally, on the rare occasion when it goes wrong, is it not right that compensation is made available—on those very rare occasions?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

That is exactly my point and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for summarising it so succinctly and accurately. That is where the Government come into this. Unfortunately, I know that the Minister will not have much time, if any, in which to expand on this issue today. I hope that he will be willing to arrange for me to be able to come along with one or two colleagues to talk to Ministers about this very important issues.

Health and Social Care (National Data Guardian) Bill

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 6th June 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Cheryl. I welcome the Minister and shadow Minister to the Committee.

The purpose of the Bill is to put on to a statutory footing the office of the National Data Guardian for Health and Social Care, and to promote the provision of advice and guidance about the processing of health and adult social care data in England. It would be remiss of me not to mention the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill): she has worked hard for a long time to establish the position of the National Data Guardian for Health and Social Care, and her perseverance and tenacity have ensured that we are on track to deliver it.

I thank the Minister and shadow Minister for their help and support with the Bill—and special thanks, of course, go to Dame Fiona Caldicott, who has pioneered the work on ensuring that the NHS handles data properly. She has been very helpful to me in the preparation of the Bill.

Clause 1 creates the Office of the National Data Guardian for Health and Social Care, referred to in the Bill as the “Data Guardian”. It makes general provisions about the Data Guardian’s functions and the way in which they are to be carried out. Subsection (2) empowers the Data Guardian to publish guidance about the processing of health and adult social care data in England. I should like to make it clear that it also covers public health data.

Subsection (3) imposes a duty on certain organisations and individuals to have regard to the National Data Guardian’s published guidance. Comment has been made as to why the Secretary of State is not included in the list. However, the Department of Health and Social Care is already included in the definition of those who have to have regard to the National Data Guardian’s advice, so it would be superfluous to include the Secretary of State.

Subsections (4), (5) and (6) cover requirements in relation to the Data Guardian’s published guidance. Those subsections are intended to keep the guidance relevant over time and, if necessary, updated to reflect new evidence. It has been suggested that subsection (5) should add an obligation that organisations and individuals that process health and social care data should provide the Data Guardian with appropriate information. I argue that that would create a duplication of the remit of regulators that already exist in those sectors. The Data Guardian’s role is as an advocate for the patient and the public, to build and maintain public trust. The role is as much about supporting individuals and organisations to get it right first time as it is about commenting, advising and providing guidance. It is not the intention of this Bill to create another regulator, but that the National Data Guardian should work with the Information Commissioner’s Office and the Care Quality Commission.

It has also been suggested that subsection (6) should add a duty that all data controllers and their data processors must publish their response to all advice issued. That would be extremely burdensome on those organisations and individuals, and it would be toothless without sanctions. Accountability should be assessed through actions, not written responses; the existing regulators would be able to assess the adherence to guidance and would cite the National Data Guardian during any investigation.

Clause 1(7) allows the Data Guardian to give informal advice, assistance and information to anyone, as long as it is about or relates to the processing of health and adult social care data in England. Clause 1(8) gives the Data Guardian flexibility in how far any particular piece of advice, assistance, information or guidance may be extended. The effect is to clarify that the Data Guardian can publish guidance and give advice on specific topics or themes, and can target it to certain organisations, individuals or sectors as appropriate. Clause 1(9) provides that the duty to have regard to the Data Guardian’s published guidance applies only in so far as the guidance is relevant to the functions or services of the body or person.

Clause 1(10) introduces schedule 1 to the Bill. As clause 1 and schedule 1 are being debated together, I will make some brief comments on schedule 1. The schedule makes further provision for the establishment, maintenance and operation of the Office of the Data Guardian. It sets out the Data Guardian’s terms of appointment and covers a broad range of matters related to the Office of the Data Guardian. It includes its constitution, its financial and reporting framework, and how members of staff and advisers are reported and remunerated. I draw the Committee’s attention to paragraph 15 of schedule 1, which provides that the Secretary of State must pay to the Data Guardian the amount that he considers appropriate for the purpose of enabling the Data Guardian to carry out his or her functions.

The Committee will be aware that there was some debate about the cost during the money resolution debate. I thank hon. Members who are here today and those who took part in the debate. I want to make clear that, although the estimated cost is £725,000 per year, that is only an additional £225,000 per year and relates to putting the Data Guardian on a statutory footing. As the Committee will know, there is already a Data Guardian, which costs £500,000; we are just putting this on a statutory footing and saying it is the right thing to do.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on having got his Bill so far. On the costs, the Data Guardian will basically be indemnified for the costs incurred, yet I see that the Data Guardian will have enormous flexibility to publish and give as much guidance or advice as they wish. Surely the Data Guardian could, by giving a lot more advice and guidance over which there is no control, result in significantly increased costs for the public sector?

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention and the fact that he is on the Committee; I know that all Committees welcome his membership.

The reason why we have a Data Guardian is to provide safeguarding and to make sure that the data is handled properly. Those costs can only be estimated; as my hon. Friend says, they could be more or less, depending on the requirements. That is exactly why we need a guardian. I would like the costs to be minimal, because that means that we are handling the guardian properly. But if there needs to be more, because there is a requirement to do more, there will be more cost.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Does my hon. Friend know of any case where a regulator given powers by Parliament has chosen to reduce the amount of powers that are used? Surely, the natural thing is for regulators to increase their activity, using the powers to the maximum and thereby increasing the costs.

[Mr Bone]

I agree, but what we are not doing today is creating a regulator; I would not be likely to propose a Bill to create a regulator. The Data Guardian already exists and it is not a regulator—I specifically said that in my opening remarks. Although it is probably true that regulators do that, that is not what I expect to happen with the National Data Guardian.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bone]

The clause provides for all the Bill’s provisions to be brought into force by regulations made by the Secretary of State. It is a standard clause to be found in many Acts of Parliament.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

It may well be a standard clause, but such clauses are often abused by the Government. For example, Parliament passed a measure to outlaw exit payments for public sector workers in the Enterprise Act 2016. We are still waiting for the regulations under that primary legislation to be introduced. The Government now say that they will have to consult on them. Effectively, what Parliament thought was happening—the limiting of public sector exit payments—has not happened.

The Bill is supported across the House, as the measure I have mentioned was. I should be grateful for some indication from the Minister of when the Government will implement it. It could be delayed by the Government by means of the regulation-making powers in the clause; or by the Government’s not appointing the Data Guardian. There are other ways in which it could be delayed, and if we take the past as a guide to the future we should be suspicious of the Government when they are not prepared to include in the Bill a commitment for it to commence on a given date.

Health and Social Care (National Data Guardian) Bill (Money)

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Money resolution: House of Commons
Monday 21st May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention, but I would like to deal with that later in my remarks.

There is the following deferred Divisions motion on the Order Paper in the name of the Prime Minister:

“That, at this day’s sitting, Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) shall not apply to the Motion in the name of Mel Stride relating to the Health and Social Care (National Data Guardian) Bill.”

That is interesting because under Standing Order No. 49 automatically there has to be a debate of up to 45 minutes on a money resolution, so I am not sure why that motion is on the Order Paper. The new version of Standing Orders published on 1 May is in the Vote Office today, and consideration of such a resolution automatically can go through the moment of interruption.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

We have just allowed a money resolution to go through on the nod in relation to the Tenant Fees Bill and I think the sums involved are much higher than £700,000, yet under Standing Orders we were not allowed any separate debate on that. Can my hon. Friend explain why his Bill for £700,000 has 45 minutes but a much more expensive Bill has nothing?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

I do not think we need to consider that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bone]

That is exactly what I am saying, because it would come on as a second Bill and therefore, as it is quite a complex Bill, would not get through. I think that some people who may have been involved in rearranging when money resolutions come through—this new idea of having a choice in relation to money resolutions—were aware of that fact, but I am not sure that everyone in this House was. I considered standing up and recommending that Members should not support this money resolution. However, if I did that, I would be playing into the Government’s hands, because that would stop a private Member’s Bill.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

My hon. Friend seems to be saying—in his typically generous way—that, for the greater good, he would be prepared to make a short-term sacrifice in respect of his own Bill. From the debate that took place earlier today, we know that one way of avoiding the problem that he encounters by having to have a money resolution debated and voted on in the House tonight would be to have a Bill without a money resolution. When he drafted his Bill, did he consider whether it would be possible to draft it in such a way that it would not require any more public money?

[Mr Bone]

Absolutely. There was much discussion with the Clerks of the House on that point. As my hon. Friend knows, that money has already been expended on the system that we have. My Bill is actually not going to cost the public purse any more money than at present. I argued strongly that my Bill should not have a money resolution, but the Clerks persuaded me that it was the proper thing to do. I think they felt that, on balance, it was safer to do it like this.

I did not think I would be speaking about a money resolution for my Bill. I did not think that anyone would spend any time on this matter. What normally happens—[Interruption.] No, I think we need to scrutinise this properly—

Middle Level Bill

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 28th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Well, it is one each on that one.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a very informative speech. He will recognise that other Members are affected, other than just those from the fens, because the River Nene—or “Nen”, depending on which part of my constituency someone is from—flows into the Middle Level. So this issue is wider than just a local area.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

This is the Middle Level Bill!

[Sir Christopher Chope]

It is very important that my hon. Friend has been able to put his interest in this subject matter on the record.

Amendment 17 relates to clause 9, which addresses stranded, grounded and sunken vessels and vehicles. The amendment would remove the subsection 3, which states:

“Whenever any vessel is, without lawful authority, left or moored in any waterway the Commissioners may after serving not less than 28 days’ notice on the owner of the vessel, unless it is not practicable after reasonable inquiry to ascertain the name and address of the owner, raise and remove the vessel.”

As set out in the rest of clause 9, it is perfectly reasonable for a vessel that is stranded or abandoned in a waterway and is interfering with navigation to be removed quickly. However, when one takes into account the very wide definition of “waterway”, the inclusion of subsection 3 is potentially oppressive. It could mean that the commissioners could, for example, go into a marina and raise and remove a vessel at considerable cost after no more than 28 days’ notice. The amendment would therefore remove that power from the Bill.

Clause 11 relates to the requirements for registration and incorporates a very important amendment promoted by the March Cruising Club and others on the charges and the amount by which they could be increased in any one year. It introduces a requirement that such charges should not increase above the rate of inflation as defined by the consumer prices index. Many boaters—some may be represented by my hon. Friends here this evening—are not very well-off in financial terms and need to be able to plan their budgets ahead. When they work out the costs of having a vessel on the waterway, they need to have the certainty that the charges levied cannot be increased by more than the rate of the CPI each year. By analogy, the Government have said that council tax should not increase by more than the CPI. They have made some exceptions to that recently, but the general proposition is that they cannot be increased by more than the CPI.

[Mr Bone]

On that point, is my hon. Friend not concerned that the Bill does not state what the initial fee will be? It just says “a reasonable application fee”. Would he not prefer the Bill to state what that fee should be?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Much as I would like to agree with my hon. Friend, there has to be some discretion, because the fees needs to relate to the powers and duties that will be carried out and funded by them. One of the clauses that we looked at earlier specified that the money for the fees had to be spent on various things, particularly, for example, on navigation.

Principal Local Authorities (Grounds for Abolition) Bill

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Friday 1st December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

This is a timely debate because Christchurch Borough Council is this very day sending out voting papers for a local referendum to ask every local elector in Christchurch whether he or she consents to the abolition of Christchurch Borough Council and its forced merger with Bournemouth and Poole into a unitary council. The electors will have two weeks in which to give their response.

The Bill, which I hope has the support of the Government, would make it absolutely clear that principal local authorities, including district councils, are on a par with parish and town councils, and could not be abolished without their consent. Unfortunately, the current law does not seem to make that absolutely clear. It has been suggested that it would be possible for a group of councils to get together and effectively bully another group of councils and force them to be abolished against their will.

There have been, however, words of encouragement from the Secretary of State who, in his statement of 7 November, greatly emphasised the need for consent, and said that that had not yet been demonstrated in the local government reorganisation in Dorset. During the Adjournment debate of 15 November that was secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey), the chair of the all-party group on district councils, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry), said:

“Finally, when looking at district councils that may wish to merge—there will be no compulsion to do so—we will ask them whether it would create a credible geography for the proposed new structure.”—[Official Report, 15 November 2017; Vol. 631, c. 549-50.]

There is therefore quite a lot of encouragement from some of the obiter dicta of the Government on this issue.

The Bill would put it beyond doubt that councils could not be abolished without their consent. In January last year, Christchurch councillors voted, by a majority, against the abolition of their council, as did Purbeck and East Dorset councillors. Despite that, much energy and many months have been wasted by local government officials trying to engineer a situation that, in my view, is designed in their own best interests, because a merger will mean that they either receive substantial pay-offs, or become part of a larger organisation with enhanced salary bands. The Bill would make it clear that it is for elected councillors to decide these issues. It would be only if they supported such a proposal that a local referendum could be called.

Parliament approved measures that provide that if councils wish to increase their council tax by more than 2%, they have to get the consent of local people in a local referendum, paid for by local people. However, if people want to take over a council—in the case of Christchurch, an ancient borough with no debts but assets in excess of £50 million—can that really be done without local people having the final say? There seems to be a certain inconsistency to the Government’s approach.

That is the essence of the Bill. If it were already on the statute book, Christchurch Borough Council would not have to spend money on a local referendum, because the matter would have been closed last year when the district council voted against abolition.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

My hon. Friend, as usual, is introducing a very important Bill. In Northamptonshire, everyone seems to agree that there should be reorganisation, but the individual councils cannot agree what form that should take. How would the Bill help in that regard?

[Mr Chope]

It would put a lot more pressure on councils to agree. It would mean that no individual council or group of councils could impose a majority opinion on the minority. We are talking about the essence of local democracy. There is nothing more local than a local district council that is accountable to its own electors. From time to time, the Government have suggested that it would be appropriate to abolish that level of local democracy, but I think that is anathema. It should not be done unless there is full-hearted local consent from elected councillors and local people.

Points of Order

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Wednesday 25th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

rose—

Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 18th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

It is a great honour and a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn); I spent 13 years living in his constituency trying to get rid of him with absolutely no success whatsoever. While we hardly agree on anything, he is undoubtedly a leading parliamentarian, and I am pleased, in the best possible sense, that he is now back on the Back Benches and not constrained by being on the Labour Front Bench.

I congratulate the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) on choosing this most important subject to be debated on one of the 13 private Member’s Bill days we have in this House, and congratulate all the Members who have made the effort to attend today. I hope that we will get a Division on this Bill and the House will decide one way or the other.

I also congratulate the hon. Lady on the tone in which she introduced the Bill. I thought it was the right tone. There are party political issues, as the hon. Member for Newport West said, and I will touch on them, but the hon. Lady got to the heart of the matter: this is about Parliament and scrutiny. I did spend a brief moment in her constituency during the EU referendum campaign, and it was a really pleasant constituency. I met people from many different parties, and it is a great shame from her constituency point of view that she has decided not to stand again.

I am also following another parliamentarian of great skill, my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who I thought when he first came to this House was definitely destined to become a great parliamentarian, which he is. He has, unfortunately, been contaminated by becoming a Government Minister, but now he is back, although he has not quite lost that contamination. In a couple of years, he will be back supporting Parliament and not worrying about the Executive.

