Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Richard Shepherd and Jack Straw

Monday 13th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Straw]

Let me say first, for the avoidance of doubt, that I have made no protestations of virginal innocence, and would never seek to do so.

The two Bills are certainly not cognate, but they are linked in the sense that they are the price that the Conservative party agreed to pay in order to stitch together this very curious coalition. I am glad, in saying that, to receive the approbation of many right hon. and hon. Members on the Government Benches. In any event, the idea that this Bill had to be bashed through very quickly was blown away by this morning’s announcement.

[Mr Shepherd]

Given that the right hon. Gentleman is giving us a catalogue of what is wrong with the Bill and what is difficult about it, how can he vote in favour of the principle of the Bill as drafted and lying in front of the House of Commons, rather than voting against it as a matter of principle? It does not strike me as amenable to satisfactory changes in Committee, even if the good will of the Government were there for the purpose. Why is the right hon. Gentleman not standing by that principle, and demonstrating that this is an unsatisfactorily prepared Bill?

[Mr Straw]

It is an unsatisfactorily prepared Bill—on that the hon. Gentleman and I are in absolute agreement—but we may be in disagreement on the principle of the Bill. I have done many things from the Front Benches in 30 years to seek to justify difficult positions and have emerged upright at the other end, but with a commitment as clear as daylight in our manifesto—of blessed memory and only five months old—that said, in terms, that the Labour party would introduce legislation for fixed Parliaments, it would have been a bit tricky for me to have come to the House and opposed the Bill. [Interruption.] The Deputy Leader of the House may say that that did not worry me a week ago. But it did. [Laughter.]

There is a serious point. Had the subject of this Bill been tied up with a proposition with which we wholly disagreed—as with the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, where the Government could and should have separated the alternative vote and boundaries issues—that would have been different. As I explained to the House this time last week, I would have been delighted to vote in favour of the Bill if all that it contained was part 1. The Deputy Prime Minister knows better than me why he has decided to put alongside that proposition—one that was broadly agreed—an entirely separate and unrelated proposition wholly to change the agreed and consensual way in which we have set boundaries in this country for many years, a manner last amended by this House not under Labour, but under the Conservatives.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Richard Shepherd and Jack Straw

Monday 6th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Straw]

I had not thought of that before, but I commend the strength of that point. It is why the banal comparisons that the Deputy Prime Minister makes are so false.

[Mr Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. The point just made is crucial to the equation. Clearly, if we reduce the number of Members of the House of Commons, and not the size of the Administration, their control over the size of the House of Commons increases. That is the very thing that the House is struggling to address in the wider context of constitutional reform.

[Mr Straw]

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I recall that when that point was put to the Deputy Prime Minister in the debate on the Queen’s Speech and he was asked whether he accepted that there should be a pro rata reduction in the number of Ministers and aides, he refused to give any commitment at all.

Let me return to the issue of public inquiries. Back in 2003, when the present Prime Minister supported the system, he had an opportunity to have his case put before a local inquiry. Under the Bill, no such right will exist in the future. Instead, all that the public are offered is a longer period for written representations, which is no substitute whatever for a proper examination, including oral evidence, before a judicially qualified chairman.

The Deputy Prime Minister said in the House a few minutes ago that there was no evidence that such local inquiries had changed the original proposals from the Boundary Commission. Again, he is not woefully ill-briefed, because he has a fine set of officials, but he is woefully ill-informed. The Boundary Commission’s fifth report for 2007 reported that local public inquiries had led to change in the original recommendations in 64% —two thirds—of the cases where proposals had initially been made. The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head. That happens to be the case, and the source for that is the Boundary Commission.