House of Commons Business

Richard Bacon Excerpts

Thursday 8th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Allen]

There are some very eminent Members, of course, who know absolutely everything, and that is why I always bow to their view. But similarly, in many of those 29 debates, although a petition was tagged to the subject, the petition was never even referred to in the debate. Those were the debates, actually, that Members got going, and petitions were tagged to them. If we get to a position where that is reversed—where, if there is an inference that if you can get to 100,000 signatures, there is an expectation, not that Government should find time, but that the agent of Government, the sub-office, Parliament, will have to look after those things—I can tell Members what happens next. It is that their time, as Back Benchers, starts to get squeezed out.

If there is a petitions committee, let us imagine being the Chair of that petitions committee. Will they just pass the petitions through? Or will they ask, “Would my hon. Friend on the Backbench Business Committee give us a little bit of time? This is so important; I have had more than 100,000 signatures and my petitions committee thinks it is really important”? Is it likely that members of the petitions committee will go to the Government? Will they pop up at business questions and will the Leader of the House say, “Absolutely; very important. I will find you a couple of hours next week”? No, they will not. They will go to our Backbench Business Committee.

I remind new Members that the Backbench Business Committee did not pop out of thin air. It was fought through against the wishes of the Labour party, fought through, it seems now, against some of the wishes of the governing parties. The Committee is a very precious thing and its time is very precious. It is not to be bandied about and traded to a petitions committee in order, really, to salve the conscience of the Government, who, if they are interested in specific issues, should be using the vast majority of the House’s time, which they own and control, to hold debates on them. We do not need to be manipulated into using valuable Backbench Business Committee time for Government debates.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

On that point, I am interested in the subject of a petitions committee and the Scottish Parliament comes to mind. Would not the best role of a petitions committee, if it were working properly, be not to fight for time from the Backbench Business Committee but to sit in public, calling Ministers of the Government in front of it to account for the problems that were brought before it by petitioners, and to insist that Ministers explain to it—the petitions committee—what was going to be done to address those problems?

[Mr Allen]

The hon. Gentleman has probably put the final nail in the coffin of a petitions committee by making it clear that Ministers should be brought before it to answer on matters that are in the Government’s, rather than Parliament’s, domain. Either that, or it may well be that the people who are members of the petitions committee will be so pliant that they will never bother to do anything like that and will just pass most of the responsibility over to the Backbench Business Committee, pretending that the job has been done, and that those petitioners have really been listened to. They do not get listened to easily. Every Member of the House knows that they have to fight for time. We have to fight for airtime. we have to campaign. We have to really demand that something that incites us as individuals gets in front of Government. We should be extremely careful about compromising that.

My final point was pre-empted by the hon. Member for Broxbourne, the Chair of the Procedure Committee. It is about gateways. I do not pretend to be an expert on these things, but I do know that when people log on and have a look at how they can progress a petition, it is really important that they are given good advice from the first moment, just as we are in the House. If a Member goes into the Table Office with an idea for a question, they will get some good advice about who to send it to and how to word it. The same standards should apply in the House to petitions. That is why each petition should be in the ownership of an individual Member. Rather than the petition starting with the words, “We, the petitioners, call upon Parliament to declare world peace”—or free beer for everyone—there should be a check, and advice to the effect: “Hang on a minute. You are the Member in charge. We need to get the words right and ensure that your petition is in order. Then you may go crazy and get 100,000 signatures if you can.” But if we leave things as vague and open as they are at the moment, we again do the public a disservice, because they will not know, any more than they do now, the difference between Government and Parliament.

As the Chair of the Procedure Committee said, people need to know what other options exist. Petitioning may not be a very effective way to proceed. It may be better to write to the local Member of Parliament and get them to ask a question or appear before a Minister or write a letter to a Minister. Unless the gateways are really clear—the parliamentary gateway being very different from the Government gateway—I am afraid we are again perpetrating that deceit upon people. It would be no better than the origins of petitioning—prostrating oneself before a mediaeval monarch in the hope that they might grant a favour. I think we can do better than that.