I thought I would look back to how this all started. This was part of a backroom deal done when the coalition came to power. The Liberal Democrats wanted a vote on changing the parliamentary system, and the Conservative party wanted to equalise the seats, not because it really believed that was fair—although it is fair and the right thing to do—but because it was thought it would give the Conservatives more seats. That is the truth of the matter. To put the other side of the coin, I should say that there are many sitting on the Opposition Benches who are interested in this for reasons of self-interest, too. But I bet most of the Members in the House today are here for the fundamental issue of Parliament versus Government.

Sadly, I cannot see a single Liberal Democrat in the House today, including the former Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg), who—I am sorry to have to correct my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean—was the Minister who introduced the Second Reading of the Bill that started all this. I thought it would be interesting to see how the hon. Member for North West Durham voted on Second Reading of that Bill, which took place on 6 September 2010. She voted against the proposals. I then thought I would check who else voted against the proposals. There was the then Member for Northampton South and my hon. Friends the Members for Stone (Sir William Cash), for Christchurch (Mr Chope), for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) and for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner). So the Division was not entirely along party lines. There were people who were prepared to vote against, including, to their great credit, many from the Democratic Unionist party.

This issue goes back, therefore, to something the hon. Member for Newport West touched upon: the balance between the Executive and Parliament. Since what we might loosely call the expenses scandal, Parliament has been getting more powers back. We have had a Speaker who has put Parliament first and championed it, we have had Select Committees, and we have had other movements in that direction, including the establishment of the Backbench Business Committee. All the moves have been to take power away from the Executive and give it to Parliament. This move, however, completely reverses that trend.

I am all in favour of broadly equal-sized seats. That is fair, within a threshold, and I would be happy for the Committee scrutinising this Bill to look at that issue. The hon. Member for Newport West made the point that there were exceptions for certain geographical areas. The previous proposals referred to the Isle of Wight and to what I call the Western Isles, which had two constituencies. I think that that makes sense, and we should consider whether that could be expanded for certain constituencies—but I want to get back to the Executive.

The Electoral Reform Society has said that if there were a general election under the proposed new arrangements and the same proportion of MPs were to be elected as there are now, 43% of Conservative MPs would be on the payroll. That cannot possibly be right. We should not all be here to be in government. There are two equal roles for an MP, one of which is to scrutinise Bills that go through this House. Ever since the Blair years, the Bills that have come to this House have been programmed. Sometimes we do not even debate certain clauses of a Bill, and it is actually the other place that does the proper scrutiny. The elected Members here should have the time to carry out that scrutiny.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend has reminded us of that previous debate. Does he agree that one of the reasons that some of us could not support the Government on that occasion was that they would not answer the straight question as to whether there would be a pro rata reduction in the size of the Executive if there were a reduction in the number of MPs. The Government would not answer that, saying that it was premature to ask the question.

[Mr Bone]

I remember my hon. Friend making that point, with which I entirely agreed.

Things have got worse. We now have more Government Departments, and rightly so, given that we are coming out of the European Union, but I guess that we are also going to have 60% more laws to look at. The argument for reducing the number of MPs seems to be false, especially as we are getting rid of 70-odd MEPs. Also, the Government cannot possibly claim that they are doing this on the basis of cost. We have only to look at how much more money is being spent on Spads. Even during the Blair years it was only a few million, but it is something like £9 million now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I am trying to address that point. If we are to have proper democracy rather than mathematics, we need a reasonable period within which the boundary commissions in Wales and England can look at the evidence and work out where it will be best for the boundaries to be situated. They could then consult and hold public inquiries on that basis. We have already heard, however, that if the Bill were to be put on to the statute book with a requirement for the new arrangements to be implemented no later than October 2018, it would not be possible for the boundary commissions—certainly those in England—to do the necessary spadework to ensure an equitable outcome, rather than one that would be subject to judicial review as a result of having been rushed and not taking into account the representations that had been made.

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. I want to get it clear in my mind what he is saying. Is he suggesting that we should equalise the seats and keep the same number of Members of Parliament, for reasons of democracy and scrutinising the Government, but that this cannot be achieved in the proposed timescale? Should we not simply allow the Bill to have its Second Reading and then amend it in Committee?

[Mr Chope]

I take my hon. Friend’s point. I am trying to plead with the hon. Member for North West Durham to come up with a proposal that would enable the boundary commissioners to come forward with their proposals before October 2018 and therefore enable her Bill to be implemented in time for the next general election. I am willing her to try to find a way of achieving that. From what we have heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset, however, that could be very difficult. Some rough and ready exercises might have to be carried out, possibly involving a reduction in the time for consultations. I challenge the hon. Lady to come forward with proposals that would enable someone looking at this Bill to decide that it was practical to require the boundary commissions to have their proposals in place by October 2018. I hope that she will be able to address that point when she responds to the debate. If she cannot do so today, and if the Bill gets its Second Reading, we will obviously be able to deal with this in Committee.

In its evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in September 2014, the Boundary Commission for England said that the approach that it had taken to the previous review had been well received, but that

“if the Commission is to continue that policy for the next Review, it does mean there is very little flexibility within the timetable outlined above.”

That timetable suggested that the commission was

“working towards a formal launch for that Review around the end of February 2016”,

and that it

“anticipates submitting its final report of the next Review in September 2018.”

The commission stated clearly that

“if changes are made to the governing legislation in the interim, that may have a consequential impact on the timetable for the next Review.”

I have not heard anything from the hon. Member for North West Durham about her conversations with the Boundary Commission on its evidence to the Committee, or about whether she thinks that that evidence could be modified in the light of the needs that she has expressed on behalf not only of Opposition Members but of many Conservative Members who have concerns about this.

It is of paramount importance that, by 2020, we have new boundaries that reflect more accurately the need for equality of electorates in each constituency. At the moment, the disparities are so great and are getting greater, so we cannot wait beyond 2020. If the hon. Lady is saying with the Bill, “I agree with that point, we must do something before 2020”, it is incumbent on her to explain—if not today, in Committee—how it can be achieved and how she has been able to work with the relevant boundary commissions to bring that about. It is only if she can demonstrate the practicality of the Bill that she will ultimately be able to get the House’s support. It is a paramount requirement that we equalise the constituencies before 2020.

I gave evidence earlier this week to the Boundary Commission inquiry into constituency changes in the south-west. I was surprised by how few people came along to give evidence. There were probably half a dozen people. It was a two-day hearing. I finished giving my evidence before lunch—my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms) gave evidence, too—and only one other person was due to give evidence between then and 8 o’clock in the evening. That was the first day of the inquiry; I do not know what happened on the second day.

There may well be means by which the prolonged procedure for examining these proposals can be foreshortened, but that is the kernel of the matter that the hon. Lady, in bringing forward this Bill, has to address if it is to progress and get on to the statute book.

This issue is very important. I am disappointed that the Government have not been prepared to say, “If we reduce the number of MPs to 600, we will have a pro rata reduction in the size of the Executive.” They could have done that. It would have been the right approach, but they have ducked it up to now. Perhaps the Minister will be able to assure us that there will indeed be that pro rata reduction. In a sense, that would mitigate some of the problems we have been discussing today.

I expect that the Bill will receive a Second Reading, because, unlike a lot of private Members’ legislation, it seems to have generated a lot of interest. It is great to see so many Members in the Chamber on a Friday. If the Bill does get a Second Reading, we need to look at its practicalities in Committee.

Beach Huts

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Wednesday 20th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

That is a very good way of putting it, Mr Speaker. We enjoy a large cohort of visitors, not least now because of the popularity of the series “Mr Selfridge”, as Mr Selfridge is buried in a church in Highcliffe and spent much time at Highcliffe castle. We have quite a history and there are many aspects of life in Highcliffe and Christchurch that are attractive to visitors and to our resident population.

On 18 November last year the Christchurch Council community services committee agreed to allow a competition to proceed for the design and construction of beach huts at Highcliffe. That was confirmed by the Council’s resources committee on 2 December. Both meetings, and the decisions taken at them, were kept private on grounds of commercial confidentiality, despite the fact that the beach huts were to be sited on open, unspoiled coastline, which is also part of a site of special scientific interest.

Two months before, local residents had celebrated the Government’s rejection of a proposal for a massive offshore windfarm at Navitus bay of up to 200 wind turbines, each up to 200 metres in height—my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), the local council, and many other colleagues campaigned strongly and successfully against that proposal. One can therefore understand people’s dismay when they found that the council, which had campaigned so effectively on their behalf on that issue, had secretly been cooking up a proposal with Plum Pictures.

That proposal emerged only in March this year, when people found out that the competition had been launched and were able to look at the brochure, which described Christchurch Borough Council’s “beach retreat technical specification”, for people to design their own beach retreat—they are called beach retreats because they are not just ordinary huts; they are larger than huts and for overnight, residential use around the clock, 24/7. Those beach retreats were to be located in a scattered formation across the clifftop at Highcliffe.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

As usual, my hon. Friend makes a powerful case. There are no beaches in Wellingborough, but this issue is much more important from a national perspective because when councils own land, they have a tendency almost to rubber-stamp the planning permission. If I have got it right, this case is even worse, because planning permission was not even applied for in the first place.

[Mr Chope]

Exactly. There has been no accountability for this at all, but I agree there is a problem when councils give themselves planning permission, because the Government are often reluctant to call in those applications, even when they involve development on the green belt. In a recent case in my constituency, development was proposed on the green belt for a new school, and the Government—much to my dismay and that of many of my constituents—did not call it in for a public inquiry, but that is another story.

The terms of this competition were

“to find inventive people to design and build innovative and exciting beach retreats.”

The 12 winners were to get £8,000 each to spend on the materials

“to make their dream beach hideaway a reality”.

The trouble was that they are not really hideaways at all; they are in the most exposed position one could imagine on the coastline. It was stated:

“All beach huts will be owned by the Council, but all designers will be guaranteed four weeks a year to enjoy the retreat they created.”

The brochure also spelt out that the winners of the competition would not need to apply for planning permission for their beach huts, and it boasted that

“Highcliffe is one of the South Coast’s most beautiful coastal points, located just round the corner from the famous beach huts of Mudeford Spit and with panoramic views that include the iconic Isle of Wight Needles.”

The competition was designed to close on 1 May, with winning participants notified on 13 May. The huts would be constructed and completed by 11 September, when filming would be carried out by Plum Pictures. The revelation that the council had entered into such a secret agreement for the development generated an immediate furore that continues to this day. A massive online petition with 1,400 signatures was presented to the council. There has been voluminous correspondence and other protests, and a new local action group has been formed to try to protect the coastline and the beaches against this sort of intrusion.

I asked the council how it was possible for such a proposal to go forward without the need for planning permission.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I was referred to the rules about permitted development, in particular the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015, which sets out the rules for what can be classed as permitted development; that is, development that does not require planning permission. Class A under part 12 of schedule 2 to of the order grants permitted development rights for local authorities in relation to what are described as “small ancillary” buildings, including the setting of a size limit. It seems extraordinary to any layman that a small ancillary building could be interpreted as covering 12 separate overnight beach huts in isolated locations many hundreds of yards from any building, let alone a local authority-owned building.

The problem seems to be that in the order, “ancillary” has been deemed by the courts—at least in one judgment—to relate to a function of the council, rather than a building. This was discussed in the case of The Queen on the application of John Richards v. West Somerset Council in the High Court of Justice, Queen’s bench division, the administrative court on 23 September 2008. In this case, Judge Hickinbottom agreed that “ancillary” related to function. It seems, however, that that was on the basis that the parties to that particular case were themselves agreed that “ancillary” related to function, as is made clear in paragraph 21 of the judgment. The judge merely said that he, too, agreed that that must be the case:

“The building works or equipment constructed must be allied to a proper function of the council.”

I do not think that, on any normal interpretation of that case or the order, it could be said that “ancillary” relates to a function rather than to another building. I would be grateful if my hon. Friend the Minister could ensure that the wording of the order is adjusted to make it clear that this is not the correct interpretation of “ancillary”. That is the only way, in our sovereign Parliament, we can overrule a wrongful interpretation of our intentions by the courts. I am sure the Government would not have intended that this sort of thing could happen, with the council entitled to interpret “ancillary” in this way and not having to apply for planning permission as a result.

I would also be grateful if my hon. Friend established that the permitted development rules do not allow councils, in any circumstances, to avoid planning legislation, by deeming such huts of any size or shape to be permitted development. That is important to restore public confidence. It is also important because many of the powers available to Natural England to protect sites of special scientific interest are triggered only when a planning application is in play. I had a meeting with Natural England in my constituency to discuss this issue. It made it clear that, although it had a very limited role if the council applied for what is called an “assent” rather than a “consent”, it would have a much more significant role if the council had to apply for “consent” as part of a planning application. That is another good reason for strengthening the law in this area.

In the Highcliffe case, Natural England was involved, but, it seems, only as an afterthought by the council. I tabled a question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which was answered on 6 June. It was prompted by reports emanating from the council that Natural England was content with what was being proposed.

[Mr Bone]

I have been listening carefully to my hon. Friend’s argument—it is a very strong argument—but can he put this in context? I thought he said that the competition ended on 31 May. How could a council have proposed to build luxurious and very expensive beach huts at a time when everyone in government was saying that the world was coming to an end because we were leaving the EU?

[Mr Chope]

The councillors viewed the designs for the huts in private, so I cannot comment on rumours that one of the successful designs had a large European flag with a cross through it on one side of the hut and a Union Jack on the other. My hon. Friend, as always, makes an interesting observation, although the competition ended on 1 May.

On 1 June, I was told by the chief executive of the council:

“The Council has been working closely with Natural England since the proposal for the huts first came forward”.

He went on to say that officers from Natural England had given detailed advice as to what would and would not be acceptable on the site and that the competition had been designed with that in mind. He was clearly saying that Natural England was content with the situation. From my discussions with Natural England, however, it is clear that it is not. Indeed, it did not receive an application from the council until 6 June, and following consultation, that application has now been withdrawn as unacceptable to Natural England.

I had hoped to tell the House that all had ended happily and that the application to Natural England had been withdrawn; that the proposal for residential beach huts had been withdrawn; that the rumoured alternative proposal for day huts had also been withdrawn; and that the council had agreed to go back to the drawing board and undertake proper consultation before even considering building any construction on or near the Highcliffe cliff top.

Unfortunately, however, the clarity that I hoped would emerge from the council’s scrutiny committee last night was not forthcoming. There are still rumours circulating that the council might want to develop beach huts and that it might be liable for damages for breach of contract because the competition has been abandoned. Most of all, however, the continuing lack of transparency and accountability is adding to public anger and frustration. The council needs to declare openly that it will not proceed with any beach hut development at Highcliffe unless or until there has been full public consultation, including on the design, location and terms of use of any huts.

Although this is all clouded in secrecy and is regarded as commercially confidential, I find it inconceivable that any council could have entered into a legal agreement for the construction of 12 beach huts without making it conditional upon the obtaining of the relevant consent from Natural England. As that consent has not been forthcoming, the contract, if properly drafted, could be easily terminated by the council on the grounds that one of the conditions had not been fulfilled. The fact that the council does not seem to have announced this to the world makes me suspect that it did not execute that basic precaution. If that is so, I fear a potential bill of many tens of thousands of pounds for my constituents. I am sure they will not be at all pleased at that prospect and will want to ask the sorts of questions I have been asking this evening but which have not yet been answered.

Child Victims of Human Trafficking (Central Government Responsibility) Bill

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Friday 29th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bone]

There was a big row about the POPPY project and I am broad-brush about this: I think the Salvation Army operation has been a huge success, and I am absolutely convinced that no other country in Europe looks after rescued adult victims of human trafficking better than ours, and we can be very proud of that.

