Infected Blood Inquiry
Peter Bottomley Excerpts(5 days ago)
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Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
May I follow the tributes to the great Dame—the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson)—for what she has been doing?
I have been actively involved in this in one way or another for 25 years. We all know that the justification for having the Langstaff inquiry has been the information that has now come out in public, which was concealed or not known over the decades. We also know that this is different from most of the discussions in the Pearson report on whether there should be compensation when things go wrong in medical treatment. This report is likely to show how, since the war, people have not paid enough attention to the warnings given by those in the field. With the update of Caroline Wheeler’s book and the BBC programme, we now know that, as well as the haemophilia trials published in the 1970s, the 1980s trials showed massive defects by the standards of those days, let alone by up-to-date standards.
I join the right hon. Lady in asking the Minister when it will be possible for people to register their names, backgrounds and circumstances for compensation. Do we have to wait until a month’s time for that to happen, and how will it be dealt with? Obviously, as the Cabinet Office Minister, he follows his predecessor in carrying this responsibility, but how far will the Department of Health and Social Care be involved, and will other Departments be involved?
John Glen
My hon. Friend makes wise observations. I did not mean not to pay tribute to him in a similar way; his commitment to this cause, probably over my lifetime, is extraordinary.
In respect of the £100,000 payments announced through the Government amendment tabled last Wednesday, we will be working with the existing support schemes to expedite them as quickly as possible for the estates of the deceased infected. On the substantive response on the wider complete compensation, through last week’s intervention, and building on the amendment of the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), we have established the delivery vehicle for compensation.
On the challenge that we were somehow delaying compensation, which was reasonably made, I think that what I have said to the House this afternoon makes it clear that we are committed in legislation to delivering that compensation, but that the terms of how we do so, and how we respond to translating those 18 recommendations into reality, is ongoing work that I will seek to address substantively as soon as possible by 20 May.
Oral Answers to Questions
Peter Bottomley Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
Mr Speaker, you and the Prime Minister will be welcome in the Arun district of my constituency, where developers are trying to build over every vineyard, horticultural nursery and piece of agricultural land. Will he point out that the last place to build homes is prime agricultural land, especially in an area where developers have enough permissions to meet the council’s targets for the next five years?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is right that sustainable development must be at the heart of our planning system. That is why we are committed to meeting the housing needs of our communities by building the right homes in the right places, making sure that everyone makes best use of brownfield land, conserving our countryside. That is also the point he makes, which is important. I have been crystal clear: we must protect agricultural land. Food security is incredibly important and we need our farmers to produce more Great British food.
Tributes to Sir Tony Lloyd
Peter Bottomley Excerpts(3 months ago)
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Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
One of the interesting quotations in Wikipedia has Tony Lloyd’s words:
“the basic morality of politics was instilled in me. I have always thought if not fighting for what’s right and just, then what is politics for?”
My recommendation to anybody coming into this place, and one I try to take myself, is to try to earn the tributes that Tony Lloyd has earned.
Oral Answers to Questions
Peter Bottomley Excerpts(3 months, 1 week ago)
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Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
The House understands that it is the Minister’s Department that has to co-ordinate government, and that is not an easy thing to do. Does he understand that Sir Robert Francis and Sir Brian Langstaff have made it absolutely clear that the final report will say nothing more about compensation? It is not just the victims of the infected blood scandal who matter; so do the families of those who have already died—they are dying as well. May I say, on behalf of the all-party parliamentary group on haemophilia and contaminated blood—I am sure that the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) would say the same—that 25 days after the report is published in May is too long to wait? People want certainty and need support.
John Glen
I thank my hon. Friend for his empathy with the complexity of delivering this. I recognise the urgency, of course. That is why, over the recess, I had several meetings with officials. We are moving forward with the appointment of the clinical, legal and care experts. However, I recognise that his focus and that of colleagues across the House is on the speed of delivery of payments. Obviously, we made those interim payments further to the first interim report recommendations in October 2022. I will continue to have meetings with colleagues to move this forward as quickly as I can.
Infected Blood Inquiry: Government Response
Peter Bottomley Excerpts(4 months, 1 week ago)
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Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
Mr Deputy Speaker, I hope that you realise that after I have asked my question, and the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), and another Conservative Member have asked their questions, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) will be the definitive person to put to Government what needs to be done.
I say to the Minister and, through him, to our right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin), the Minister’s predecessor, that we are not doing enough, fast enough. How many months have passed since Sir Robert Francis produced his report? I hope the Minister will confirm that it is about 20 months. How many months have passed since Sir Brian Langstaff produced his final recommendations on compensation? It is about eight months. Those are the relevant issues.
The fact that the Government will act 25 working days after Sir Brian’s final report comes out next year does not deal with the issue of what the affected and infected need and should get now. If it is a question of money, how much and the cashflow for the Government, they should say so now. There is nothing that can be said on compensation 25 days after the report comes out that could not be said now, so please will the Minister say it?
John Glen
I thank my hon. Friend for his questions. I could not agree with him more about the level of urgency that is attached to the Government’s response. He is right about the publication dates; I think the whole House is aware of that. In the past five weeks, I have taken concrete steps, building on the work of my predecessor, to take the actions necessary to make those decisions as quickly as possible along the timescale I have set out. I cannot reiterate enough the Government’s commitment to dealing with the issue as quickly as possible, and I am doing all I can to gain consensus across Government to move things forward as quickly as possible.
