House of Lords Reform Bill
Stephen Williams Excerpts(12 years, 3 months ago)
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Conor Burns
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the situation is unsustainable and untenable, and that is why many of us are in favour of reform: we are in favour of introducing a mechanism for peers to retire; we are in favour of a limit on their numbers; and we are in favour of strengthening the independent House of Lords Appointments Commission. In short, we are in favour of some of the excellent ideas contained in his right hon. Friend Lord Steel’s draft Bill.
Let us deal with the issue of how we legislate for our supremacy. What are the candidates going to do? Are they going to say to their electorates, “Vote for me, for I have no ideas, I am not going to publish a manifesto, I am not going to tell you what I am going to do if I go to the House of Lords”? Of course they are not. We cannot legislate for the supremacy of this House when another House is elected, and some of the people who tell us that we can are the same people who told us that we could insert clauses into the Maastricht treaty that would guarantee stability in the eurozone. We are setting off on the conveyor belt to conflict between this House and the other place, and it is an unsightly and an unseemly act for a Government to carry out.
I have always had a reverence for the institutions of our country and a profound love of history. The right hon. Member for South Shields (David Miliband), the former Foreign Secretary, who has now left the Chamber, talked about this place and about showing it to young people, and when they come here they see how our democracy has evolved and the battles that previous generations of parliamentarians waged to have this place as the supreme will of the people. When we slam the door in Black Rod’s face, that is not some pantomime theatre; that is an assertion of our historic belief in the power and rights of this Chamber.
Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)
I thank my hon. colleague for giving way. When he takes his constituents, schoolchildren or otherwise, into the other place, does he think that they all find it extraordinary that the people who sit there are completely unelected—or do they think that it is wonderful?
Oral Answers to Questions
Stephen Williams Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)
Hundreds of my constituents who work for Aardman Animations, Europe’s largest animation company, were delighted by the reference to Wallace and Gromit in yesterday’s Budget. Does my hon. Friend agree that the extension of film tax credits to the TV and animation industries is important not only for maintaining British talent and ingenuity in Bristol and other places in our country, but so that children grow up watching programmes that are made in Britain and sound as though they are made in Britain?
Mr Vaizey
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was privileged to visit Aardman’s headquarters. I gather that it has just held the premiere of “The Pirates!”, its new film. Those in the House with young children may want to go and see it. He is right that the proposal is about keeping talent in this country.
Business of the House
Stephen Williams Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Sir George Young
On the first point, it is indeed our intention to phase out the detention of children, and I will draw the Home Secretary’s attention to the matter. I will also raise the second issue with the appropriate Minister—either the Home Secretary or the Foreign Secretary.
Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)
I do not know whether the Leader of the House reads The Times over breakfast, but if he does, this morning he will have noticed that the share price of News Corp has fallen by 3.6% and that companies as diverse as Ford, the Co-op, Butlins and, I am pleased to say, the state-controlled Lloyds Banking Group have withdrawn their advertising from the News of the World. Will he ask a Cabinet Office colleague to make a statement to the House on the level of Government expenditure on advertising with News International titles? Where private business and investors have given a lead, could not the Government now follow?
Sir George Young
I read a digital version of The Times at 5.30 this morning, but I am not sure that all the advertisements appear in the digital version. However, my hon. Friend raises an important issue about whether the Government should continue to sponsor advertisements when the private sector has acted as he mentioned. I will raise the matter urgently with the Minister for the Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr Maude), and see whether the House can be kept in the picture.
Business of the House
Stephen Williams Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)
The Government’s tobacco control strategy is at an advanced stage of preparedness and I understand that it will be published shortly. Given that smoking is still the biggest killer and cause of preventable early death, will the Government ensure such an important debate, in their time, on public health and in particular tobacco control?
Sir George Young
I commend my hon. Friend’s work as chair of the all-party group on smoking and health—a group of which I used to be an active member. He is right to draw attention to the importance of making further progress on smoking, which causes some 100,000 premature deaths each year. It is right at the heart of our public health strategy. I cannot promise a debate in Government time, but there may be an opportunity at some point in the passage of the Health and Social Care Bill to debate that important aspect of public health.
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Stephen Williams Excerpts(14 years ago)
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Chris Bryant
That did not make it better, and it was larger in an era when the expectations of a Member of Parliament to be present and available were much reduced. There was a time when MPs, when they visited their constituencies—once a year—were greeted with a brass band. That is not true today. [Interruption.] It is certainly not true for me, and I can see that it is not true for anybody else either.
Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)
I have read the hon. Gentleman’s book, and I think that he is referring to Stafford Cripps, who was greeted by a brass band when he arrived at Bristol Temple Meads. The Member who currently represents Bristol Temple Meads is certainly not greeted in that way.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman is right: I am referring to Stafford Cripps. The book is not one that is available in all good bookshops, but there is a copy in the Library should any hon. Member wish to read it.
I want to end with the words of Jim Callaghan, a former Prime Minister and a Member who represented south Wales:
“Constituencies are not merely areas bounded by a line on a map; they are living communities with a unity, a history and a personality of their own.”—[Official Report, 19 June 1969; Vol. 785, c. 742.]
That has always been how we have done things in this House and in this country, and I believe that it is how we should continue to do them in future. That is why I have moved this amendment, and why I hope that we will not reduce the number of seats from 650 to a fixed number of 600.
Austin Mitchell (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
I rise to speak about amendments 259 and 260, which I tabled and hope to put to the vote at the end of the debate. Two features of the “General Gerrymander and Electoral Jiggery-Pokery” Bill are the most offensive. The first is the alternative vote, which is a Liberal benefit plan—Liberal Democrats hope that if we get the alternative vote, they will be everybody’s second preference. Fortunately, the alternative vote is unlikely to be carried in the referendum—I shall certainly vote against it. It is rather sad that many people with whom I have worked over the years for electoral reform seem to believe that AV is a form of electoral reform. It is not—it is the stupid person’s electoral reform. The only effective electoral reform is proportional representation.
Stephen Williams
If the hon. Gentleman thinks that AV is such a mistake, why did he use it to elect his own leader, and why was it in the Labour party’s election manifesto?
Austin Mitchell
The leader now sees the benefits of the alternative vote, but I do not. It is not a halfway house to a system of proportional representation. Only proportional representation will allow us to manage the emerging multi-party system in the confines of the electoral system. We cannot do it with the current system, but I do not want to be detoured from my main purpose.
The second unattractive feature of the Bill is clause 9, to which amendments 259 and 260 apply. It is even more offensive because it is the “Castration of the Commons” clause. It states:
“The number of constituencies in the United Kingdom shall be 600.”
It does not say “590”, “620” or “650”, but “600.” It would be interesting to know how the Government reached that figure. Did they have a séance, as they did for the scale of the cuts that were announced this afternoon: “£240 billion, £120 billion; £600 billion”? Did they split the difference, or did they, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) suggested—I think rightly—arrive at a figure that will lose Labour more seats than the Liberal Democrats?
The Liberals had a smaller figure in their manifesto, but it was proposed in the light of a transfer to STV, which the Liberal party has always supported, with three, four or five-Member constituencies, in which the Liberals have a greater chance of getting somebody elected. The smaller figure was not proposed for first past the post or AV. The Government wanted to cut 10% of the seats. Why? Was it an economy measure? Was it to capitalise on the discontent that The Daily Telegraph’s revelations about expenses produced, and to say, “We’re getting rid of these greedy so-and-sos and reducing the number of people who sponge off the public purse”? Was it that sort of populism? Is that how they arrived at the figure? We need to know before we can make a judgment.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
Given that there will be two Front-Bench speeches in addition to other people speaking, and that two votes might be called on this issue, I fear that we might not reach the next group of amendments, although I know that people are anxious to debate those issues. I shall therefore keep my remarks brief.
There are two amendments in my name that are intended to probe the numbers issue. One would replace the figure of 600 with 500, and the purpose of that is to tease out the issue, although it has been reasonably well teased out already. We have debated the numbers and why we need to arrive at one hard and fast figure, rather than setting a number as a target or guide for the Boundary Commission to pursue.
Concern has understandably been expressed tonight about the rigidity of the drafting of the proposals, in that they offer no flexibility to take into account the whole range of factors that have been properly and articulately expressed so far. That straitjacket will result in antiseptic constituencies whose boundaries are perpetually mobile between each election, and I do not think that would be good for the House or for democracy. We want the Boundary Commission to have sufficient discretion to work towards a target while taking into account reasonable geographical, cultural and electoral issues.
We also want the Government to allow places collectively to make decisions for themselves, provided that they do not ask for any special favours. In other words, when it comes to numbers, those in Cornwall are not asking for favourable treatment, but for distinctive treatment. Having 600 Members might result in an MP representing Cornwall having to give up part of a seat in order to achieve proper respect for the boundary between Cornwall and Isles of Scilly. I specified the 500 figure in a private Member’s Bill in October 2003—part of a long campaign in which I have sought to demonstrate to the public that we can achieve efficiencies ourselves and save money.