Let me rewind a bit to when I was traipsing around Europe with Anthony Steen. He is a man it is impossible to say no to; I have seen him blag his way into all sorts of establishments that we had no right to be in, and he did so fearlessly. In some places he talked to traffickers and took great personal risks. His influence is what drives me to continue this fight on this particular issue.

At that time, back in 2005, there was a Council of Europe convention on human trafficking. The COE is a very good body. It brings together 47 countries in Europe. The idea is that if we can get something through the COE that everyone agrees with, it is a really good standard. What happened to this convention happened when a Labour Government were in power, but I am absolutely not blaming the Labour Government because it equally would have happened if a Conservative Government had been in power at that time because of the way people looked upon human trafficking: we could not even get the convention signed. Then, after lots of pressure, the convention was signed, and then that turned out to be no use because until it is ratified, it does not come into force, so then we had a fight on that and it was eventually ratified.

Many of the things that were then discussed became part of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, such as tougher penalties for traffickers, quite rightly. There was originally a problem with the hurdle that had to be mounted to prosecute traffickers. The Crown Prosecution Service had decided that in order to get successful prosecutions, it would have to go for lesser charges. That was sorted out; traffickers can be jailed now for 14 years. Tougher border controls are hugely important, too, because I do not want to be punishing traffickers and rescuing victims, as I do not want them to be victims in the first place. There is a lot to do in Europe on that, but obviously, our border control is important. In a wonderful example of co-operation, the Metropolitan police and the Romanian police worked together and broke up a notorious gang and saved many people from being trafficked. Police operations all come down to intelligence and working together across Europe.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend accept that there is not just an issue with border controls, but a lot of concern about forged documents and passports? There is a report in today’s press that the United States is thinking of withdrawing its visa waiver scheme for some European countries—for example, for Belgium—because there are up to a million forged EU passports in circulation.

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend is quite right that this is not, as I have portrayed it, just a European Union issue. I wanted to use that example because I did not want to get into the arguments about immigration and migration control. People from the EU have the right to be here and can be trafficked, but of course human traffickers operate across the world. Traffickers bring people in from Nigeria, and use all sorts of terrible things to keep them in prostitution. If someone were in a town and forced into prostitution, one would think that there would be ways for them to escape, and there probably are, but they are under acute mental pressure. They may be told that their parents will be killed or that their children will be harmed. If they come from Nigeria—this may seem strange to us—voodoo spells may be used. All those things have to be dealt with, and we are beginning to deal with them. The problem of forged passports is important.

I do not accept what the Home Office used to say, which is that if we create a safe environment for people who have been trafficked, it will be a pull factor. That is complete and utter rubbish. People can come in and claim asylum anyway. They do not need to pretend to be trafficked; there is no advantage to that at all, and I really reject the idea. There are more slaves today across the world than there were in Wilberforce’s time; it is just that we do not see them on the docks. Great credit should go to the Government for what they have done in this regard.

Going back to the Council of Europe situation, a good convention was eventually signed and ratified. One thing we wanted for the protection of people who have been trafficked was the appointment of a rapporteur —I would say a commissioner because the word rapporteur sounds far too “European Union” for my liking. We had a long battle on that with the Government. By this time, we were in the coalition Government. A cross-ministerial group was appointed, which was complete rubbish. We knew that by how many times the Ministers bothered to turn up. It was a complete farce. We had a battle on that. MPs from both sides of the House and from all parties—the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) was a great support—called Westminster Hall debates to put pressure on Ministers and to ask lots of questions. That all followed on from what Anthony Steen did.

When I first came to the House, Anthony Steen was the only person doing anything, and then everybody started to realise that there was a problem. People may think that the Government make all their decisions in Downing Street and that we are just here to tick the boxes, but it was not like that, and we proved that with the previous Bill. On human trafficking, it was absolutely not like that. Private meetings went on, and so on. We finished up with a Modern Slavery Act 2015, which increased the penalties for trafficking, toughened border control and improved the rights of victims to prove that they were victims, which is a complicated thing, but we did not deal with the situation of child victims. We dealt with victims, but forgot that there was a huge loophole.

Members will recognise that probably every week in their constituency advice surgeries, they have someone in front of them who is clearly in need of help and social care. The problem is that the health service says the person needs social care and the local council says the person needs social care, but they blame each other for not funding it. I will develop the argument a little later.

Adult victims of human trafficking are a central Government responsibility, that of the Ministry of Justice. Unbelievably, children who are victims of human trafficking finish up in local authority homes and, bizarrely, are indirectly the responsibility of the Department for Education. How that works I have no idea. In fact, it does not work.

I do not know of any legislation in which we deliberately set out to treat adults better than children. I return to my example of the 18-year-old who was tricked into coming to Belfast and started off in the restaurant but finished up in a terraced house. It must be an horrendous experience to be repeatedly raped, and many of those people come from countries in central Europe that are deeply religious.

Business of the House (2 December)

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Tuesday 26th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

It is good to have a reasonable slot in which to expand on the remarks that I was making just before 10 o’clock last night, and it is good to see that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is on the Front Bench and in a position to explain a bit of the background to the motion.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

All the background.

[Mr Chope]

Indeed: all the background.

The purpose of the motion is to enable the House to sit until as late as 11.30 pm on Monday, or even later, in order to consider two motions, one of which proposes to amend Standing Orders. I wanted to know why the Leader of the House had decided that the business should be debated so late on Monday, after a Second Reading debate on the important Mesothelioma Bill. Why could it not be debated at some other time? I believe that the motion proposing amendments to Standing Orders has been on the Order Paper for a long time, and I understand from contacts that I have had with my own Whip that the Government are concerned about the possibility that the House will divide at 10 pm on Monday. The business is highly contentious, which is why Members have been told that they will not be allowed to be “slipped”, or that slips that had been granted to them have been withdrawn. That suggests the Government regard it as highly contentious. If they do, it is all the more reason it should be given a primetime slot, rather than pushed towards midnight on Monday.

On a more serious point, the motion restricts the amount of time during which the two issues can be debated. It states that

“the Questions necessary to dispose of the proceeding on the Motion…relating to select committee statements and the Motion in the name of”

the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, including on amendments, shall be put

“not later than one and a half hours after the commencement of those proceedings”.

That means that a maximum of three quarters of an hour is being given to each subject, including for the discussion of amendments and for votes on the first motion before the second motion is debated.

I am speaking now on the last item of business on a Tuesday afternoon before the Adjournment debate. The hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid), whose Adjournment debate it is, could therefore have an extended debate on the defence police and fire pensions review until 7.30 pm. I cannot understand why the business on 2 December is being so dealt with and why effectively we have to suspend Standing Orders and move this business motion. I am not normally of a suspicious disposition, but this raises various questions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I would be happy, as I am sure my hon. Friend would be too, to debate these issues until 1, 2 or 3 o’clock on Tuesday morning, should the need arise. That is why, as I said, the more serious of my concerns is the time limit rather than the timing. Obviously, he and I will participate in the debate at whatever time is set down, but we need to think about how easily people outside can follow our proceedings.

[Mr Bone]

I am concerned about my hon. Friend; he is becoming a bit of a leftie and a liberal. Is he really suggesting that the House should sit 9 to 5? That is outrageous.

[Mr Chope]

That is a gross exaggeration of my position. I was suggesting to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) that we should sit until we concluded the business, but that one advantage of having debates earlier—during primetime, as the Government would put it—is that they would be more likely to attract more interest from people scrutinising our affairs, who would not have to look at the historical record, but could watch it as it was happening.

[Mr Bone]

I am sorry that I misunderstood my hon. Friend’s point. I think he said earlier that slips were being cancelled and that people were being whipped, but that cannot possibly be right, because this is House business, and House business cannot be whipped.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I shall not answer my hon. Friend, but I invite him to intervene on me again.

[Mr Bone]

With regard to the date and time of the debate in question, why does my hon. Friend think so many Members will be present?

Energy Bill (Carry-Over Extension)

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Monday 18th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

As someone who voted against the Bill on Third Reading, I will not oppose the time extension. The later the Bill is put on the statute book—if it is put on the statute book—the more grateful I will be. It is significant that on Second Reading in the other place, my noble Friend Lord Lawson made one of the finest speeches in any debate in recent times. He was absolutely dismissive of much of the content of the Bill.

This evening’s short debate presents me with the opportunity to ask my right hon. Friend the Minister what, if anything, will be done to respond to Japan’s recently announced initiative to abandon its climate change targets? That follows the decision by the Australian Government and, earlier, by the Canadians. What does my right hon. Friend think are the implications for the assumed international consensus? Has it been altered by those recent decisions? Where will that leave us if we are justifying imposing significant increases in the price of electricity for consumers on the basis that we are setting an example and leading the world in our opposition to global warming and in our determination to reduce carbon emissions? That leadership does not seem to have resulted in anything significant. Indeed, it seems to be going in the opposite direction.

I would be grateful if my right hon. Friend gave some indication of how the Government will respond to what has happened in Japan. Japan is where the Kyoto agreement was negotiated. The consequence of the Japanese redefinition of its targets will probably be more carbon dioxide emissions, and we will not be able do anything about that. If we turned off all the lights, closed down all our heating systems and did not use any energy at all, we would still not be able to counter the consequences of the recent Japanese decision. Does that not show that, far from being able to lead the world, the political climate in the rest of the world is changing and we are slow to react to that?

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I assume the thrust of my hon. Friend’s argument is that an extension will allow more time for that to be debated.

[Mr Chope]

I hope so, yes. I am enthusiastically supporting the extension in the hope that wiser counsel will ultimately prevail and the Bill will be revised significantly before it reaches the statute book.

Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill [Lords] (Programme) (No. 3)

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Tuesday 26th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is right. I am not aware of anybody on the Committee feeling that the Bill was too strong and should be weakened; the only people there either supported it or wanted it to be strengthened. That shows how unrepresentative the Committee was. We now have three groups of amendments and only three hours in which to debate them, after deducting such time as we will spend on considering this programme motion.

[Mr Bone]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the problem arises because the Executive decide on the time for debate? Within just a couple of months, the Government are going to bring forward proposals for a House business Committee. Will that not solve the problem?

[Mr Chope]

Thereby hangs a subject for a separate debate. The coalition agreement contained a commitment to have a House business Committee by the third year of this Parliament. We now know that that is being interpreted as meaning the end of December 2013, which is rather an extension of the use of the English language. However, that may be the subject of another debate on another occasion. As my hon. Friend suggests, this shows, in essence, that Front Benchers are not to be trusted on these issues, and until they prove their point and we are satisfied, we will be suspicious.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend scores a bit of an own goal. If we had had the original programme motion, we would have been able to continue the debate until 7 pm. If, as I imagine, he will support this programme motion, he will be supporting a curtailment of the debate.

[Mr Bone]

An outrageous slur has been made on my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), who has made it clear that he wants more time for debate. The simple answer is that when the House divides on this programme motion and we defeat it, the previous programme, which gave us a whole day for debate, will be in place. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) should apologise to my hon. Friend.

[Mr Chope]

I do not expect hon. Members to apologise to me. I think actions speak louder than words on these issues.

Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill [Lords]

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Tuesday 26th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

I support new clause 2. In most people’s eyes the Bill was designed essentially to protect the UK supplier, particularly of fresh produce, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) said. What the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) has just delivered is a scaremongering speech designed to undermine British suppliers of fresh meat and produce. That is extremely regrettable.

Last night I attended a speech given by the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon). His speech was entitled, “Deregulation for Growth”. I must admit to being slightly confused about what I have heard so far during this debate, because it seems to be about regulation. How, I ask the Minister, will the Bill be consistent with the Government’s growth agenda? Perhaps she will tell us when she responds.

The Minister last night said that there was a two-for-one principle—that for every £1 of additional burden imposed through regulation, £2 of savings of regulation had to be found. That brings me to new clauses 4 and 5, which are designed to highlight the fact that the Bill as drafted will embody the law of unintended consequences writ large. It will potentially benefit suppliers not only from elsewhere in Europe, but from right across the globe, when most people who support the Bill think they are doing so in order to help the farmer down the road in the United Kingdom. That is far from the case. What will happen is that the Bill will enable suppliers from overseas to exploit our system, at a time when our own suppliers and producers are not able to access overseas markets on an equivalent basis.

[Mr Bone]

I am sure my hon. Friend is going to explain new clause 4 in more detail. I am troubled by the way it is drafted, as it says

“if they have their principal headquarters outside the European Union.”

Why not outside the United Kingdom?

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend anticipates the argument that I am going to put. I was in discussion about whether an amendment referring only to “outside the United Kingdom” would be in order and selectable. On advice—obviously, I am responsible for deciding whether to act on advice—I decided that my new clause was much more likely to be selected if, instead of referring to the United Kingdom, I referred to the European Union. That is because of single market and European Union rules. Obviously, I wanted to ensure as far as possible that my new clause would be selectable, but my hon. Friend makes a good point. He is saying that the whole public debate is about why cannot we buy British—buy UK food and thereby avoid the risk associated—[Interruption.]

Business of the House (26 February)

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I hesitate to call the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House disingenuous, but that is probably the only proper description of what he has just enunciated. Standing Order No. 20 provides that private business should be given three hours between the hours of 4 o’clock and 7 o’clock. The Leader of the House has all the rest of the parliamentary timetable to play with as he wishes, so surely he should respect the right of people who put private business before the House to do so with some certainty as to when that business will begin and conclude. That is the whole purpose of Standing Order No. 20.

If there was no Standing Order, we would be treating private and public business in exactly the same way. As Members know, I take a keen interest in private business, and I think it is important that we do not tear up our Standing Orders on an ad hoc basis. It is almost invariably the case that the Leader of the House tables a motion to try to vary the convention under Standing Order No. 20 that private business should be dealt with for a specified three-hour period.

If I was speaking on behalf of the promoter of a private Bill, I should wish to have certainty; it is unwhipped business, so to ensure that it can proceed it is important that the Member in charge of the Bill can tell colleagues to come along to the debate because at 7 o’clock there may be a vote. Instead of that situation being crystal clear for everybody, tonight’s proposal will mean that nobody will be quite sure when business on the City of London (Various Powers) Bill will be concluded, assuming that it extends for a three-hour period.

In my submission, the City of London (Various Powers) Bill is very important. Obviously, this debate is designed to ensure that we have three hours between 4 o’clock and 7 o’clock tomorrow afternoon dedicated to dealing with the Bill. In paragraph 7 of the statement by its promoters, they state that progress on the Bill, which was introduced in Parliament in November 2010,

“was delayed as the Promoter sought to address Government concerns as to the compatibility of certain of the Bill’s provisions with the EU Services Directive. The Promoter obtained an opinion of leading Counsel supporting the inclusion of the provisions and passed this to BIS in February 2012. BIS, having reserved its position to the Second House while it considered the issue…has now indicated that it has not altered its original view”.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills therefore does not agree with the opinion of leading counsel obtained by the promoters of the Bill. Those of us who discussed the last set of private Bills will recall that the EU services directive is a very controversial measure. [Interruption.]

I shall not talk more about the Bill now; I simply emphasise that it is significant and should be of interest to a wider group of parliamentarians, particularly those concerned about the implications of the implementation of the EU services directive. [Interruption.]