Debate on the Address
Peter Bottomley Excerpts(5 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
Having heard the parliamentary leader for the Scottish National party, the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn), the question in my mind is whether he anticipates the result of the next general election being better or worse than 2017, when his party got 37% of the vote in Scotland. My guess is that it will be worse. My constituents would like to have Barnett formula funding for local government for all the kinds of things he was speaking about. They would welcome having the extra money, and perhaps as we get the economy to grow, we will get that extra money and services that will go on improving.
One point that the hon. Gentleman could have made would have been to welcome the leasehold reform for England, which Scotland has had for some time. If he had spoken about that, he would have had a welcome from across the House for saying that we are catching up by ending the unfairness, the uncertainty and the life of misery that too many residential leaseholders have had for too long.
I am glad that the Government are now moving forward on that, and I pay tribute to Gavin Barwell—now Lord Barwell—who was the first Housing Minister to recognise that there was a problem. I am glad that the Secretary of State for Levelling Up and his colleagues are now taking this forward. If the Bill, when it comes forward, gives us three quarters of what we want, the Prime Minister can rely on colleagues on both sides of the House and in both Chambers to make improvements so that we get all that is needed. Freeholders, residential leaseholders and tenants ought to be able to have the same kinds of protections, and I am glad that the Government are bringing forward those improvements.
Overhanging our debate is the misery and terror both from the attack on Israel and the Israelis, and from the conditions of people in Gaza. We need to keep in mind that until Hamas releases hostages, until it can honestly say that it will not repeat that kind of attack, and until it recognises the state of Israel, it will be a continuing problem. We cannot close our eyes and say that an instant, lasting ceasefire will solve all the problems.
Although many people have criticised the Leader of the Opposition, I think that what he and the shadow Foreign Secretary have said is worth reading. We have to have an end to the violence. We have often talked about how the aggressive settlements have destroyed people’s lives in the west bank and about the conditions of people in Gaza, but we have to recognise that the bigger reality is that what happened on 7 October was another pogrom, which prompted one of my constituents to say, “There are only 16 million Jews around the world. Why do they keep picking on us?”
In this country we have to protect Muslims and Jews against hatred, and we need to make sure that we do not have one-sided demonstrations. Everyone needs protection.
Returning to the King’s Speech, I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the holocaust memorial, which the Prime Minister mentioned. The original proposal was that the holocaust memorial would be up within two years—by the end of 2017. Eight years on from 2015, and there is no prospect of it possibly being open in the next five years.
The holocaust memorial galleries have since been developed at the Imperial War Museum, and I propose that those in charge of the project should get together with Baroness Deech, me and Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who played in the Auschwitz women’s orchestra and survived Bergen-Belsen, to have a private—not secret—meeting to discuss how we can have a memorial that meets the task without taking over so much of Victoria Tower Gardens, while separating the learning centre. Having a double basement in the middle of a small park south of the House of Lords is not appropriate.
There are things outside the legislative programme that overhang this House. One is the Privileges Committee report on interference in its consideration of a complaint. I believe the House has to take up the challenges outlined in the report, which is available from the Vote Office, and make sure that, when standards are challenged, those who have to consider such cases can do so without interference. I have seen who has been in the press recently and, of the 12 examples of interference, four involved one former Cabinet Minister. We ought to make sure that, in future, people do not interfere with Privileges Committee investigations.
I invite the new Chair of the Standards Committee, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), to reopen the proposed changes to all-party parliamentary groups. For the country groups, we should find a way to have an umbrella under which the UK branches of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association provide admin support, so that we do not have all the kerfuffle of an annual general meeting with eight people present, sometimes supervised by others. Let the groups come under that umbrella.
We should also consider why we are restricting Members to being officers of no more than six APPGs. I have taken part in APPGs throughout my time in this House. Very few MPs were initially interested in the APPG on leasehold and commonhold reform, until they realised that 6 million leaseholders are at risk. Those who are interested should come to our meeting in Committee Room 11 at 6 pm, when we will be considering the Government’s proposals and what we propose to do about them. I ask the Standards Committee to review APPGs.
The Leader of the Opposition is always welcome in Worthing. If he comes to Worthing West, he could say how his proposals to ignore local objections and to let in the bulldozers will affect the Goring gap. If he comes to East Worthing and Shoreham, he could talk to hard-working Labour councillors, who are offended that they cannot be shortlisted as the parliamentary candidate.
Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
Before I start, I must declare an interest—I am a leaseholder and, as per my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, I am a landlord—since I want to comment on both those issues.
First, however, I congratulate the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Sir Robert Goodwill) and the hon. Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) on proposing and seconding the Humble Address. Both were entertaining, and it is one of the pleasures of the parliamentary year to sit back, relax and have a few laughs. I thank them both for giving us that as we move on to the serious business.
It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May). I think she needs to join me on my campaign for slow politics, because clearly we have the same agenda here. Some of the best political decisions are those where we are looking 10, 20 or even 30 years ahead, and she is right that we need to be looking at net zero now and planning ahead. Unfortunately, though, this King’s Speech, and indeed the record of this Government led by the party of which she is a member, are thin gruel in that respect.
