Sovereign Grant Bill

Debate between Thomas Docherty and Tristram Hunt

Thursday 14th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has demonstrated that he has a far superior knowledge of history than perhaps any other Member of the House who was not actually there during large sections of it. Does he agree that the histories of the United States and France are histories of violent revolution, whereas we have had a period of stable evolution, apart from a dark period in the 1650s and so on, largely because we have had a constitutional monarchy?

[Tristram Hunt]

I take my hon. Friend’s point, but we should not over-emphasise our Whiggish stability over the years. We often used to think of the 18th century as the age of equipoise and stability. In fact, underneath that monarchy, all sorts of revolutionary fervour was going on. The campaign of my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) to have the Chartists properly recognised in the House hints at a slightly different history. It is a source of great sadness to many people that, although the House was rebuilt in the 1830s and ’40s, it took until mid-1890s for the statue of Cromwell to appear outside.

For all its narrow, Eurocentric and white family structure, the royal family also has a curious internationalist sensibility, for to understand the British royal family in the 19th and 20th centuries is to understand empire and the nature of Britain in the world. As we have heard today in respect of reforming the Act of Settlement, the monarch was also monarch of imperial nations across the world, then the British Commonwealth and then the Commonwealth. That points to the unique nature of Britain: its openness and sense of citizenship, which is, again, above and beyond blood and soil. Part of the strength of monarchy is that it speaks to the multicultural, multi-faith age in which we live. There is a curious modernity about the nature of monarchy, which, again, keeps its strength going.

The real virtue of the royal family today is the soft power embodied within it. We have heard, quite rightly, detailed discussions about £35 million or £37 million costs this afternoon, but the royal family as a brand vehicle for Britishness is worth huge sums more than £35 million or £37 million. The sums regained from the world’s media focus on London during the royal wedding recently were far in excess of its cost. Although our beloved former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, used to describe Britain as a young country, it is, in fact, a very old country.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Thomas Docherty and Tristram Hunt

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt]

I do not wish to speak for too long, because we need to get on to the Government’s plans for the immolation of the Duchy of Cornwall. However, I do want to speak in favour of amendments 364 and 259. I want to focus on the rationale for the move from 650 MPs to 600. Like many other Opposition Members, I am in favour of broader equality between the electorates in our constituencies, and as a result, I am potentially in favour of a reduction in the number of Members of Parliament. However, as we have clearly seen, if anyone could have come up with a way not to do it, it would be the Bill before us.

We have heard from the Deputy Leader of the House that the intellectual rationale behind the move from 650 to 600 was that it was an arbitrary number, but seemed to have some magic. I am no scientific rationalist, but it seems to me that that might not be the most sophisticated way in which to develop public policy—particularly on something with such dramatic consequences. I suggest that if we are to move from 650 to 600, we need a greater purpose than that.

If we wanted to begin the process with some degree of intellectual consideration, we might begin to think about the role and function of Members of Parliament—what we want them to achieve, and their roles in the community and in the House. We might think about demographic changes, the move from market towns to cities, migration or citizenship. We might think intelligently about the future, and what the role of the Member of Parliament should be in it. As a result of such consideration, the number of Members of Parliament might go up or down. Having worked out that fundamental principle, we might begin to think of a point to which we wanted to head, over the course of Parliaments—but we might not have pulled all that together in a shoddily constituted Bill, rammed through this place with no pre-legislative scrutiny, especially as it deals with what I would have thought was a rather important matter of public policy for this House, and as we respect our democratic traditions, which are admired right around the world.

[Thomas Docherty]

My hon. Friend’s knowledge is second to none in this House. Can he tell me, as someone who is not as knowledgeable, whether he can think of an example from the past when there has been a review of the number of constituencies that has been as rushed or ill-thought-out as the one that we now face?

[Tristram Hunt]

My hon. Friend asks a very good question. My lack of historical knowledge comes to the fore, because I can think of no other example. Perhaps the Rump Parliament would come to mind, or some other innovations during the 1650s. I think that we are seeing certain Cromwellian attributes appearing among those on the Government Benches. Like many others, I am new to this place, but I understand that we used to hear a great many lectures from Members who are now in government about the right to discuss public policy at length and not to have it rammed through.

The Conservative manifesto, about which the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) spoke so eloquently—unlike some of his colleagues, he actually still believes in what he stood for at the election—suggested reducing the number of Members of Parliament to 585, while the Liberal Democrat manifesto went for 500 seats. On the principle of compromise and the coalition agreement, one would have thought that they might bisect the two figures—that there might be a rationale for 542 or, if we are generous, 543, to allow the Isle of Wight to remain whole. But no, they have gone for the magical figure of 600, without any real rationale.

Some of the arguments this evening have been about making politics cheaper. Without making a cheap joke, I think that the coalition has made politics cheaper. It has cheapened public debate by reneging on pretty much all its other manifesto commitments over the past few months. We are told that this is potentially going to save £12 million—but we have not been given the costings for the packing of the House of Lords, which is proceeding as we speak. We do not know the full costs of the referendum. It is particularly apposite, on a day when we have heard about so many cuts in other parts of the budget, that we are allocating money to that.