Conflict Decisions and Constitutional Reform

Stephen Twigg Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2014 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

indicated dissent.

[Dr Coffey]

The hon. Gentleman is shaking his head, so I will accept that. I will do some more work. It is, however, right that we put power back more locally. I simply sound a note of caution. I grew up in Liverpool in the 1980s. That is why I became a Conservative: it is thanks to Derek Hatton. When the council had control of all the different levers, dare I say it, a lot of tax rates went up and a lot of people and businesses left. It is one reason why the population dropped suddenly, as those people went to other areas around Liverpool to escape the high-tax regime.

I apologise to hon. Members: I said I would speak for a short time, but this is probably one of the longest speeches I have made in Parliament. The topics are interesting, and having two debates in one is a novel and wonderful idea.

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I am trying to resist the temptation to be drawn into a debate about Liverpool. All I will say in response to the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) is that the current Labour council there, led by Mayor Joe Anderson, is hosting an international festival of business, attracting business, and working well with central Government through its city deal.

I join others in paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) for his brilliant chairmanship of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, and to all members of that Committee for their work. That work is critical to our efforts to address the issue my hon. Friend spoke of at the end of his speech. Frankly, there is a crisis in our democracy because of the disconnect that people feel between their life and what we politicians do, in this place and more generally.

It is good to set that as the frame for our debate on these two important, thorough and rigorous reports by the Committee. Each report is on an issue of profound significance for our constitutional arrangements, and both concern the fundamental principles on which our system is built. I shall address them in turn.

I will begin by talking about Parliament’s role in decisions about conflict and war. As other hon. Members have said, it is an issue that goes to the heart of how our constitution can ensure the effective separation of powers, a long-standing and vital principle that ensures that the judiciary, the Executive and the legislature have separate roles and functions, so as to protect the nation and its people from tyranny. The power to deploy troops in a conflict situation goes to the heart of the principle of the separation of powers.

As my hon. Friend has said and as the report acknowledges, this is a difficult issue. We want the flexibility that the royal prerogative has allowed the Executive, but as democrats we rightly expect that Parliament, on behalf of the people, should have a say. At the same time, as the report acknowledges, there are enormous challenges in keeping the courts out of decisions about peace and war, as those are rightly decisions to be made by elected politicians. The powers that derive from the royal prerogative remain, in a sense, an oddity of our parliamentary democracy. The constitutional writer A.V. Dicey said that they are the

“residue of arbitrary and discretionary authority”.

I do not think that prerogative powers sit easily with our modern concepts of democracy, and those of us who favour further reform feel slightly uneasy about them.

Nevertheless, the power to deploy troops is a prerogative power and is arguably the one of utmost importance. The decision to take military action should never be taken lightly. It is literally a decision of life or death, and as others have said, it can have long-lasting consequences for our nation. As my hon. Friend said, we need to learn lessons about how to do things better in this regard in future. Putting our troops in harm’s way should not be a decision made without due diligence and consultation.

There is a case to be made that the convention that has developed in recent years that Parliament should be consulted on such decisions shows the maturity and flexibility of our constitution. My hon. Friend reminded us of the events in the build-up to the war in Iraq 11 years ago, and in his exchanges with the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) we relived those moments. What was clear was that we had a vote in 2003; indeed, as the hon. Gentleman said, we had several. That, in a sense, was unprecedented and has created the new convention, which is crucial to this debate. Since then, when action was taken in Libya, Parliament was consulted immediately afterwards, and, as we have already heard, a potentially momentous constitutional moment occurred when the Government attempted to secure parliamentary support for action in Syria. Parliament did not provide that support, and the Prime Minister rightly said that he respected its decision.

The report sets out in a helpful way the options for taking the matter forward. One option is simply to have a strong convention—a development of the convention that has built up over the past 11 years from the experiences on Iraq, Libya and Syria. Others advocate new legislation. The report proposes that Parliament adopt a resolution. The Deputy Prime Minister has said that there are wide-ranging views on the matter, and suggested that he would support attempting to make the convention as strong and solid as possible, but we know that previously the Foreign Secretary intimated that legislation may be the preferable route.

