Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Tom Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

The hon. Lady makes a good point with which many colleagues agree, but I shall move on.

In my view, the Deputy Prime Minister had good reasons for opposing the combination. He worried that holding a referendum on electoral reform on the same day as the general election would cloud the debate and affect the outcome, making a yes vote less likely; he was right. He instead supported our proposals for a referendum after the election, but within approximately 18 months of the legislation gaining Royal Assent, which meant that the most likely date would have been October 2011. That course of action would not have delivered the savings that that combination with a general election would have provided, but, given the importance of the decision in question, it was a fairer and more constitutional way of proceeding. That was his view back then, but we know that it has changed.

[Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

For clarification, will my right hon. Friend make something absolutely clear? When the Deputy Prime Minister opposed having a referendum on the alternative vote on the same day as the general election, was that before or after he was given a ministerial salary, a ministerial car, a ministerial private office and the accompanying prestige?

[Sadiq Khan]

My hon. Friend has made his point.

I hope that all Members, whether for or against a change from the first-past-the-post system to the alternative vote, agree that if we hold a referendum on the voting system, it is imperative that that referendum is transparent, clear and understandable to the British people and that the result is invulnerable to any charges of illegitimacy. I fear that the timetable for the referendum proposed by the Bill will fail on each of those counts. So I urge coalition Front Benchers to listen to the concerns being articulated by people of all political persuasions about the dangers of a clash between the referendum and local and national elections, which, as we must not forget, are due to take place in some places but not in others.

In Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, numerous warnings have now been given about the danger of combining the referendum with elections to the various devolved institutions. Those warnings have highlighted that holding simultaneous polls risks confusing voters and muddying political debate. That is not a patronising view from Westminster politicians; it is the view of the devolved Executives. In Scotland especially, there is, as has been said, concern about the unhappy experience of coupled elections in 2007, which gave rise to significant numbers of spoiled ballot papers, and that experience could be repeated. The hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) referred to Ron Gould, who recommended against combining polls.

Individual Electoral Registration

Tom Harris Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

That is not something I thought of announcing today, but the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that for politicians it is sometimes frustrating when we do not have people’s correct titles and we end up with our individual computer programmes guessing what they are, often getting them wrong. I will think further about this, but we should remember that in view of all the pieces of information we already ask local authorities to collect, process and deal with, which are not essential for voting, we must be careful not to impose extra burdens. As I say, I will think further about it.

[Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

Despite my reservations about individual registration, I welcome what the Minister said about data-sharing pilots and I hope he will consider Glasgow as a candidate for such a pilot. However, if we are going to all this great effort to share all these databases in order to identify people who have deliberately chosen not to register to vote up until now, what is the point of the exercise if, having identified those people, we are not going to oblige them to register? What is the point of that exercise?

[Mr Harper]

There are two questions there. On the first, I shall be writing to all local authorities responsible for registration suggesting that they engage with the pilots. The best thing the hon. Gentleman can do is to speak to his council and his registration officer and encourage them to participate. On his second point, quite a lot of people have not deliberately chosen not to register. As I said, one of the key reasons is that people have simply moved and have not got around to registering. Some people do not know how to register. Many would do so if it were easier, and if they were clearer about what they had to do. I think that if we approach them, tell them that they are eligible to vote and explain how they can do so, we will improve the rate of registration. However, in a free society, if someone deliberately chooses not to register to vote, that is a matter for them.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the statement. I have listened to what hon. Members have said, and it seems to me that while nobody will be removed from the register, there is a certain amount of uncertainty in respect of eligibility to vote. Through these various registration documents, will the Minister consider giving people a particular number that could be annexed on to the national insurance number?

[Mr Tom Harris]

An ID card.

[David Morris]

No, not an ID card. Far from it; it will be a number, and that number will transfer with them if they move addresses. That would be—

[Mr Harris]

An ID card.

[David Morris]

It would not be an ID card. It would be a number that was unique to each person.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Tom Harris Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

We have had an excellent debate, kicked off by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) for the Opposition. I cannot let this debate pass without remarking on the fact that he intends that to be his final speech from the Front Bench. He has said that he will retire from the Front Bench: he has done 30 years of hard labour on the Opposition and Government Front Benches and has given distinguished service. He has been called many things: my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) referred to Barbara Castle’s remarks about how he had a degree of low cunning about him. I must say that I have found him wily as I have worked for him over the past few years, and wise. I thank him for the time that he has given to junior Ministers and spokespeople. He has always been illuminating to work with, and we will all miss his speeches from the Front Bench, although I am sure that we can look forward to many more from him from the Back Benches in future.

