Government Policy on the Proceedings of the House

Stephen Hammond Excerpts

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Mr Stephen Hammond.

[Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

I beg the hon. Gentleman’s pardon, but I think the Leader of the House was intending to come in next. Am I right?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)]

I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to make a short contribution to this debate. Like perhaps a number of Members, I was somewhat surprised to find us debating this issue today, when there are so many other things we should be debating, but you are absolutely right, Sir. As the shadow Leader of the House said, you are entrusted with grave responsibilities, and it is only right, when a Member of this House makes what is effectively a substantive complaint against the Government—essentially, that they disrespect this House—that you should call them to this House. I am grateful for that, because it allows those of us on the Government Benches to set out arguments that, as you will see, more or less demolish the proposition that has been put.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) quite rightly said that we need to look at the words of the motion, which says:

“That this House has considered the Government’s policy in relation to the proceedings of this House.”

There seem to me to be two ways one can tackle the motion. The first is to look, as he did, forensically at the debates in question, which the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) referred to yesterday. Anyone listening to my right hon. Friend’s speech would conclude that the Government clearly did not disrespect this House in any way.

There is another way of looking at this, which is to say, “What would be the basis for the charge?” There seem to me to be four things that the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland could complain about. The first is, “Are the Government allocating enough days to Opposition debates?” Is he saying that the Government are not taking part? Is his charge that failure to vote is in some way a slight or a breach of convention? Or is he just saying that the Government are ignoring the Opposition motions?

The shadow Leader of the House complained in her speech about the number of times she has to ask for days. The reality is that the number of days allocated to Opposition day debates has not changed since their introduction in 1998. Governments of all hues— Labour, coalition and Conservative—have observed the number of allocated days. Indeed, in the period 2010 to 2017, when the Opposition were entitled to 140 days, they were actually given 141 days. They were also given 24 more days in unallocated business that there was space for, so they cannot really claim that Opposition business is not being allocated the right number of days.

If the charge is about participation, then a number of colleagues from across the House have pointed out that they are participating, particularly on this side of the House. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said, on the day in question the Government fielded some of their most senior members. There were 11 speeches from the Opposition Benches and 10 from the Government’s, and in the second debate I think the figures were eight and 17. In both cases we had almost exactly the same number of speeches, so the charge of non-participation, which seems to be the thrust behind some of the contributions today, does not stack up. If this was the only time made available to debate such matters, that would be serious. It is not, of course. Tuition fees have been debated during ministerial statements and urgent questions, and in Westminster Hall. The subjects have been thoroughly debated by this House, and the charge of non-participation seems to me to be very difficult to prove.

The Government, as the Leader of the House said, take their responsibilities very seriously. If the Opposition really believe there is a need for more scrutiny, there is a way to secure more scrutiny and force the Government to defend their case, and that is by debating and voting on programme motions. The Opposition have chosen to debate only 15% of programme motions in the last seven years. If they really want more time, the Opposition could force the Government to come through the Lobby more often on programme motions, but they have chosen not to do so.

The third charge is that, somehow, by not voting the Government snubbed the House. On the two days that we are talking about, my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean and others have made the point that snubbing the Opposition was certainly not the reason for the Government’s not voting. It is absolutely true that no Government have ever been bound by convention or the rules of the House to vote on any motion, especially Opposition motions. As my right hon. Friend has said, it is clear that Government—the Leader of the House is, I believe, following this tradition—should consider each motion and debate as it comes. There is no reason why the Government should be committed to voting on any motion, and my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House was right to resist the temptations offered by the Scottish National party to commit herself to that.

[Lady Hermon]

I am not suggesting that the Government snubbed this House, but the fact that they did not vote on lifting the pay cap left uncertainty for thousands and thousands of nurses and doctors throughout the United Kingdom. [Interruption.] If I may, I will continue. At the end of that debate when the Government did not vote, after the DUP had indicated that it would not be supporting them, there was no point of order to clarify the situation. I have scores of constituents in Northern Ireland, where we have no devolved Assembly. We need a lead from this House, and we did not get one. The problem is not the snub but the ambiguity, because this is not an academic point of argument; it affects people’s lives.

[Stephen Hammond]

The charge of ambiguity is a serious one, but it does not hold up. The Government Front-Bench team answered that question when they responded to the motion, so I do not think that that charge can really be levelled against the Government.

In the short time that I have left, let me make the point that as a Government Back Bencher, I have experienced the frustration of sitting here with my colleagues until all hours of the night, only to find that no vote takes place. On the question of votes, it is for individual Members to make their minds up, as my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) said. We are elected here as individuals, and we can follow our wits, if we choose to do so. We are often urged to do so, and many people choose to do so, but it is for us to make that decision. Equally, it is for the Government to choose, motion by motion, when they should vote.

Finally, Opposition days can be used to raise matters of national importance, but all too often—not necessarily in this case—they are used for narrow party political posturing rather than a discussion of real quality. If a motion is about a matter of national importance, it is often phrased in a way that the Government find provocative or difficult to support. Many Governments have taken the view that they need to note what an Opposition day motion says, but ever since 1978, when the Conservative Opposition twice defeated the then Labour Government, it has become an established custom of this House that Opposition days are nothing more than advisory, and that they are not actionable. Although the Government should take note of the motions and continue to debate the issues raised in them—I have no doubt that that will happen under my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House—they are advisory and the Government are not bound by them in any way.

