House of Commons Disqualification (Amendment) Bill
Debate between Sarah Wollaston and Peter Bone(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Bone
My hon. Friend hits on an important point. One of the problems in this Parliament is that someone who does not agree with the line of the Executive or the shadow Executive cannot get on to such Committees. That happens because Whips nominate the membership of Committees, but a side benefit of my Bill would be that that would end, because there would be no Whips.
Unlike in many other countries, the Executive live within Parliament, rather than outside it. They propose from within Parliament, and sit, live and breathe within it. Over the years, people have therefore sought election to Parliament not to become Members of Parliament, but to become Ministers. They want to be either a Minister in government, or a shadow Minister in opposition. In the vast majority of cases, people who are elected to the House of Commons want to be a Member of Parliament not for its own end, but as a method to become a Minister. That gives enormous control to Government and Opposition Whips. If someone proposes to exercise their judgment against what the Whips want, they will rapidly be given the threat that their career will be over and they will never become a Minister—I think that I have probably qualified for that advice.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that that leads to a form of creeping patronage? Mechanisms such as negative briefings are also used, and I was subject to a hostile Culture, Media and Sport briefing that was sent around. That goes to the heart of a culture in the House that undermines the integrity of individual hon. Members.
Mr Bone
My hon. Friend is not quite correct. The Question on the motion was put, but because nobody expressed dissent, it was carried by the collection of voices. Many of us who returned especially to vote on that were delighted that there was no opposition.
My argument about that day is that the Whips should not have attempted to influence support for the actions of my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin, as the debate was Back-Bench business. The Whips should simply have butted out. The Bill would make it impossible for such pressure to be applied in the future because Members of Parliament could not be Whips. Instances of such behaviour abound and we all know several Members whose careers have been significantly affected by the actions of the Whips Office. It is, sadly, a simple fact of parliamentary life that even the size of the room a Member gets depends on how much they have pleased the Whips. My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering is still in a shoebox.
As for disinformation, let me give the House an example, particularly in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston). I know that Whips deliberately misinformed hon. Members about the facts relating to the new Backbench Business Committee by sending out an e-mail out that claimed the Committee always held its business on a Thursday and decided the topic under discussion only a few days before. That was sent out by the Whips as authoritative fact, although it was completely and utterly untrue. It was intended to rubbish the new Committee because that Committee put business before the House that the Whips did not want to see debated.
It is astonishing to think that in an age where employees have more rights than ever before and workplace bullying has, thankfully, become increasingly unacceptable, Members are still treated in such a manner. If I were to treat my staff in this way for even an instant I would, quite rightly, be taken to an employment tribunal, yet it is through these often underhand methods that Whips ensure that the Executive line is strictly obeyed, and that the public are therefore denied the independent-minded Members of Parliament and, indeed, the Parliament that they deserve.
The situation is worse in coalition Governments, as Whips often force Members to vote in totally the opposite way to what their party manifesto stated on issues that they stood on at the last election. Although Liberal Members signed a pledge before the last election not to increase tuition fees, they were forced by their Whips to do completely the opposite when they were in government. Equally, Conservative Members who stood on a platform opposing the alternative vote were forced by the Whips to vote for a Bill on a referendum for the alternative vote system.
Let me give a personal example of Whips’ tactics. In the last parliamentary term, on 30 March 2011, a Whip sent out an e-mail, which I will read out:
“I regret to have to inform colleagues that we are all required tonight after 7pm on a strict 3-line whip with respect to a Motion by the Leader of the House to which an amendment has been tabled by Mr Peter Bone and others so it is now votable. Unless you have previously been slipped by me, your presence is required.”
The e-mail was sent out to every Conservative Member of Parliament. Not only did it cause great embarrassment, but it was factually incorrect and misleading—another example of misinformation. The e-mail received an understandably negative response from my colleagues, including a Minister who had to return from an important meeting because of the Whip’s action. After I contacted many of my colleagues and explained the true situation, they were appalled that the Whips had ever sent out such an e-mail. What was so outrageous was that the Whip was trying to influence Members of Parliament about a matter relating to House of Commons business which was of no concern to the Executive and entirely the responsibility of Parliament. Of course, though, that is insignificant compared with some of the other episodes in which the Whips have involved themselves.