As my right hon. Friend explained, we agree with the principle of a fixed-term Parliament, although we believe that it should be for a shorter period than the proposed five years. We had a manifesto commitment to a fixed term favouring four years, and for that reason we will not be voting against Second Reading. However, the House should not misinterpret that as anything more than our agreeing with the principle behind the Bill. We have grave concerns about many of the measures proposed in it, about its timing, and about the way in which the proposals have been developed—although “developed” may be too grand a word for a Bill that seems to have been thrown together on the Deputy Prime Minister’s whim and then repeatedly altered as each new problem has emerged, all without the slightest effort to consult anyone else. As many Members have said today, that is not a recipe for good legislation.

We shall be looking closely at the details of the Bill and suggesting amendments. Indeed, it might be better if the Government took the whole thing away and started again from scratch, given the confused and shifting mishmash that appears to be before us and that so casually sets about riding roughshod over one constitutional convention after another. Little thought seems to have been invested in the devising of a scheme that works before the appearance of legislation to implement one that probably will not. Given that the Leader of the House—who is present now—suggested this morning that the present parliamentary Session would continue for two years, why should the Government not take the opportunity to take the Bill away, consult on it properly, and return with something that is in rather fitter shape?

It is almost as if the Deputy Prime Minister does not really care whether the Bill works or not, as long as he can send a reassuring signal to his parliamentary party and his Tory ministerial collaborators that this Parliament will last for five years, whatever the strains—which are already showing—may be in the interim. The rapidly changing provisions, the substantial but unthought-through shifts that we have already witnessed, the thoughtless interference with long-standing constitutional conventions which have been mentioned by many Members on both sides of the House, the indecent haste with which a major constitutional Bill has been introduced when there was no need for it to be rushed through the House, the total lack of consultation or pre-legislative scrutiny referred to not least by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen), the Chair of the Select Committee—all those things make us suspicious about what the true motivations might be.

So what is really going on behind the overblown rhetoric of the Prime Minister and, in particular, the Deputy Prime Minister, who specialises in it, about the purpose of their constitutional innovations? The Prime Minister says that he wants to give power away, while the Deputy Prime Minister says that he is embarking on a programme of constitutional reform more extensive than any since the great Reform Act. Of course, he forgets just how minimal the reforms of 1832 actually were in substance. In reality, little or no justification has been offered beyond the rhetoric.

We have heard from Members in all parts of the House—from the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr Shepherd), from the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) in interventions, from the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) and my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell) in very witty speeches, from the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) in a rather more portentous but very serious speech, and from the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), who has form in this regard—some alternative theories about what might be going on. The truth is that the Deputy Prime Minister is using vastly overblown claims to hide a tawdry piece of fixing that took place over a few days in a testosterone-filled room packed with erstwhile political enemies who were intent on one thing: producing a political stitch-up that could deliver government to both parties, while preventing each from double-crossing the other for the duration of a Parliament. The fact that they decided to do that by using novel constitutional props is absolutely clear from the proposals that emerged.

Far from being born out of some kind of reforming zeal, and far from being derived from a carefully thought- out analysis of what is wrong with our current constitutional arrangement, the Bill was born out of a suddenly discovered political imperative to save the necks and promote the ministerial careers of those who negotiated it. That is what it looks like to us, because that is what it is. Let us have done with the overblown deputy prime ministerial rhetoric and just call a spade a spade. The long title of this Bill should be “A Bill to ensure that the inherent contradictions in the coalition Government are suppressed for a full five years; to make sure that neither party can double cross the other; and for connected purposes.” That would be a bit nearer the mark.

Those Government Members who are slavishly following the Government—many are not—may protest that I am being too cynical. If I am wrong, how come such an important piece of constitutional reform was not in both parties’ manifestos? It was in the Liberal Democrat manifesto; they were in favour of a four-year fixed term in their policy, but we appear to have a five-year term in the Bill. How come the Bill has not been afforded the opportunity of pre-legislative scrutiny, or preceded by a Green Paper, White Paper or draft Bill? How come it did not involve all-party consultations and discussions with a view to reaching cross-party agreement, which there may have been some possibility of reaching? How come the Bill has changed in substance more than once as the repeated announcement of ill-thought-through expedients has hit the reality of their not actually being workable or acceptable in the cold light of day?

How come the Bill is in such a poor state that the Clerk of the House has indicated that it has the potential to allow the courts, and even the European Court, to be second-guessing the Speaker, the monarch and this House on such fundamentally political issues as the date of the general election, or whether or not a confidence motion has been passed? It is not just me asking these questions. The hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North, the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) and the hon. Member for North East Somerset all asked this precise question.