The impact of devolution and the need to save money and to make international comparisons are issues that have been articulated well so far. I hope, however, that we will have an opportunity to move on to the second string.
Stephen Williams
I, too, will try to be brief, as I know some colleagues want to speak on the second string. This clause has huge ramifications, some of which I agree with—notably the equalisation of boundaries. We have just had an enormous boundary change in Bristol. I lost 30,000 electors whom I used to represent in 2005, but gained 30,000 electors from another part of the city at this election. The number of my electorate is pretty much the same as it was five years ago. It is 82,728, with my neighbour the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) representing 69,448 electors. Within the same unitary authority, one MP has 13,280 more electors to represent than another. That is surely an anomaly that has to be corrected. That is why I believe it important to have frequent boundary reviews, not 10-yearly or with even longer intervals as we have experienced before.
Phil Wilson
The hon. Gentleman says it is all about equalising constituencies, something people do not necessarily disagree with. Why, however, do we need to reduce the number of MPs to achieve that? We could simply divide the electorate by the number of MPs—irrespective of whether there are 650 or 600 MPs. We could equalise the constituencies on that basis.
Stephen Williams
I was just coming on to the reduction from 650 to 600, and I would like to offer some friendly scepticism to my colleagues on the Government Front Bench. The Deputy Leader of the House was candid enough to say that reducing the House of Commons by 50 Members was arbitrary, but I am even more concerned about this number being arrived at without full knowledge of the whole package of constitutional reforms that this coalition Government are going to introduce.
I know that the Deputy Prime Minister has an ambitious programme of constitutional reform for the future, but we do not yet know the detail. We do not know the composition of what I hope will be a wholly elected second Chamber. We do not know what its powers will be or whether it will reflect the four member nations and regions of the United Kingdom. That makes it difficult to deal with the issue raised several times by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)—that of giving more recognition within Parliament to Wales. I think that could be dealt with more properly in an elected second Chamber than here. We still do not know whether more powers are to be given to English city regions. Full devolution has been granted to Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and to London, but English local government certainly needs radical reform and more powers.
We have heard about cost—I do not believe that it provides a good reason for reducing the size of the House of Commons—and about international comparisons. France, for instance, has 577 seats and Germany 622, but as we heard earlier, they have far greater devolved Administrations and Bristol’s twinned cities of Bordeaux and Hanover have enormous powers in comparison with those of my colleagues who run the city of Bristol.
Stephen Williams
That is the hon. Gentleman’s phrase and he has put it on the record.
The number of politicians to whom people in Bristol can turn is very small. I live in the Cabot ward of the city of Bristol—a ward I used to represent on Avon county council and Bristol city council. If any electors—any of my neighbours in Kingsdown—want to complain about an issue affecting them, they can approach me, their Member of Parliament, or Alex Woodman or Mark Wright, their two city councillors. That is just three politicians: those are the only people to whom electors can turn if they have concerns about Bristol matters, national matters or international matters.
Stephen Gilbert
I thank my hon. Friend. This brings me neatly to my intervention, which is made in the spirit of coalition politics. Given that I intervened earlier on the hon. Member for Poole (Mr Syms), I now intervene on my hon. Friend to remind him of the time.
Stephen Williams
Then there is the state commissioner of the county of Ingham, and then there are all the judges to be elected: two judges for the Supreme Court, one for the court of appeals, and the incumbent and non-incumbent circuit judges for the 30th district. There are also a number of state propositions like the referendum that we are discussing.
There will not be elections for all the officers and elected representatives on 4 November this year. There will be no elections for Lansing or East Lansing local councillors, for a directly elected mayor or a directly elected sheriff, or for the two United States Senators who could represent the people from the state of Michigan; and, of course, there will no election for the President or Vice-President, or for all the appointed politicians who help to run Michigan and the United States.
It is clear that a person living in Michigan could potentially turn to a huge number of politicians, both elected and appointed, to resolve their problems. In my city of Bristol, however, there are only three to whom electors can turn. If we are honest with ourselves, instead of worrying about the cost of politics we should admit that we actually do politics rather cheaply in this country. Rather than electing school boards, as they do in the United States, we have school governors—people who give their time freely to serve their communities. Rather than electing judges, we have either appointed judges or numerous magistrates who give their time freely as well.
A reduction to save costs does not seem justified to me, and it is not yet justified in the context of a wider package of constitutional reform both of this Parliament and of the way in which we govern our localities. I look to the Deputy Leader of the House for assurances that we will be given a comprehensive package of political reform to put this reduction into a proper context.