My hope is that if the Leader of the House or the Deputy Leader of the House respond positively, the Procedure Committee will take what is before us now and do a really great job on it. I say to the Chair of that Committee, directly across the Chamber, that the responsibilities are onerous. People have been kidded about e-petitions. It has been confusing. It has not been clear even to many Members of the House, let alone to members of the public. It is easy to misrepresent. He needs to clean this up, and his Committee has a job to do that. One of the best ways he can do that is to ensure that a separation between Government petitioning and parliamentary petitioning is clear in the report that he produces for the House. I wish him well.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)]

I do not intend to go back to the 1300s, but I do intend to go back to the 1600s. In 1624, the master of the felt-makers was arrested while attending the House to proffer a petition. The House considered that he had the protection of the House to proffer the petition and established a committee to consider whether the arrest itself was a breach of privilege. In 1696, Thomas Kemp and other Hackney coachmen were arrested as a consequence of proceedings by Richard Gee, a commissioner of Hackney coaches. The House concluded that Mr Gee was guilty of a breach of privilege and a high misdemeanour and that he was to be imprisoned by the Serjeant. In 1699, John Kelly was imprisoned in consequence of having given Members an abstract of several articles against the commissioners of victualling. That was referred to the Privileges Committee. The fact that people used to be imprisoned for petitioning Parliament shows how important petitions were.

To return to the current day, about a month ago the London borough of Redbridge was upset that a 94-year-old woman wanted to petition Parliament. Sadly, before it could get an injunction to stop her petitioning Parliament, she did so and the petition is now bagged behind Mr Speaker’s Chair and in Hansard. Obviously, there are still issues with regard to petitioning Parliament.

One of my fundamental principles in politics is that people have a right to complain to Members of Parliament. An issue about schools in my constituency and others in Birmingham has been debated. It is a particular principle of mine that nobody should be frightened to speak to me. There is no question but that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) did excellent work, with the support of the Business Secretary, in getting a statutory instrument through that stated that disclosures to Members of Parliament are protected disclosures for the purposes of employment tribunals. I have asked the schools to put in their staff room a copy of the Library briefing saying that a disclosure to a Member of Parliament is a protected disclosure, and they have both agreed to do so. The staff at those schools can therefore have absolute certainty that they are protected, from the perspective of employment law, in talking to Members of Parliament.

Parliament should go further and do what it used to do in the 1600s, because it used to protect people’s right to complain to Members of Parliament. In our debates, that is what privilege is about. It is about the people of this country being able to use Parliament to redress all grievances. Although the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) referred in his excellent speech to article 5 of the Bill of Rights, he did not mention article 13, which defines one function of Parliament as the redress of all grievances. However, if we do not know what people’s grievances are, how can we redress them? Through parliamentary jurisdiction, Parliament has powers to protect people when they talk to Members of Parliament. I have two live cases: in one, somebody has recently been injuncted in an attempt to stop them talking to me; in the other—I have only just got the e-mail on my phone—somebody is frightened that they might face litigation if they petition Parliament.

There is an issue about e-petitions, which are not proceedings in Parliament, although paper petitions are. I agree with the Government motion, which is sensible. I am a member of both the Procedure Committee and the Backbench Business Committee, and I congratulate both the Chairs on their able work. I agree that e-petitions need to be looked at, and I disagree with the amendment of the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), which would fetter the Procedure Committee’s discretion. Although I accept some of the amendment’s content, if it is pushed to a vote, I will oppose it.

As a House, we must emphasise that parliamentary privilege is a form of privilege akin to absolute privilege, qualified privilege and legal professional privilege, all of which are about protecting people’s rights. Parliamentary privilege is about protecting our citizens’ or constituents’ rights to complain to us, with those complaints being addressed in some part or other of the system. Frankly, we should explain that fact, rather than change the name, because privilege has an important function. How else can people ask somebody to stand up on their behalf to complain about what has happened to them without fearing that they will be imprisoned?

Lots of things still go wrong in this country. Hon. Members will be aware that I have often complained about people being intimidated in an attempt to stop them talking to me. Normally, it does not work; sometimes it does. Obviously, I do not know the circumstances when intimidation has worked in that way, because the people stop talking to me. We need to protect people’s rights to talk to us.

[Mr Bacon]

I am listening to my hon. Friend’s speech with interest. If I had to explain privilege, I would describe it as the unfettered right of Members to stand up and speak on behalf of their constituents. That is the simplest way to describe it. Does he not think that it is extraordinary for an English judge ever to believe that there are circumstances in which it is appropriate for them to name a Member of Parliament as a person to whom a constituent should not speak, as has happened in an injunction?

[John Hemming]

Indeed; it is extraordinary for a judge to go so far, but there has been some pulling back from that position. The Neuberger committee considering the issue of super-injunctions concluded that it is not possible for an injunction to prevent people from talking to Members of Parliament. However, not everybody has read the Neuberger committee’s report. I am the sort of sad person who reads judgments, committee reports and the like, but most people who are told that they will be imprisoned if they talk to an MP believe that that is true—in fact, it is not true—and that, sadly, guides what they do.