The Bill contains too many novel and contentious constitutional principles to be dealt with in the arrogant and high-handed way that is becoming a hallmark of the Deputy Prime Minister’s dealings with this House. The subjects that the Bill addresses are constitutionally fundamental; there is no doubt about that. It ends prerogative powers to dissolve but not to prorogue Parliament—something Charles I would probably have been able to work with—but with the potential to drag the monarch into party political controversy, which would be highly undesirable in this day and age. It introduces the novel, ill-thought-though and potentially dangerous concept of super-majorities into parliamentary proceedings.

As our Clerk has warned, and as the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon set out, the Bill puts elements of parliamentary procedure into statute, thus fundamentally changing the nature of the legislature’s relationship with the judiciary by potentially forcing it to decide what we meant to do in parliamentary proceedings that have hitherto been unavailable to judicial interpretation, thus potentially politicising the judiciary; a most undesirable outcome. The possibility of this is the danger, not the probability, as the hon. and learned Member made clear. I agree with him.

The Bill refers to confidence motions without defining them, thus potentially requiring judges to define them in court proceedings. It draws the monarch and the Speaker into the most party-political aspects of parliamentary proceedings with the obvious risk that their deliberations and actions will be tarnished with party-political controversy of a kind wholly alien to our constitutional arrangements. As we have heard from many hon. Members, the Bill has a serious impact on the devolved institutions of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales because of the planned date of the election. If the Deputy Prime Minister had bothered to consult in advance, that particular difficulty might have been pointed out to him so that he could have avoided it.

It is reasonable for any Government to propose constitutional changes, but there is a proper and improper way of doing it. This is not the best way of handling constitutional issues. Why the rush? This is the big question that many of us have been asking during the course of the debate. There is no need for such an ill-thought-through Bill to be before us. The coalition agreement on 12 May said that there would be a “binding motion” placed before the House, whatever that is. I thought that most of our motions were binding. That was to be followed by legislation for a five-year fixed term during which a vote of 55% of Members would be needed to bring the Government down. It just so happened that the combined strength of Tory and Lib Dem Members in this Parliament is 56%, so this represented a clear effort to strengthen the Executive at the expense of the legislature, not to mention preventing the parties to the coalition agreement from ratting on each other.

The furore that ensued has led the Deputy Prime Minister to think again, and that is a good thing, but by the time of the publication of the coalition’s programme for government on 20 May this remained the policy. By the Queen’s Speech on 25 May, the legislation had been brought forward to be a major priority in the first Session, although we were still promised the binding motion. The Deputy Leader of the House promised it to us before the summer recess, but in the event it did not appear. Perhaps the Deputy Prime Minister ought occasionally to inform his ministerial colleagues about the back-flips that he plans to execute before they assure the House that the Government are going to do something that he has already decided not to do.

[Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has given the House a superb explanation of why this is a rotten Bill; anyone who came into the Chamber just after she began her comments might mistakenly believe that the Labour party is opposing this Bill. She has given many good reasons why we should oppose it, but can she try to explain to me why on earth we are going to be sitting on our backsides during the Division?

[Maria Eagle]

My hon. Friend will do what he wants with his backside when the Division gets called; I am sure that he is capable of making his own mind up. We have made it clear that although we are not voting against the Bill on Second Reading, whether we support it on Third Reading will depend on how well it is put right in the interim.

The Deputy Prime Minister told the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee:

“We felt that”—

the resolution—

“was necessary on the assumption that the legislation would then come much further down the track.”

Why not put the legislation further down the track, in order to enable proper consultation and pre-legislative scrutiny to take place and to allow there to be properly considered measures, with cross-party agreement, that might actually work?

By that time, the measures that the Deputy Prime Minister had announced were already unravelling, because those in the testosterone-filled room of self-interest of the coalition builders, who came up with the 55% super-majority, were so focused on protecting themselves against mutual duplicity that they failed to consider little issues such as the sovereignty of Parliament and other constitutional conventions relating to Dissolution. The proposals in the programme for government were running into the sand; all it took was the light of day and the unravelling began.