[Mr Bone]

rose—

[Mr Bone]

Will my hon. Friend make it clear to the House that one reason why we are having this short debate—and possibly a Division—is to stop us debating important private business between the hours of 7 pm and 10 pm tomorrow night? What we are doing tonight is trying to prevent the House from sitting late tomorrow.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is, of course, absolutely right. If there are hon. Members present who would rather I was not speaking, I would point out to them that it was open to them to vote against the 10 o’clock motion. Indeed, I am rather surprised that they did not do so, if they wanted to get home promptly.

Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Tuesday 5th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann). His very last point was that we should never vote for something that we know is a bad Bill. What a statement for Parliament and parliamentarians!

Today is a sad day for me. I think it is my saddest day as a Member of the House when my party brings in a Bill to which I am fundamentally opposed. I personally believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, but I am sad that my party has introduced the Bill without any democratic mandate. I am not going to address the issue whether gay marriage is right or wrong, as Members on both sides of the House are making those arguments very well. I shall deal specifically with the democratic deficit. That is what Parliament should be concerned about tonight.

I have listened to many of the short speeches that have been made in the debate. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) started to make some interesting points, but the time limit stopped her developing her argument. The first democratic deficit which I draw to the attention of the House is the fact that we have only one day for this Second Reading debate, so that Members are reduced to speaking for four minutes, and many will not get in. It would have been much better if we had had the debate over two days. I hope that towards the end of the debate, the Leader of the House will rise and suggest that the debate be adjourned, and that we have another day so that all Members can contribute on such an important matter.

[Mr Chope]

Would my hon. Friend sum up the conundrum by saying that it is the tyranny of the usual channels which has destroyed our opportunity of having a two-day debate? The Front Bench teams both support the Bill, which leaves the Back Benchers who are against it out on their own.

[Mr Bone]

The suggestion that I could ever criticise the Whips is outrageous. Our problem is that Parliament does not decide the timetable; the Executive does so.

Canterbury City Council Bill

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Thursday 31st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I urge my hon. Friend not to do down the communist route of centrally dictating things, because these are individual Bills. It would not be beyond the wit of man to have little signs, as we do with conservation areas, for instance. That would be useful. Will the promoters of the Bill accept these amendments?

[Mr Chope]

I thank my hon. Friend for supporting these amendments. I have yet to hear officially, although in introducing their lordships’ amendments and mine at the beginning of the debate—I know my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough was not in his place at that time—our hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey implied en passant that he did not want to accept any of these amendments. Perhaps in the light of the ensuing debate, he will change his mind.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I would have hoped that we could trust councils to provide adequate training. The purpose of my amendment is to try to ensure that that happens. If the training is not adequate, it will be open to somebody to make a complaint to the council or the councillors; ultimately, it could be used as a defence to a fixed penalty notice or something like that—although I would not want to speculate on that. The test is that the officers must be properly trained: that is what the provisions would require—rather than that the council thought the training was adequate. I hope it would not be necessary to set up a new bureaucracy—an appeals panel or something like that—to deal with the situation, as we are already overburdened with bureaucracy and officialdom in this country, and we do not want even more of it.

My amendment (g) to Lords amendment C27 proposes the deletion of subsection (2), which makes training provided by the council mandatory. It states:

“The council shall make the training referred to in subsection (1) available also to constables and community support officers empowered by section 5(1) to give a fixed penalty notice.”

That is redundant, because constables and community support officers receive training that enables them to perform this function outside the ambit of any particular local Act relating to pedlars, and it is therefore unnecessary to require the council to become involved in training them. Obviously, if the chief constable asks the local council whether it will provide training for constables and community support officers, the council will probably be happy to oblige and to explain the procedure.

[Mr Bone]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way—he is being exceptionally generous—but did he mean to refer to the police and crime commissioner just now, rather than the chief constable?

[Mr Chope]

I think that it would be the chief constable in this instance. My understanding is that police and crime commissioners are there to decide whether to hire and fire, and to set out the budget for the police authorities, whereas operational issues are dealt with by the chief constables. I would regard the question of whether constables or community support officers on the beat are capable or knowledgeable enough to introduce or apply a fixed penalty notice regime as an operational issue.

[Mr Bone]

I would understand my hon. Friend’s logic if this were national legislation, but given that it is local legislation, by virtue of being a private Bill, surely it should be up to the police and crime commissioner to decide whether he wants to get involved with this nonsense at all.

[Mr Chope]

I take my hon. Friend’s point, but I trust that police and crime commissioners have bigger fish to fry.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey will support my amendments. As was made clear earlier, they also apply to the other Bills with which we are dealing today. We are not picking on Canterbury in particular, but it is the first Bill on the Order Paper.

[Philip Davies]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) not just for his speech, although it was of the customary calibre, but for his dedication in ensuring that, if the Bill ever leaves this place, it will leave in a much better state than the state in which it arrived. Without my hon. Friend’s personal dedication to this issue, and his determination that we should do what we ought to do in this place—that is, defend people’s freedoms and defend enterprise—the Bill would have passed through Parliament in a much less satisfactory manner.

Like my hon. Friend, I am grateful for the work that was done by their lordships. I do not know whether my hon. Friend felt the same, but I feared that the Bill would go through on the nod in the House of Lords. Their lordships should be commended for going through it in great detail and considering the arguments properly, and, consequently, tabling some amendments with which I think we can be particularly pleased.

I agree with what my hon. Friend said about many of the amendments. He focused on the subject of seizures, and on the Lords amendments that proposed the omission of various clauses relating to it. He may recall that the issue caused great controversy when it was debated for the first time in this place. It struck me as unacceptable that local authorities should employ authorised officers to go around seizing people’s goods willy-nilly. As my hon. Friend will recall, we argued the case vehemently for many months. We were told that the clauses were essential to the Bill, and that without them it would be unworkable and meaningless. We were also told that the proposals in the amendments would be unenforceable, and that they were in effect wrecking amendments: that, if I remember rightly, is what my hon. Friend was accused of when he tried to persuade the promoters that what they were saying was over the top.

I should be interested to know why the promoters thought that removing those clauses then would wreck the Bill, whereas removing them today apparently does not wreck it all. It seems that it will still be fit to proceed into law. It is difficult for us to consider the merits of the amendments until we are given some satisfactory answers to the question of how important the clauses are to the Bill as a whole.

I have the impression that we have reached a stage at which the promoters are determined to produce an Act of Parliament, irrespective of what is in it and whether anything that is in it will ever be applied. This seems to have become a war of attrition, a battle of wills. The promoters seem merely to want an Act of Parliament to hang their hat on. I certainly support the removal of all these clauses—page after page of them—and I think we should be grateful for the fact that the promoters may have come round to my hon. Friend’s way of thinking.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

Exactly—my hon. Friend is right to make that point.

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way—he is being exceptionally generous. In his desire to rush through his speech so that we can complete the business today, he has not admitted the fact that any obstruction of the highway is a police matter, and that they can deal with it. The measure is therefore superfluous.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Such measures are quite often a matter of interpretation. The trained police officer is in a far better position to interpret the law than a council that is prejudiced against the interests of pedlars. To reinforce the point about prejudice, the noble Lord Strasburger said on Third Reading that:

“It was alleged that pedlars create a situation that attracts pickpockets, but…no evidence was offered. It was also said that pedlars cause obstruction of the highway. Little evidence for this allegation was offered apart from a small number of cases where wide and expanding trolleys had been used…The witnesses who spoke for the local authorities were somewhat unconvincing. We heard evidence from pedlars that many council officers and the police are ignorant about the 1871 Act, and we also heard much evidence of a bullying culture on the part of council officials towards honest and hard-working pedlars.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 3 December 2012; Vol. 741, c. 451-52.]

That is why we need to be alert to the precise wording of the Lords amendments. We need to ensure that the intention is to establish a level playing field for pedlars and street traders, and to ensure that pedlars cannot be undermined by over-zealous or prejudiced council officials. For those reasons, Lords amendment C9 would be much improved by amendments (a) to (h), which I have tabled.

Amendment (h) would remove subsection (8), which states that:

“The provisions of sub-paragraph…(2)…of Schedule 4 to the 1982 Act shall apply to a resolution under this section as they apply to a resolution under that paragraph but as if…for ‘street’ there were substituted ‘area’”.

That completely undermines the concept of pedlars’ freedom to go from house to house and sell their wares on the public highway by trading from street to street.

The Lords amendments grouped under the heading “Pedlars and street trading” are a significant improvement.

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing that to the attention of the House, because it takes us back to our discussions on clause 4 in the previous Parliament. It was in the context of the provision of services that the issue of the services directive was raised. That was why, as I recall, we were arguing that the provision of services should not be covered under these particular local Acts. There seems to be a recognition that clause 4 is outlawed by the services directive. What I do not understand—I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about this—is why the directive also applies to pedlars who are dealing not in services, but goods. How does the directive apply to the sale of goods by pedlars? That is causing concern among the pedlar fraternity.

There may be as many as 4,000 pedlars in this country, so the implications are significant. They are concerned that if the legislation, which sets out a separate regime for pedlars and has been established for well over 100 years, is torn up and repealed, it may be that the significant status and freedom that pedlars have hitherto enjoyed—of being able to obtain a certificate and, as long as they are of good character, trade from door to door, place to place and town to town—will be removed from them.

As was said in their lordships’ House, pedlary goes back long before the time of Shakespeare to the time of Chaucer, if not before. Therefore, to tear up the 1871 Act, as the Government seem to be proposing in their consultation paper, would be damaging to the interests of pedlars.

[Mr Bone]

Perhaps my hon. Friend can explain something to me before he concludes his opening remarks on this group of amendments. It is Government policy to encourage micro-businesses, and pedlars are small business men at the very smallest level. Therefore, it appears to me that these councils are going against Government policy.

[Mr Chope]

That may well be so. If councils are going against Government policy, one would expect the Government to say to their supporters in the Chamber that they wish them to vote on the amendments in a particular way.

Sadly, my hon. Friend the Minister is temporarily not in his place, but I am delighted to see my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands) in his place instead. I am sure he will make a careful note of what I am about to say. Under the heading, “Chapter 1 - Proposal to repeal the Pedlars Acts 1871 and 1881 (Part 2 of the draft Regulations at Annex A)”, the Government’s consultation paper, which is still out for consultation, reads:

“Below we detail our proposals (reflected in the proposed draft Regulations set out at Annex A) to repeal the Pedlars Acts 1871 and 1881 in relation to the whole of the UK.”

That is not a discussion of the possibility of repealing the Acts, but a specific proposal to repeal the Acts in toto. The proposal might still be out to consultation, but the Government have effectively made up their mind to repeal the Acts.

For reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and others explained, the Government have been diffident about declaring their hand in relation to the provisions in the Bills when they have had the opportunity to do so. One of the difficulties when considering Lords amendments is finding out why they were proposed. As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) just pointed out, removing clause 4 from this Bill and equivalent provisions in the other Bills was not referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey. It was taken as a given, despite its having significant implications.

Neither was there proper explanation of why, if they thought that removing clause 4 would satisfy the services directive, the Government now say that to satisfy it we would effectively have to repeal clause 5 in toto and not replace it with any other provision relating to pedlars.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

The answer to my hon. Friend’s question is that when their lordships drew up these amendments in November 2011, the Government had not declared their hand. They did not do that until November 2012—and nobody can be blamed for not anticipating what the Government would say.

[Mr Bone]

I may be wrong, but could it possibly be that 0.88 metres is actually equivalent to a yard?

[Mr Chope]

If that is correct, I am grateful to my hon. Friend; I cannot understand why we do not use yards and feet rather than refer to 0.88 metres. We always say when we come to this place that we always learn something. That is certainly something I have learned today, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for it.

Let me reach a summation on these particular issues. I have seen some movement on the part of my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey, and I hope he will ensure that we have time to listen to the Minister’s response, as it is very important for the Minister to send out some clear messages to pedlars, many of whom are very worried by the proposed changes to the legislation and are confused by the attitude of the Government, particularly towards amendment C9 when looked at alongside the Government’s consultation paper.

I fear that an atmosphere is developing in which the Bill’s promoters think, “Well, it has taken us so long, so rather than try to improve it further, we might as well try to drive it home as quickly as we can and curtail debate as much as possible”, which obviously has the effect of creating a reaction. We know that the House’s procedures have resulted in a considerable curtailing of the rights of Members to speak in some debates. Fortunately, in private business, we still have the right to try to insist on getting the promoters of Bills to listen to our arguments.

I think that that is what we are looking for on this occasion. We are asking the promoters to reflect on the arguments that we have presented, and to consider tabling their own amendments to the Lords amendments. One of the virtues of a debate organised in this way is that, in this instance, we have so far discussed and voted on only Lords amendments C3, C4 and C5, which means that the promoters still have an opportunity to table their own amendments to those on which we have not yet voted.

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s full explanation of the position. As I understand it, the benefit of the procedure that we are using today will result, eventually, in a better Act of Parliament. By allowing the promoters to reflect on the arguments and then come up with amendments that may even improve on those tabled by my hon. Friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and me, we are likely to end up with a much better Bill. Would it not be great if the Government followed the example set by private business and dropped programme motions? Then this could happen week in, week out when we debated Government business.

[Mr Chope]

I think that there is a strong case for asking the Procedure Committee to look into the possibility of applying the principles relating to private business to public business. What has happened today demonstrates the virtues of being able to engage in what might be described as an iterative process, during which we discuss the issues, and the promoters have a chance to reflect on the points that have been made—over weeks, months or years—and to respond to them accordingly.

I do not need to speak any longer on this group of amendments—[Hon. Members: “Shame!”] I know that—

Business of the House (11 July)

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

I could not agree more with my right hon. Friend. His speech today made the case that the Government should think again, withdraw the Bill and make a fresh start.

The business before us relates to our discussions on Wednesday, and I want to make sure that Members who might wish to debate Wednesday’s business on the sitting hours of the House recognise that if they support this motion, they will be limiting the time for discussion to two hours. If they want to do that, that is fine, but I think it is right and proper that Members should have the opportunity to consider whether they wish to limit that debate to two hours.

My other point is that it has been a long-standing tradition and convention in this House that a specific period of time is set aside for the consideration of private business: three hours, between 4 pm and 7 pm on a Wednesday or between 7 pm and 10 pm on a Tuesday. Nowadays, however, the Government almost invariably seek to introduce a motion undermining that principle. The consequence is that Members are left in doubt as to what the order of business will be and, if they are concerned about private business, whether they will have their special three-hour slot allocated to them, or whether it will be interfered with by the business managers. There are some important principles at stake, therefore.

What I am saying is: when it comes to discussing these issues on Wednesday why can we not say that between 4 pm and 7 pm, if it takes that long, we should be able to discuss the private business, as set down under Standing Order No. 20? Why do we need to say that the business of the House starting with the September sittings motion and followed by the debate on VAT on ambulance services should be able to force the private business much later on in the agenda, perhaps until 11 pm or later?

The consequence of that is that some hon. Members will stay behind because they are told that, although it is private business, it is very important and the Government want them to be here. They feel that they have to hang on in there late because the Government have told them to do so. The Government then blame me or somebody else; they say, “The reason you are staying late is that the hon. Member for Christchurch has required that you should stay late by talking this business long.” All I am saying is that we have a three-hour slot on Wednesday, so can we not keep that for private business?

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is being very unfair to the Government. The suggestion that this Government would try to whip private business is absolutely outrageous; they would not require Members to stay behind.

[Mr Chope]

Of course my hon. Friend is right to say that ultimately it is for hon. Members to decide whether they are willing to be whipped by the Government into supporting or opposing private business and whether we should allow some things in this House—private business—to be decided by Members on an individual basis, using their own judgment. So be it.