We have in this King’s Speech the offerings of what has really now become a zombie Government. I do not use that word lightly—I am not just a soundbite woman—but in a Parliament, where we too often break early because there is not enough business to carry on, there are many things that could have been in this King’s Speech to deliver for the people of Hackney South and Shoreditch and for those up and down the country.
It has to be acknowledged that this King’s Speech is not landing out of the blue in a new parliamentary term; it comes on the back of 13 years of this Government, who have led through chaos and created chaos. Austerity has left a long shadow and a lack of resilience in our public sector, and it is telling now. The wage freezes brought in by the former Chancellor George Osborne are now hitting and have, with the cost of living, created a perfect storm for our constituents up and down the country.
On the handling of Brexit, which the right hon. Member for Maidenhead knows about only too painfully, it was poorly delivered in the end, in the hands of her successor, and none of the promises of the early days of that campaign was delivered. We on the Public Accounts Committee see that through our work. We have produced 12 reports on the delivery of Brexit, all of which found the Government wanting. We have seen gimmicks at Budgets. Again, the former Chancellor was one of the worst for that—or best, depending on our point of view. The lifetime ISA, for example, has withered on the vine as a novel financial product that was not kept up, either by that Chancellor or by subsequent Chancellors. I will touch on that in a moment.
Of course, we cannot look at the King’s Speech without mentioning the premiership of the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), who crashed the economy and has caused havoc in the lives of our constituents. In this Chamber, on these green Benches, it can sometimes seem that we are remote, but week in, week out I am on doorsteps in Hackney South and Shoreditch seeing the reality of people struggling to pay for the food that they need, living without food, going to the food bank when they can, and living in massively overcrowded conditions.
It is not long covid that is leading to a lot of those issues; it is long austerity—that lack of resilience in public services and the public sector; that lack of investment in schools, hospitals and other areas such as defence. Basically, most capital spending was frozen or reduced, and that has led to a growing problem. Whichever party is in power after the next general election, which cannot come soon enough, will have—to borrow the words of Laurel and Hardy—another fine mess to deal with in so many areas of the public sector. The Public Accounts Committee, which I have the privilege of chairing, regularly examines capital spending, as well as day-to-day spending, and we see the problems. Report after report highlights that issues were missed or not dealt with, and that we are now reaping the problems.
This King’s Speech and this Prime Minister promise change, but we see nothing of that in what has been announced. There is no real hope here for renters or those who want to buy their own home, and no plans to tackle poverty and to really level up. In Hackney South and Shoreditch—in fact, across the whole borough of Hackney—one in two children lives in poverty. In London in 2023, we have that level of poverty. In the borough of Hackney as a whole, which comprises two constituencies, 28% of people are private renters, 28% are owner-occupiers and 44% are social renters, while 77% of properties—nearly four in five—were leasehold properties, which means that leasehold reform is of particular interest to me and my constituents. The median house price in Hackney South and Shoreditch is £600,000. That is more than 16 times the median Hackney household income, so home ownership is out of reach for generation rent and for the people living in social housing, which is massively overcrowded, often with four children to a bedroom and many teenagers sharing bedrooms with their mothers because there is nowhere else to sleep. They have no opportunity to get on the housing ladder or to rent privately.
That brings me to the lifetime ISA. I have not seen the detail of the King’s Speech because I came here to talk about it, but the lifetime ISA cap for first-time buyers is still £450,000. The average first-time buyer in Hackney paid £595,000 in August this year, so that cap does not reach anywhere near what is needed. Even the Government’s proposed solutions do not keep up with demand, and their complete detachment from the reality of the choices that people have to make is a real issue.
Sir Peter Bottomley
I have two brief points. First, will the hon. Lady join me in commending Martin Lewis for spelling this out on MoneySavingExpert.com? Ministers ought to pay attention to it. Secondly, through her, may I say that I too am a leaseholder? I do not think I am affected by the Government’s proposals, but I should have put it on the record.
Dame Meg Hillier
The Father of the House and I obviously share support for the work that Martin Lewis does in bringing these consumer finance issues to the mainstream and managing to explain things that people think are complicated in an incredibly simple way.
No Chancellor should make these policies up at the Dispatch Box, because they wither. The Chancellor themself loses interest, as do subsequent Chancellors and the Treasury. The child trust fund has not kept up since the Government withdrew it, and there are many other examples like that.
I have a lot of constituents who are trapped in the private rented sector, with no security. The average two-bed rent in Hackney was just £2 shy of £2,000 a month this year. We have a huge challenge in that there is no security for those residents, including the security that is needed to bring a family up, because they get moved on far too quickly, yet we have seen the lack of the promised abolition of section 21 evictions in the Renters (Reform) Bill, which was introduced just before the King’s Speech and is expected to continue in this Session of Parliament.
The reason is that the courts are backed up. That is a valid reason, but whose fault is it that the courts are backed up? It is due to a lack of investment by this Government over the years. It is not just covid, because as we have highlighted on the Public Accounts Committee, the delays in the courts were there before covid hit; covid had an impact, but the delays were there. We will not be back to pre-covid court delay times until 2025. It is no wonder that private renters are living in despair. The promise of this measure being delivered has been dangled repeatedly, and once again we see it whisked away, leaving tenants with no security and no knowledge of whether they can make a house a home.