That is not to say that all Whips behave in such a manner, and nor is it to say—this is a response to an earlier intervention—that the Whips do not perform useful functions, but it is the Whips Office that performs those useful functions. We do not need Members of Parliament to be Whips. We can get civil servants, who are currently employed in the Whips Office anyway, to carry out the administrative necessities. There is nothing that the Whips do that could not be done by civil servants, if there was a business of the House committee. The only thing left for them to do would be the strong-arming tactics of trying to tell people how to vote.
Dr Wollaston
I thank my hon. Friend. In these challenging financial times, has he estimated how much this would cost the taxpayer, and does he think that it would deliver value for money?
Education and Health
Debate between Sarah Wollaston and Peter Bone(14 years, 5 months ago)
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Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for letting me catch your eye when so many hon. Members wish to do the same.
I thank the hon. Members for Chippenham (Duncan Hames) and for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) for their passionate speeches about education. I come to the House with little political experience, but as a doctor and teacher selected through an open primary, the first in the country to give every voter in a constituency the chance to select their candidate. I would also like to thank my predecessor, Anthony Steen. He served this House for an extraordinary 36 years. He is not the sort to retire, and I wish him well in his continuing fight against the evils of human trafficking.
I am very fortunate to represent one of the most spectacular and diverse constituencies in this country. The Totnes constituency stretches from the hill farms of Dartmoor to the most stunning of west country coastlines, which supports a diverse tourist and fishing industry. Many people may not realise this, but more fish are landed at Brixham than at any other port in England—and I hope all Members will join me in recognising the adverse effect of the common fisheries policy on our fishing industry.
Dr Wollaston
Thank you.
We are also home to “Transition Town Totnes”, which is the home of the transition towns movement. As such, it recognises not only the problem of climate change, but problem of the peak oil; it is planning ahead for a time when we no longer have abundant or cheap fossil fuels.
In the South Hams, we also have some of the most spectacular countryside, but I have to inform Members that that countryside is in crisis. We are fast losing our sustainability as more and more dairy farms in particular go out of business because of the problems of bovine tuberculosis. Devon is, in fact, at the very heart of the bovine TB epidemic. As a doctor, I have to tell Members that we cannot treat infected badgers by vaccination. Vaccination can only hope to prevent the disease in unaffected individuals. I have been teaching junior doctors evidence-based medicine for 11 years, and I can say that one of the problems we face is that the randomised badger culling trial has for years wrongly been used to justify a policy of inaction. Unless we do something about bovine TB, more and more of our farmers will go out of business. We need to recognise the effect on them and their families, and the very real distress bovine TB causes them.
The main reason why I came to this House is because I feel passionately about our NHS and the patients it treats. I welcome the proposals in the Gracious Speech to get rid of top-down bureaucracy in the NHS and to hand power back to clinicians on the front line.
In my constituency, we have four community hospitals, and I would like to pay tribute to their staff, and also their volunteers, for the work that they do. I hope that giving patients a louder voice in our NHS will prove to be the best protection for community hospitals, because people, particularly those in rural constituencies, really value them. I hope Members will support me in this endeavour.
There is another issue I wish to highlight, which affects not only my constituents, but those of all Members. After the tragedy of the Paddington rail disaster in which 31 people lost their lives, we rightly held a public inquiry and that led to the setting up of the Rail Safety and Standards Board, and after 3,000 terrible deaths in the USA, we joined a “Global War on Terror”, so what should we say should happen after 15,000 to 20,000 deaths every year in this country as a result of alcohol? I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron), who has chaired the Select Committee on Health. It has recommended minimum-price alcohol as the best way forward. That may not be popular—in fact, in suggesting that we cull diseased badgers and raise the price of alcohol, it is clear that I am going for the popular vote! However, unless we do something about this, our constituents will continue to suffer. Let us look at the statistics: 1.3 million children in this country are directly affected by alcohol, and alcohol is a factor in half of all homicides. Members also need only consider the number of constituents they see in their surgeries who are victims of domestic violence. Alcohol continues to be the number one date-rape drug in this country, too. I ask all Members to look at the evidence, so we can have evidence-based politics.
The evidence is out there, and it is very clear. If we want to do something about the death toll—15,000 to 20,000 people a year in this country—we have to do something about price and availability. This is not about the nanny state; lives are at stake, and I ask the House to look again at the evidence, not only from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence report issued today, but from its own Select Committee. I commend minimum-price alcohol to the House.
There is no such thing as cheap alcohol; we are all paying a very heavy price.