All-party Parliamentary Groups

Rosie Winterton Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Scottish National party spokesperson.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

I agree with many of the points made—particularly those made by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton)—and fully support the report’s aims in respect of transparency and financial accountability. However, I have a few concerns, similar to those expressed by my hon. Friend. For example, I am the trade envoy to the western Balkans, which is six countries. I happen also to be an officer or a member of those six country APPGs, which I think is advantageous to my role as the trade envoy. It may be that showing an interest in those countries before I was appointed to be an envoy played a part in my appointment. I do think it is important that I take an interest in those all-party groups because they give me wider knowledge and an interest in aspects of those countries other than their trade and economy.

I am also an officer of a number of other APPGs, usually because of a personal interest or because they are relevant to my constituency. I am a vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Iceland because my constituency is heavily reliant on its trading relationship with Iceland; thousands of my constituents who work in seafood processing are totally reliant on supplies of fish from Iceland. There seems to be a particular logic to that. I am a member of those APPGs because of the trade envoy role, interest in the countries or relevance to my constituency, but why should that stop me from being the treasurer of the all-party parliamentary group on heritage rail? I happen to have a passion for steam railways, some of which are in Wales, I say to the Chair of the Standards Committee. The restriction on membership to six APPGs is perhaps over-egging the pudding to some extent. There is an issue with transparency in some APPGs, but we are perhaps looking for problems that do not exist.

On the issue of 20 Members being a member of an all-party group, on the face of it, that would seem perfectly possible. However, some all-party groups deal with illness and disease—virtually every illness or disease known to man probably has an all-party group. There are the headline ones such as strokes, cancers and so on, but some are rather obscure illnesses that may have affected Members, or their families, who have a particular passion to deal with that and to work with the charities and support groups. To find 20 members could be challenging and make it a little more difficult to do that important work.

The report says:

“There appears to be the real possibility of APPGs having been set up at the suggestion of, and as a result of lobbying by, a commercial interest.”

I set up the all-party parliamentary group on freeports a number of years ago because it was a policy concept I wanted to push that would be beneficial to my constituency and others. We have seen the Government adopt the freeport policies around the country. I set that up because I thought it was advantageous to my constituency, not because I was being lobbied by any commercial interest. However, I was aware that commercial interests were interested in the establishment of freeports—port operators being the obvious candidate. I agree wholeheartedly with the vast majority of what is proposed, but, in respect of the points I have made, it goes too far. I certainly support the suggestion by the Father of the House that we delay a final decision on this.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Chair of the Standards Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

The hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) is not giving way.

[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.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Sorry, could you do that again?

[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]

Having said that, I now feel that I have been discourteous and I am going to give way to the hon. Gentleman.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) refers to the guide to the rules on all-party parliamentary groups. I went out to try to get a copy of this document from the Vote Office and was able to get one copy, but there were no other copies available. The Vote Office is currently trying to print more copies. Considering how few Members there are in the Chamber, it seems most unsatisfactory that we have such a small number of copies of the guide to the rules, which extends to a very large number of pages. Why can we not all see this before we reach a conclusion?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

What is the point of order?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

This debate should not conclude until all Members present have had an opportunity to read the guide to the rules on all-party parliamentary groups, a copy of which is not yet available to every Member.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I have received no other complaints from hon. and right hon. Members that they do not have a copy. As the hon. Gentleman says, he has not been here for the whole debate, so he has not heard a lot of the other arguments. It is a bit discourteous to keep disrupting the debate in this way. We should allow the Chair of the Standards Committee to finish his speech without interruption through points of order, which is a poor approach when we are having a debate. The hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) is on the Panel of Chairs, so I hope he would understand.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

I will come on to the Panel of Chairs a little later.

I rather enjoyed that point of order, because I think the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) is complaining that he has a copy of the relevant document that he wanted.

APPGs are great, but we have too many. There is a great deal of duplication, and I suspect we are all guilty. Many of us end up creating another new APPG on another new medical condition that is somewhat similar to other APPGs, and so on. Colleagues are often a bit naughty in trying to make every APPG publication look remarkably like a Select Committee report, knowing perfectly well that, when it is referred to on the “Today” programme or on ITV, the APPG will be referred to almost identically as a “Committee of MPs,” which is unfortunate because we should rigorously protect the authority of Select Committees and official communications of the whole House.

As I said earlier, I sometimes feel that APPGs are the soft underbelly of the way we do parliamentary lobbying. One Member, who I am not naming—I do not even know who it is—is an officer of 88 all-party parliamentary groups, and I do not think they could possibly do due diligence on all 88 groups.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Chris Bryant]

I am not giving way again. I am really sorry, but I have been trying to leave the stage for some time.

This is the next scandal coming down the line. I know that the vast majority of Members want to address the matter. We cannot possibly do so if we remain with 762 all-party parliamentary groups. That is more than there are Members of this House. It is almost as many Members as there are in the other place. If a group cannot get five people to an AGM, it probably is not really an APPG and should not have the imprimatur that the APPG title guarantees it. I urge the House to support these measures today. Actually, the authority is vested in the Committee; it does not need to be agreed to by the House, but we thought that it was best for the House to be able to take a view as well.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Father of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.