We have a big shortage of social housing in Hackney. We have 8,351 households on the wait list for council housing in Hackney. That is after stringent rules were brought in to reduce it, so that people had some hope. The current waiting time for social housing in Hackney is about 12 years for a three-bedroom property. It is simply unacceptable.
Renting is out of reach, home ownership is out of reach and there is not enough house building, which is why I welcome my party’s proposal to build significantly more homes. The Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) is on the Front Bench. He knows, because he does the maths and he has been a member of the Public Accounts Committee, that even the Government’s downward revised targets for affordable housing have not been met. They set a target and had to reduce it, and even that reduced target has not been met. That is happening while people are living in overcrowded and difficult conditions.
Leasehold reform is oft promised, but nothing has yet been delivered, and I would like to see it voted through. As a Labour and Co-op MP, I would like to see a move towards commonhold. There is work being done on that in other countries that we can build on. It is not a quick path—it is slow to deliver this—but that is another reason we need to get moving and start on it now. I commend the Father of the House for his pioneering work to champion the issues of leaseholders in this place.
The King’s Speech talks about delivering on the NHS workforce plan. Of course, the Public Accounts Committee took an interest in that as well. I welcome the NHS workforce plan, because it is a good start, but it is only funding the training of people listed in the NHS workforce plan for the first five years. There is no plan or long-term strategy for how we fund those health professionals who are working in frontline healthcare and hospitals, delivering for patients, which will cause a problem down the line. It is another fine mess waiting for any future Government.
I welcome discussion about how artificial intelligence is handled. I agree with the right hon. Member for Maidenhead about making sure that we keep the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 up to date with how the modern digital world is working. We need to do that in a calm, professional, cross-party way, because this should not be a political football. There will be difficult choices at the margins about—rightly—protecting civil liberties, rights and access to data and about protecting the most vulnerable in our society. We need to make sure that, in the heat of an election year, that discussion is had sensibly.
I also welcome the Prime Minister’s personal commitment to reduce smoking, which I think will be a game changer in public health for our children’s generation. I was pleased with the proposal on safeguarding of the future of football. It sounds like a bold promise, but I would like to see more detail. As a Co-op MP, I am a long-standing champion of Supporters Direct, which enables fans to part-own their club. If we go down that route, I am happy to support the Government, but we will wait to see the exact details. I am pleased that unlicensed pedicabs will finally be dealt with. I have worked with the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) to tackle that issue, and it is time that it is dealt with.
We have had too many broken promises from the Government. We now need delivery, but the King’s Speech does not do that. We have chaos in this country. People are struggling with the cost of living and we need change. Frankly, we need a general election. We need opportunity and hope, and the only way we are going to get that is with a Labour Government.
Oral Answers to Questions
Peter Bottomley Excerpts(6 months ago)
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Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for his kind words.
Israel and Gaza
Peter Bottomley Excerpts(6 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
The House will be grateful to both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition for the lead that they have given in today’s statement. This is not the time to point out the faults of Benjamin Netanyahu. What we have to say is that the inexcusable terror attack on Israelis was intended to bring awful harm to the Palestinians.
Rather than quote international leaders, I want to quote a senior constituent, who said: “This is a very harrowing time for Jews all over the world. There are about 16 million of us worldwide. Why can’t they leave us alone?”
If we pray for the peace of Jerusalem, we want to try to bring security, both to the people of Israel and to the Palestinians in Gaza. Does the Prime Minister know that he will have our support as he tries to do that?
The Prime Minister
I thank the Father of the House for what he has said, and I simply agree with his constituent in saying that all of us will pray for peace in the region, but especially for peace for those families who have been so tragically affected by what has happened over the past week.
Resettlement of Afghans
Peter Bottomley Excerpts(7 months, 1 week ago)
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Johnny Mercer
The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, because he lives in a different world. All the bridging hotels are closed, and nobody has slept rough. I am proud of the team that has delivered that. We have not done it for him or for a pat on the back from the Labour party; we have done it because it is the right thing to do for the Afghan people, because on this side of the House we believe in something and in doing right by these people, and we will deliver on our promises to them as we continue into the future.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
I thank the Minister for dealing appropriately with the response from the Opposition Front Bench. During the next week I would like him, or one of his colleagues, to follow up the case that I raised with the Leader of the House last Thursday. An International Security Assistance Force commander said of that person that he,
“because of his service in support of the NATO Armed Forces in the Afghan Theatre of Combat Operations…has suffered and continues suffering threats to the life and property of himself.”
I know that is not for the Minister to answer today, but I make that request. I want to be approached by the right person to find out how we can solve that problem.
Johnny Mercer
My office will have heard that today. We will ensure that that individual’s case—I saw my hon. Friend’s question last week—is raised with my office. We will do everything we can to provide him with an answer and to see where we go from there.
All-party Parliamentary Groups
Peter Bottomley Excerpts(9 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Tim Loughton
All right, the figure may be 10 if I have missed one out, but, in hurriedly putting some notes together, I could remember nine.