I can recall strongly opposing a private Bill that would have resulted in a substantial destruction of the amenities and environment in Southampton. I was grateful that a lot of then Government Members, including the then Home Secretary, supported me in the Lobby against the Bill; he wondered afterwards what he had been voting for, but I explained that it was in a really good cause.

I admit that there are precedents, but why should we want to oppose having a proper discussion of why we should be carrying on with certain private legislation that has been hanging around in this House for not just one or two years, but for two Sessions or more—for two Parliaments or more? I believe that one of the motions we will be debating on Wednesday goes back to 2007, when it was first introduced in the House.

I need elaborate my remarks no further. All I need to say is that, having raised this debate, it is right and proper that the Deputy Leader of the House should try to make a better job of responding to this debate than he did to the previous one.

London Local Authorities Bill [Lords]

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Tuesday 21st February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

Everybody seems to be rather reluctant to engage in this Third Reading debate—admittedly, we probably have only two minutes for it. By the time we are able to debate Third Reading properly, I hope that the promoters will have ensured that the Bill is reprinted, because a large number of amendments have been made to the Bill in this House.

[Mr Bone]

Does my hon. Friend agree that that is probably why the promoter of the Bill was reluctant to start this Third Reading debate, as he wanted the House to have the printed material so that we could discuss it properly?

[Mr Chope]

I think that may well be so. Indeed, I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, because in the course of this Bill’s progress the promoters have accepted a lot of the ideas and criticism put forward by me and my parliamentary colleagues. That vindicates the whole process of giving such Bills detailed scrutiny.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

That was an unnecessarily impertinent and provocative intervention by my hon. Friend.

As we were deprived of a speech from the Minister on the last group of amendments on Report and because the Government abstained from the vote on clause 9, everybody is gagging to hear from the Minister what the Government’s approach is to the full contents of the Bill, now that it has been amended. When we reflect on what has happened this evening, we will inevitably regret that we did not hear from the Minister, who has been sitting in his place for the best part of three hours and who, from my recollection, has not uttered a word.

[Mr Bone]

One of the advantages in the House is that after Report, Members such as me who did not have a chance to speak have a chance to speak on Third Reading. There are so many more Members who are now interested in the Bill that I am sure they will turn up when we next debate the Bill on Third Reading.

[Mr Chope]

Again, my hon. Friend makes a good point. I hope that he will be able to make a significant contribution to the Third Reading of this Bill.

I give notice that although the Bill is significantly amended compared with what it was at the outset, in my view it still contains a lot that is pernicious and detrimental to the freedom of the citizens of this country. Visitors to London will be taken by surprise when they find themselves on the wrong side of the law. One of the Bill’s biggest problems is that it legislates partially for a particular area of the country. If there is a mischief, that mischief applies across the whole of the country and should be dealt with in a public Bill, if necessary on the basis of enabling legislation so that local authorities could opt in—

Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Monday 17th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bone]

I listened very carefully to the hon. Lady. If this motion goes through, the Government will quite rightly be able to say that the official Opposition support the wording because they voted for it in the House of Commons. That may well be her position—I am happy to accept that—but this is not the right place to be debating this issue.

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend share my disappointment at the obvious lack of intellectual rigour being applied to this issue by those on the Opposition Front Bench?

House of Commons Disqualification (Amendment) Bill

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Friday 9th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend is quite right. I think it was the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), when he was Leader of the House in the previous Parliament, who said that there had never been a piece of legislation that had gone through the House and received proper scrutiny that had not become a better Bill as a result of that scrutiny. The thinking of the Whips—that pushing stuff through without proper scrutiny achieves the best for the Executive—is the wrong way round, because that actually results in completely the opposite.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I strongly support my hon. Friend’s Bill, but does it deal with the problem of the Committee of Selection? That Committee is dominated by the Whips and it effectively prevents honest Back Benchers with an independent mind from serving on many Public Bill Committees.

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend hits on an important point. One of the problems in this Parliament is that someone who does not agree with the line of the Executive or the shadow Executive cannot get on to such Committees. That happens because Whips nominate the membership of Committees, but a side benefit of my Bill would be that that would end, because there would be no Whips.

Unlike in many other countries, the Executive live within Parliament, rather than outside it. They propose from within Parliament, and sit, live and breathe within it. Over the years, people have therefore sought election to Parliament not to become Members of Parliament, but to become Ministers. They want to be either a Minister in government, or a shadow Minister in opposition. In the vast majority of cases, people who are elected to the House of Commons want to be a Member of Parliament not for its own end, but as a method to become a Minister. That gives enormous control to Government and Opposition Whips. If someone proposes to exercise their judgment against what the Whips want, they will rapidly be given the threat that their career will be over and they will never become a Minister—I think that I have probably qualified for that advice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bone]

Indeed it does, but I am abolishing those as well. The hon. Gentleman should not worry about that; there is no problem there.

In concluding my opening remarks—

[Mr Chope]

Before my hon. Friend finishes, let me say that I am absolutely delighted with his speech. I am sure that my decision not to go any further with the National Health Service Redress (Amendment) Bill was a wise one, because otherwise we would have been deprived of his contribution. Does he think that his Bill could be summed up as a deregulatory Bill, replacing regulation with self-regulation?

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and as usual he is at one with the Prime Minister in wanting deregulation.

Let me finish by quoting the words of a man who has the best interests of our democracy and our country at heart. This man said:

“We will give the House of Commons more control over its own timetable so there is proper time for scrutiny and debate. We will make MPs more independent, with more free votes so that they can vote as they wish and not as they’re told to.”

Those are words of our new Prime Minister, uttered in 2009 in his powerful speech about rebuilding the connection between Parliament and the people. He has already done much by giving us the Backbench Business Committee, ensuring the election of Select Committee Chairmen and promising to set up a business of the House committee by 2013. I am moving the Second Reading of this Bill today to help the Prime Minister achieve his aims.

Finance Bill

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

I certainly support the national health service, but I do not think that the hon. Gentleman understands my point. My point is that even in very socialistic countries, such as Sweden, the other Scandinavian countries and others in Europe—quite apart from the United States—the proportion of total health spending that comes from the private sector is much higher than it is in this country. I think that it would be much better if a higher proportion of our total health spending came from the private sector and from individuals and companies.

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend is, as ever, making a powerful speech. Will he explain why some people think that not having private money gives us a better health service? Our European colleagues have better outcomes when they have more private money.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I think, and some of the research suggests, that when people contribute directly to the cost of their health care they take a greater interest in outcomes and hold the health service to account to a greater extent than when they can be told, “It’s all free, so what do you expect?” We talk about the health service being free at the point of delivery, which of course it is, but I want a health service that is available at the point of need, and the two things are very different. That is the gap that exists at the moment. A little more private sector resource, which would relieve some of the burden on the taxpayer or complement taxpayer resources, would be a good thing.

Prayers

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Friday 17th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the House sit in private.

Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 163), and negatived.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. We see today in the newspapers that the Government are announcing new measures on public sector pensions. It is in the media and we have seen the Chief Secretary to the Treasury being interviewed about it, but unfortunately there has been no notification on the Annunciator or the Order Paper that an oral statement will be made at 11 o’clock. Is that an error, and in fact a statement will be made?

Employment Opportunities Bill

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Friday 17th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I do not know, because I have not inquired, how many hon. Friends of the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Tony Lloyd) employ people as interns for well below what my hon. Friend and the Mayor of London would describe as the London living wage, but perhaps we will hear about that in due course.

I do not want this Bill to go forward without some focus on clause 1, because under current law we deny those foreigners seeking refugee status the right to work in this country.

Clause 2 deals with the problems that the current law restricts British citizens from selling their labour at a price of their own choosing; discriminates against those who are young, inexperienced or seeking on-the-job training; prevents people from agreeing to cut their wages to save their jobs; and imposes nationally uniform rules on the labour market, ignoring regional and local variations. All those shortcomings are tackled in the Bill, which effectively recognises the right to work.

The context for that can be found in article 23(1) of the universal declaration of human rights:

“Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.”

Article 6 of the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights, to which the UK is a party, states:

“The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right to work, which includes the right of everyone to the opportunity to gain his living by work which he freely chooses or accepts, and will take appropriate steps to safeguard this right.”

I think it will come as a shock to many Members to know that currently many people are not given the right to work enshrined in those important United Nations articles. The Bill is designed to address that problem.

To make it clear to the hon. Member for Manchester Central that I have read my own Bill, I have noticed that there is a typographical error in clause 1. As a consequence, it would enable only foreigners who are in detention to work, rather than the reverse, which was the intention. I put that firmly on the record and apologise to the House. I will address my remarks to clause 1 as it should be, rather than as it is.

Clause 1 refers directly to those unlucky enough to be seeking asylum in this country as a result of persecution, and obviously to their families. Why are we depriving people who are seeking asylum of the ability to earn money while in this country, so that they can make ends meet and not be wholly dependent on the state? The shock of seeking refugee status should not be exacerbated by the humiliation of not being able to take employment and contribute to the society that is acting as their host while their application is considered.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Speaking as the chairman of the all-party group on human trafficking, one problem for victims who have been trafficked into this country is that if they are rescued by the police and start to recover, they are not allowed to work because they are treated as asylum seekers.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, that treatment also prevents people who are being held in prison-like conditions by the person who is looking after them from breaking out, for fear of a worse penalty being sustained.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I am delighted to learn that that was a useful intervention, and I am glad that I gave way. When I gave the example of my constituents, I had a Zimbabwean in such a position in mind.

Obviously, in putting forward a proposal such as clause 1, one needs a statistical basis to show how many people would be affected. It seems as though all the statistics produced by the Home Office in this regard are completely unreliable. The Daily Telegraph reported on 26 April that 25,345 new asylum cases submitted since 2008 still awaited a conclusion. The Home Affairs Committee reported on 24 May that the independent chief inspector of the UK Border Agency agreed that there was a new backlog, but did not know its extent. He advised that he might find out what the extent of it was in due course. We know that the Government were going to achieve the target of completing 90% of asylum cases within six months by December 2011. My understanding is that that target has been abandoned in favour of what is described as a “basket” of 11 alternative indicators. The National Audit Office report of 15 March indicates that up to 181,000 people might have overstayed their work, student or family reunion visas in the past four years. We also know that migrants are arriving in this country at a rate of between 500,000 and 600,000 a year. That is more than 10,000 a week.

There is a problem here. I think that the most deserving people who come in as migrants are genuine asylum seekers and refugees. However, the UK Border Agency makes it quite clear on its website, under the heading “Employment”, that asylum seekers are not allowed to work:

“You will not normally be allowed to work while we consider your asylum application, except in very limited circumstances.”

It continues:

“Currently, most new asylum applications receive a decision within 30 days.”

That is what the website says, but it is not borne out by the statistics to which I have referred. So what actually happens? Instead of allowing asylum seekers to obtain employment, we, as national taxpayers, give them support. We provide them with cash, housing, access to the health service and access to our schools when children are involved. We are paying out a lot of extra money to support people while denying them the opportunity to support themselves.

Does that make sense? In my book, it does not make any sense whatever. I therefore hope that the Government will look carefully at my proposition.

We know that in Sweden, for example, asylum seekers are given the right to work. We can contrast the situation there with that in Greece, about which I have recently received a lot of evidence in my capacity as this year’s chairman of the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Population of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The situation in Greece is desperate, because the Greek authorities will not allow the tens of thousands of asylum seekers in the country to work. As a result they cannot get their cases dealt with quickly, and some have been waiting there for many years. Now there is a outbreak of lawlessness, including murder and a lot of robberies, in Athens and surrounding areas, committed by desperate asylum seekers who do not have the means or ability to lawfully seek jobs. They are locked into Greece because they cannot get into any other country. They cannot go back to Turkey, through which most of them arrived. The situation for asylum seekers there is chaotic and desperate. I do not want to see that replicated in this country.

[Mr Bone]

The problem in this country, at least from my experience in Wellingborough, is that although people are trying to deal quickly with new asylum cases, the backlog includes people who have been here for years and years. Their cases are not being decided because of the concentration on new applicants. That means that they have to live on benefits for years, when they want to go out and work. Often, they have married and had a family. That situation cannot be right.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that is why I am so grateful to him for being a sponsor of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for intervening, and I will return shortly to the figures I have now been able to find as a result of his intervention. On the training wage, I am disappointed by his intervention because it shows that he is trying to be pedantic. He is not sure whether under the contract of employment entered into voluntarily between the employer and the trainee—for want of a better expression—the training would be of a sufficient quality. However, that would be a matter between the person being trained and the employer. If that is the hon. Gentleman's only objection, I would be happy to see what could be done in Committee, but I suspect that his objection is much more fundamental, because he is on the side of producer interests backed up by the trade unions. He is not really interested in having a genuine training wage, which is what I suggest we should promote through the Bill. I do not want to appear too sceptical or cynical about what his interventions are really motivated by.

According to statistics from the House of Commons Library, in my constituency in April 2011, there were 205 jobseeker’s allowance claimants under the age of 24, which was an increase of 2.5% over the year. For those between 25 and 49, there was a reduction of 375, which was a 22.7% reduction, and for those aged 50 and over, the numbers were 150 and a 30% reduction. Those figures speak for themselves—they show that we have a real problem. While the numbers of people receiving jobseeker’s allowance in the older age groups are declining—certainly in my constituency—the same is far from true for those in the younger age range. A rational body deciding on policy would say, “There’s a problem here. We have to try and address it.” I hope, therefore, that my hon. Friend the Minister will tell us when he winds up the debate what the Government are going to do to get more young people trained and back into work, if they are not going to adopt my suggestion in clause 3.

[Mr Bone]

Before my hon. Friend moves on, may I use the word “scandal” about the situation with interns? People come to me asking to be interns—people with university degrees—but I cannot pay them anything because of rules set by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, which means effectively that the only people whom I take on as interns are people from wealthy backgrounds. That cannot help social mobility and is wrong. IPSA needs to reconsider that specific point.

[Mr Chope]

I am sure that the powers that be in IPSA will be listening to every word my hon. Friend says. I agree with him. This, again, is one of the problems with having centralised bureaucracy intervening in the marketplace. Perhaps if clause 3 was on the statute book, it would provide a complete answer to the problem he has identified.

I was talking to a colleague yesterday who said that his son, a recent university graduate, was out of work. At the moment, about 20% of graduates are unemployed. That does not mean that they are unemployable—most of them want to get a leg up into the workplace, but at the moment they are being deprived of that. I had a case in my constituency of a graduate, aged about 24 or 25, who said that he would be happy to work for the so-called apprenticeships minimum wage—it will be £2.60 from October—but he is not allowed to do so because it applies only to people aged 18 or 19. That, too, is a real issue.

I promised earlier that I would refer to Mr David Frost of the British Chambers of Commerce, who said:

“The change to the national minimum wage rate is the wrong increase at the wrong time and will risk pricing young people out of work when youth unemployment is at a record high”.

As I pointed out earlier, if he thinks that a 6p an hour increase in the minimum wage for young people will break the bank, would not completely removing the constraints of the national minimum wage from young people undertaking training have an even greater impact? That is not always the case, but I do not go as far as Eamonn Butler from the Adam Smith Institute, a good friend of mine, who on 17 February called for the minimum wage for young people to be totally scrapped. He set out some cogent arguments and said that the minimum wage

“prices them out of jobs, so does them no good at all. For them, low-paid work is a way of building up some human capital that will make it easier to find a better job. But we stop them even getting that work at all—and all in the name of protecting workers.”

