petitions
Debate between Simon Hart and John Bercow
Mr Speaker
Order. Will Members leave the Chamber in a seemly manner? Ministers and Whips will not conduct noisy conversations with each other, because they will want to show the same respect to the hon. Gentleman as they would wish to be extended to them in comparable circumstances. I take that as a contrite smile from the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes).
Female genital mutilation
Debate between Simon Hart and John Bercow
Mr Speaker
Order. Will Members leave the Chamber in a seemly manner? Ministers and Whips will not conduct noisy conversations with each other, because they will want to show the same respect to the hon. Gentleman as they would wish to be extended to them in comparable circumstances. I take that as a contrite smile from the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes).
Simon Hart
I am pleased to be able to present this petition from the Tenby and district branch of Soroptimist International, urging the Government to do all that they can to stop female genital mutilation.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of the UK,
Declares that the Petitioners believe that not enough is being done to stop the illegal practice of female genital mutilation, and further that a Petition on this subject has received over 2,600 signatures.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to do more to stop female genital mutilation and to encourage other countries to stop this practice.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001349]
Upland Sheep Farmers
Debate between Simon Hart and John Bercow(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)
I apologise for not being here at the beginning of the debate. There has been a lot of talk about sheep, but I hope that the Minister also recognises that the dairy industry has been significantly affected. In some cases, cattle condition and milk yields have gone down as a result of the weather, so perhaps the banks and the companies that—
Mr Speaker
Order. Let me just say to the hon. Gentleman that I understand that his intention is good, and why he wants to draw a parallel, but I am afraid that it is not relevant. We are on sheep farmers and we must stick to that, not start to stray into other matters, which he has done.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Simon Hart and John Bercow(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
Order. The question is specifically about West Worcestershire, and Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire is a little distance from there.
House of Lords Reform
Debate between Simon Hart and John Bercow(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)
As is pretty obvious to people who know me well, I am not an academic, a lawyer or a constitutional expert, which puts me in a minority of probably one for the purposes of this evening. However, I am a pragmatist from west Wales, and in that spirit I want to offer something constructive to the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), of whom I have grown rather fond during the past 14 months as we have discussed one constitutional matter after another. Some of my best friends are estate agents and car salesmen, and much as I know them well, like them and enjoy their company— indeed, I was one at one stage—it does not necessarily mean that at the end of the day I want to buy what they have on offer. I fear, and I hope my hon. Friend will forgive me for saying so, that this moment is no different.
Given the limited time that we have, I thought it would be helpful to summarise the debate. I have sat through 50-odd contributions and for the sake of something different to say, I jotted down what I thought the debate had shown. A snapshot of the views expressed across the Chamber reveals that this is not about Lords reform but about parliamentary reform, abolition of the Lords and the relationship between the Lords and this place, between us and the devolved Assemblies and between us and voters. Those are serious matters. This is not some throw-away matter that we can loosely describe to the press as a process of kicking out a few old duffers. This deserves to be taken more seriously.
Another point that has been raised is that there would be long-term effects. There are long-term questions that need to be answered and arguments that have not been properly addressed, and I hope that the Minister will have the opportunity to reply to them. What failure in the upper House are we seeking to remedy? How will elected Members succeed where unelected ones have apparently failed? What improvements are we hoping to achieve? We seem fixated on how the House of Lords, or whatever it will be called, will look, rather than what it should do. That is the nub of the matter, and I must say that this afternoon’s debate has simply confirmed my fears in that respect.
On the other hand, the Government have attempted to make the case that the Lords “lacks sufficient democratic authority”. Mind you, so do many other institutions in which the nation happily puts its trust. That is an absolutely fair accusation if that is what we seek. There have been enough contributions from around the Chamber and the other place to suggest that that is not what we seek, so we must be very careful not to justify these measures purely on the basis of that argument.
There appears to be no public appetite for this, and people have dismissed public appetite as somehow irrelevant. They say, “It may be boring, but it’s important.” Well, many things we do here are boring and important, and some are boring and unimportant, but this is actually boring and very important. I wonder what my friends in The Eagle in Narberth would say tonight if they flicked over from the tennis and saw me standing here. When they are trying to cling on to their public service jobs, or hold on to their house, or get an operation in their local hospital, they will think—I apologise for looking at the camera if this is the case—that this is yet another example of some self-indulgent activity that contributes to people’s disinterest in and indifference to politicians of whatever nature, either elected in this House or unelected in the other.
There seems to be almost no parliamentary support for the proposals, judging by the statistics in the House of Lords and in this place. There appears to be some coalition interest, and we can only speculate why that might be. There are profound long-term constitutional consequences that need further examination. We are told that there would be significant costs, which one estimate puts in the region of £433 million. I hope that the Minister will reflect on the comments that have been made this afternoon and follow the recommendation that many Members have made, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns), which is to proceed with great caution, go for a free vote and remember that it was not long ago that we suggested to the Labour Government that there was a fine line between constitutional reform, which we all support, and constitutional vandalism, which we accused them of achieving. We should bear in mind the wonderful words of the Prime Minister, whom I also commend, who rightly said that this was a fourth-term issue.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Simon Hart and John Bercow(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Simon Hart
At present, IPSA costs the taxpayer more than its predecessor and employs one member of staff for every nine Members of Parliament. Its bureaucracy is so complicated that it takes staff roughly 1,700 calls a week to unravel its complexities. Does the Leader of the House consider that to be progress, and could he do the taxpayer a great service by offering assistance in haste to the parliamentary standards—
Mr Speaker
Order. I think we have got the gist of it, but the hon. Gentleman’s question was too long.
Fixed-term Parliaments Bill
Debate between Simon Hart and John Bercow(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Simon Hart
The hon. Gentleman is suggesting that fixing the term at five years automatically favours the Government of the day, whereas it can of course have the opposite effect. Does he agree with me, as did some of the witnesses who appeared before our Committee, that by tying themselves into a five-year fixed term, the Government might find that the election coincides with a rather dismal period in the opinion polls, giving great advantage to the Opposition? I thought that that evidence was given to the Select Committee—
Mr Speaker
Order. We are grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but his intervention is getting rather long.