Oral Answers to Questions

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Miss Smith]

It is clear from comments that I have made at the Dispatch Box and that our noble Friends have made in another place that the Government’s implementation plan remains firmly committed to 2015 as the date for transition to an IER-only register. Amendments made during the Bill’s passage through Parliament provide a safeguard that extends the final point for transition to an IER-only register to December 2016. Those amendments, however, do not alter our aim to deliver that register in December 2015. They simply add a safeguard so that Parliament has a say, but I do not expect Parliament to have to make that call because I expect our transition plan to be robust.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

6. What the Government’s political and constitutional reform priorities are up to 2015.

[The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)]

The Government continue to work on political and constitutional reform, particularly in support of the wider priority of rescuing, repairing and reforming the British economy. The process of devolution and decentralisation, including the second wave of city deals, is central to this. Work also continues on individual registration, party funding, recall and lobbying reform.

[Toby Perkins]

That sounded okay, but we all know that all the big reforms that the Deputy Prime Minister had planned have broadly failed. Across our country numerous public servants with far busier in-trays than the Deputy Prime Minister have been laid off. In the interests of savings to the economy, is it not about time to mothball his Department until it has something significant to bring to us in terms of constitutional reform and that has some prospect of being delivered before 2015?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I do not accept that there is no link between constitutional reform and rebuilding the shattered British economy left in such a parlous state by the hon. Gentleman’s party. The key to that is in the answers to some of the earlier questions. If we are to rejuvenate the British economy, we must breathe life back into our local communities by letting go some of the powers in Whitehall and embarking on an ambitious programme of economic and political decentralisation, the likes of which the Labour party never did in 13 years of government.