By 5 July, the Deputy Prime Minister had changed his mind again, but alas the new proposals are not better; they are just different. The 55% super-majority has been abandoned in favour of a 66% one, which appears unlikely to be used. I say in all seriousness to the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), for whom I have a lot of time, because he has great difficulties in his Department: what is the rush? We are at the beginning of this Parliament, so why not consult? Why not seek cross-party agreement? What on earth is the argument against doing so? Why not have pre-legislative scrutiny on such an important constitutional Bill? Why not allow the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee to do its job, instead of making it rush? Why not allow the time for concerns expressed by the Clerk about the risk to the privileges of the legislature to be properly addressed? Just asserting in the newspapers that he is wrong does not amount to a refutation of his arguments. Why was his informed advice not heeded a little more in the drafting of this Bill? Is it right that a Bill that provides for such massive constitutional innovation should be introduced five days before the House rises for the summer recess and debated one week after its return, given that the Leader of the House has just announced that this Session of Parliament will go on for two years?

The truth is that the Bill is a reflection of the Minister in charge of it and the political imperatives that led to its being devised. Our over-confident yet vacillating Deputy Prime Minister, who keeps changing his mind every few weeks about what should be in this legislation, appears armed only with his grandiose delusions of constitutional good sense and that characteristic overblown Lib Dem sense of self-importance, which all those who fight the Lib Dems at a local level will recognise very well. One wonders how much he is listening to, or absorbing and considering properly, the advice he must be getting. This is a dangerous combination for our constitutional settlement. We cannot and should not accept that constitutional arrangements that have worked well for centuries should be thrown away hubristically and without thought by a Deputy Prime Minister who cares only for his own neck and the short-term expedient of remaining in his post for a full Parliament.

We have a Deputy Prime Minister who flits from the whim of introducing super-majorities to allowing judges to tell us whether or not we can have an election, and who does not seem to understand that the sovereignty of Parliament and the independence of the Speaker are important principles that we should defend. We have a Deputy Prime Minister who appears more interested in lofty rhetoric about how radical his constitutional innovations are than the detailed work needed to make them both desirable and workable in practice. Members of this House will have to do the work for him. Her Majesty’s Opposition will play our part; we will seek to subject the Bill to the scrutiny it needs, and I also reiterate the fact that we intend to review whether to continue to support the Bill on Third Reading.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

And I know my right hon. Friend always means what he says.

The Bill’s key principle is that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is giving up the power to seek the Dissolution of the House. Previous Prime Ministers have exercised that power for their own party advantage. That principle of having fixed-term Parliaments was welcomed by the Chairman of the Select Committee and by the right hon. Member for Blackburn, who speaks for the Opposition; indeed it was in his party’s manifesto.

At this point, I should just add to the comments of the Deputy Prime Minister last week and the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood today. I will miss the contributions from the Front Bench of the right hon. Member for Blackburn. He and I have sparred in this Chamber a number of times, and I have always listened carefully to the guidance he has given me on how to deal with the House. I hope Members feel I have learned something from him. I leave it up to others to decide whether what I have learned is, as the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) said, low cunning or whether I have some way to go in that regard. I should say that I thought the right hon. Gentleman dealt very well with the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) about what happened in 1950 and how that could perfectly well have been dealt with by our Bill. The expert way in which the right hon. Gentleman did that showed that he is secretly quite supportive of the Bill.

[Mr Tom Harris]

Does the Minister understand that it is rather difficult for the House to accept that from the Conservative party’s point of view this Bill represents a point of principle, given that every single Conservative Member of Parliament was elected on the promise that in this Parliament the replacement of the Prime Minister would result in a general election within six months? That surely says more about the Prime Minister’s confidence in the support of his Back Benchers than it does about his confidence in the principle of constitutional reform.

[Mr Harper]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs Laing) said, in the last Parliament, when Conservative Members had the opportunity to discuss this matter, we did not vote against it. It is a very clear principle in the coalition agreement to have a fixed-term Parliament. All Members on the Opposition Benches—or at least in the main Opposition party—were elected on that principle. I am sure that they will support the Bill if there is a Division this evening.

The proposals this morning from my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House on the way we want to change the Sessions of this place to fit in with this Bill can, I am confident, be debated in Committee. We debated them a little earlier today and I think that the fact that the Chair allowed that debate to take place shows that they are in order and that we will be able to debate them in Committee.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Tom Harris Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Straw]

Indeed. I suspect it would be far better to have the referendum as a single-issue referendum on a separate, dedicated day. That is not about whether the British public can cope with one or two issues at a time, but about ensuring that the issues are properly aired. There are all sorts of incredible complications about the funding limits for the parties and for the referendum campaigns when the polls take place on the same day.

[Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

Can my right hon. Friend shed any light on the latest budget for the referendum? I believe that before the election the Government made it clear that the referendum would cost £40 million. On 27 July, the hon. Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter) said it would cost £9.7 million, representing a saving of £17 million, because it was being held on the same day as the other elections. On 18 August, the Deputy Prime Minister told the press that it would cost between £80 million and £100 million. Can my right hon. Friend shed any light, or are we just looking at a random selection of numbers?

[Mr Straw]

The parliamentary answers I gave were that the costs, on a variety of assumptions, would be somewhere between £80 million and £100 million. That was not plucked from the air and of course, if I had stayed in office, as I wish I had, we would have sought to refine the costs.

Part 2 of the Bill is one of the most partisan proposals we have seen in recent years. It proposes arbitrarily to cut the number of Members to 600, to redraw parliamentary boundaries according to inflexible new arithmetical rules based on an electoral register from which millions of eligible voters are missing and, extraordinarily, as we have heard, under clause 10 public inquiries by the Boundary Commission into the Government’s preliminary proposals are explicitly to be prohibited.

If enacted, those proposals would represent the very antithesis of the high ideals that the Deputy Prime Minister initially set out for his political reforms. They have nothing whatever to do with those high ideals. Instead, they represent the worst kind of political skulduggery for narrow party advantage. There is no need for Members on the Government Benches to take that from me. All they need to do is to look at the ConservativeHome website and the detailed statement put there today by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field)—to coincide with this debate, I assume. He says that

“the current proposals for AV and the reduction in number of parliamentary constituencies are being promoted by Party managers as an expedient way to prevent our principal political opponents from recapturing office.”

That is the truth and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for saying it.

Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority

Tom Harris Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Winnick]

I am not going to take up what the independent expenses compliance officer said. I do not think that his comments deserve any response from me; they speak for themselves. However, if the situation has been difficult for returning Members—as many of us are—how much more difficult has it been for new Members? It must be an outright nightmare for them, and that is set against a background in which they would find it far more difficult to criticise the system because their local paper might say, “Look what they complain about the moment they are elected.” At least returning Members have constituency offices, however difficult it is to get IPSA to agree on rent and related matters. New Members have to start from scratch, without being able to go to IPSA and say, “This is what we want to do. Is it legitimate? Is it within the rules?” Those are elementary questions, but they will not get any answers because, at the moment, the system does not provide for anything of that kind.

[Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend find it perturbing that although it is virtually impossible for Members of Parliament to get a face-to-face interview with a senior IPSA official, it is extremely easy for almost any member of the press to do so?

[Mr Winnick]

I take that point entirely. If IPSA spent as much time trying to resolve the genuine difficulties of new and returning MPs as it gives to the press, that would be an advancement. The national press will say, as in one recent article, that MPs are too obsessed with their own position. However, what we want to do is on behalf of our constituents; it is not about our salary. Perhaps our salary has not been paid in full due to a technical fault, but that is not the subject of today’s debate. We are not going to town about that, far from it. If we want to have constituency offices and to get matters resolved, it is so that our constituents can come to our constituency offices and we can pursue their complaints. IPSA gives the impression that our concerns are all about ourselves, and that is what it tries to get over to the media.

Constitution and Home Affairs

Tom Harris Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I shall give way one more time, then I shall make progress.

[Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Deputy Prime Minister, who is being very generous. I do not expect that he will be able to represent the whole of the Conservative party in terms of policy, but if the Conservative party is committed to fixed-term Parliaments, can he explain why, during the general election, the Prime Minister committed his party to holding a general election within six months if the Prime Minister was removed? That is hardly compatible with a commitment to a fixed term.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The coalition agreement, which binds the Government as a whole, is very clear that we want to see fixed-term Parliaments. We will table legislation for a fixed-term Parliament. We will table a motion before the legislation is introduced to make sure that the political commitment to a fixed-term Parliament is made completely clear. There is consensus across the whole House on the virtues of fixed-term Parliaments. This is another issue on which the hon. Gentleman and so many others on the Opposition Benches, having failed to introduce this change for the past 13 years, are coming up with a series of synthetic reasons why they should oppose something that they themselves used to propose.

We also want—[Interruption.] I shall make progress. We want people to be able to initiate debates here in the Commons through public petitions, we want a new public reading stage for Bills, we want people to be able to instigate local referendums on issues that matter to their neighbourhoods, and we want people to decide directly if they want to change the system by which they elect their MPs, which is why there will be a referendum on the alternative vote. I will announce the date of that referendum in due course.