I very much agree with those sentiments.

The last part of my Bill deals with the need to ensure flexibility in the labour market in different parts of the country and sets out a method by which the Low Pay Commission will be required to address those problems.

I hope that this Bill will command the support of the House. However, I hope also that it will trigger a much more serious debate than we have had so far across the Chamber, among my political party, the coalition Government and the Opposition, because this issue is far too serious to be the subject of yah-boo politics—“Are you in favour of the minimum wage or are you against it?” We need to examine the issues in a rational, non-prejudiced and hard-headed way, so that we can get more people back into jobs and enable our economy to prosper.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I certainly do have the guts. Should the matter arise, I would obviously need two people as Tellers, but it would be good to test the will of the House, if the Government are indeed as intransigent as it seems they are from what the Minister said in his short intervention.

[Mr Bone]

I hope that my hon. Friend is not missing the point. The shadow Minister—the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas)—has been really helpful, because clearly the Opposition are fully behind the Bill and want to have a Division to help us. My hon. Friend should please not miss that point.

United Kingdom Parliamentary Sovereignty Bill

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Friday 18th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend asks why use the word “reaffirmed” rather than “exists”. I have chosen that particular word, but other words could be substituted for it. I am not saying that it is the only word that could be used in clause 1 to convey the meaning that I wish to get across. I think it is a good word, and unless and until somebody comes up with an amendment that they think is better, I would like to keep it in the Bill. If my hon. Friend would like to join me in considering the Bill in Committee in due course, I am sure he will have the chance to move amendments and speak to them to explain why he thinks his choice of words is better than the words in the Bill.

May I take the House back briefly to the “Invitation to Join the Government of Britain”, which was the title given to the Conservative party manifesto at the last general election? On page 114, under the subtitle “Promote our national interest—an open and democratic Europe”, it is stated:

“The steady and unaccountable intrusion of the European Union into almost every aspect of our lives has gone too far. A Conservative government will negotiate for three specific guarantees—on the Charter of Fundamental Rights, on criminal justice, and on social and employment legislation—with our European partners to return powers that we believe should reside with the UK, not the EU. We seek a mandate to negotiate the return of these powers from the EU to the UK.”

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I understand that the Ministry of Defence has had to pulp several books because it does not like them. Is it correct that Conservative central office has tried to pulp all the previous manifestos?

[Mr Chope]

I do not know, but I think my hon. Friend is perhaps a bit harsh. I hope that all Conservatives in this Parliament, who were elected on that manifesto, are trying their hardest to ensure that its words are implemented. My hon. Friend is in the forefront of trying to achieve that objective.

We were also promised in an informal meeting of the Conservative parliamentary party that there were red lines around our policy on Europe in the coalition agreement. We therefore believed that the words that I have just read out would not only remain part of the Conservative party manifesto but be inherent in the coalition manifesto.

I do not want to go back over the European Union Bill because we had long discussions about it, but recent events have brought home to me the fact that the gradual erosion of our sovereignty remains a live issue. We had a debate on Wednesday evening, which is, in a sense, unfinished business, because the Division is deferred to next Wednesday, about the fact that the Government have decided to use section 6 of the European Union (Amendment) Act 2008 so that the Prime Minister can agree to amend article 136 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union next weekend to establish a permanent stability mechanism for the euro.

The hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) made one of the most interesting interventions in that short debate when he asked:

“Would it not be more appropriate for an intergovernmental agreement to be reached among the member states of the eurozone, rather than have some change to the treaty on the functioning of the European Union?”

My right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe replied:

“It would have been possible for the member states of the eurozone to have come to such an intergovernmental agreement, but they chose not to do so.”

Surely if member states want to set up intergovernmental arrangements centred around the euro and the eurozone, they should be allowed to do so. There is no reason for the Government, controlled by Parliament, to be dragged into that process. It then became apparent that Parliament was being asked to give the Government authority to negotiate away some of our powers because it was thought sensible for us to be party to an unnecessary treaty amendment. If it is not necessary, why are we doing it? How is that consistent with what was said in our manifesto?

Later in the debate, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Europe said:

“Should there be any suggestion of amending the draft decision at the European Council—there is no such suggestion from any quarter at present—”.—[Official Report, 16 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 422-24.]

However, as I said, I was in Brussels for three days at the beginning of this week and I picked up a copy of European Voice, a newspaper that circulates there. An article on page seven, under the headline “MEPs confident of getting say on bail-out mechanism”, states:

“MEPs expressed optimism on…8 March that EU member states will accept their demands to link a permanent bail-out mechanism for the eurozone more closely to the EU institutions.”

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[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend has failed to look at today’s Order Paper and failed to notice that I do not have one Bill but several, and therefore I have a conflict of interest. If I speak too long on one Bill, I may jeopardise the chance of being able to speak on my next.

[Mr Bone]

Just before my hon. Friend concludes, I want to put in my bid to be on the Bill Committee. We have heard from several hon. Members that they want to be on the Committee, and I would like to add my name.

Parliament (Amendment) Bill

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Friday 4th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

I hope to be able to do that as well. My hon. Friend will not have failed to notice that my Bill would come into force on 1 May 2015, so it is forward looking, like much of the material that I bring before the House. I do not think that his is an adequate objection to the Bill. I hope that the measures in clause 1 will be in the draft Bill that the Government talk about bringing forward; I would have thought it unconscionable for the Government to propose that the other place have more than 600 Members. I hope that, on reflection, my hon. Friend will be prepared to accept clause 1.

Clause 2 deals with the number of Ministers in the House of Commons. Under the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975, the maximum number is 95. As has been accepted by the Government—this point is supported strongly on both sides of the Chamber and in the other place—if we reduce the number of members of the legislature, we should also reduce the number of members of the Executive; otherwise, the balance between the Executive and the legislature gets out of kilter. Indeed, that was a recommendation of the Select Committee on Political and Constitutional Reform, of which I am privileged to be a member, in our report last October. We said:

“It is self-evident that a reduction in the number of Members of Parliament will increase the dominance of the Executive over Parliament if the number of Ministers sitting and voting in the House is not correspondingly reduced. This is a matter of constitutional importance that goes to the heart of the relationship between the Executive and the House.”

This very day the Government have responded to the Committee’s recommendations. Cmd 7997 states:

“The Government remains committed to strengthening Parliament in relation to the Executive…We have been clear that we accept the principle that there is a link between the legislature and the size of the executive.”

So we are making progress.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a sound argument, which I totally support. May I draw his attention to the business listed for Wednesday 7 September 2011? It includes the Second Reading of my House of Commons Disqualification (Amendment) Bill, which would remove a number of Ministers at a stroke, and they happen to be in the Whips Office.

[Mr Chope]

I had the privilege of listening to my hon. Friend when he made a very powerful speech introducing that Bill under the ten-minute rule. Nothing in my Bill cuts across or undermines anything in his Bill, which I hope will make swift progress when it comes before the House.

The Government’s argument against clause 2 of my Bill is given in paragraph 91 of today’s Command Paper:

“There is no immediate need to resolve this issue, since the provisions relating to a reduced number of MPs will not take effect until 2015. The Government therefore intends to reflect on the arguments made during the passage of this Bill”—

the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill—

“and set out its plans once there is greater clarity on the composition of the second Chamber, including how many Ministers could be drawn from there.”

It seems as though the Government are moving in the same direction, but clause 2 of my Bill would be a bit more of a nudge in that direction. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to confirm that the matter will be resolved during this Parliament. I certainly remain concerned about that.

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[Mr Bone]

Is not one danger of having a smaller number of MPs to scrutinise the Government while also having an ever-increasing Executive that there will be more and more demand from people to split the powers and take the Executive out of the House of Commons? That would be a wrong move, but it is a danger because of the direction in which the Government are heading.

[Mr Chope]

As so often, my hon. Friend is probably on to a good point; one can almost read between the lines of the Command Paper to which I referred, which seems to suggest that the Government might increase the number of Ministers in the other place as a quid pro quo.

We need to put limits on the number of Ministers in this House. I suggest 80. At present, the maximum is 95. If we can have a leaner civil service and public sector, we can also have a leaner Government in terms of the number of Members who hold ministerial office, so I commend clause 2 to the House.

Clause 3 deals with Parliamentary Private Secretaries. At present, there is no limit on their number. Bearing in mind that they are used as lobby fodder, have responsibilities to their Ministers and are appointed by the Prime Minister and that if they step out of line by so much as supporting one of my Bills on a Friday their career as a PPS is at an end, we should give them recognition in statute and limit their number. I suggest that

“no more than 25 persons being the holders of the office of Parliamentary Private Secretary shall be entitled to sit and vote in the House of Commons at any one time.”

That would be roughly one PPS to each Secretary of State, which would be more than ample.

The provision would not stop the Government doing what they do at the moment, which is to appoint people who are not given the title of Parliamentary Private Secretary; they are advisers, deputy chairmen or vice-chairmen of the party or they have a special responsibility in this or that Department—all part of the patronage system. The Bill would not stop that, but it would at least prevent the number of Parliamentary Private Secretaries from increasing as it is at the moment. A side-effect of my proposal is that we would have to put on the public record who the Parliamentary Private Secretaries are and where they are; at the moment, that information is not easily available.

Clause 4 deals with ministerial office in the other place, to try to ensure that we do not end up with a bloated Executive there after any reforms that may be introduced. Although the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, tells us that there will be a draft Bill, who would be so bold as to put their money on its being enacted before the next general election? I suspect the odds might be similar to those on Ireland beating England at cricket the other day.

Clause 4 is important because the provision that states that

“Not more than 10% of those persons who are entitled to sit and vote in the House of Lords at any one time shall be the holders of Ministerial offices”

will apply even if there has been no reform of the other place before the next general election. I thought 10% was a generous quota; if there were 600 Members, there would be a maximum of 60 Ministers in the other place.

Of course, there is no point in limiting the number of Ministers if we cannot also limit the number of Parliamentary Private Secretaries in the other place, so clause 5 would provide that not more than 3% of those

“who are entitled to sit and vote in the House of Lords at any one time shall be holders of the office of Parliamentary Private Secretary.”

This is a short, straightforward, easily understood and transparent piece of legislation.

[Mr Bone]

I think my hon. Friend is about to reach a conclusion. Before he does so, will he tell us whether he has had a letter of support for the Bill from the Prime Minister? The measure is entirely in line with the Prime Minister’s very powerful speech of 26 May 2009—“Fixing broken politics” .

[Mr Chope]

I have not got a copy, but I am sure that if we give the Minister a chance to speak he will quote from the Prime Minister’s letter of support. I am sure that the Prime Minister is on our side. We are members of the legislature; he is, for the time being, the leader of the Executive, but he recognises the importance of the legislature having a bigger role in holding the Executive to account, and the Bill is designed to achieve that.

Loans to Ireland Bill

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his observations.

None of my constituents, particularly those in the business community, understand how or why we can justify increasing our national debt to help Ireland. The line is that the Irish are friends in need, but I remind the House that there is a strong argument to suggest that the Irish Government exacerbated the original banking crisis. When we had problems with Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock, and our Government limited the deposit guarantee to £50,000, the Irish increased their guarantee to all deposits. That helped the run on Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock accounts, thereby developing our banking crisis. We did not get much help from the Irish when we were in need in that situation.

We must also not lose sight of the fact that the Irish people have received enormous sums of British taxpayers’ money through our membership of the EU. We make big net contributions to the EU, and a lot of that money was subsequently pushed into Ireland, enabling the Irish people to sustain for a time a much higher standard of living.

[Mr Bone]

Will my hon. Friend confirm that our net contributions to the EU over the next five years will be £41 billion, which is £21 billion more than in the previous five years?

[Mr Chope]

I am sure that my hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are contributing to Ireland through our EU membership, so the Irish people should be very grateful.

When, on behalf of my constituents, I weigh up whether we can be pleased with how Ireland conducts its affairs, I must express renewed disappointment that Ireland caved in on the Lisbon treaty, with the consequence that this country has been landed with it.

London Local Authorities Bill [Lords] (By Order)

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Wednesday 13th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bone]

Will my hon. Friend clarify for the House that what we are doing today—deciding whether to give the Bill its Second Reading—is about the principle of the Bill? Also, is it not unusual to have so many different things in private business? I have spent hours considering private business, but it is normally about a specific, single thing for a specific area. This seems to be a very wide-ranging Bill.

[Mr Chope]

I agree with my hon. Friend that this is a very wide-ranging Bill. The fact that it is the 10th such Bill to emanate from London local authorities in a reasonably short space of time shows that London local authorities are pushing at what are reasonable bounds on the powers that they should be taking in legislation. They keep trying to extend those bounds, taking more powers for themselves; indeed, there are powers in the Bill that I think go too far. The consequence of what my hon. Friend has described so pertinently—the fact that the Bill contains a large number of contentious clauses—is that unless its promoters listen to reason and allow it to be amended, it will find it jolly difficult to make fast progress through the House. Even it were to sail through the Opposed Private Bill Committee, it would encounter the same kind of difficulties on Report that the pedlars Bills were up against during the last Parliament.

Significantly, my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green did not refer to the pedlary and street trading provisions in this Bill, but the Bill contains powers to seize commercial goods on the ground not of reasonable belief but of reasonable suspicion that an offence has been committed. We brought in the reasonable suspicion test, reluctantly, under anti-terrorism legislation. It is draconian in the extreme to seize people’s goods or interfere with their liberty on the ground of reasonable suspicion that they might have committed an offence. Because of the strength of that argument, amendments replacing the term “reasonable suspicion” with “reasonable belief” were accepted by the promoters of the Bournemouth Borough Council Act 2010 and the Manchester City Council Act 2010—two pedlars Bills that reached the end of their proceedings during the last Parliament. The fact that no such amendments have been offered by the promoters of this Bill represents a pretty bad prospect for the Bill, because it suggests a certain intransigence and resistance on the part of the promoters to listen to reason. It might also suggest that they want to give themselves extremely wide powers to seize goods. I believe that such powers go far beyond what is reasonable.

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[Mr Chope]

The hon. Gentleman’s intervention is timely, as I was just going to refer to Scores on the Doors, which has been described as a national food hygiene rating scheme. I downloaded material on it from the internet earlier today, which made it clear that Scores on the Doors is a commercial organisation, describing itself as

“the No. 1 national food hygiene rating scheme”,

enabling official local authority hygiene ratings for food businesses to be found.

Scores on the Doors is the largest such scheme in the world, but it does not cover all local authorities. According to the internet site, there are 124 contributing councils, but interestingly not all the London councils are included in that number. It does not include the London borough of Wandsworth, which I had the privilege to lead some years ago. I am immediately alerted to the fact that even the Scores on the Doors scheme is not universally accepted by London boroughs, let alone by councils more widely across the country.

Someone wishing to search for one of the premises listed on the internet will find that there are 145,931 of them. That is the number of premises that will be affected by legislation second-guessing the Food Standards Agency and introducing a national requirement, subject to criminal penalties for non-compliance. I looked for a reference to a restaurant in my area, but to gain further access to the website I had to accept a general disclaimer. The disclaimer is quite interesting, because it shows that even Scores on the Doors is by no means a panacea:

“The information on the food premises listed here is held by us on behalf of our member local authorities. By accepting this disclaimer, you are submitting a request… to the relevant local authority for the disclosure of summary inspection reports under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.”

It also states:

“The information… has been gathered by authorised Environmental Health Officers”.