Mark Durkan
Like other Members, I am keen for us to reach the next set of amendments, so I shall make only a couple of points.
Arguments are being presented about whether there should be 650 Members of Parliament or 600. The problem that I have with all the figures—including the 585 suggested by the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and the 500 from the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George)—is that they result in just one sum: one magic, supreme and absolute number. That means that when we take away the holy trinity of the three protected constituencies, the boundary commissions must come up with figures that add up to 597.
That will have to be done in Parliament after Parliament, all the while taking account of changes in the numbers registering in different parts of the country, which will force boundary changes in every one of the four constituent boundary commissions. If there is a significant registration increase in part of England, Northern Ireland could lose a seat in the next Parliament. If there is a drop somewhere else, however, we might gain a seat. In each Parliament, therefore, we will be up a seat, perhaps, and then down a seat. In Northern Ireland, that will mean the boundary review will affect every single seat.
That will be one of the consequences of moving to this absolute figure of 600 and 600 only with no elasticity. To repeat a point I made earlier to the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing), I predict that we will end up questioning whether we decided on the change with too much urgency and as a result were left with a fixed, arbitrary limit and the tyranny of arithmetic—the insistence that one size has to fit all in spite of the reality and all other considerations. That will mean that we will end up with an IPSA-type situation for boundaries. In Parliament after Parliament, MPs will regret that they are dogged by all sorts of fairly arbitrary boundary changes that are driven purely by arithmetic and perhaps dictated by registration changes somewhere else. People in many constituencies will wonder why they are constantly having to go through such changes because of something that is happening somewhere else.
Should the Committee insist on going for diktats that will result in reviews having to be conducted every time and arithmetic for establishing a quota for seats, would there not be merit in amendment 228 tabled by the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), which takes 600 as a target figure but allows a margin of accommodation to the boundary commissions so that there can be as few as 588 seats and no more than 612? That margin of consideration would at least allow the boundary commissions to take account of the issues and pressures facing them. Under clause 10, the number of seats allocated to them will be fixed under the Sainte-Laguë formula.
Already the Government recognise that the absolute figure of 600—and all the other aspects of the Bill—cannot be fully applied in respect of Northern Ireland, so they have had to say that in Northern Ireland the seats can vary more widely than the 5% either side of the UK quota. Therefore, we can come in at lower than 5% or over 5%, so our constituencies can be more disparate. That proves that the hon. Member for Epping Forest is wrong in saying that there are no adverse consequences and that the rigid application will not be a problem. The Bill admits that the rigid application is a problem, and it means that Northern Ireland will not be getting equal constituencies. We will have much more disparate constituencies as compared with other parts of the UK. More importantly, we will have much more disparate constituencies in the Northern Ireland Assembly, for which there are six Members. Therefore, disparity of representation and of mandate will arise in, of all places, Northern Ireland and Northern Ireland only. That was not what was intended when this House, as well as everybody else, supported the Good Friday agreement and its provisions.
I therefore ask the Government to consider the very sensible recommendation in amendment 228. Its sister amendment 227 does not accommodate the situation in Northern Ireland, because it allows only a 2% margin of discretion. It should allow for at least 2% or at least one seat. If that could be inserted in the Bill, it would help.
Use of the Chamber (United Kingdom Youth Parliament)
Stephen Williams Excerpts(14 years, 3 months ago)
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Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)
Does my hon. Friend recall that in the previous Parliament, it was somewhat embarrassing that the House of Lords allowed the UK Youth Parliament to sit on their red Benches, which is what shamed us into allowing it to sit on our green Benches? This House made rather a spectacle of itself in the last Parliament and we made ourselves very unpopular. We are in grave danger of doing exactly the same thing again, and looking increasingly out of touch.
Mr Heath
I think it is always a matter of concern when the House of Lords looks comparatively youthful, progressive and forward thinking in comparison with the elected House, so I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend.
Let us deal with some of the apparently very important logistical questions raised in last year’s debate. They were clarified then, but it is worth repeating them for the avoidance of any doubt. The rules of order that the UK Youth Parliament will follow in this Chamber will be the same as our own. As I suggested earlier in response to the intervention by the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), there are strong arguments for us to follow its lead in how we interpret procedure rather than it following ours.
The Mace will not be in its place and the Speaker’s Chair will not be occupied by anyone other than Mr Speaker or the Deputy Speakers. As for broadcasting, the rights will remain with us. I believe that the parliamentary broadcasting unit should be encouraged to film the proceedings, and I am sure that the broadcasters will need no encouragement to show it.