Electoral reform should, the Government believe, also include—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

I am not sure I am up to the task of following such an eloquent, entertaining and, frankly, self-assured maiden speech as the one we have just heard from the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). Not since the days of Boris Johnson have we in this Chamber been treated to such a colourful, imaginative and evocative detailing of our history. I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that I have no doubt that he will do extremely well in this Chamber, and on his own Government’s Front Bench at some point soon. I am sure that if he holds on to his seat long enough, after the next general election, he will make an excellent addition to the shadow Cabinet.

I was elected to this House precisely nine years ago today, and I made my maiden speech a few weeks after that—coincidentally, on the Queen’s Speech debate on the constitution and home affairs. During that speech, I made mention of the fact that a commitment to electoral reform was absent from the Government’s agenda that year, and I said that I hoped the absence of electoral reform would be a recurring feature of future Queen’s Speeches.

Unfortunately—alas and alack—we now face a Government who are committed to a referendum on electoral reform, and specifically on replacing first past the post with the alternative vote. As for that referendum, I am somewhat bewildered by the fact that in this new age of Aquarius—this new dawn of democracy, the new politics—we are left with a Government, both parties of whom campaigned against a referendum on the alternative vote, but who are now implementing a referendum on the alternative vote. I hope that those of us who use the phrase “the new politics” will henceforth remember to indicate the irony of that phrase by perhaps using air-quotes when they say it.

The Liberals continue to oppose the alternative vote in principle, but they support it in practice, because they see it as a stepping stone to further electoral reform. The Conservatives still oppose the alternative vote in principle, but they support it in practice, because it is the only way that they can keep hold of their ministerial Oyster cards. There is something peculiarly undemocratic about that situation.

Personally, I am looking forward to campaigning for the retention of first past the post in my constituency and throughout the rest of the country. Let me say at the outset that first past the post is not a good system for electing MPs—indeed, it is a rubbish system for electing MPs—but it has the unique value of being slightly less rubbish than all the alternatives. I do not want us to move through further electoral reform to a situation where the decision of who forms the Government and who becomes Prime Minister is taken from the hands of the electorate and given to a single individual: whoever happens to be the leader of the Liberal Democrats. I do not see anything remotely democratic in that.

Just after the election results were known, a number of my colleagues on the Labour Benches went on television to talk about “our friends” in the Liberal Democrats. Those “friends” are the same people who have supported electoral reform in some form or other over many years because they hold the view that there is a permanent progressive majority in this country that, given the opportunity and the right electoral system, would put in place a permanent anti-Conservative coalition. Leaving aside the dodgy democratic credentials of such a proposal, I would ask my hon. Friends whether they still believe that the Liberal Democrats’ centre of gravity is on the left of British politics. I would ask them to look across the Chamber and see the evidence before their own eyes. I do not believe that the Liberal Democrats would be an appropriate partner for the Labour party in a future coalition Government. After all, I do not want to touch them with a bargepole—I know where they have been.

My favourite part of the new politics so far has been watching Liberal Democrats arguing that black is white, that north is south, and that Short money was ever intended for Government parties. However, I have some reassurance for Liberal Democrat Members. If they are genuinely worried about a closing down of a valued and regular source of income—I would totally understand that—I have some words of comfort for them, because although I might be wrong on this, as far as I understand it, they now qualify for Ashcroft money.

I do not want to take up too much time, so let me conclude. There has been a lot of talk about the Government’s proposed caps on immigration, including in our considered amendment, but I want to suggest a departure not only from my party’s policy, but from that of any other party—I am effectively thinking out loud now, having listened closely and carefully to the views of my constituents during the election campaign. There is a lot of concern about immigration, but we cannot avoid the fact that there is a lot of concern not only about non-EU immigration, but about EU immigration. I wonder whether we have reached a point at which we should at last, like the French citizens until two years ago, offer the people of our country a referendum whenever we decide to enlarge the European Union—whether we should give the people ownership of those decisions, and fight for the arguments in favour of expanding the EU. Those arguments are strong; I think that they are unanswerable. But I also think that if we, the political elite, insist on making such decisions ourselves without consulting the public, we shall reap the whirlwind in terms of disenchantment with the EU and a possible collapse of support to the far right.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving me an opportunity to respond to that point. As he has just said, the decision is up for renewal towards the end of July. No decision has been taken at the moment, but I can assure him that Parliament will be informed of any decision that is taken. That question partly leads on to the freedom Bill. Protecting the country from terrorist attacks is, of course, of primary concern, but striking the right balance between safety and liberty is something that the previous Administration got horribly wrong. We have seen a significant erosion of individual freedoms, and power has been diverted from the citizen to the state. That is why we are legislating to roll back the state, to reduce the amount of Government interference and repeal unnecessary laws, but our commitment to protecting the public will not be compromised. The freedom Bill will help us to balance an individual’s right to privacy and liberty against the collective safety and security of the entire country.