I chair the APPG for children, which is a substantial group. Over many years, it has produced some reports that have led to changes in the law, and I do not think that anybody is going to challenge the legitimacy of that. I chair the 1001 critical days group, or the APPG on conception to age two—first 1001 days. That was the genesis of the Government’s “best start” policy, brought in by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom), which has played an important part in early years provision. I chair the APPG on archaeology, which briefs parliamentarians on changes to the law regarding the influence of archaeology on the environment, agricultural matters and cultural matters, and it is very active.
I chair the British Museum APPG, which met only yesterday. It has an important job, given that it was this House that established the British Museum back in the 18th century. When there are serious challenges ahead—the future of collections such as the Elgin marbles, for example—this House must have a voice. I chair the APPG for Armenia, which I took on reluctantly from my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) because he was a Minister again. I was told there would be very little going on, and within a few weeks Azerbaijan invaded Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia became a very hot topic. I have virtually weekly conversations with the ambassador and others on this subject, so it is an active group.
I chair the reformed Wilton Park group, an important foreign affairs melting pot financed by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. I chair the all-party group on mindfulness, which has done so much good for the mentality, mental health and camaraderie of Members in this House since its formation about 10 years ago, with the strapline of “disagreeing better”; that is very relevant, and it is one of the more active groups. I chair the all-party group on Tibet, which has been absolutely essential to the whole issue of China’s abuse of human rights not just in Tibet but in Xinjiang and beyond.
I chair, too, the all-party group on photography. I took that role on after the murder of our former colleague Sir David Amess. Because I was the next named officer, very shortly after his murder I was, disgracefully, contacted by the registrar to say, “You must have an EGM within 30 days to appoint a new chair,” completely oblivious to the circumstances of the loss of our previous chair. That was how I got to take on that role. The group exists largely to organise the annual photography exhibition, which Mr Speaker very kindly supports and will be attending again later in the autumn. So those are my interests—and there is apparently a tenth one that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) will tell me about. I will therefore automatically be caught under these rules, so I have a double interest.
I do not criticise the report, although I disagree with some of its findings, but I think it has gone largely under the radar and many Members are going to be very surprised if and when it goes through that they will be impacted. I absolutely take the point from my right hon. Friend the Veterans Minister, who I am delighted is here to defend these measures today, that the all-party group system is an important part of Parliament—the report itself says that as well—and that new rules should not deter all-party parliamentary groups. I am afraid they will, however, for some good reasons and for other, unintended not-so-good reasons.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
May I, through my hon. Friend, invite the Minister before he winds up to read pages 55 to 74 of the “Guide to Rules” and see how long that is going to take and how sensible it is?
Tim Loughton
All right then, I will, but my concern is that there has been very little profile for this report and study. I notice that only one Member of Parliament submitted written evidence and only one gave formal evidence to the Committee, and I cannot see that there were any submissions or calls to give evidence face to face from any chairs of all-party groups, let alone multiple chairs of all-party groups.
Tim Loughton
Therein lies the problem. There is no common year end for all APPGs. We had the AGM of the all-party parliamentary group for photography at the beginning of this week, because yesterday was the end of our year when we had to do that by. There is another group for which I have another two months to hold it. After 16 October, when the AGMs start coming up, which groups do I then have to drop to take me down to six or below? It may be ones that I do not necessarily want to drop.
The point is, why are we bringing in this change at the tail end of a Parliament? This is quite a significant change and the obvious thing, surely, is to bring it in in the next Parliament, when none of the groups will exist until they are formed again if there is sufficient interest and a sufficient number of Members interested. There may be a larger number of Members required to set them up—that is a better way of doing it. At their genesis, APPGs, whether they are renewing from a previous Parliament or are genuinely new groups, need to justify the need for setting up that group. That could involve a higher threshold of Members needing to sign the form and somebody scrutinising in more detail whether it is a credible and legitimate APPG that will serve some positive purpose for the House.
Sir Peter Bottomley
This may be slightly unconventional, but what we are dealing with actually matters to the House. Would it be possible, during this debate, for the Minister and the Whip to consult with the Leader of the House, the official Opposition and the Chair of the Standards Committee, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant), to see whether it is possible for us not to make a decision on the motion today, but to come back to the issue in September? That would still allow whatever timescale is needed, and would allow more MPs to be aware of the implications.
We also have to hear from the Chairman of the Standards Committee, which will tell us more, but it might be sensible if the Government, the Opposition and the SNP considered not coming to a decision, having the debate and then coming back in September when minds will be clearer and more MPs know what is going on.
Tim Loughton
The Father of the House, my constituency neighbour, makes a very helpful suggestion. I do not understand the rush in any case. As the motion stands, I cannot support it. It would be a bit unusual if we had to force a Division on it— I am not one who usually likes to have Divisions on reports by the Standards Committee. There is a need for change—I absolutely agree—but I think we are going to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There will be damage and harm done to APPGs, which is specifically what the Minister says he does not want to happen and goes against the thrust of a report that wants APPGs to continue to play their very important role.