A very serious concern is therefore a live one in 2014. Even if petitioning has gone on since the 1300s, it is a live concern today. Although the work of the right hon. Member for Haltem and Howdenprice or whatever it is—[Interruption.] I apologise to the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden for not getting his constituency name right. Notwithstanding the complexities of his constituency name, his work is excellent. That work has gone part of the way, but we need to go further. It is a job for Mr Speaker through referring issues to the Privileges Committee, because we need to stand up for our constituents’ rights to talk to us.

On timetabling on Report, I want to make two points. The first is that procedure is how one exercises power and is therefore crucial. From time to time, all Governments want to use procedure to prevent difficult votes from happening. I do not think that Governments are frightened so much about debates as about votes in which difficult Members—perhaps like me—will not necessarily vote with the Government, so if they can avoid such votes, all the better. That will always be a difficulty, although we are making useful progress in the form of the motion on programming before us.

The second point about process is one that people should be aware of when they consider votes in Public Bill Committees and whether amendments should be made in the Commons or in the other place. The reality is that for amendments to be accepted by the Government, there has to be a consultation process throughout Whitehall, which is sensible, but takes a certain time. If an amendment is tabled in a Public Bill Committee to be voted on three days later, the consultation process will not have happened and the Government are not therefore in a position to agree to it. That is why many amendments, however well argued, are not generally accepted until they appear again in the other place. The Procedure Committee has suggested using the recommittal process, and I believe that there are mechanisms to facilitate the Government’s accepting amendments in this place rather than the other place. We must, however, take into account the real and realistic requirements for a process of consultation, and the fact that a vote in a Public Bill Committee at short notice is insufficient. In other words, we are making glacial progress, although in some areas we should assert ourselves, as Members did in the 1600s.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), for whom I have a great deal of respect. I do not plan to speak at length, and I have already made my primary point about parliamentary privilege in an intervention. Privilege—we should not seek to re-label it, but we should explain it—is the unfettered right of Members of Parliament to speak up on behalf of their constituents without any fear of the consequences, and it includes the unfettered right of people to go to their Members of Parliament so that that can take place.

I want to dwell on what happens to petitions. I recently re-read the obituary of Lord St John of Fawsley in The Guardian on 5 March 2012, which I recommend to anybody who wants a bit of entertainment on a wet Thursday afternoon. I particularly recommend my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal to read it. The first paragraph states that Lord St John of Fawsley

“was as vivid a personality as politics can bear.”

I do not think that I am doing my right hon. Friend an injustice if I say that people have not often said that of him, but he has an opportunity to go down in history every bit as significantly as Lord St John of Fawsley.

The issue of petitions cuts to the quick. As hon. Members have said, the right to petition goes back a long way and it is part of why we are here. Indeed, we might say the same about the English courts. The whole development of English administrative law was about the process of seeking remedy for specific grievances. That is how we have grown as a polity during the past 1,000 years.

What interests me is not so much whether there is an “e” in front of the word “petition”. I was particularly intrigued and delighted by the excitement my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) showed for technology—it seems slightly out of place with his normal demeanour and with his area of expertise, which usually dates back several centuries—and that was interesting to witness. However petitions end up in Parliament, it is what is done with them that really matters.

I know that the Chair of the Procedure Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker)—he is rushing back to his place—is at an early stage of thinking about these issues. I encourage the Leader of the House, too, to think about what happens to petitions next. It seems to me that, later in the process, we should have a petitions Committee that has real teeth and before which Ministers have to appear.

For example, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) presented a petition about Alphonso mangos last night. He had only 329 signatures because he had only since the middle of last week to arrange his petition. The petitioners included significant street traders and representatives of traders in his constituency and elsewhere. That is an issue that will affect many people, that will damage many businesses to the tune of many millions of pounds and that outrages many people.

It ought to be possible for such issues to be addressed quickly in Parliament, not only through a debate but in Committee. If a Committee member does not like the answer that they receive from a member of the Executive, they should be able to press them further and harder to answer the question again and again until they get the answer that they want. They should be able to hold the Government’s feet to the fire, as it were, until they get a sense of what action they will take. In the case of the Alphonso mangos, that will be the pressure that they will put on Brussels to ensure that there is a quick solution.

Having a petitions Committee with teeth could transform the level of respect for this House among members of the public. They should feel that when they bring their grievances and concerns here, there is a swift mechanism for dealing with them that does not relate only to the number of people who have petitioned. I agree on that point with the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen). The number of people who petition should not be the only criterion. A small number of petitioners could be just as important or even more important. That ought to be down to the judgment of Members of the House and members of Committees, such as a putative petitions committee. In that way, we can retain and strengthen the respect with which Members of Parliament are viewed.