At the heart of our reforms is the desire to build a stronger society with responsibility and fairness at its heart. We will enable people to take back responsibility for themselves and their families. We are determined to value the British people, to invite them into the debate and to listen to them—something that was sorely lacking under the previous Administration. The right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) talked of linking the Government and the people—a worthy aim indeed, but it is a pity that the last Labour Government did not do that. For 13 years, they took powers to the centre and away from people and communities.

[Mr Tom Harris]

The first Bill Committee on which I served as a Back Bencher after being elected nine years ago was the one that considered the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. Throughout the 39 sittings in Committee, the Conservative party constantly made requests for the measures to be watered down. Now that the right hon. Lady is in government, can she confirm that that Act will not be watered down but, in fact, strengthened?

[Mrs May]

The Government and the Conservative party will take no lessons from Labour about being tough on crime. I remember that when I came into the House in 1997 the Labour Government had been elected on the slogan, “Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.” What did we see? Criminal justice Act after criminal justice Act, new offence after new offence, and nothing to do with the causes of crime.

Debate on the Address

Tom Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 25th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman has to understand that, in the words of the outgoing Chief Secretary, we have run out of money—[Interruption.] I do not know what they are shouting about. The Labour Government left us with a budget deficit of £160 billion. Of course the child trust fund was a good idea when it was thought up, but today it means that when a child is born we are borrowing money to put into that child’s bank account. You broke the nation so badly that we cannot continue with such schemes.

The Queen’s Speech has these values running right through it in each and every Bill—devolving power, not centralising it; trusting people, not dictating to them; and saving money, not wasting it. It is a radical programme for a radical Government, and that is exactly what our country needs.

[Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Prime Minister for giving way and may I congratulate him on his recent promotion?

I and many of my colleagues were looking forward to an opportunity in this Parliament to reaffirm our support for the Hunting Act 2004, and I understand that many of his Back Benchers were also looking forward to an opportunity to express their view on it. Is there any particular reason why repeal of the Act was not included in the Queen’s Speech?

[The Prime Minister]

There will be a free vote on a motion of the House of Commons and all Members will be able to take part, voting according to their conscience, as they should on this issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Miss Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the new hon. Member for Watford (Richard Harrington), who has the great distinction of making the first maiden speech of any of the 2010 intake. That suggests that he has been quick off the blocks, and I hope that his Front Benchers take note that he, among our large 2010 intake, managed to get in first. I was expecting to hear maiden speeches for the next six months or so, so well done to him for getting in so quickly.

From listening to the hon. Gentleman’s contribution this afternoon, I am sure that it will not be long before he plays an important role in the Chamber, and I was delighted to hear him pay tribute to his predecessor, Claire Ward, because she was well liked in the House. She entered Parliament as a very young woman, aged 23, and she was indeed in that famous picture—in which I also featured, because I too entered Parliament in 1997—of Blair’s babes. However, she grew up in this Chamber, getting married and having children, and for her to have survived the life that we Members have to lead, while all that was going on in her personal life, which is the normal life of most young people, is nothing short of miraculous. I worry that we have made it more difficult for young people like Claire to enter Parliament, to lead a normal life as an MP and to have a successful career and home life, too.

I know very little about Watford; I am not even sure whether I have ever been through the town. People from Scotland always used to complain that people from south-east England knew nothing of what was happening north of Watford, so perhaps the hon. Gentleman will at some point explain to me what the Watford gap was; I never did find out.

I pay tribute also to the proposer and seconder of the motion on the Loyal Address. In 2001, I seconded the motion on the Address, and in those days, traditionally, the proposer was most definitely someone who had been a Member for some time but would be standing down at the next election, and the seconder was the up-and-coming new person who would have a meteoric rise and soon be on the Front Bench. Since then, I have languished on the Back Benches, although I remember saying in my maiden speech that one advantage of my using a wheelchair was that I would be on the Front Bench for most of my parliamentary career. Unfortunately, the powers that be have perhaps not quite appreciated my talents.

Thirteen years on, I am absolutely amazed that I am still in this place. When a Member has an ultra-marginal seat, they do not expect to retain it when their party loses an election and to be on the other side of the House. However, I have managed to make it from one side to the other, and the view is much the same; I was expecting things to be somewhat different.