However, it goes on to say:

“The hygiene rating given to premises on this web site has been based on the latest Primary Inspection carried out and as such represents the situation as found by the officer on the day of that inspection. Therefore the score may not be representative of the overall, long-term food hygiene standards of the business and should not be relied upon as a guide to food safety or food quality.”

Yet the London boroughs are seeking not only to encourage but to require premises to put up signs which are meaningless. If they do not do so, they will be subject to penalties up to scale 3. If they deface the signs—perhaps by adding material from the internet, such as the extract that I have just read out—they may be subject to a penalty on scale 5.

The situation is ludicrous. I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green did not have a chance to go into more detail, because if he had done so even more people would be saying that the Bill goes far too far, and that it would be best to make a fresh start.

[Mr Bone]

In my constituency, many restaurants enter the scheme voluntarily, which is fine. However, the rating is a snapshot of a single day, and it can cause great concern to people who are given a bad rating one day and cannot get it altered the next day. It is quite proper for restaurants to have a right to opt into the scheme, but it seems wholly wrong to compel them to enter it.

[Mr Chope]

I entirely agree. The disclaimer states:

“Food premises may only be inspected every 6-36 months as specified in the Food Standards Agency Code of Practice.”

There is the potential for an enormous amount of damage to be caused to the reputation of commercial businesses that will have to stick on their doors something that is unrepresentative of the true position.

Finance Bill

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Thursday 15th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

The amendments aim to tease out from the coalition Government and, in particular, the Exchequer Secretary, who is responding to this debate, what the Government’s attitude is towards people who do the right thing and try to relieve the burden on the public sector and the national taxpayer. Although it would be wrong to suggest that the inspiration for the amendments came from the Secretary of State for Transport, he was on to an important principle recently when he said that if a pensioner has a bus pass but can afford to pay their fare, they should not use the pass but pay the fare themselves and thereby relieve the local taxpayer of the costs consequent upon the use of that subsidised bus pass. It is a subsidy of general application—it goes to people irrespective of their means and ability to pay.

We know that quite a lot of people choose to buy medical and personal health care in the private sector without burdening the state and the taxpayer. If those people choose to do that through personal health insurance, this Budget will increase the financial penalty on them. In other words, it will be a disincentive to people taking responsibility for their own personal health care through personal health insurance. Many years ago, it was the policy of the then Conservative Government that those who subscribed to personal health care insurance should have their subscriptions tax deductible. That was based on the worthy principle that, if we did that, we would encourage more people to take responsibility for their own health care. We have moved a long way from that now.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, and I am grateful to him for giving way. Does he support the Government’s aim of coming up with suggestions that will reduce the charge to the taxpayer? Obviously, if more people take private medical insurance, there is less of a burden on the state and it is a win-win situation for the Government.

[Mr Chope]

Almost every contribution I make in the House is designed to try to help the Government and often to try to get better value for money for taxpayers.

If we were under any illusions about how important and critical the situation is in relation to health care, we should bear in mind that yesterday, in response to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) about the NHS White Paper, the Prime Minister said that

“when we look at the NHS, we know that there are expensive drugs coming down the track, expensive treatments and an ageing population, and more children born with disabilities and living for longer. There are cost pressures on our NHS that mean that even small real-terms increases will be an heroic thing to achieve.”—[Official Report, 14 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 950.]

My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) is making exactly the same point. I am trying to tease out from my hon. Friend the Exchequer Secretary whether it is the Government’s policy to try to encourage people to take responsibility for their own health care, if they can so do. This is not the subject of an amendment, but similarly, if people can afford to educate their children in the independent sector, should they not be encouraged so to do?

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[Mr Chope]

My right hon. Friend has particular expertise and knowledge about that particular end of the market. I am sure that the Committee is obliged to him for that information. The point he makes is absolutely correct. If we are thinking in terms of equity and fairness as the guiding words of the day, let us see if we can look again with radical eyes at this whole structure of taxing insurance premiums. Let us see whether the Government accept the amendment today; if they do not, let us see whether they have anything else to put on the table by way of responding positively to the points raised in the debate. We can then decide whether we wish to divide the Committee on this issue or just put down a marker.

[Mr Bone]

Before my hon. Friend concludes his opening remarks, will he clarify this? I assume that the amendment is not really about whether to have the tax rise or not to have it, because it is very small. Is it more about sending out a signal that the Government want to encourage people to take responsibility and take out insurance?

[Mr Chope]

Absolutely. I make no apology for declaring my own view, which is that if it could be afforded, it would be sensible to give tax relief on insurance premiums where we think those premiums are for the public good and will result in reducing the burden on the state and the taxpayer. I would like at least to bring in incentives in the form of tax relief, let alone eliminate the insurance premium tax. As I said earlier, I do not think that the latter is affordable in the present crisis. That is why I tabled this very modest proposal in the hope that it will get the Government thinking about alternative means of raising money from insurance policies.

City of Westminster Bill [Lords]

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Monday 5th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field) on taking the matter before us seriously. The reason why I and other colleagues shouted “Object” to prevent the revival motion from going through on the nod was so that we could hear from the Bill’s sponsor exactly why it was held up for so long in the House of Lords between Second Reading and the completion of its Committee stage, which, as he said, has not yet happened. We now understand from the promoter’s statement that a date for the resumption of that Committee has been fixed for later this month. That will mean that the Bill and the petition against it will be considered in the Lords. As he said, if passed in the other place, the Bill will come to this place in due course, when hon. Members can give it proper scrutiny. I am all in favour of that.

I heard what my hon. Friend said, but it is worth emphasising that a revival of a private Bill is not a right but a privilege, and it is right that Members of the House ensure that a motion to revive a Bill is made on good grounds and that the case is made. We will have a chance in due course to consider aspects of the detail of the Bill, but one point my hon. Friend did not deal with is the interaction between the City of Westminster Bill and the possibility of more general legislation applying to pedlars. The Bill consolidates much of the private legislation relating to pedlars in the city of Westminster.

In the previous Parliament, the Government initially asked Durham university to carry out research, which was subsequently conducted and consulted upon. Proposals were then introduced and subjected to further consultation. I hope that during the course of the evening, in response either to the debate on this Bill or to the debate on the Canterbury City Council and the Nottingham City Council Bills, the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr Davey) will say what the Government’s initial thinking is on their approach to pedlar legislation. What impact would national pedlar legislation have on the provisions in private Acts in relation to Westminster city council? Obviously, it might be a waste of time if the House or the other place spend a lot of time discussing the consolidation measures in the City of Westminster Bill if the Government subsequently introduced national legislation on pedlar activity.

At the moment, traditional pedlars cannot operate within the city of Westminster boundary. They can go from door to door, but they cannot act as pedlars on the street, which means that they are severely disadvantaged, notwithstanding their national licences to peddle. I hope for national legislation and a national approach to the matter, and that the Minister tells us what the Government’s thinking is on the prospect of such legislation, so that we do not have piecemeal proposals from councils up and down the country.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Is that not the crux of the matter? The previous Government talked about introducing national legislation. It costs local councils an enormous amount of money to promote private Bills, so would not such legislation solve that problem?

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are told that had there not been so much resistance from him and others to private Bills in the previous Session and the one before that, there would have been many more. That it was difficult for such Bills to make progress through the House acted as an effective deterrent for the very good reason he articulates. Such legislation is expensive and will often be seen by local taxpayers as a disproportionate response to a local niggle. That is why a large number of councils did not go down the private Bill route. Obviously, the City of Westminster has a very well-resourced council—it also delivers one of the lowest council taxes in the country—and has decided that it will go down that route, but it is important to point out that many of the private Bills promoted by local councils to deal with street trading and peddling were encouraged by the City of Westminster Bill, which has acted as a sort of precedent. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and others will be interested to see what the City of Westminster council thinks of touting. I notice that its Bill includes a lot more information on seizure powers and what to do with the receptacles that are used for street trading, and that it includes some of the powers that were eventually excluded from the Bournemouth Borough Council Act 2010 and the Manchester City Council Act 2010, which were passed following a gentlemanly compromise prompted by the opponents of those provisions.

Some of the developing law is contained in the City of Westminster Bill, which is why Members who are alert to the concerns of individuals who try to eke out a living as street traders or pedlars should be vigilant on their behalf. We want to ensure that oppressive, disproportionate legislation is not introduced under the radar. That is why this evening’s debate is important, but I can tell my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster that it is not my intention to press the motion to a Division.

Canterbury City Council Bill

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Monday 5th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) on introducing the revival motion, and on trying to seduce the House by not going into much detail about the background and history. If he were to do so, people would be reminded that of the four Bills dealing with pedlars introduced in this House in the last Parliament—there were also two others that started off in the other place—the Leeds and Reading Bills are now in the other place and their revival motions have not been objected to, and I think it would be sensible to put on the record why I did not object to their revival motions, whereas I did object to the revival motions in respect of the Canterbury and Nottingham Bills.

In a nutshell, the reason why I objected to one group of Bills and not the other was because in the last Parliament the promoters of the Leeds and Reading Bills and their respective council officers realised that the best way of making progress would be to have some constructive discussion about the contents of their Bills. That constructive discussion resulted in the equivalent of the clause 5 provisions on pedlars in the Canterbury and Nottingham Bills being significantly amended.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

There are a number of new Members in the House tonight who will not quite understand why councils have to come to individual Members in respect of these Bills, instead of their being like Government Bills. Will my hon. Friend expand a little on the procedure so Members can understand what is going on?

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. The short answer is that there is no compulsion at all, but obviously, councils that are in close touch with their council tax payers will want to be able to ensure that the resources they spend are spent wisely. The view was taken in Leeds and in Reading that the provisions in the equivalent of clause 5 of the two Bills in question were not necessary for their areas, which is why they were prepared to have significant amendments. In particular, those amendments recognised that pedlars carrying their goods with them about their person should be able to continue to do so and to display and sell them in the city centres of Leeds and Reading, and to use modest additional trolleys and so on if appropriate. The issue in Leeds in particular was that the trolleys were causing the obstruction, which is why they were prepared to have their Bill amended.

Unfortunately, and despite my best efforts, the opportunity has not arisen to get any compromise out of Nottingham or Canterbury, save that my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury did agree that when his Bill progressed, he would remove completely clause 11, which deals with touting. Although there was an opportunity to do that in the last Parliament, it was not seized on for one reason or another. I am not criticising my hon. Friend, however. I know he is keen for clause 11 to be removed as soon as his Bill goes before a Committee in the other place. I hope he will also ensure that clause 5, on pedlars, is significantly amended to bring it into line with the Reading Borough Council and Leeds City Council Bills.

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[Mr Chope]

I am disappointed at my hon. Friend’s response, but not surprised; a lot of time has been spent in this House trying to tease this matter out. If his Bill is revived, goes before a Select Committee in the other place and the petitions against it are heard, I hope that Members there hearing them will take into account the compromise that has been reached by other councils—including, of course, on slightly different areas, Bournemouth borough and Manchester city councils. Obviously, my hon. Friend—and I, for that matter—will have to accept whatever verdict is reached in the other place when it considers the petitions’ merits.

One thing that emerged from what the Minister said in the previous short debate is that the Government will come forward in two or three months with their response to the consultation. I strongly urge Members of the other place to defer convening a Committee to look at the detail of these Bills and the petitions until after they have the Government’s response, because the information may be very helpful in enabling them to consider the petitions in detail. So I hope that, for the sake of a month or two, the Bills will be put on hold and that priority will be given in the other place to the Bills that were the subject of the constructive compromise to which I referred. If it is not possible to hear petitions against all the Bills at once in the other place, I hope that the Reading and Leeds cases will be dealt with before the Canterbury and Nottingham ones. That is another reason why I thought it would be helpful to put them on a different time frame by ensuring that we had this debate and that the other ones would already have gone through the other House with the revival motions unopposed.

So that is the background. We, in this House, no longer have any control over what happens to the contents of the Canterbury City Council Bill and the Nottingham City Council Bill. For that reason, the pertinent question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) in the earlier debate is more pertinent in respect of these two Bills—he asked whether the Bills are worth reviving. It remains open to this House to consider the contents of the City of Westminster Bill, but the Canterbury and Nottingham Bills are outwith our control. We have no opportunity to propose further amendments in the light of any suggestions that the Government may make, so we are at the mercy of the good sense of their lordships. To look on the bright side, I should mention that last week I met one of their lordships who is very interested in and concerned about these issues relating to pedlars. He spoke as warmly in support of the principle of pedlary as the Minister has just done, and I am sure that if that noble Lord is involved in the Committee, as I hope he will make it his business to be, the pedlars will receive a good hearing in the other place.

[Mr Bone]

I just wish to get this point clear in my mind. This is now in the other place, so we may now have only one option tonight if we have concerns about these Bills, on which we have had hours of debate. So if we were to divide and the Bill were not allowed to be revived, would that, in effect, kill the Bill off?

[Mr Chope]

My understanding is that that would kill the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. So much has changed, in regard not just to the national economy but to the information available on the role of pedlars and pedlary, since the Bills were first introduced in late 2007. Two and a half years have passed, and we must now consider whether we want them to be discussed for a further year or 18 months in the other place, or whether it would be better to have a fresh start. Obviously, some of us are asking whether the Bills are really worth reviving. That is the consideration that we must keep at the forefront of our minds.

[Mr Bone]

Does my hon. Friend agree that a new aspect has come to light, and that we ought to consider it before making a decision on whether to revive the Bills? It relates to whether these local Bills would interfere with the right to the free movement of labour granted by the European Union.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend will recall that there was quite a lively debate in the previous Parliament about the interaction of the services directive and the provisions of the Bills. In the end, it was resolved by the then Minister saying that, as far as he was concerned, the legislation would not make any difference and that pedlars would still be able to carry on their pedlary irrespective of the interaction with the services directive. However, my hon. Friend is right to suggest that the matter might not be quite so clear cut.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

That is wonderful—a revelation. It has taken two and a half years and a general election, but we now have constructive engagement from the city of Nottingham. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that. I hope he will encourage his city council to engage with the other place in the same spirit, if we grant the Bills a revival tonight. His contribution to the debate—I do not know whether he intends to make a more extensive one later—may be an effective softening-up exercise among some of my colleagues, who may have been taking a rather hard line, encouraged by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley.

[Mr Bone]

My hon. Friend is generous. Before I make up my mind whether to support the revival of either Bill, I need to hear about the Bills. Last time we heard nothing about Nottingham. My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) has been a powerful advocate and has made his point, but we will need to hear from Nottingham before deciding whether to divide the House.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury went into enormous detail about the situation in Canterbury, so much so that one almost felt that one had been living in the environs of Canterbury cathedral, among the street traders, the pedlars, the tourists and others. We have never had any similar word picture from Nottingham. We had a very effective word picture from Members from Leeds, and my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Mr Wilson) did a similar job in relation to Reading. I hope we will have the benefit of a contribution this evening from the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) so that he can put on the record—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bone]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that helpful intervention. Had he been a Member of this House for a little longer, he would know that I am just as critical of my own side on many occasions.

The other issue we must take into account is whether the new Parliament has a right to discuss this Bill.

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend think that Nottingham city council has indicated tonight through its Members of Parliament a willingness in any way to compromise on the Bill’s content? If there is such a willingness, it might cause people not to want to vote against its revival.

[Mr Bone]

I am very grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. The interventions from the Nottingham Members have been quite helpful in determining the House’s view, and if a Member from that area wanted to leap to their feet to intervene—

Backbench Business Committee

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bone]

I thank my hon. Friend. I was intending to deal with that issue shortly.