Of course, it would be best to have a single view from Government. I do not say that in a partisan sense, as this is clearly a matter of utmost importance, and it is right that it be debated within the Government, as well as in Parliament. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North acknowledged, the decision to deploy troops is a difficult one, which sometimes has to be made very quickly and may sometimes be unpopular but nevertheless be deemed necessary.

One concern is that putting the convention into legislation could open such decisions up to judicial review. Although the courts have previously made it clear that certain royal prerogative powers should not be challenged through judicial review, where there is legislation there is always the potential for judicial review.

The report also points out, as did several contributions to the debate, that there are definitional issues. The nature of war has changed fundamentally since the 19th century, and indeed since the 20th century. There is a vast array of different operational options. My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) spoke about Helmand; the action there was in the middle of the conflict in Afghanistan, so would that be covered by legislation on this issue? The threats we face in the 21st century are real and dangerous, and no Member would want us to compromise on security.

My view is that the report’s proposal of a parliamentary resolution is interesting and should be considered seriously. Questions remain that would have to be thought through thoroughly with independent legal advice. Would the resolution merely state that Parliament must be consulted, or would it give Parliament the power of veto? What language would be used to cover the definitional issues? It is critical that we work together on the matter, on a cross-party basis. The Labour party is happy to take the issue forward, working both with the Select Committee and with the two Government parties to see whether we can achieve consensus, based on the Committee’s proposal for a resolution.

I turn to the second report, which assesses the case for a constitutional convention. I welcome the diligent work and research that the Committee and its staff have obviously undertaken in producing the report. It goes without saying that it comes at a critical time. We are fewer than 100 days away from the people of Scotland going to the ballot box to decide the issue of independence.

Our view is that the United Kingdom has been a successful political union. The Acts of Union in 1707 brought our countries together and placed power in this place, the Westminster Parliament. Since then, the rules and principles of our constitution have evolved. The report quotes Professor Vernon Bogdanor, and it is worth repeating what he says, as it is often forgotten quite how much constitutional reform there has been in the past two decades:

“We have all been living through an unprecedented period of constitutional change, an era of constitutional reform which began in 1997 and shows no sign of coming to an end.”

After such a period of transition, and with seemingly more change on the horizon, there are strong arguments in favour of having a constitutional convention to discuss the direction we are heading in, to give a voice to the whole United Kingdom, and to ask the most basic question: what can we do better? I very much support the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North that any further constitutional change should be rooted in the two principles of union and devolution.

The report helpfully looks at international examples of such conventions. In Iceland, a national forum took place four years ago, involving 950 citizens selected randomly from across the country. In an age in which the public feel disconnected from their politics, such an initiative has real attraction. In Canada, which established a citizens’ assembly, the fact that the public felt involved clearly meant the process had some worth, even though the final proposals were not implemented in practice.

At the same time, there are reasons for caution. In his evidence, Iain McLean pointed out that successful conventions usually require overwhelming political support for change. Setting up a convention without the political will for change risks creating a fine exercise in democratic citizenship, but without an outcome at the end. There is a danger that we could see the existing disenchantment with politics worsen.

As the report acknowledges, there needs to be a question for a convention to answer, but there also needs to be a broad political coalition that wants the answer to that question. The example I want to highlight is the Scottish constitutional convention before 1997. At that time, there was a clear commitment from the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats and a large swathe of Scottish civil society to the principle of devolution. The convention was therefore asked not to answer the question, “Devolution—yes or no?” but to say what Scottish devolution should look like, and that proved a great success.

The Labour party is therefore not against the idea of a convention outright, but more groundwork needs to be done on exactly what question we need to answer. There is—let us be frank about this—no lack of potential questions, and my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North described some of them: the English question; the West Lothian question; further devolution to the nations of the United Kingdom; devolution to the regions and the cities of England; localism; regionalism; broader political reform; and reform of this place, including, crucially, of the second Chamber.

We may well be coming to an appropriate moment for a constitutional convention, but further groundwork needs to be done to make sure it has a clear remit for change and is supported by as wide a political consensus as possible. A convention must not be an exercise in kicking difficult issues into the long grass; however, if it provides an opportunity to engage the people of the United Kingdom in a serious debate about how we best improve our democracy, it is certainly an option worth considering.