[Mr Tom Harris]

I don’t like it.

[Miss Begg]

My hon. Friend says that he does not like it. We might not like the inability to influence policy in the same way, but the view is very similar.

I suppose that one of the reasons why I am still here is my Liberal Democrat opponent. He put out so much literature, all of which told constituents in my very marginal seat that if they wanted to get rid of Labour, all they had to do was vote Liberal Democrat. My majority was emblazoned across all his leaflets. I had always had a real problem in convincing my constituents that, yes, I did indeed have a marginal seat. They kept saying, “You’ll be fine, Anne, don’t you worry.” I said, “No, I have got only a 1,300 majority and I have a marginal seat,” but they would say, “Oh, it’s all right—you’ll be fine.” So I thank the Lib Dems, who put out a sea of leaflets with my majority on them, all claiming that Labour could be defeated only if people voted Liberal Democrat. Thank goodness, my constituents saw what was best for them and for me and voted Labour after all.

I am proud of the achievements of the Labour Government in the past 13 years. Before history is rewritten too much and our achievements are swept away in the great euphoria of the new coalition Government, I should say something about the Liberal voters who did not realise that by voting Liberal they would end up with a Tory Government; in Aberdeen South, they were very well aware that if they voted Liberal they would get a Tory Government. To those Liberals, I say a Scottish phrase: if ye didnae ken then, ye ken nou!

The Labour Government’s achievements have been many, but the one in which I take most pride is how we tackled the scourge of poverty—both pensioner poverty and child poverty. I do not want anyone to undermine what we did as a Government to bring people, particularly pensioners, out of poverty. We ended absolute poverty with the introduction of the pension credit for all pensioners in this country and we made huge inroads into tackling relative poverty. We did the same with child poverty; we turned the tide. The numbers were going up under the last Conservative Government, but we have turned that around—we turned that around, I should say; I have not yet got my tenses right—and the numbers of children in poverty were coming down.

The Labour Government also transformed the landscape on equality. I am thinking not only of the rights of the lesbian, gay and transsexual community, but of those of us with disabilities and those facing discrimination because of their gender or on any other grounds. I worry that the new Conservative-Liberal alliance will not take equality as seriously as the previous Labour Government took it. There are some warm words in the Queen’s Speech, but warm words do not necessarily add up to a strong commitment to the equality legislation already on the statute book and to building on that to make sure that equality is at the heart of everything that the new Government do.

A Liberal-Tory coalition is not a new thing. We had one elected in Aberdeen in 2003, and it lasted until 2007, when a Lib Dem-Scottish National party coalition was elected. I have to say that it was not a happy experience for the good burghers of Aberdeen. Under the Liberal-Tory coalition elected in 2003, the city council underwent a huge reorganisation, which cost huge amounts of money, took away the existing directors of education and housing, and reorganised local government in Aberdeen into three geographical areas. By 2007, it was clear that the whole restructuring had failed miserably, and it had cost a huge amount. I do not know the exact cost because it is difficult to disaggregate these things, but it was certainly more than £100 million.

Aberdeen has had a foretaste of what may now happen under this coalition Government with regard to public spending cuts. In the first year, there were supposed to be £25 million-worth of cuts, which miraculously rose to £50 million, and in the second year there were proposals for another £30 million-worth of cuts. This happened in one small city as a result of the financial mismanagement of, essentially, a Liberal-dominated council. Perhaps some of the Members sitting on the Government Benches should worry that the Liberals may talk a good game, but when they get into power there is quite a different outcome. What we found in Aberdeen, before the effects of the global crisis kicked in, and before any of the proposals made by the Government in the Queen’s Speech or in the days leading up to it, was one of the richest cities in the United Kingdom on the verge of bankruptcy. It has been a sorry tale.

We often think of public servants as faceless bureaucrats and paper-pushers, but we must remember that it is these very same public servants who work for our local councils in providing the care for our elderly and disabled, and who will find that their jobs have been lost as a result of the actions taken by this new coalition Government. It is frightening to think of what might happen when we have the new cuts on top of the existing cuts. We have already seen it in Aberdeen. Schools have closed. Day centres for people with severe disabilities have closed without alternative provision being made, and those people have been left to find activities for themselves because they are no longer provided by the council. All the warm words—“Oh yes, we’ll provide something better”—have never materialised into action.

Perhaps that helps to explain why I am sitting here on the Labour Benches having survived the Liberal bounce, the Clegg bounce, or whatever it was it called. It is because people in Aberdeen know the reality of what it is to live under a council run by the Liberal Democrats.