Lord Mandelson
Debate between Simon Hoare and Emily Thornberry(5 days, 6 hours ago)
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Emily Thornberry
No, it is given to those who are making the decisions—as I understand it. The due diligence is done by the Cabinet Office. It does due diligence on a number of candidates, and then the decision is made as to which candidate will be put forward. Then it is announced. Then the vetting is done by the Foreign Office, and that information is handed back. I believe that that is the process. I think it is important, for clarity, that people know the process, because if we are about to get a large amount of information, it is important to understand how it worked.
Simon Hoare
The Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee is right in that respect. I will just quote from a letter from the Cabinet Secretary to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, which I chair:
“Due diligence is generally carried out by the appointing minister’s department (in this case it was carried out by the Cabinet Office on behalf of No 10) so is not usually shared with other departments, and was not in this case.”
That answers the question of whether the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office was involved; this was purely the Cabinet Office and No. 10, so the right hon. Lady is right. I just thought that that quote might help her in her argument.
Emily Thornberry
I thank the hon. Gentleman. Yes, I have read the letter—I am afraid I did not have it at my fingertips—but I think it is important to put all this information before the House.
The next question is, what does “vetting” mean? I appreciate that there are other processes that we cannot go into here, and it would not be appropriate to do so, but I hope it will be of help to the House to share another answer from the Foreign Affairs Committee session. In question 269, I said:
“The foundation of it seems to be that they have a form to fill in, you take it in good faith that they are filling that in correctly, and then you check what it is that they have said, so if they have omitted anything, no one is looking outside what is on the form.”
Sir Oliver Robbins then said:
“That is broadly correct, yes.”
That is vetting.
Scotland Bill
Debate between Simon Hoare and Emily Thornberry(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Emily Thornberry
The right hon. Gentleman will, I am sure, realise that we have all moved on in the last 100 years and that things change and we have become different people, but I think the majority of people in these islands identify as British. We saw that in the referendum result and the feelings expressed across the whole of this nation, and the important thing is that we remain a United Kingdom. With the devolution being introduced today, which will be a continuing devolution, we must nevertheless remain a United Kingdom. I believe I speak on behalf of the vast majority of people in Great Britain when I say that.
What concerns me about the Bill, however, is how the Sewel convention will be implemented. The Smith commission recommends that the Sewel convention be placed on a statutory footing. However, despite the Secretary of State’s contention that the Bill will implement the commission’s recommendations in full, in my view clause 2 falls short of fulfilling that promise.
In the 1998 debate on the Scotland Bill of that year, Lord Sewel said:
“However, as happened in Northern Ireland earlier in the century, we would expect a convention to be established that Westminster would not normally legislate with regard to devolved matters in Scotland without the consent of the Scottish parliament.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 July 1998; Vol. 592, c. 791.]
In seeking to put this convention on a statutory footing, the Bill uses identical language, stating that
“it is recognised that the Parliament of the United Kingdom will not normally legislate with regard to devolved matters without the consent of the Scottish Parliament.”
What does that mean? Does that mean we will not normally legislate with regard to devolved matters without the consent of the Scottish Parliament unless the UK Parliament does not like it? It seems rather an odd way of proceeding and it is a funny way to write the law.
In its report on the Government’s draft proposals, the House of Lords Constitution Committee described this in much more measured terms than I would. [Interruption.] It says
“the use of the word normally…is unusual in legislation and is undefined.”
[Interruption.] The Secretary of State, who is the only Scottish MP on the Government Benches, should listen: the House of Lords Constitution Committee says his legislation is nonsense, and he should listen.
The inevitable question is what the Government mean by “normally”. Language that may be appropriately applied to a convention may well be inappropriate in statute. For instance, we might pass legislation that says, “Normally, it is illegal to steal someone’s wallet”—except when it is legal—or, “Normally, millionaires should pay their fair share of tax”, although perhaps that is a bad example. How about this example, then? Legislation might say, “Normally, it would be illegal to blow up the Houses of Parliament,” but there might be circumstances in which it was legal. This is the legislation being put before us by the Government today.
Emily Thornberry
The normal response to silly questions like that is to pass on and not make comment, because the hon. Gentleman belittles himself and this place by descending to that.