There are other details in the new rules, for example putting up the quorum for an AGM from five to eight. We all know it is often difficult to get five MPs to attend a meeting to form a quorum because of the competing priorities in this place, and unwitting MPs are literally dragged in from the cafés to boost numbers. Again, I am not entirely sure what that is aiming to achieve. We have the idea of having outside chairs to chair these AGMs, but who will those people be? Will Mr Speaker have to create another pool of chairs or whatever? Again, I will leave that for the hon. Member for Rhondda, if he is going to explain more in his speech.
In conclusion, I support reform of the all-party groups, because there has been abuse, they are open to abuse and we do not need as many as there are. However, we do need a great many of them and we need greater transparency in how they operate. I fear that some of the detail around the implementation of these rules, though well intended, will undoubtedly have the result that many APPGs will not be able to continue in their current form, and this House will be at a loss for it. That is why I air those points in good faith.
Having had some experience of being chair or holding other offices of all-party groups over the years, I can say that the report is a good report, but in its detail it is still lacking. I would like the Minister and others to agree that further work needs to be done to come back with a more suitable solution. Preferably, the whole lot will be put into the next Parliament, which will probably not be that far away, so that we can start afresh without people involved in all-party groups now being unwittingly penalised for it.
Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
First, may I put on record my gratitude to the members of the Standards Committee—both the MP members and the seven lay members—to all the Clerks and, in particular in regard to this paper, to James Davies, the registrar, and Philippa Wainwright, the other part of the team running the APPG register.
We have 762 APPGs at the moment. It is virtually impossible to have any kind of proper regulation or oversight of them, or examination of whether they are doing their job properly when we only have two members of staff, one of whom also does the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. So I pay enormous tribute to them for their work. They try to be as helpful as they possibly can be and to ensure that Members do not inadvertently break the rules, because the rules are complicated and there are too many of them.
We have rules for what we are allowed to do in the Chamber, the code of conduct, the behaviour code and the rules on APPGs. Then there are the stationery rules, the rules of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority and the ministerial code. All those bodies are different. Frankly, it is very difficult for most Members of Parliament to keep up. I am desperately keen, as is the Standards Committee, to try to have rules that are coherent, consistent and, to use a valleys word, “tidy”.
I used that phrase when we were introducing Ofcom, many years ago, and Hansard rendered “valleys” as “valets”. We do not have many valets in the valleys, so Iusb hope people understand what I mean. We are just trying to bring a bit of tidiness to the sets of rules that we have. Some of you may have valets who do that for you—I do not know why I am looking at you, Madam Deputy Speaker—or indeed batmen, if I am looking at the Minister who opened the debate.
Sir Peter Bottomley
It does depend on how many Ls there are, and whether there is a T.
Sir Chris Bryant
I am not giving way. It is a courtesy to the House that if you are going to start intervening in a debate, you should have been here for the ministerial openers.
Sir Peter Bottomley
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I think it is within the orders of the House not to accept an intervention, but to make a derogatory comment while not accepting an intervention does not allow the hon. Member who has been referred to to answer back.
Sir Peter Bottomley
I was suggesting that it is all right for the hon. Member not to take an intervention, but that to go on to make remarks that might be regarded as adverse to the person trying to intervene when he does not have the opportunity to respond seems unfair.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I am not sure that that is a point of order—it is perhaps an opinion—but I think it is courteous for those who are intervening in a debate to have been here for a long time. My feeling about this is that a lot of different views have been expressed and it is important to have heard the whole debate. I do not think it is unreasonable for the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) to say that the reason he is not allowing an intervention is that the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) has not been here for the whole of the debate. He is perfectly within his rights to give a reason why he will not take an intervention.
Sir Chris Bryant
No, I do not buy that, I am afraid, because what we are trying to say is there are officers and there are registered members. All the registered members should express an interest in the running of the group, and that will demonstrate the cross-party nature of the body.
We recognise that there are many APPGs where there is no financial interest at all. There is no money or external secretariat; it is simply done out of the goodness of the office of the individual Member. We have left most of the rules for APPGs with no financial interest unchanged in all other regards, and the quorum will remain five people.
However, we are introducing a quorum of eight for APPGs where there is a financial interest, and we are saying that the chair for an AGM or extraordinary general meeting of those APPGs will be provided by Mr Speaker, as was requested by Mr Speaker and the Lord Speaker. They want a clear, independent body to be able to administrate whether there has been a proper annual general meeting and that all the rules have been abided by.
I know that Mr Speaker has had some conversations with the Panel of Chairs. It may be necessary to have a couple more members of the Panel of Chairs. We are fully cognisant of the fact that it will take time for all groups to have their AGMs and extraordinary general meetings to be able to comply with the rules, which is why we are making transitional arrangements, although we want the main body of the rules to apply from 16 October, as the motion says.
It might help if I read out the transitional arrangements, because they are important for everybody. They are at the beginning of the document referred to by the hon. Member for Christchurch, and they were in the resolution of the Committee yesterday.
“(1) The rules prohibiting foreign governments from providing or funding (whether directly or indirectly) a secretariat come into force with immediate effect on 16 October 2023.
(2) APPGs need to comply with any other new rules from their first AGM following the new rules coming into force, or 31 March 2024, whichever is the earlier; except that the additional rules applying to APPGs that meet the £1,500 funding threshold will apply only from 31 March 2024.