I suggested five additional days to balance the Sessions, but I have not moved the trigger forward. That means that after the eighth private Members’ Friday progress can be made on Bills, which will make it easier for Members taking part in the ballot to ensure that their Bills are heard and passed into law. I thought that there was a bit of smoke and mirrors in the statement by the Leader of the House.

I have not much more to say, but I want to tell the House where I think the five extra days should go. I was going to say something about Wednesdays, but that point has already been dealt with. I propose—this touches on a point made earlier about September sittings—that two of the extra days should be in September, so that the September weeks become even more important. I was not here on the last occasion when the House sat in September, but I understand that there was a feeling that the House was almost “going through the motions”. If two of those Fridays were devoted to private Members’ Bills, the sittings would become even more important. I have also proposed adding one day in October this year, one day in June, and one day in July next year. Sittings on those days would inconvenience no one, and would add dramatically to parliamentary democracy.

Another of the last Government’s objections to more sitting Fridays was that they would somehow prevent Members from carrying out constituency business. As my staff members have reminded me today, constituency business continues throughout the week, and is certainly not restricted to Fridays. Moreover—new Members may not know this—Members do not come to the House on days when private Members’ Bills are debated unless they are interested in those Bills. Normally there is no Whip to ensure that Members attend, so there would be no requirement for a full House.

In proposing the five additional days, I am merely suggesting that the number should be returned to what would be expected in a normal two-year cycle. In a two-year period, we would expect 26 Fridays for private Members’ Bills. Given that there were only eight in the last Session, an additional 18 in the current Session would produce the 26 that would normally have occurred. I am not proposing to increase the number of days for private Members’ Bills; I am proposing to keep it in line with the spirit of Standing Orders and the House.

The public are still clamouring for change in the way in which politics is conducted, and for a check on the power of the Executive. Parliament must be allowed to fulfil its role, and Members of Parliament must be allowed freedom to express their opinions and those of their constituents. How the Government respond to this issue will be an important public indication of their commitment to real openness. I am pleased to have received a pledge from them that this will be a free vote, and that there will be no guidance from the Whips. This is a genuine House matter, and it could lead to a huge leap forward. Tonight, Members will have a chance to express their opinions about private Members’ Bills without any influence.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is making a brilliant speech. Can he confirm, in his peroration, that there is no reason why any Back Bencher should vote against his amendment? If a Back Bencher were so to do, they would be voting against the interests of other Back Benchers, and the only people who can possibly lose out if his amendment is carried are members of the Government.

[Mr Bone]

I agree and disagree with my hon. Friend. I agree with his remark about Back Benchers, but I also believe that it is very much in the interests of the Government and Front Benchers to support my amendment, because that would show that the Executive are open to scrutiny and new ideas.

We are experiencing the dawn of a new age. We have a coalition Government who are charging forward with reform. If I have an opportunity to do so, Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall press my amendment to a vote.

Dissolution of Parliament

Debate between Peter Bone and Christopher Chope

Tuesday 25th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

What does my hon. Friend think would have happened when Callaghan’s Government fell and an election was called if the 55% rule had been operating?

[Mr Chope]

It was because I did not know the answer to that question that I initiated the debate. I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to speak in it as well, given that, as I have said, it will be much longer than we expected it to be.

It must also be unusual for the first Adjournment debate in a new Parliament to concern a subject that was not raised at all during the general election campaign. I can recall only one reference to it by a member of my party. At some stage during the campaign, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced that, if elected, he would legislate to require that in the event of a change of Prime Minister—let alone a change of Government—a general election should be triggered within six months. I think that he was emphasising the importance of accountability to the public and the people, and felt that that accountability had been lacking when the last Prime Minister became Prime Minister without the people having a say. Now that we have an arrangement that is becoming increasingly presidential in style, with rival candidates for the position of Prime Minister almost standing on soapboxes in front of millions of television viewers, it is probably all the more significant that a change of Prime Minister should generate a general election rather than being simply dealt with through the usual channels.

I know that many of my constituents were rather enthusiastic about the point made by my right hon. Friend during the general election campaign. I wonder whether the Deputy Leader of the House, when he responds to the debate on behalf of the Prime Minister, will be able to explain what has happened between the occasion, a few weeks ago, when the Prime Minister said that such a development was desirable and the position today, which seems slightly inconsistent with that stance. I understand that the talk is now about having a five-year Parliament, irrespective of how many Prime Ministers there are, and not giving the people a chance to have their say when there is a change of Prime Minister in the intervening period. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be able to provide a response to that extra question.

I also in my preliminary remarks refer to the fact that I was elected, and was proud to be elected, on the Conservative party manifesto. I was pleased, as I am sure the Deputy Leader of the House is pleased, that page 63 of the Conservative party manifesto included the Conservative commitment to change Britain

“with a sweeping re-distribution of power…from Government to Parliament.”

We all signed up to that in the Conservative party and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be consistent with that part of the manifesto. For the sake of completeness, I refer to page 67 of the manifesto where there was a pledge

“to make the use of the Royal Prerogative subject to greater democratic control so that Parliament is properly involved in all big national decisions.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I have not gone into the detail of that, but I am sure the hon. Lady is correct.

All of this brings me to chapter 24 of the coalition agreement, which states that the Government believe that it is necessary to make

“changes to our political system to make it far more transparent and accountable.”

The chapter continues:

“We will establish five-year fixed-term Parliaments. We will put a binding motion before the House of Commons stating that the next general election will be held on the first Thursday of May 2015. Following this motion, we will legislate to make provision for fixed-term Parliaments of five years. This legislation will also provide for dissolution if 55% or more of the House votes in favour.”

It is because of the various ambiguities in that passage that I thought it would be a good idea to explore these matters in this Adjournment debate.

I have set out a number of questions to ask. I am sure that many others could be asked as well, but the following are the questions that immediately came to mind when I looked at the wording of chapter 24. What is meant by a “binding motion”? Surely any motion that is passed can later be amended or revoked by Members of this House? Will this binding motion also be put before the House of Lords; will it need to be approved by both Houses? Will the binding motion include reference to the proposed 55% threshold for Dissolution, or will that be dealt with later in the proposed primary legislation? Will the binding motion be brought before the House before the summer recess? It was stated in the original draft coalition agreement that this motion would be put

“before the House of Commons in the first days following this agreement”,

but those words are omitted from the final version. Does this indicate a welcome ingredient of consultation and opportunity for full debate inside and outside the House, in the context of our commitment to more transparency and accountability? I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will be able to confirm that that is the correct interpretation to put upon that change of wording.

Will the legislation that is promised in the coalition document to make provision for

“fixed-term Parliaments of five years”

only apply to future Parliaments, or will it apply retrospectively to the Parliament elected on 6 May 2010? If it is going to be retrospective legislation, how can that be justified constitutionally?

What is meant by the following statement in the coalition document:

“This legislation will also provide for dissolution if 55 per cent or more of the House votes in favour”?

Does the 55% figure mean 55% of those voting on any motion, or 55% of those eligible to vote, or 55% of all MPs elected at the 2010 general election, including Sinn Fein Members and you yourself, Mr Speaker? What role, if any, will there be for the House of Lords in the legislation?

Will Members other than the Government be able to move a motion for Dissolution? If so, what safeguards will there be to require the Speaker to give such a motion precedence over ordinary business? Those of us who have been in the House some time know that it is all very well having a motion on the Order Paper. Indeed, during the last Parliament, there were motions reflecting decisions taken across the House in important debates on future House business and our organisation of our affairs, yet the then Leader of the House refused to put those motions above the line on the Order Paper, thereby preventing Members of the House from voting on them, even though, collectively, we were in a majority. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome and I were seething with frustration and anger about that, so I am sure he would not wish us to be in a similar situation under this new regime.

Will there be constraints on the Government’s tabling a motion for Dissolution? That point was raised in an intervention. I mentioned Germany, and an example of how something that on the face of it seems plausible could actually be cynically used for the self-interest of a coalition Government when they see that their opponents are in a particularly weak situation.

In what circumstances will a Dissolution follow if the Government are defeated on a confidence motion by a bare majority? There has been a lot of debate about that outside, and perhaps some confusion and misunderstanding, which I hope can be cleared up this evening. Are there any circumstances in which a Government defeated on a confidence motion could remain in office? If they did not remain in office could an alternative minority Government be formed even if they did not enjoy the support of a majority of MPs on confidence and supply measures? What would prevent Parliament from repealing by a vote of 50% plus one legislation requiring a 55% threshold for Dissolution?

I shall expand on some of those points in a minute, but I now turn to some fundamental procedural questions. Will the proposed legislation to establish a fixed-term Parliament and a 55% threshold for Dissolution be published first in draft, and be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny? When we were, collectively, in opposition, we were very much in favour of draft Bills and pre-legislative scrutiny. There could be no more critically important constitutional legislation than the proposals we are talking about this evening.

Will the Government set up a special Joint Committee of both Houses to consider the matter, along the lines of the Joint Committee on the draft Constitutional Renewal Bill in the last Parliament? My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House—I am delighted to see him on the Treasury Bench—and I were privileged to serve on the Committee. It drew on expertise not only from this House but from the other place; for example, Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, who has recently written on the subject in The Times, gave some important evidence and his counsels were very well received. Such a Committee would be a sensible way forward.

My next question is for my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House: will all these important and novel matters—which were not raised in the Conservative manifesto at the general election, when we said we were in favour of more free votes—be the subject of free votes for all Conservative Back Benchers? That would take quite a lot of heat out of the situation, because it would then be obvious that in order to win parliamentary support for these novel propositions, my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench would need to win not only the votes, but the arguments. A free vote would, I submit, be useful; indeed, it might be a good example of the new politics in action. To balance that out, I ask the Deputy Leader of the House why, when a fixed term of four years was proposed in the Liberal Democrat manifesto, we are now talking about a five-year fixed-term Parliament.

Some of those questions and others were raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) in an article in one of the national newspapers, and in other media outlets. He has said that he is sad that he is not able to participate in this debate, but he has been kind enough to share with me the response that he received to a letter that he wrote to the Prime Minister. It might help the House if I quoted from it a little. Members will make their own judgment about whether it clarifies or obscures what we are talking about. It says:

“I do take on board your concerns about our suggested proposal to require a 55 per cent majority to dissolve Parliament. Let me set out why I think this is an important, progressive and necessary step.

As we know from last week, the country wants strong and stable government.”

I do not want to pour cold water on anything that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister says, but I thought that in the general election campaign we were saying that the only way to deliver strong and stable government was for the Government to have an overall majority in Parliament. Indeed, I can remember distributing leaflets that were strongly against the threat of a hung Parliament, and which said that if we had a hung Parliament, there would be deals done behind closed doors; that nobody would know what was happening; that hon. Members of this House would be the last people to know what was going on; and that the country’s economic crisis demanded strong and stable government, and that is why we needed a Conservative Government with a strong majority. I still believe that proposition, and that is what I was campaigning for.

I disagree with the Prime Minister’s interpretation of what the country wanted, because the country voted for a hung Parliament. The essence of a hung Parliament—this is important for those of us who have the privilege of being Members of this Parliament—is that it is not a strong Government, but a strong Parliament. A strong Parliament is one that can hold the Executive or the Government to account. It means that we can put pressure on the Government if we disagree with them, whether on relatively minor matters such as the details of Bills, or on slightly more important matters, such as those that we are discussing this evening.

A strong Parliament and a strong Government are two separate propositions. My interpretation of the fact that we have a hung Parliament is that the people decided to have a strong Parliament. I am privileged to be a Member of this Parliament, and I hope that it will be known in due course as the strong Parliament, rather than be given the epithets that the previous Parliament was given.

[Mr Bone]

May I take my hon. Friend back to before the general election? He will recall that on the Order Paper, below the line, there was a motion for fixed-term Parliaments. I think that I was the only Conservative Member to sign that motion, and there were very few names on it, so before the election there was no groundswell among Conservative Members for fixed-term Parliaments.

[Mr Chope]

I am interested in the fact that my hon. Friend was and is in favour of fixed-term Parliaments, and he is quite right to reflect on the balance of opinion within the Conservative parliamentary party and throughout the House more widely. At one stage during the previous Parliament, it seemed that the then Government were flirting with the idea of a fixed-term Parliament. Indeed, I think that the Modernisation Committee—I shall be corrected if I am wrong—looked at the idea for a time and took evidence on it, including evidence from Officers of the House. The whole project was then kicked into the long grass.

I revert to what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden. The Prime Minister said that

“we are determined to deliver that stability with our lasting coalition. The introduction of a fixed term Parliament was, therefore, a necessary and important measure to propose. Obviously, this is a new idea for our Parliament and necessitated a mechanism for dissolution. I want to reassure you that a mechanism for a no confidence vote in the Government is unchanged.”

That is an important statement. The Prime Minister continued:

“Rather, what our proposals would do is give Parliament a new power to dissolve itself”—

rather like a Beechams powder, although that is perhaps an unfair analogy. That power, he said, is

“currently only exercised by the Prime Minister. We are, in effect, taking a power away from the Executive and putting it in the hands of Parliament, not the contrary. As you know it has always been my intention to reinforce the powers of our Parliament. I hope that this proposal is one positive measure to do just that.”

In my final quotation from the letter, the Prime Minister says:

“The House of Commons will remain able to call a vote of no confidence in the Government as at present. If that took place, a vote of 50 per cent plus one would mean that the Government falls and unless an alternative workable majority can be formed within a specified number of days, a General Election would be called.”

The convention that prevailed meant that if the Government were defeated, the Prime Minister would go to the sovereign and invite her either to dissolve Parliament or to invite somebody else to form a Government, but the new proposal seems to leave Her Majesty out of the equation. I do not know whether that is the intention, and if I am incorrect on that, I am sure that I shall be corrected in the Minister’s response.

I am not criticising anything that has been proposed; all I am doing is asking questions and saying, “Why is the change to the convention on Dissolution necessary or desirable?” The Prime Minister is giving up his constitutional right to request a Dissolution, and I can understand that that is very important—a matter of honour between himself and the Deputy Prime Minister. It means that the Prime Minister cannot pull the rug from under the coalition, but why do we need legislation or, indeed, a motion to achieve that? Surely the Prime Minister’s word is sufficient. Such a unilateral commitment gives the Liberal Democrats the assurance that the Prime Minister will not pull the rug, but during the debate on the Loyal Address earlier today the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) said that the measure might provide for less stable government, because it would enable the Liberal Democrats to withdraw from the coalition and vote against the Government on a motion of confidence without causing a general election. I hope that the Deputy Leader of the House will be able to deal with that issue. If at some stage the Liberal Democrats withdraw from the coalition, the threat hanging over them, as things stand, is that the Prime Minister would go to the Queen and invite her to call a general election. But if the Prime Minister said that he would not do that in any circumstances, but had no reciprocal Liberal Democrat commitment not to withdraw from the coalition in any circumstances, the Liberal Democrats could withdraw and align themselves with the left, as the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) would have much preferred them to have done in the first place. They could create an alternative coalition.

That predicament is unlike the situation that prevailed immediately after the general election, when the Liberal Democrats, those on the left and the nationalists were not able to form a sufficient number to guarantee staying in Parliament and enjoy a confidence and supply measure of support. In the situation that I have described, the Liberal Democrats would have no such constraint—they would be able to form a minority Government and stay in office for the remaining period of the fixed-term Parliament. I hope that that nightmare scenario, from a Conservative perspective, is just a nightmare and is not realistic, but I have yet to be persuaded of that. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be able to persuade me.