House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Bill [Lords]
Debate between Tony Baldry and Baroness Primarolo(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
New clause 2—Bill of Rights—
“Nothing in this Act shall be constructed by any court in the United Kingdom as affecting Article IX of the Bill of Rights 1689.”
This clause, modelled on section 1 of the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009, preserves the exclusive cognisance of the House of Lords over its own proceedings and membership.
New clause 3—Code of conduct—
‘(1) Standing Orders of the House of Lords may provide for the adoption of a code of conduct.
(2) A resolution passed by virtue of section 1(4) must include a reference to the relevant provision of any code of conduct which the House of Lords may have adopted and which has not been superseded by a subsequent decision of the House.”
This clause allows the House of Lords to adopt a code of conduct and also requires the application of penalties under this Bill to be linked to that code, if there is one.
Amendment 18, in clause 1, page 1, line 6, at end insert
“on the ground of that member’s conduct as set out in the resolution”.
Sir Tony Baldry
New clauses 1 and 2 stand in my name, and new clause 3 and amendment 18 are in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope).
This important Bill enables a lacuna to be filled in the procedures of the House of Lords, and to enable the House of Lords—where appropriate—to suspend or expel Members. The House of Lords currently has powers to suspend Members, but rather curiously it can do so only for the remainder of a Parliament. Therefore, if a Member of the House of Lords were to be suspended today, they could effectively be suspended only until 30 March, or whenever this Parliament is dissolved. If, on the other hand, the House of Lords decided to suspend a Member early in the next Parliament, they would be suspended for the duration of that Parliament. That is curious and it is difficult to justify why the length of suspension should vary. The House of Lords wanted to clarify that position as well as the position on expulsions. The measure had wide support in the other place, and I am sure it will win support throughout this House.
This is a somewhat thin House today. I speak not personally about my bodily weight—although, as my wife points out to me, I have a body image problem because I do not see my body as everybody else sees it—but it is a thin House because there are very few of us here. That, I think, is a consequence of five-year fixed-term Parliaments, because for the last few months, although the House has been sitting, large numbers of colleagues understandably want to be in their constituencies or elsewhere campaigning.
Future of the NHS
Debate between Tony Baldry and Baroness Primarolo(13 years ago)
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Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman is a member of the Health Committee, so one would expect him to be well informed on these matters. I assume that he reads other reports of the House relating to health. I wonder what he would say about the report of the Public Accounts Committee that was recently published, under the chairmanship of one of his right hon. Friends, which says:
“The trend of falling NHS productivity will have to be reversed if the NHS is to deliver, by 2014-15, savings of up to £20 billion each year for reinvestment in healthcare.”
The PAC found that there were serious problems with productivity—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Interventions, by their nature, must be brief, particularly when so many Members are waiting to speak.
Tony Baldry
No, I am not going to give way as I am conscious that many Members wish to speak, and Madam Deputy Speaker has already told me off this afternoon for taking too long.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I was not telling the hon. Gentleman off; rather, I was reminding him of the convention.
Tony Baldry
I can recognise a chastisement when I see it!
GPs want to get on with things, and while it is important that we should pause and have a listening exercise, we also need to give GPs the confidence so that they continue to plan for GP-led commissioning.
The more I listen to the contributions in the debate, the clearer it becomes that each Member has their own agenda of changes that they wish to be made. Much has been made of the 98% vote against my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State by the Royal College of Nursing, but I listened to Peter Carter, chief executive and general secretary of the RCN, on “The World at One”, and I was so struck by what he said that I took down a transcript. Martha Kearney put it to him—
Communities and Local Government
Debate between Tony Baldry and Baroness Primarolo(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), recently made a written statement about the award of jubilee city status in 2012. That continues a practice of creating new cities that was seen at the times of the Queen’s silver and golden jubilees and the millennium celebrations.
The granting of city status to existing large towns or urban districts reflects changes in Britain’s demography. After all, the original definition of a city was a large town with a cathedral. Many cathedrals were built in the middle ages, and thus the status of many cities in no small part reflects their historic importance. It is therefore much to be commended that the diamond jubilee provides an opportunity to create new cities and to recognise the changing identity of where people live.
However, city status is partly a celebratory designation and does not change the status of a place for the purposes of the Local Government Act 1972 or any subsequent amendments to it. I hope that the diamond jubilee will also provide an opportunity to recognise the historic identity of many of England’s larger towns that do not aspire to be described as cities but would welcome back the right to be described as boroughs.
The English and Welsh boroughs played an important part in our nation’s history. Borough status was granted by the Crown by royal charter because a town had achieved significant status or for particular achievements, and boroughs were entitled to return Members of Parliament. Most could return two Members, although under their charters a handful could return only one. Banbury became an episcopal borough way back in the time of the Plantagenets, and it was granted a royal charter for borough status by Queen Mary Tudor in 1554. Under that charter it was entitled to return a single Member to Parliament, and I am thus the 46th Member of Parliament for Banbury. A subsequent charter was granted by James I in 1608.
If colleagues take a walk through Central Lobby to St Stephen’s entrance and look up at the window, they will see there in stained glass the coats of arms of the boroughs at the time when the House was rebuilt after the fire. There, immediately opposite the statue of Somers, are the coats of arms of Banbury, because at that time it was recognised that the English boroughs were part of the fabric of our nation.
The reorganisation of local government in the early 1970s broadly divided England into two tiers, counties and districts. It was decided that only districts could have the opportunity of describing themselves as boroughs. Effectively, the only boroughs remaining are those communities that, at the time of the 1972 Act, were large enough as boroughs to become stand-alone district authorities. Smaller boroughs such as Banbury were wiped off the map and given no more than charter trustee status. In other words, the district councillors who represented the former borough of Banbury were designated as trustees of the borough’s charter. It was only comparatively recently that former boroughs such as Banbury were able to acquire town council status, which is the equivalent of being a parish council.
I can report to Ministers that, since Banbury acquired town council status, there has been a considerable regeneration of civic and community activity. Banbury is an English market town that is proud of its history and traditions and the history of our nation, as shown by the fact that it is, so far as I know, the only town in Oxfordshire that, every year since 1940, has held a battle of Britain service and parade to give thanks for England’s deliverance at the battle of Britain.
Banbury does not aspire to be a city, but it is the largest town in Oxfordshire after the city of Oxford, and it would like to be recognised for what it always has been—an English borough. Banbury does not aspire in any way to compete with Cherwell district. Indeed, as local residents, we are proud to be part of Cherwell and of Cherwell’s achievements. It is a distinctive area of England.
More than 40 years have passed since the 1972 Act, and there is no risk of anyone becoming confused between a Banbury borough council and Cherwell district council, just as no one is confused between Banbury town council and Cherwell district council. Ministers in the Department for Communities and Local Government state that, under the 1972 Act, only district councils can become boroughs. I understand that point, but I want to tell my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary that I have a solution.
As the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office made clear, the creation of new jubilee cities will be done not under an Act of Parliament, but by exercise of the royal prerogative. On exactly the same principle, I suggest that the Queen could exercise the royal prerogative to create jubilee boroughs. Any town in England with former borough status could apply to become a jubilee borough. That would not require an amendment to the 1972 Act. There would be no confusion between jubilee borough celebratory designation and boroughs that are district councils. It would enable recognition of an important part of English civil life and cost not a single penny—