(3) APPGs will be able to hold EGMs virtually or by correspondence during a transition period (to meet the requirement for 4 officers and no more; and to ensure that those officers are officers of no more than 5 other APPGs) ending on 31 March 2024.
(4) An audit of compliance will be carried out in April 2024. Any APPG that has not complied with the Rules by 31 March 2024”—
which happens to be Easter Sunday—
“will be deregistered.”
I hope it is helpful that I have read that out, because we want to make it as clear as we possibly can.
Sir Peter Bottomley
When was what the hon. Gentleman has just read out agreed? How is it available to us now?
Sir Chris Bryant
It was agreed yesterday at the Standards Committee. We only knew today that this debate was going to be happening today; we thought it was going to be later in the year. It is available on the front page of the document referred to earlier, “The Guide to the Rules on All-Party Parliamentary Groups”, which is available from the Vote Office. It was agreed yesterday, under the authority granted to the Standards Committee.
Sir Peter Bottomley
I have “The Guide to the Rules”—I am one of the ones who managed to get a copy. I don’t see it—
Sir Peter Bottomley
Transitional arrangements? I have read through every other page, starting with page 3—I did not read page 2. I do not believe any other Member of this Chamber, except for the other members of the Standards Committee, has read that. To take a decision on the arrangements this evening, given the impact it will have on every all-party group, is not necessary, wise or advisable.
Sir Chris Bryant
I think that was a speech. Perhaps the hon. Member will be able to catch your eye later, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am conscious that I have spoken for quite a long time and I had not intended to do so.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
Through you, Madam Deputy Speaker, may I say to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) that he should use the word “vale” when he says goodbye? For those who were not here earlier, we were having a discussion about how “valet” was spelt and sounded.
I have obviously been remiss in not paying enough attention since the publication of the first report on all-party groups. That concluded that the risk of
“influence by hostile foreign actors through APPGs is real.”
It said that there had been
“a dramatic increase in the number of APPGs”,
commercial interests and the like.
That did not prepare me for the motion, and the conclusions that the Committee came to. The motion contains the words
“subject to any transitional arrangements agreed by the Committee on Standards.”
I had not realised that the Committee would make transitional arrangements without consulting us. I do not believe that I saw draft proposals that alerted me to that. That is my fault. I am not blaming the Committee, but I think that the Chair of the Committee is not right that delaying a vote on this would not allow for improvement; it would.
Mr Carmichael
Had I been able to intervene on the Chair of the Committee, I would have said that I agree wholeheartedly with his analysis, and his starting point about the need for reform. I fear that the proposals will result in a variety of unintended consequences coming down the track, but I am prepared to go with them for today if I hear some sort of undertaking, from the Committee or from anywhere else in the House, that there will be a review of them, so that if my fears about unintended consequences prove to be correct we can revisit them, and not just say, “We’ve done that; we’re not going back to it.”
Sir Peter Bottomley
We have heard that the Committee could, so to speak, impose the proposals even if the House rejects them. I think that we probably should vote on them, just to ensure that Members who are paying attention have the chance to express their view. I will vote against them on the basis that they should be reviewed.
I am happy to co-operate with the commissioner, the hon. Member for Rhondda, the Committee, the Clerks, the Lord Speaker and the Commons Speaker to help to make the improvements that people desire and that are necessary. Some implications of the proposals are not improvements; they are retrogressive.
Sir Chris Bryant
I am trying to be helpful to the House. The rules on APPGs are the prerogative of the Committee. That was already a decision of the House, but we did not want to proceed without the House taking a view. I hear quite a lot of discomfort about several elements of the proposals. I think that it will look terrible if we decide to pull them this afternoon—it will look as if the House does not want to take action, and that will be seen badly. What might be right is that we reassess the issue of transitional arrangements if people want to make representations to us, which the Committee could hear at its first meeting in September. One option is obviously that none of the proposals applies until the next Parliament. The Committee was hesitant about that—I am sorry that this is a long intervention, but I am trying to be helpful—only because it might look as if this Parliament was not prepared to put its house in order; it just wanted a future set of people to do it.
Sir Peter Bottomley
That is potentially helpful. I am grateful, and the House will be as well. If the transitional arrangements concentrated on foreign Governments, or significant commercial beneficiaries, effectively supporting groups, that would be understood. It is the other parts that I do not understand. I say that as someone who was asked to chair the Austria all-party parliamentary group when Angus Robertson became leader of the SNP group at Westminster and felt that he could not do it. I stood in and did it, and I remain the chair of that group. In co-operation with the Austrian embassy, which provides no money and no resources, we welcome Austrians here. I guess that alternative arrangements for some functions of that kind could be made quite easily within the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
I am chair of the BBC all-party parliamentary group because one of our colleagues became the interim Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. To keep the all-party group going, given the importance of being able to hear from the BBC and liaise with it on controversial and non-controversial issues, I thought that it was important to stand in.
I am, I think, the chair or co-chair of 12 groups. I am the person the hon. Member for Rhondda referred to as being an officer of more than 80 groups. I could quite cheerfully take him and the House through each of the groups and why I am a member of them. [Hon. Members: “No!”] I will not go through them all, but I will give some illustrative examples.