This has been an interesting debate, but what today has shown—my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean pointed this out—is that, in the case of the two debates mentioned by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, the charge does not stand. If we look behind the four possible arguments for saying that the Government are not listening on Opposition days, it is very difficult to contend that his proposition stands, so I hope Members will vote to defeat it this evening.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) shows how little he understands the matter when he suggests that we will be voting on this, because we cannot vote on it.

We do not have a written constitution in this country, and that is why we need to be very careful about the way in which we operate our conventions. For instance, nowhere, even in statute law, does it say that the Prime Minister has to be a Member of Parliament—a Member of the House of Commons, or indeed a Member of either House of Parliament. That is not written down, but it is an accepted part of the way our constitutional settlement works.

That is why I say to Government Members, despite all the huff and puff today, that they need to be very careful about how they play around with the conventions at the heart of our political constitution. We have a system under which the winner takes all. Even if a party gets only 35% or 42% of the vote and does not have a majority of seats, if it manages to form the Government it gets to decide when Parliament sits, when the Queen’s Speech is, what is in the Queen’s Speech, what gets debated and how long it is debated for. The hon. Gentleman is wrong to say that we could add extra hours by debating programme motions. We cannot table a programme motion, and if we force a debate on one—

[Stephen Hammond]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I am not going to give way to the hon. Gentleman. I have not even finished the point I was making.

[Stephen Hammond]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could just wait a moment. We do not get any extra time. If we use up time debating a programme motion, we are only taking time out of the main debate, so I will not give way to him on that point.

[Stephen Hammond]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way on a different point?

[Chris Bryant]

I am not going to give way to the hon. Gentleman. He should understand that I am not going to give way to him on that point.

Only the Government can introduce legislation and be certain to get it debated. Once a private Member’s Bill has been given a Second Reading, it can proceed further only if the Government table the relevant motions, even if it was assented to by the whole House or by a significant majority, as happened during the last Parliament. Only the Government can amend a tax or a duty, and only the Government can table motions in relation to expenditure. It is a case of winner takes all, and that places a very special responsibility on every single member of the governing party.

I worry that this is all part of a trend. Of itself, this is not the biggest issue in the universe—of course it is not—but it is part of a trend in this Parliament since, I would say, 2010. The golden thread that runs through our parliamentary system is government by consent. It is not about the Government deciding everything because they have managed to take it all by winning, but about government by consent and the sovereignty of Parliament. Whatever the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean says—he and I have had many debates over many years—the truth of the matter is that the Government knew they were going to lose the vote and that is why they decided not to vote. That was absolutely clear, and it was what all the Whips were saying throughout the day.

The latest trick that the Government are playing in this winner-takes-it-all system—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) really should not lead with his chin on that issue. Their latest trick is to increase the payroll vote in Parliament. In this country, we have more Government Ministers than France, Germany and Italy put together—or, for that matter, than India, Pakistan and Australia put together. We have a vast number of Ministers. In addition, the Government now have 46 Parliamentary Private Secretaries, as well as 15 Government MPs who are trade envoys. All this is an exercise of patronage to make sure they hold on to power. If we look at the percentage of the governing party that that has represented since 1992, the interesting fact is that this is now the highest percentage ever, with more than 50% of Government MPs being part of the payroll vote. That is a despicable process for the Government to have adopted.

The right hon. Member for Forest of Dean said that the Opposition should have tabled a motion early in the year, so as to prevent the student fees regulations from coming into force. But the convention of this House, which he knows perfectly well, has always been that if the Leader of the Opposition prays against a statutory instrument—secondary legislation—the Government will provide time, in Government time, on the Floor of the House for a debate and vote within the timescale, so that the legislation can be prevented from coming into force if that is the will of the House. The Government’s Chief Whip refused to do that. When I asked, and when the shadow Leader of the House asked repeatedly, when we were going to get that debate, we were met with a consistent refusal.

This is a big breach of our constitutional rights in this House. In the last 12 instances when the Leader of the Opposition has prayed against, only five have led to the granting of debates and votes, and three of those were debates in Committee, where even if every single member of the Committee, including the Government Whip, voted no, the legislation would still go through because all the Committee is allowed to consider, under our rules, is whether or not the matter has been debated. In other words, it is the height of cheek—the most brass neck imaginable—to try to blame the Opposition for not providing time to debate statutory instruments laid down by the Government. That is why I say that hon. Members on the Government Benches should think very carefully about this business of whether the Government simply decide, when they think they are going to lose on a motion—a Back-Bench motion, an Opposition motion or any other kind of motion—to up sticks and say, “Oh well, it doesn’t really matter. It’s the kind of motion that doesn’t matter.”

There have been two other Back-Bench motions that I could cite in the last Parliament. One was on Magnitsky, tabled by the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab); the other, tabled by the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard), was on circus animals. The Government knew they would lose in both cases. They decided not to vote. So there was a unanimous vote in favour, and the Government have done absolutely nothing.

You should just beware. If you think we are Marxist Bolivarians, what will we do when we have these powers?