I am the parliamentary warden of St Margaret’s Church on Parliament Square. I saw the lights on one evening and went into a service, which was the 12-step addiction service. All kinds of people with addictions, whether alcohol, gambling, sex, stealing or whatever else, were giving their witness. That gave me an interest in 12-step recovery programmes and, when a Member of the House of Lords asked whether I would help to set up an all-party group, I agreed. That is one of the groups of which I am a co-chair and registered contact, and I think it is worthwhile. The idea that we would necessarily get four members together at the same time or have 20 people registering as members is unlikely, but the work done by that group is important to all kinds of people inside the House, both Members and staff, and outside it.
I was once asked by Tristan Garel-Jones, a humanist, whether I, a member of the Ecclesiastical Committee who had been a trustee of Christian Aid and chairman of the Church of England Children’s Society, would be prepared to get a humanist group going. I said I would; I said that I was not a humanist, but it seemed to me that it was a line of thought that deserved some kind of parliamentary opportunity. The group has since grown and I am no longer a member of it.
I could go through the various other groups, but there are two that I am keenest on. The first is the group on leasehold and commonhold reform, where for more than 10 years, working first with Jim Fitzpatrick and now with the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), and with the help of the campaigning charity Leasehold Knowledge Partnership, we have fought to look after the interests of 6 million residential leaseholders. Even in the last couple of days we have had success with the Financial Conduct Authority on trying to ensure that those people are not ripped off on insurance, commissions and the like. That group can get large numbers of Members interested, but not get them all together at the same time.
The same applies to the group on park homes, which my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) has been in charge of for a long time with Sonia McColl, one of the campaigners. To show the kind of interests that we were up against, when her mobile home was being moved from one place to another, it was stolen.
I have some incredible things going on. If I were brought down to six chairmanships, I would not be able to do half the good that I do, and I do not always know which group will become important. When one of my hon. Friends became a Minister, he asked if I would take on, with the Astronomer Royal, the group on dark skies. We are co-leaders of the world in astronomy, and it is important to have parliamentary interest, so that Members of the Lords and Commons who are interested can come to meetings and we can liaise with outside groups.
I think very few of the groups I am involved in—although there are some—would not do worse if I were not interested. I say this to the Government, to those on the Front Benches and to the SNP: it is not necessary for this motion to pass. We have been told it does not matter to Parliament, because the Committee itself can set the rules, but it is possible to get through to the beginning of the next Parliament with suitable transition arrangements that are variations of what is on page 2 of the guide to rules.
Tim Loughton
I think the compromises my hon. Friend is putting forward will be helpful here. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant), the Chairman of the Committee, is concerned that if we pulled this motion now and deferred it to the next Parliament, it would look like a cop-out. This matter needs to be resolved by this Parliament, but it does not need to be resolved this month. I would certainly ask the Standards Committee to come back with some small revisions to parts of the rules, particularly the transitional rules that have been queried. This is not about the bigger issues of foreign intervention or transparency, because I think we all agree on those. If the Committee came back with those revisions as a matter of urgency in September, the rules could still come in on his timeline—although, frankly, I think that if we resolved the matter now but they did not come in until the next Parliament, most of the problems would go away.
Sir Peter Bottomley
I agree, and I hope others have heard what my hon. Friend said.
I refer again to pages 55 to 74 of the guide to the rules. It may or may not surprise colleagues that that is appendix 5, on data protection and APPGs—page after page after page of MPs who run groups telling MPs who may be members of the group, or who may be on a mailing list, how we handle their data. That is one of those things where we move ten places across, from one thing to another, without anybody on the Standards Committee understanding at all what was being put forward.
I do not know whether the Chair of the Standards Committee has experience of trying to administer all-party groups. Getting the detail right is important. We try to get it right, and we make some mistakes, but to add in an extra 20 pages for each group that we may be involved in, even if we are limited to six groups, gives us more than 100 pages to fill in. It is bureaucracy. If the only people who can be members of those groups are Members of Parliament, what on earth are we trying to do? That should not be there, and I hope that it is taken out.
Sir Christopher Chope
Another unintended consequence is that, if a group is allowed only four officers, and one of those officers is appointed to the Government, or falls under a bus, the group will be unable to operate until it has had a formal meeting to elect a replacement. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is so rigid as to be unworkable?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. This debate has to finish in nine minutes, and one more Member wishes to speak before the Minister. The hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) has been speaking for 12 minutes, and I would like to give five minutes to the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett).
Sir Peter Bottomley
First, I believe that the Chairman of the Committee is wrong to say that people are not members of groups. We are all members of groups. Requiring 20 names to be put down is, again, bureaucratic.
Secondly, I say to the Chairman: do what I have suggested, which makes sense. Do not push the motion to a vote now—I will vote against it if he does. Whatever the result of that vote, he should consult again. My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and I, and anybody else who wants to, will come in to have a roundtable and solve the problems. I believe in controlling foreign Government and big commercial interests; I do not believe in wrecking the purposes of all-party groups. Most of those I am involved in have no foreign Government or big commercial interests.
Johnny Mercer
I strongly urge Members to take that course of action. Voting down the motion would be extremely self-defeating.
Sir Peter Bottomley
I hope that what the Chair of the Committee has just said can be interpreted as including not only the transitional arrangements, but some of the minor arrangements that are no threat to the major purposes behind this.